March 2007
More Tried and True
By
President of Workforce Associates
and author of
NetWork: Maximizing Your Career Resources on the Internet
Available online and in print from Author House
March 2007
More Tried and True
By
President of Workforce Associates
and author of
NetWork: Maximizing Your Career Resources on the Internet
Available online and in print from Author House
Continuing the list of favorite job boards that have been around for at least ten years, here are more of websites that I've recommended consistently:
Craigslist.org
The Craig in Craigslist is Craig Newmark, who founded this unorthodox site in 1995 and who, according to lore, first thought of it more as a hobby than a business. Today Craigslist is the 37th most popular Internet site in the world, according to Alexa.com, which tracks online traffic. And it is the 9th most popular website in the US. According to a recent Christian Science Monitor article, "Craigslist receives more than 15 million unique visitors per month, people who are placing classified ads or looking for things - jobs, household items, information, tickets, personal connections, and much more."
When you first get on Craigslist, you can't believe its popularity. It's deliberately kept looking amateurish. This can be off putting to those who only think of websites as serious if they have slick graphics and simple home pages. I describe it as Plain Jane Plus (and I'm the only one who is allowed to use that term, for obvious reasons!). When it first started, Craigslist was for techies in the Silicon Valley area. Within ten years, you can find local Craigslists covering every major and minor metropolitan area in the country. It also covers every Canadian province and nearly 40 international cities and countries.
Is Craigslist effective? Anyone under the age of 40 swears by Craigslist, whether they're buying old sofas, finding a date, and certainly in finding jobs - from highly technical and professional ones to those in the non-profit world to those in unusual settings. Try it out and you'll be hooked just like the rest of us - whether we're over or under 40!
Best Jobs USA offers a wide variety of professional positions in hundreds of communities around the U.S. It's probably best known for its job alert and help in displaying your resume in front of employers. It is particularly designed for someone who is new to Internet job searching because of its extensive FAQ that makes the process simple for a newbie to this kind of job search.
CareerBuilder.com has virtually replaced the old fashioned print classifieds that many of us remember - and not too fondly either! It also includes the features of BestJobsUSA but with added resources and email newsletters to continually update and improve your job search.
CareerJournal.com is the Wall Street Journal's daily resource about the challenges, trends, and tips about finding and retaining employment. It's a comprehensive guide right at your finger tips with a very busy homepage. Once you've figured it out, you can easily head to resource info, timely articles, and job postings around the country in a wide variety of industries. Their daily email newsletter is required reading if you're serious about succeeding in your job search.
CollegeRecruiter.com does a terrific job of guiding the first-time job hunter into the world of professional work with excellent resources and a lot of information about individual employers that young people may not be aware of. The blogging features clearly aims at young people with lots of free advice and wisdom from adult mentors who monitor the blogs. There are also very useful podcasts and videos of what to do - and not do - during interviews.
Moving from job boards, here is a welcome new development to match job hunters or those curious about new opportunities out there to keyword searches. What will Google think of next?
Google has introduced a new feature that is designed to help both small and large employers but could be VERY helpful when you're job hunting. As you are researching companies and sharpening your networking skills with a Google search, keep an eye out for a small ad on the right hand side of your monitor. Your keyword search may result in a small ad by a company looking for your talents and experience.
Savvy employers have recently discovered that they can "buy" keywords that you may be using to research job opportunities. Google has recently introduced mini-websites for its new AdWord customers. These mini-Web-sites enable businesses of all kinds to describe what they do and the skill-sets for new employees that they're looking for as well as contact information for you to follow up on. These right hand column AdWords are easy to set up and, best of all, they're free to employers.
For example, rather than driving job applicants to their regular career section on their corporate website, they will use the landing pages to focus on those who might qualify for a special project or a new facility location or to deliver a special message to a hard-to-recruit subset of the candidate population. This special ad obviously sends a strong signal that they are keenly looking for talent right away that you probably wouldn't notice unless you stumbled on their website.
Thanks for your many email letters and exchanges this past month. I've enjoyed our correspondence! Keep your questions coming.
I can always be reached at jlommel@WorkforceAssociates.com
Jane M. Lommel, Ph.D.
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