Tuesday, May 17, 2011

4 Tips for Efficient Job Hunting Online

Where to Post Your Resume:
Statistics show that 75% of candidates post their resumes only on one job board. However, job boards charge us for resume access and for job posts. Some recruiters and smaller companies may buy only one job board membership, or none. To reach a wider audience and have more choices, (1) Post your resume on several job boards and also somewhere on the open web, to be found by Google, such as VisualCV or your blog or website.

How to Use Social Networks

Social Networks are making job boards less popular. Having an up-to-date profile on a network is safer for a job seeker: it doesn’t indicate to your employer that you are looking.
By all means create and fill out your profile on LinkedIn, “the” business social network. Make sure you fill out the experience sections for the last 2-3 positions. Please note that it may be hard for a recruiter to reach you on LinkedIn if you have a small network and do not participate in groups, and the recruiter does not have a paid LinkedIn account.  (2) Join relevant LinkedIn groups to see job posts and be more visible.
How to Research a Job Post
(3) If you see an interesting job post, paste a phrase into Google in quotation marks to find all recruiters (and often the employer) who have posted it. (Make sure you apply only through one channel: a recruiter, or directly. Multiple submissions may hurt you.)
Which Jobs to Apply For
Back in the dot-com times anyone with a resume had a chance. Now, companies are looking for the (recent!) relevant experience, with rare exceptions. (If you are open to relocation or open to learning a new skill, you may still be competing with people who already live there and have the skill.)
(4) The must-have section on a job description really means “must have”; apply only if you are an exact match.
Best of Luck! For more resources, check out my favorite site for job hunters, http://job-hunt.org/, with information carefully selected by its owner Susan Joyce.

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