I added a new category to the blog this week: Professionalism 101. Part of my job at Stony Brook U.’s j-school is coordinating internships and helping our seniors and graduates find jobs. And as the mission of this blog is to reflect on how j-schools are preparing the new generation of journalists for the evolving news industry, writing about job issues and the transition from student to professional feels like a natural fit.

When Joe Grimm met with our graduating seniors last week, he mentioned indeed.com, which he described as a “job board scraper.” Indeed.com has been around for years, apparently, and has been written about widely, yet it’s new to me. I’m an instant convert.

Just for fun, I tried searching for three starkly different job titles — newspaper reporter, hydrogeologist and sewing-machine operator — and got lengthy search results for each. Users can narrow the results by location, salary, company or title, among other choices; one can have e-mail alerts sent whenever a new job is posted in a selected category. The site has a blog examining overall trends in hiring, forums by job title, FAQs, search tips and a neat feature that Joe mentioned: job trends by industry. Today’s page on trends for a category called “media and newspaper jobs” says that job postings last month in this area were up 18 percent over February 2009. How’s that for some good news for a change? (Numeracy alert: Let’s remember that last February, such job postings were few and far between. Still, better up than down.) Among the top 10 job titles in this group: copy editor, with more than 11,000 such jobs posted at an average salary of $48,000.

Another site I’m crazy about is mediajobpod.org, which the Society of Professional Journalists mentioned in a recent e-newsletter; one of my colleagues passed it on to me. This site is the brainchild of two journalism profs at Kent State University, Karl Idsvoog and Dave Smeltzer, a former TV journalist and corporate videographer, respectively. Nice job, guys! They bill the site as “Job Search Advice for Multimedia Journalists and Production Majors.” It consists of beautifully produced video clips of top staffers, and executives who make hiring decisions, discussing topics such as internships, cover letters, writing and multimedia for specific job titles. The journalism job titles currently listed are TV reporter, TV producer, videographer/editor and Web reporter. Among the people who appear on the site are NBC’s Tim Peek, executive producer, new media; CNN anchor/reporter Carol Costello; and the elegant Rita Andolsen, news director at WKYC in Cleveland.

What’s so great about this site is the chance to hear and see professionals giving the advice that matters most to students, the nitty-gritty details about resumes and cover letters and interviews. Hearing from professors is one thing; for students, sometimes, it’s a lot like listening to parents, in one ear and out the other. Or so I fear. But hearing from professionals, and watching them speak, often in newsroom settings, is like diving into the Atlantic off Long Island. It wakes you up. The concern they express for helping students get the job-hunt right, and their passion for finding great young people to bring on board, makes for an inspiring experience.