7 steps to finding a job online

NEW YORK (Fortune) -- Dear Annie: I have two questions for you. First, I graduated from a top engineering college in June and have been applying for jobs all summer with no luck.

I've targeted five companies I'd especially like to work for who I know are hiring entry-level engineers. I sent them my resume online and registered on their web sites, but have heard nothing from any of them. I don't want to be a pest, but should I call or e-mail to make sure they have seen my resume?

My second question is, am I right to leave my grade point average (GPA) off my resume? I excelled in my engineering classes, but my overall GPA isn't very good (2.8), mostly because I worked my way through school by doing three part-time jobs, so I didn't have much time to study. But should I put it on my resume anyway and then hope I get a chance to explain why it's not so hot? --Wondering in Waukegan

Dear Wondering: Your resume may be getting tossed aside by the computerized screening systems that most employers use these days to winnow huge numbers of resumes down to a manageable few, says Mark Lyden, who wrote a book aimed at new grads called "Do This! Get Hired!" ($16.00; see www.dothisgethired.com) that's jam-packed with insider tips on getting the job you want -- from how to get an interview to coming out on top in salary negotiations.

"If your resume doesn't contain the exact same keywords and phrases as the job description for a given opening, using precisely the same terms, you are probably going to be invisible to these systems -- and to the people using them," Lyden says. Yikes.

0:00/1:25Beyond banking for grads

Luckily, there are ways to make sure you show up on employers' radar screens, says Lyden, a veteran college recruiter at Boeing. The key is what he calls "reverse engineering" your resume, and you can do it in seven steps:

1. Pinpoint the jobs you might want. Before you do anything else, go to the websites of the five companies you have targeted and get the job descriptions of specific openings that interest you.

2. Take your cue from the job descriptions. Next, "mark the precise words and phrases that describe the skills and knowledge someone has decided are necessary for each job," Lyden says.

3. Rewrite your resume for each opening. Use the keywords and phrases you highlighted when describing any relevant experience you have. Be precise. Let's say a job description reads "Must have experience with finite element analysis," an engineering specialty often abbreviated as FEA. If your resume says "Experience in FEA," you could be counted out.

"The person doing the screening may not know that FEA stands for 'finite element analysis,' so your resume may never get a second glance," says Lyden. "It sounds crazy and unfair, but it happens all the time."

Tailor each resume you submit to match those exact key phrases from the job description. If you have no training or experience in a given area of the job description, concentrate on the ones where you do have some knowledge.

4. Create a heading on each resume that says "Interest Areas." Take all the keywords and phrases you highlighted from the job description and list them under this heading, even if they've already been mentioned in your resume's "Experience" or "Education" sections.

It seems redundant, but some computer screening systems are set up to scan the "Interest Areas" part first, so again, it's a way to not get tossed aside in the first round of screening.

5. Rewrite your profile on each web site. When you register on employers' websites, make sure your online profile includes those same keywords and phrases -- especially if the company asks for your "interest areas."

6. Then -- and only then -- apply for the jobs that interest you. If you've already applied for specific jobs, follow the five steps above and reapply.

7. Keep customizing your resume, and updating your online profiles. As you apply for more jobs, repeat the process above for each one.

Now, about your second question, regarding your less-than-stellar GPA: "For some reason, employers are stuck on 3.0 as the lowest GPA they will consider," Lyden notes. "So a 2.8 cumulative GPA may be a problem for you."

Some college career centers advise students to leave a low GPA off their resume altogether, but "this is a huge mistake," he says.

Instead, since you mention you did well in your engineering courses, he suggests listing your GPA in the major. Simply list "Major GPA: 3.6" (or whatever the number is). That should help you get a foot in the door, so that if anyone asks about your overall GPA in an interview, you'll have a shot at explaining that you held down three jobs to pay for school -- quite a feat, by the way. Good luck!

Talkback: Have you found a job through a company website? What worked for you? If your grades in college were mediocre, how did you overcome that in a job search? Sign in to Facebook below and tell us. 

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Bank of England mulls rate cuts

LONDON (Reuters) -- The Bank of England could cut the interest rate it pays banks holding reserves with it to help nurture what it says will be a gradual economic recovery, Governor Mervyn King said on Tuesday.

The economy has probably started growing again but inflation risks are still to the downside, King told a parliamentary committee.

He also defended the work of the BoE Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) after criticism from former member David Blanchflower, who said King dominated it with his hawkish views on interest rates.

British interest rate futures rallied and sterling fell on Tuesday after King floated the idea of following Sweden and cutting the rate of interest it pays on commercial bank deposits in order to encourage more lending.

In Sweden the central bank has reduced the deposit rate for banks holding reserves with it to minus 0.25%, encouraging the banks to keep money flowing in the markets -- rather than held at the central bank with a negative interest rate.

"Of course people have talked about whether it would be sensible to reduce the rate at which ... reserves are remunerated and it is something which we are looking at," King told parliament's Treasury Committee.

There has been concern the extra 175 billion pounds ($291 billion) being pumped into the economy through the BoE's quantitative easing program are being hoarded by banks rather than finding their way to struggling businesses.

Britain, facing a general election by next June, is struggling to pull out of its deepest recession since World War II. King said he saw some positive signs.

"Falls in output have broadly come to an end and we are beginning to see some very small signs of positive growth," King told parliament's Treasury Committee.

"It is important to remember that the very small positive growth rates or small falls in output in other countries in the second and possibly third quarter are really very small in comparison with a sharp fall in output that took place at the end of last year and beginning of this," he added.

King said there was a need for a very credible overall plan to make sure public finances were on a sound footing but added there was still time to do that.

0:00/0:53Interest rates steady in Europe

Cutting debt and reining in a huge budget deficit are emerging as the central argument in the run-up to the election.

King took issue with comments in the New Statesman magazine last week in which former MPC member Blanchflower criticized him for ignoring his early warnings about looming recession last year.

King said Blanchflower's account did not coincide with his own recollections.

"... (Blanchflower) has chosen to make a statement of this kind and he is entitled to do this. I think it was unwise and not sensible for someone on the committee to do that."

Earlier, official data showed British consumer price inflation slowed less than expected in August as transport costs rose, partly offsetting a downward impact from utility bills and food prices.

Inflation has fallen more slowly in Britain than in other countries, but the Bank of England reckons the large amount of spare capacity built up during the recession will bear down on prices for some time to come and could push it even further below its 2% target. 

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Let's ditch the GDP

(breakingviews.com) -- Take an intellectual crisis in economics, mix in some French philosophy and cook for a year or two in the heated brain of celebrated economist Joseph Stiglitz. The result: a missed philosophical opportunity.

Nicolas Sarkozy, the French president, set up the Commission on the Measurement of Economic Performance and Social Progress in the beginning of 2008. Back then, the world's financial problems seemed mainly Anglo-Saxon. Sarko thought the French could teach the world how to think about economic success.

Stiglitz, an iconoclastic American Nobel laureate, was chairman, and Amartya Sen, the Indian-born Nobel laureate, was chief intellectual advisor. Their seemingly radical conclusion is that GDP (Gross Domestic Product) is a bad measure of an ill understood good.

GDP may measure something, but its problems are almost too numerous to count. The measure adds together and adjusts prices in arbitrary ways. Economists "input" -- make up -- many of them.

GDP ignores housework but treats the costs of commuting, crime and finance as positives. It is a gross measure, ignoring depreciation and environmental damage. It is also a crude measure, ignoring wealth and the distribution of income.

The worst thing about GDP is not how it is counted but how it is commonly used -- as a simple indicator of economic success. You don't need to be Descartes or Derrida to know that more is not always better when it comes to the stuff of this world. Whatever the meaning of life may be, a larger GDP, at least in rich countries, is unlikely to provide more of it.

The Commission explores alternative numerical measures of economic and social success. Some are based on subjective satisfaction and others on measures of "wellbeing" arbitrarily chosen by economists. Stiglitz and Co discuss the weaknesses of these substitutes. But the value of a search for a single guiding number is never really philosophically questioned.

That's a shame. Economic activity can contribute to the human good in many ways: longer lives, better health, more education and a wide array of creature comforts. But like anything close to the human spirit, those supports cannot be measured with precision. Stiglitz would have done the world a service if he had said that there was no point trying. 

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After Lehman - Fear and wariness

NEW YORK (Fortune) -- It was around 10 p.m., exactly one year ago today, and I was standing out in front of Lehman Brothers on 7th Avenue watching as the then fourth largest investment bank in the world melted down. As I took in the scene, Lehman employees carrying out boxes under the kleig lights, past the police cordons, some shouting out angrily to perplexed tourists who had no idea what was going on, it dawned on me that the world was going to change. (The last time I felt anything like that, by the way, was when I watched the World Trade Center collapse, seven years to the month earlier.)

Today, we do seem to be on the mend. An investment banker friend of mine at Morgan Stanley (MS, Fortune 500) reports that he is extremely busy...finally. A derivative banker reports that he has just priced a new issue at a much higher price than he anticipated. Wall Street sage Vince Farrell notes the incipient recovery is proceeding on a variety of fronts, most especially in China.

And yet employment remains a problem and if there were ever a true barometer of economic well-being, that is it. Bottom line: There is still a paucity of demand, and businesses either have no need to hire (and may still be cutting back), or if they are seeing inklings of demand will wait before rehiring.

0:00/13:12Lehman's unnecessary sacrifice

Underpinning all this is fear, and that ladies and gentleman is not necessarily such a bad thing. Because the simple fact is that what got us into this horrible mess was the flip side to the current sentiment, i.e., a lack of fear. As in: "Have no fear, this homeowner can pay, and if they can't they will sell and the loan will be whole because the house will have appreciated." Couple that line with myriad other "fear not" sales pitches, and all of a sudden you have yourself a full-blown bubble.

So being wary is a good thing. We all need to ask: What could wrong with a given transaction? What is the worst case scenario? How am I protected? At Lehman back then, the answer all too frequently was "fear not." This is Lehman. What's the worst that can happen? Implicit was that bankruptcy and liquidation were not possibilities. But they were. They always are. And all of us would be well to never forget that. 

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Industrial Production

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -- U.S. industrial production rose more than expected in July, Federal Reserve data showed Friday, supporting hopes the longest recession since the 1930s was finally drawing to a close.

Aside from a hurricane-related rebound in October 2008, this was the first monthly increase since December 2007, which marked the start of the current recession.

Industrial production rose 0.5%, stronger than the 0.3% that economists polled by Reuters had expected and well above June's 0.4% decline.

Manufacturing output rose 1% in July, mostly because of a jump in motor vehicle assemblies which rose to an annual rate of 5.9 million units in July from 4.1 million in June.

Auto sales got a big boost from the government's "cash for clunkers" program, which provides incentives to buy new cars. The program's initial $1 billion funding was exhausted in its first week, and it has since been expanded to $3 billion.

Excluding motor vehicles and parts, industrial output fell 0.1% in July.

The capacity utilization rate, a measure of slack in the economy, edged up to 68.5%, slightly higher than economists had expected but still 12.4 percentage points below the 1972-to-2008 average.

The output of utilities fell 2.4%, reflecting unseasonably mild temperatures in July, while mining output rose 0.8%. 

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Rx for money woes: Doctors quit

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- Some 5,000 patients suddenly found themselves without an ob/gyn last November when Dr. Tara Wah closed her practice in Tallahassee, Fla.

Wah, 55, informed her patients in a letter that she could "no longer afford to make ends meet."

After 24 years, "I'm working longer hours than ever," she wrote. "Insurance payments for patient care have stayed virtually the same for the last 15 years, while the cost of doing business, including health insurance, staff salaries and supplies have risen."

The rising cost of malpractice insurance, particularly for her specialty, was the straw that broke the camel's back.

"My malpractice insurance was $125,000 a year, and going up," said Wah. "The only way to get the extra money was to cut back on my salary."

But it wasn't always like that. Being a doctor was once thought to be a path to a cushy lifestyle. Six years after she started practicing, Wah hit her "peak" income year in 1990. Then she took a pay cut every year from 1993 onward, to eventually take no salary for two months prior to permanently shutting her office.

Wasted skills

Wah no longer practices medicine. Instead, she designs and repairs jewelry. "I feel guilty. I dream about [medicine]," she said. "[But] I am so angry. I think, 'What a waste of my training.' "

Wah's situation sheds light on a troubling trend of physicians leaving medicine for a career outside of health care, said Kurt Mosley, a staffing expert with Merritt Hawkins & Associates, a physician search and consulting firm.

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A first-ever survey of 12,000 primary care physicians conducted last October by Merritt Hawkins and the Physicians' Foundation, an organization that represent the interests of physicians, showed that 10.1% of respondents planned to seek a job outside of health care in the next one to three years.

"That is a big number. It's just very sad," said Mosley, especially in light of the shortage of primary care doctors in the United States today.

The American Medical Association said it is aware of this trend, citing the survey, but said it does not have data to show how many doctors have already prematurely exited the profession.

Regardless, Mosley said it's a waste of training, skill, talent and money when a doctor leaves the profession in mid-career.

It takes a minimum of 10 to 12 years of training to become a doctor. In Wah's case, she underwent 10 years of training, including medical school and residency, before she entered the workforce.

While some enter medicine because they believe it pays well, most choose it as a career because they feel it's their calling.

"For many it's not about the money. They have a passion for it, to take care of people," said Mosley. "It's not easy to feel that passionately for another career after medicine."

Waste of taxpayer money

It's also a waste of taxpayer money when a physician opts out. "We are all paying out of our pockets to produce doctors," said Mosley.

That's because medical residency programs are mostly funded by Medicare to the tune of $9 billion to train about 100,000 residents annually, according to the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission.

"It's Medicare that funds hospital costs to house residency programs, pay salaries of residents and sometimes pay faculties' salaries," said Mosley.

Dr. Patricia Perry, 44, a dermatologist based in Burbank, Calif., operates a solo practice. She mostly performs medical procedures such as skin biopsies.

Perry said she's "seeking to get out" of her profession because she's fed up with insurance reimbursement challenges while struggling to cover other costs associated with being a doctor.

"When you get to a point where you feel unappreciated and you're arguing with people about being paid, it takes away the passion for what you do," Perry said.

Daryl Richard, a spokesman for insurer UnitedHealthcare (UHC), said his company is taking steps to address some of providers' concerns.

"We agree 100% that there is too much paperwork" tied to reimbursement claims, he said.

Richard said UnitedHealthcare offers a Web-based application to all of its providers that will enable the company to adjudicate claims to determine a reimbursement and a patient's out-of-pocket expense "by the time the patient makes it to the (doctor's) front desk."

"This takes away some of the unknown for both providers and consumers," he added.

Perry pays $2,500 a year in malpractice insurance. "I am licensed in three states. To maintain my license I have to pay a fee every one to two years in each state," she said. She also pays a considerable amount of money every year to attend annual trade conferences required by her specialty to update and hone her skills.

0:00/2:26Health care disagreements

She said many physicians are scared to speak out about their money woes because they don't want to be perceived as "greedy."

"I have news for you. You are already being perceived that way," she said.

Dr. Kenneth Cohn, a general surgeon with an MBA who tours the country advising doctors on non-clinical job options, says there's a high-level of angst among U.S. physicians. "There's absolutely a greater number who are looking for other job opportunities," he said.

It's a reality that we have to deal with, Cohn said. The implication of it on the health care system, he said, is that doctors may have to increasingly use nurse practitioners and physicians assistants to fill in the gaps. They may also need to look to newer delivery concepts such as medical homes, in which doctor take more of a managerial role in a patient's health care.

'Insurance company is dictating what I do'

Dr. Douglas Evans, 50, a pediatrician based in St. Joseph, Mo., said he's considering a mid-career change if insurer-provider relations aren't reformed.

"I had a young football player in my office [this week]. His symptoms indicate a problem with his neck," he said in an example. "But I have to get authorization from his insurance company first to get an X-ray or an MRI. It's an example of how insurance companies dictate to me what I have to do."

Evans is frustrated that this process will delay treatment by several days.

"My first concern is that he's young and has his career in front of him," he said. "My second concern is that there's a predatory lawyer out there," meaning that if his patient's condition worsens while he waits to get authorization, it could expose him to a malpractice suit.

And Evans said insufficient reimbursement from insurers is posing a heavy financial burden on his practice.

"You can't go to Wal-Mart (WMT, Fortune 500) and pay half the price for a loaf of bread and take the whole bread," he said. Still, he said many doctors have a hard time turning away patients for this reason alone, and end up absorbing the costs.

He warns that unless things improve, only those providers who can't afford to do something else will be left in the system. "I am looking for something that's still science related, like teaching biology at a university," said Evans.

Wah is disillusioned and disappointed, but maybe not completely bitter.

"For the young doctors who are just getting started, I want to say don't give up," she said.

"After taking some time off , I might be able to do some volunteer work," she said. "I do love medicine, but I'm not [mentally] in a place right now to come back." 

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U.S. budget gap widens

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- The U.S. budget deficit grew by $111.4 billion in August, according to government figures released Friday.

The Treasury Department said the August deficit was down slightly from a shortfall of $111.91 billion a year earlier. It was also smaller than the $139.5 billion deficit that economists surveyed by Briefing.com had forecast.

But analysts said the difference from last year was due to calendar issues, which affected outlays related to monthly Social Security payments, and made the deficit in August 2008 appear larger.

For the first 11 months of the fiscal year, which began in October, the total deficit hit $1.38 trillion. That compares with a total deficit $500.5 billion for the first 11 months of fiscal 2008.

The government had a total deficit of $454.8 billion for all of fiscal 2008, which was the largest on record.

With the August shortfall, the U.S. has logged 11 consecutive months of deficits. That has happened only two times before, both in the 1980s, according to a Treasury official.

"We're still running enormous deficits," said Gus Faucher, director of macro economics at Moody's Economy.com. "But that's the price needed to pay to fix the financial system and bring the economy back to growth."

August receipts were $145.5 billion, versus $151.5 billion the month before, bringing the total amount that the government has taken in so far this year to $1.88 trillion.

Total outlays for August were $256.9 billion, a decrease from $332.2 billion in July. For the fiscal year to date, outlays totaled $3.26 trillion.

Looking ahead, the government said it expects to spend $3.65 trillion this fiscal year, which ends Sept. 30. 

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