“Hey Ma, Alex went to see the Avengers, can we go too?”
Cringe. While the idea of sitting and watching Paul Bettany for two hours sounds great to me, I have no idea if the movie is appropriate for my little guy to watch. I mean, I know it’s rated PG-13, but all the ‘other’ kids are watching it. Is there swearing? Sex? Violence?
Remember that awkward moment when you were watching a movie with your family and all of the sudden somebody on the screen was buck naked doing the horizontal mambo? Your Mom blushed and your Dad awkwardly jumped up and turned off the VCR, went and grabbed a drink, never to talk about it again.
I remembered when Erica talked about the amount of violence in the Hunger Games and wondered just how you know if a film is OK for a certain age? When it comes to watching sex and violence, do you trust your instinct and keep your kids home? Do you trust that if your childs best friends are being allowed to go that it’s an Ok film?
Enter Kids-in-mind.com, which provides complete information about the content of new releases and older movies, so parents can decide whether they should watch a movie with or without the kids.
In their words “It's like a food labeling system which tells you what a food item contains. That's it. We make no judgments about what is good or bad or anything else. Indeed, we do not "condemn," "critique" or "criticize" movies. And we don't "praise" or "recommend" movies either. We advance no "beliefs" and we do not "preach" anything. We are not affiliated with any political party, any cultural or religious group, or any ideology. The only thing we advocate is responsible, engaged parenting.”
And that about sums it up. They provide a summary of the amount of sex, volence, profanity in a film, but also a complete content analysis concerning the levels of violence, sex etc. with descriptions such as this one for the Avengers:
“Two guards are struck by arrows and fall dead; one falls off a roof and onto the ground below. A man shoots another man (we see the man pull the bullet out of his clothing later and there appears to be a bit of blood, but he seems OK). A woman is shown lying dead on the floor with a burn mark on her face.”
Great right?
You can use the site to search for a specific title, ‘New This Week’ or ‘New on Video’ to help narrow down your search. This info is so incredibly helpful on those movie nights when you’re standing in line at the movie store and can't tell if that PG-13 movie is really any better than the one that's rated R.
The database at Kids-in-mind.com goes back to the 90’s (although the 90’s reviews are not as detailed as the more recent films) I was able to find reviews for one of my favourite movies ever, Billy Madison, as well as make an informed decision on the Avengers (which we decided to skip in the theatre and watch when we can rent and fast forward.)
This is a site I will be bookmarking and passing on to my mom network for sure!
The last few months have been tough here in the Ottawa area. Friends and family in the government circles have lost their jobs, or gotten notices that they will soon. Others have been restructured or laid off and are struggling to find work now that the market is even more flooded with summer students.
It sucks.
And while I know a lot of you still use the news paper classifieds to find a job, I wanted to highlight some of the better online job search sites out there. Some of which can even provide you notice within 24 hours when a job is posted so you can get a leg up on the competition and apply for the perfect job.
So how can you use the internet to find work?
Sites like WetFeet.com offer information on many aspects of the career and hiring process like salary data, company profiles, industry profiles, recruiter Q and A and much more. What’s good about using this website is that you can create a website and have it critiqued by others in the industry to give you that extra edge.
I know it sounds obvious, but if Joes Bike Shop is your favourite company and you want to work for them, go to their website, search their careers page and bookmark it. If it’s a larger company, their careers page may have alerts that can be sent to you via email when a job that matches what you’re looking for comes up. Check frequently!
The Job Bank is a service run in conjunction with the Government of Canada that allows companies to post open positions on their site. They verify that each employer who places job orders on the web site is a valid employer with a valid job to offer that conforms to their requirements for fair and equitable recruitment.
There are many sites that fall under the category of ‘Paid by employers, free to the user’
Workopolis - Workopolis allows you to post your resume and also do job searches from within their web site.
Believe it or not, I have actually gotten a job by posting my resume there. A company searched for qualifications, asked me to come in for an interview and I had an offer letter the following day. If you’re willing to post your information on there, I guarantee that companies do use it for searching.
Monster - Monster is very similar to Workopolis in that it allows you upload a resume for free. It allows you to not only search based on your qualifications, but like Workopolis, it allows companies to search your profile as well.
There are quite a few sites out there that take data from hundreds of companies career pages, and pull them into a search engine. They vary in functionality, but at a minimum, most offer the ability to search by keywords and region
A few examples are:
If you’re not on LinkedIn, you should be. Building my network on LinkedIn has provided me with a lot of potential opportunities, and chances to network with people I wouldn’t have had the chance to otherwise. Setting up your profile will allow employers to find you and connect with you regarding potential opportunities, and you can see how many times you have appeared in their search results as well.
For those in Ottawa and Toronto, one of my favourite paid services is Peters New Jobs. For a small fee you can subscribe to have a list of all new jobs emailed to you each day. PNJ pulls jobs from the careers pages of PNJ tracks close to 10,000 employers, as well as the Government of Canada, and staffing agencies. It’s my favourite way to hear about a job first.
So those are some of my favourite resources. Do you have any hidden gems I should know about?
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