Getting Started
VitaeWho requires registration and authentication to use. Registration means you need to sign up for the service. Authentication means that you need to login before using the service.
Registration
When you start VitaeWho the first time, you need to register. Select the login link in the upper right corner of the application 
. The logon form will present itself. Select the register now link at the lower left corner of the form 
. This will present the registration form.
There is nothing unusual about this form.
User name: This is a unique name that doesn’t already exist in the database. This is what you will need to use to LOGIN to the systems, NOT your EMAIL!!! If you want, you can enter your email as your username, . . .that will work.
Friendly name:This is what you would like shown to identify you.
Email: Your email address. It has to be a real email because once you register, an email will be sent to whatever address that you give. You will need to click on a link on that email in order to prove to the system that the email is legitimate. Your account will not be valid until validate the email!
Password: Case sensitive, at least 7 characters and must include at least one special character, like @ or #.
Security question: The question that the computer to ask you when it needs to know you are who you say you are.
Security answer: The answer that you will respond with.
Postal Code: We want to know generally where you are located.
Captcha Text: This is to ensure that robots aren’t trying to register. In the response field, enter the matching text in lower case. That should confound the robots!
When you are done and the form doesn’t give you any errors, Click the OK button. The form will close and probably give message telling you that a validation email was sent to you. Click on the link in the email to complete the registration process. It has to be done in order to validate your email.
Navigate back to the Home Page, and click on the Login link again.
Logging On
Enter your user name and password in the form. Unless you registered with your email as your user name, DON’T ENTER YOUR EMAIL ADDRESS. The user name is not case sensitive. However, the password is case sensitive!
Click on the OK button when ready. The main program should display in the upper right:
Profile
Filling in your profile is not mandatory, but you should so that one day, VitaeWho will attempt to find you a job. Aside from the profile information, there are a couple of configuration settings that will make your life much easier. Click on the Profile link in the upper right of the browser window, as shown above.
General
Country
We want to know what country you are located so that we can boast how many users we have and where you are located.
Postal Code
We’d like to get a little finer in detail and narrow into your postal code location.
Start Date Offset
We aren’t going to show every job posting that you ever applied. Here you can tell the program how many days back you would like to see. The default is 90 days back, you can change it from 1 day to 365 days back.
Culture
Generally, the culture settings on your computer determine how things are displayed. The default is English (United States) but there are 137 different other cultures that you can select. The program is configured to store your culture with your profile. It really doesn’t make a difference if you always use your computer at home, but if you go to Spain and use a computer in an internet café, it will make a difference. Without your profile knowing what culture you prefer, in Spain, the computer in the internet café is likely set to Spain and you will probably see Spanish and other formatting differences. By setting your culture in the profile, what you see will be the same regardless of computer and location.
We can’t support all the cultures, so if you select a culture that we don’t support, it will probably revert to the English (US) version. Hopefully, we can get users like yourself to help us internationalize the program better!
Allow Searches on your Profile:
Currently, this doesn’t do anything. If you elect to check it, one of these days, we might allow companies to query out database for some variation of the profiles that you select in the dialog boxes other tabs. It doesn’t make sense for us to send them a resume for you since we aren’t asking for a “permanent/official” resume from you. Most likely we will provide them you with an email stating that some company would like for you to forward your resume to them.
Move Backlog to Not Selected
This option looks at the Closing Dates of prospects that have a status of App Backlog and automatically changes the status to Not Submitted if the Closing Date has already passed by more than a day.
Industry
These are typical industries that you might be searching for a position. It gives whoever is looking a sense of where you see yourself and to a certain extent, how you view your skills. This list will likely be expanded over time.
Education
Not much to say. If a company only want someone with a PhD, it doesn’t really matter how much experience you have or what your accomplishments are, you are probably wasting your time even sending a resume.
Skill Level
This is generic. Pick a skill level that will be matched to whatever you claim your profession. This list will likely be expanded over time.
Profession
Your profession speaks to what you are skilled at. That might be different from what Industries you are interested in pursuing employment. This list will likely be expanded over time.
Engineer Type
If you are an engineer, it really doesn’t help to tell someone that you are an engineer without context. That context is usually evident based on the circumstance surrounding the conversation. There is no context to this on-line stuff. If you are an engineer, please indicate the type.
We don’t want to get into tremendous detail hear, but as we get feedback, it is likely that this list will also expand.
Programming
If you are a programmer, tell us the languages. Many people program using different languages over the course of their career. That counts in your ability to learn new languages and your ability to revisit a language that you might not be current. Only check programming languages where you can maintain an reasonable conversation. How good you are in the language is subjective and will be discerned in the interview.
Languages
You never know whether your ability to speak a language will get you a job interview. We will definitely be expanding this section in the future. The languages shown here are the top ten languages in the world as of a recent internet search.
Microsoft Certifications
Schedule of Abbreviations
|
MCTS |
Microsoft Certified Technology Specialist |
|
MCITP |
Microsoft Certified IT Professional |
|
MCPD |
Microsoft Certified Professional Developer |
|
MCAP |
Microsoft Certified Architect Program |
|
MCDST |
Microsoft Certified Desktop Support Technician |
|
MCLC |
Microsoft Certified Learning Consultant |
|
MCSA |
Microsoft Certified Systems Administrator |
|
MCSE |
Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer |
These are the basic ones that employers might be interested.
CISCO Certifications
CompTIA Certifications
Schedule of Abbreviations
|
CompTIA |
Computer Technology Industry Association |
|
PMP |
Project Management Professional |
|
CAPM |
Certified Associate in Project Management |
|
PgMP |
Program Management Professional |
|
PMI-SP |
Project Management Institute-Scheduling Professional |
|
PMI-RMP |
Project Management Institute-Risk Management Professional |
Other
There are lots of other profiles that we can collect to help describe your particular skill set. If you have suggestions on how/what we can collect for your industry, please let us know!
Prospects
The application is essentially a single form that allows you to manage your resumes. Along the top of the form are the filters that can be applied to all the job prospects that you have saved to the database.
Application Status Dropdown
This is the primary filter. The status categories are:
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Under Consideration – You submitted a resume/cover and know that they will get back to you one way or the other.
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Interviewing – They called you back to set up an interview.
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Cancelled – They didn’t hire anyone, but cancelled the position. In the scheme of things, it might not matter since you didn’t get hired. By tracking this, you know how many firms didn’t hire your because they didn’t hire anyone.
-
Not Selected – Not what you really want to hear.
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Application Submitted – You submitted a resume/cover and know that they will either contact you if they are interested or just file your resume. The only news you will get from them is good news.
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Application Backlog – Lots of times, you are surfing the postings and something is of interest. You can’t always drop everything to send them a resume, because you don’t know if a better position is listed below and you want to be sure that the time you spend customizing your cover letter is for the most interesting position. Save this posting in the Backlog category and you will be able to decide later if it is worth pursuing. A link to the posting URL is saved so there is no hunting for this later.
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Not Submitted – Works with the backlog. If there are positions that you place in the backlog, and later when you go back, decide that position wasn’t really that interesting, don’t throw the listing away. Just move it to Not Submitted. You never know when you might rethink that position. After all, it did initially catch your eye.
Change the status filter and press the Load Prospects button.
Company DropDown:
If you select a status category of Application submitted and there are 100 postings with numerous companies, you can narrow the search by selecting one of the companies in the list. The companies in this drop down changes with the companies in the status selection set. Change company filter and press the Load Prospects button.
Start Date
For the most part Start Date is controlled by the start date configuration item in your profiles. In fact, when you first enter this form the start date will always be based on whatever you entered in the profile. However, you can change what is displayed by selecting a date here. It is only temporary and will only affect the current session. Change the date and press the Load Prospects button.
Load Prospects
Change the selection filters for Application Status, Company and Start Date, then press this button to refresh the display. If it is grayed out, it means that you have made changes to the previous job prospects that are displayed and you need to save the changes first before you can update the listing.
Save Changes
When changes are made to any prospect, the Load Prospect button will be disabled. This prevents you from making changes and not saving them.
The Prospect Grid
The grid consists of job prospects that you have defined. Click on any column/row position to edit. The last three columns on the right are actually buttons that indicate if there is a URL associated with the posting, or if there is a resume or cover letter saved with the position. “U” indicates URL, “R” indicates resume and “C” indicates cover letter. They are buttons, so clicking on the button enables you to manage that data.
URL Manager
The URL Manager enables you to save a URL location that will get you back to the job posting. It also allows you to open the URL in your browser window.
Resume/Cover Manger
The Resume and Cover manager are actually the same dialog. This dialog box allows you to save either your resume and/or cover letter to the database. Both Word format and PDF format is supported. We expect and would actually prefer that you use the Word format because they are smaller files and when retrieved, they are editable, whereas the PDF format is not. You can also clear the resume and/or cover letter from your database. Notice that the header for the dialog contains the description of the current job posting that you have selected.
The first row in the form allows you to choose either the cover letter or resume. The second row let you specify whether to save it or get it from the database. If you are saving it, then the third row allows you to select the file from your computer. The bottom row of buttons lets you initiate the save or retrieval of the file.
When retrieving either your resume or cover letter, you will be prompted to save it somewhere. Once it is saved, you can open it with either Work or Acrobat.
Delete Row
This is the first column, with the "D". It Deletes the job prospect from the database. You get a warning dialog before it happens.
Change Status
When you finally hear from a company that they want an interview or you were not selected, change its status here.
Note that the posting will remain visible in the table until the changes are saved and the Load Prospects button is selected again to refresh the display!
Contacts
Add as many contacts as you need for each job posting. Each consists of a name, email, and three phone numbers. Again, after you add a contact of make changes to an existing contact, press the Save to Database button. If you press OK before doing so, you will get a reminder. If you don’t want to save the changes, use the Cancel button.
Add New Job Prospect
Inserts a new row to the table that can be edited with the posting information. It will present the following table:
This dialog lets you completely identify the position, company, their reference id, URL where the position is listed, and cover and resume letters. Fill it out, and press the OK button. the position will be added to the Grid.
Note that if the grid is currently showing a status such as Under Consideration, and you fill the dialog with a status of App Backlog, the entry will not appear in the grid, . . . because the grid is only showing job prospects that are Under Consideration.