Whether you're in a full time job search or just keeping tabs on the labor market in your field, you have limited time and effort to invest when using employment Web-sites. It's important, therefore, that you visit those sites that will provide results tailored to your interests and useful to your career. With over 40,000 job boards now in operation, however, and more setting up shop every day, making the right choices can be difficult ... unless you know the right way to do so.There are six criteria you should consider when evaluating the potential usefulness of a job board. These factors address only their capability to support a job search. There are, of course, other facets of career self-management that can be and frequently are provided on such sites-activities such as assessment , planning, education and training, and peer interaction and support-and you should take advantage of them whenever possible.
Finding a great job, however-one that will challenge and reward you-is clearly at the heart of your career success. And a job board that cannot serve your job search needs and goals simply does not provide the return on your investment of time and effort that it should. The following six criteria, therefore, will help make sure you select sites that will actually work for you. They are the right way to pick an employment Web-site.
Visibility in the right places
The right places aren't about geography; they're about employers-the ones for which you want to work. In other words, the right job boards for you are those that advertise where the right employers for you will see them. They should be appearing in the trade publications that serve those organizations, on the Web-sites that cater to their industry's human resource professionals and recruiters, and at the conferences that their hiring managers attend. How can you determine if one site or another is achieving the proper level of visibility in the right places? Results count. Search each site's job database with the names of the employers for which you most want to work and compare the count at each site. The right places will have the best results.
An inventory of the right opportunities
Inventory is your key to success at a job board. The greater the inventory of jobs, the better the chances of employment for you. Some sites, however, post hundreds or thousands of jobs, and others post two or three. You need to know which is which and focus on the sites that offer you the greatest opportunity. But inventory, alone, is not enough. You want access to the right inventory. To put it another way, you want to see the biggest inventory of the best jobs for you. How can you determine which sits have the right inventory? Search the job database at the sites you have under consideration using your field or position title (e.g., finance, sales, editor, project manager) as the search criteria. Once again, the right places will have the best results.
Opportunities at the right level
Your job search will be significantly advanced if you use the sites that can connect you with the right employers and jobs for you. It won't necessarily ensure that your job search is efficient, however, because many of those positions may not be at the right level. In other words, you can waste a lot of time looking at openings that are too junior or too senior for what you are qualified to do. Unfortunately, it's very difficult to determine which sites post jobs that will best match your level of experience (and pay). Employers often do not include the salary level of a position with their posting, so sites usually cannot provide that information to you. Some sites cater to one end of the spectrum or another (focusing on either entry level positions or those that pay in excess of $100K), but most sites post positions that cover a fairly broad range of compensation. So, what can you do? While admitting to some bias, I would recommend that you check WEDDLE's 2005/6 Guide to Employment Web Sites. It's the only reference I know that lists the salary levels of jobs posted at specific job boards.
A downright easy way to look for a job
The best jobs come and go at warp speed, so it's important to check the job inventory at the sites you select every day. That's not easy, of course, because your days are already full, whether you're actively looking for a new job or not. The question, then, is how can you be in two places at once? The answer: use a job agent. Only about 40% of all job boards offer this feature, so it's yet another criterion you can use to separate the right sites for you from all of the others. A job agent is a free service that will match your specified criteria (for the kind of job you want) to all of the jobs posted at a specific site each and every day. Whenever a match is found, it will send you a private e-mail message to that effect so that you can check the opening out. In effect, a job agent makes you more productive because it keeps an eye on the job market for you, while you're off doing other things. No less important, it protects your privacy, so you can watch for the next right job that comes along, even while you are still working in the right job you have right now. It doesn't get any better than that.
The right kind of resume database
With all of the phishing and identity theft occurring online, it's foolhardy to post your resume in a publicly accessible resume database, especially when you're going to include your home address and telephone number on that document. Posting your credentials online can be an effective part of an online job search campaign, but only if you do it right. What does that mean? First, replace your home address and telephone number with an e-mailbox and cell phone number. While the other information is probably also available on the Web, don't make it easy for the creeps online by putting it all in one easy-to-find location. Second, use the right kind of resume database-one that will remove your contact information from your resume and only release it to an employer after you have approved its doing so. Granted, such databases force the employer to do a little more work, but those employers also know that these databases are likely to contain the records of job seekers they cannot find elsewhere online. In their minds, those records often describe the right candidates.
A commitment to doing the right thing
You can take all of the steps outlined above and still see your job search fail, if the sites you select aren't doing the right thing. By that I mean that they aren't reporting data accurately-so you don't really know how many of the right jobs at the right salary level they actually have-and they aren't operating according to established business norms-they're selling your private information (on a resume or a job agent) to marketing companies or taking your money for services they do not perform. As with any group of enterprises, there are many fine job boards in operation, and there are also some bad apples. How can you tell the difference? One way is to look for the logo of the International Association of Employment Web Sites on the sites you are considering. It's the trade association of job boards, and its members commit to adhering to the highest ethical and business standards. Call it the "Good Housekeeping seal" of the online employment industry.
Job boards are the most important addition to job search since the creation of the resume. They can connect you with an extraordinary range of employment opportunities with greater ease than ever before. Taking advantage of these resources, however, requires the acquisition of some new skills and knowledge. Basically, you need to know the right way of selecting a job board. If you learn and use that, you'll be able to distinguish the wrong sites from the right ones-the ones that will work best for you.
Thanks for reading,
Peter
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