Margaret Dikel

Orchestra Librarian and Personnel Manager

Margaret Finkler Dikel, French horn, graduated from the Boston Conservatory with a Bachelor of Music (Performance) and also holds a Master of Science, Library and Information Science degree from Simmons College. Margaret’s teachers include Dr. Glenn E. Morgan, David J. Borsheim, and Thomas Newell Jr. Before moving to the DC region, Margaret spent several years in Boston as a freelance musician, performing with the Civic Symphony Orchestra of Boston, Plymouth Philharmonic, John Oliver Chorale, Boston Ballet, Cape Cod Symphony, the New England Philharmonic, the Longwood Symphony, and many other ensembles. She was a member of several chamber music groups, including the Bayside Brass Quintet and the woodwind and brass quintets of the Plymouth Philharmonic. She currently performs regularly with the Apollo Orchestra, Symphony of the Potomac, the Landon Symphonette, and the Ionian Wind Quintet. Margaret also serves as Orchestra Librarian for the Apollo Orchestra, the Symphony of the Potomac, and the Landon School, a position she also filled for the Boston Conservatory, Civic Symphony of Boston, and Plymouth Philharmonic. In 2015, Margaret retired from her day job – Internet career and job search industry expert – where she was referred to as “The Grandmother of Internet Job Search”. For over 20 years, she operated one of the first and most respected guides to online job search, The Riley Guide, which began in December 1993 as a 3-page handout in the Worcester Polytechnic Institute library and went online in January 1994. Richard Nelson Bolles, author of What Color is Your Parachute? said of her work “The Riley Guide is the best of these by far. If you can only go to one gateway job-site on the Web, or book offsite, this should be it. Margaret Dikel is the mother of all that is intelligent about job-hunting on the Internet.” Because of her early work on this topic, she was recruited by the Employment and Training Administration, U.S. Dept. of Labor, to work on some of the earliest online employment service of the Federal government, including America’s Job Bank, America’s Talent Bank, America’s Career InfoNet, and the newer CareerOneStop.org. Other clients over the years included the Career Transition Center at the Foreign Service Institute, U.S. Dept. of State, National Institutes of Health Office of Intramural Training and Education, the outplacement firm Drake Beam Morin (now part of Lee Hecht Harrison), CanWorkNet (Human Resources Development Canada), and the National Career Development Association, with whom she worked to create online resources and training materials for the organizations, their employees, and those they served. She co-authored two books--The Internet: A Tool for Career Planning (1996, 2002, 2011) and The Guide to Internet Job Searching (1996, 1998, 2000, 2002, 2004, 2006, 2008).  Margaret also served as Internet Columnist for two publications: the National Business Employment Weekly from 1996 until 1999, as well as CareerJournal.com 2000 to 2003 (both were published by The Wall Street Journal). Articles by her have also appeared in Library Journal and The Reference Librarian as well as many other books and journals. Now she just enjoys making music.