In United States, the busiest hiring season is the autumn(Labor Day through Thanksgiving). It is very important that you update your career profile, resume and cover letters now! 

In September, decision makers are back from summer vacation. Hiring managers push for an increase to take advantage of remaining budget for the year. If they don't hire before January, they might lose the allocated funds for new employees. 

The worst season for hiring and job hunting are the holiday season(Thanksgiving through New Year's) and summertime (Memorial Day through mid-August). So the employers also want to get new recruits in before December. 

The U.S. unemployment rate dropped to 7.3% in August(about 2.5% for IT professionals). Please take following steps to make yourself stand out in the job market!

1. Conduct a self-assessment to determine skills and talents, then update your career profile.
2. Use real time H1B database to conduct market research, and identify employers in need of your skills and talents.
3. Craft an industry-specific resume and cover letter, and upload them to job candidate database.
4. Utilize Resume Blasting Service and Smart Apply Service to pitch large number of employers.
5. Negotiate and evaluate job offers by researching how similar H1B jobs are paid.

Since its first release in May 2010, Smart Apply has become the most popular service on MyVisaJobs.com. Every day, hundreds of members use the service to send out thousands of applications.  They only have to spend several minutes a day, and the smart engine will match skills, customize cover letters and deliver applications. They feel relaxed and comfortable, because they know Smart Apply rules make it impossible to abuse the system, and everything possible has been done to avoid spam.

Based on feedbacks, we just released the upgraded version of Smart Apply service, following is the list of major enhancements:

1. Keywords to Avoid: The old version of Smart Apply has a very nice feature: Companies to Avoid. People like it and some of them ask why not have "Keywords to Avoid". For example, if you are searching for marketing jobs, you do not want to be bothered by door to door sales jobs. We hear you and this feature is now available on Smart Apply setup page. You can simply add the word "sales" to the list of words to avoid, and then you will never be invited to become the greatest salesman in the world!

2. Remove unwanted jobs: No matter how smart our system is, sometimes it will return some jobs that you do not want to apply for. Now on Approve Matched Jobs page, you can simply click the Remove button to remove unwanted jobs, and then you will never be bothered by them again! 

3. Apply for jobs directly and manually: We want to make our service smarter, simpler and more flexible. Sometimes, you want more controls over the job applications. You want to use different cover letters or resumes. You want to send the applications through your Outlook client or web mail. We hear you and actually we encourage you to do so for your dream jobs. Now on the job details page, you have the option to write cover letter, upload resume, change your name, email address and subject before clicking submit. Since the job contact (email, name and title) is also available, you can email the application from your email client like Outlook or Hotmail.

4. Extended trial period. Originally, the free trial period is 3 days. Now, it has been extended to 10 days. If you really like our service and update your Smart Apply setting everyday, you will soon figure out a way to extend the trial period indefinitely.  We do not fix this 'bug', because we appreciate your support and want your feedbacks. When we generate enough revenue from advertisement and employer, we will provide our services free.

Try the new Smart Apply now, and tell us how you think!