Today's Best Job-search Websites
by
Marty Nemko © 2005
Here’s my current list of
essential job search websites:
For identifying career goals
The government offers terrific
sites: www.acinet.org and, for
people just starting out,
www.careervoyages.gov. To explore self-employment, visit
www.sba.gov.
Another standout comes from the University of California, Berkeley
http://www.uhs.berkeley.edu/Students/CareerLibrary/Links/occup.cfm.
For creating your resume and
cover letters
Resumemaker.com
($29.95 for students and entry-level workers, $49.95
for more senior professionals.) Here, you’re handheld in
crafting your resume and cover letters from start to finish.
Resumemaker.com offers dozens of resume styles, and for inspiration,
hundreds of professionally created sample resumes and thousands of
employer-pleasing phrases.
For networking
Participate
in your field’s online discussion group(s). Not only will you
learn about industry trends and tips and tricks, after you’ve
established credibility, you may be able to solicit job leads. To
find on-target groups: groups.yahoo.com and groups.google.com, or
through your professional association’s website.
Alumni websites. Most
college alumni websites contain databases of their alumni, including
their job title, employer, and contact information. It’s a bit
surprising to me but fellow alumni, even if strangers, are often
willing to provide an informational interview or even job leads.
That’s especially true at private colleges. Perhaps that’s because
people feel a bond with others who, like them, were willing to spend
so much money on that college.
Linkedin.com. Here’s
how it works. After completing a profile of yourself, you’re allowed
to find people you know from among linkedin’s three million members.
You can search them out by name, employer, or keyword. You then ask
them if you can link to them. That gives you access to all of those
people’s linkedin connections, including their profile and contact
information. That can be very useful. For example, when you’re
applying for a job at a particular company, linkedin.com lets you
search your network to find all the people who work there. You can
then email them with a request for an informational interview. If
you’re a salesperson or consultant, linkedin can be a source of
leads.
To research an industry
Margaret Riley Dikel, creator of
the highly regarded career website portal www.rileyguide.com,
recommends the following starting places: Yahoo Directory (http://dir.yahoo.com/
) the Librarian’s Index to the Internet (www.lii.com),
Scout (http://scout.wisc.edu/)
and the University of Delaware Subject Guides. (http://www2.lib.udel.edu/subj/)
Richard Bolles, author of What
Color is Your Parachute, adds the Internet Public Library (www.ipl.org),
InfoMine (http://infomine.ucr.edu),
and www.refdesk.com.
To research a prospective
employer
Step 1: Obtain objective
information. Useful clues can often be
found on the employer’s website, for example, in its mission
statement, press releases, annual report, even how the site is
structured: for example, which aspects of the employer’s business
are most prominently featured? Want more information? See that
employer’s listing on Hoovers.com or Reference
USA, the latter which is available on
many public libraries’ website.
Step 2: Obtain more
subjective information. Likely sources:
google using the news tab, then the groups tab, and then the web
tab. Also use www.A9.com, which searches all the books on Amazon.com!
Scuttlebutt on large companies may also be found in the by-company
discussion groups on www.vault.com
and the $20 insider profiles on
www.wetfeet.com.
Employment ads
Simplyhired.com and
indeed.com aggregate job listings from
hundreds of employment websites, including the big ones, for
example, monster, craigslist, and
America’s Job Bank.
Work.com
aggregates the job openings listed on hundreds of employers’ own
websites.
Once you’ve identified target
employers, especially smaller ones, there’s no substitute for
checking the individual employer’s site every few days for new
listings. Or at some large corporation’s sites such as Microsoft’s,
sign up for their service which emails you every time it posts a job
opening that matches your chosen keywords.
For government jobs, the
easiest option is usajobs.opm.gov, which,
as of this writing, lists 18,767 job openings scattered all across
the country, indeed some overseas. Find 10,000 more federal openings
on individual federal agency sites. A gateway to those sites is:
www.federaljobs.net.
You may find less-noticed job
listings on the website of a local chapter of your professional
association. For example, if you’re a technical writer, visit
the website of
the Society for Technical Communication (www.stc.org)
and find the link to your local chapter.
For a wealth of other
job-related websites, go to www.rileyguide.com.
Advice I’d Give My Child
It’s tempting to spend most of
your job-search time on the Internet. That avoids having to schmooze
and cold call, but successful job seekers spend most of their job
search time contacting people in their network and attending events
at which they’re likely to meet helpful new contacts. Rule of thumb:
Spend 25 percent of your job-search time on the Net. Oh, and just
because your father wrote it, don’t ignore my website:
www.martynemko.com. If
offers my best advice on every aspect of finding a career, landing a
job, and self-employment. And it’s free.
The San Francisco Bay Guardian named Marty Nemko “The Bay
Area’s Best Career Coach.” His columns and an archive of his
National Public Radio San Francisco show plus excerpts from his
book, Cool Careers for Dummies,
which, in the Reader’s Choice Poll was rated the #1 most useful
career guide, are free on www.martynemko.com.
Copyright 2005 Marty Nemko, all rights reserved
