Job Search & Career Management

www.careerbuilder.com—Owned jointly by three major newspaper chains, this meat-and-potatoes site posts not only paid listings but also classifieds from 200 papers across the country. Consequently, there are more clerical and blue-collar positions than at other sites.

www.careerjournal.com—Even those without “executive vice president” on their business cards will find useful content at this offering from the Wall Street Journal, including articles from the paper itself and more than 125,000 listings, most for senior executives.

www.craigslist.org—The place where people go to swap their used power tools, draws a fair share of local employers and has become a good source for freelance types. There are no ads on this no-frills site, just a simple search tool and a flagging system that tends to weed out scammers.

www.facebook.com—Users can join networks organized by city, workplace, school, and region to connect and interact with other people. People can also add friends and send them messages, and update their personal profile to notify friends about themselves. Several different applications have been added that enable users to post their resumes on their Facebook pages. The resume is then available to everyone in the user’s network.

hotjobs.yahoo.com—Less spam (though plenty of ads), a pleasant interface, and seemingly fewer bogus listings distinguish this Internet portal’s megaboard, where you can search, see the number of times your resume is viewed, and sign up for e-mail alerts.

www.indeed.com—The home page couldn’t be simpler: What/Where/Find Jobs. You can drill down deep at this banner-free search engine, zeroing in on relevant jobs among the one million plus in the index by salary, location within given miles, and more.

www.job-hunt.org—Don’t let the tiny type turn you off. This free employment portal is vacuum-packed with solid advice (including a great list of tips for self-promotion without self-puffery) and links to 11,000 employers and job search resources.

www.jobfox.com—It’s called the eHarmony of job search sites because it uses a five-point method to match up employers and job hunters in over 300 professions and at over 3,000 companies. Genius idea, but what you gain in relevance, you lose in immediate gratification, which can be frustrating. So can the very long registration process.

www.jobster.com—Half job board, half search engine, this site makes you register to create a resume, but not to search listings by keyword and location or to sign up for alerts. It’s uncluttered and not clunky, but you won’t find tons of resources or information there.

www.linkedin.com—A social networking site mainly used for professional networking. As of March 2009, it has more than 35 million registered users, spanning 150 industries. The site allows registered users to maintain a list of contact details of people they know and trust in business. Users can invite anyone (whether a site user or not) to become a connection.

LinkedIn can also help you:

find jobs, people, and business opportunities recommended by someone in your contact network
list jobs and search for potential candidates if you are an employer
review the profile of hiring managers and discover who of your existing contacts can introduce you to them
use the searchable LinkedIn Groups feature to establish new business relationships by joining alumni, industry, or professional and other relevant groups, like the Yankee IABC LinkedIn group

www.monster.com—Slick, powerful, hefty, and often annoying, Monster.com is the best known of the supersites, with at least 200 million posting, has a tedious registration process and more pop-ups than a toaster. But the sheer volume of listings (which you can search quickly or by using more specific criteria), plus an easy resume-upload feature, makes it worth a look.

www.myworkster.com—Separates personal and professional life by keeping embarrassing and unprofessional MySpace and Facebook photographs or wall posts away from your work life. Like Facebook, users can create a network of people who they know or want to get to know on a business level and they can post resumes and work samples.

This is a great way to connect with the business world to post your resume and work samples. It is an easy way to get “seen” without having to actively pursue any particular job and to put yourself out there and get noticed.

www.ning.com—Facebook and MyWorkster are broad social Web sites. If you have a niche—go directly to that niche and weed out all of the other junk. Didn’t find your niche? Create it! Ning is a Web site that lets you create a social network for ANYTHING! It is a great way to build a community around something that really interests you. And, it allows you to create your own social network. All you have to do is to simply choose the name and web address.

www.oodle.com—Much smaller but craftier than craigslist, this combination classifieds board and aggregator indexes mostly noncorporate, nontechnical jobs and organizes them by area.

www.quintcareers.com—A staggering 3,500 pages of content can be viewed at this award-winning site, including” best of” job site compilations and links, tutorials, and advice aimed at everyone from students to career switchers.

www.salary.com—helps you calculate salary ranges for positions at different levels, in different geographies, etc.

www.simplyhired.com—It’s easy to use the intuitive interface to search everything that’s out there (the good, the bad, and the Ponzi) at this site—which indexes more than three million jobs—and then tailors the results, filtering by job type, education, work experience, company name, revenue, size, or other characteristics. The site is linked to the networking site LinkedIn.

www.twitter.com—A Web site for micro-blogging. It enables users to share bite-size updates about their life. Users are able to follow updates of friends via the web. Twitter looks like a blog—with short 140 characters—enabling users to paint pictures of friends, family, and coworkers. Plus, friends are able to follow your updates.

www.virtualjobcoach.com—A great way to personally manage your job search online. This career management site requires a paid subscription of $9.95. It allows the user to track interviews, schedule appointments, and store resumes and cover letters. It also automatically updates its users with job opening that match their criteria.

www.visualcv.com—Started by a group of investors, primarily search firms, as a way for top level executives to stand out among the standard resume. Anyone can use VisualCV. Now, it’s more than merely a recap of your work experience. Employers can actually get a sense of who you are with a multimedia resume that can include blogs, embedded images or samples of your work, and videos.

Compiled by Rich Young, Chaloner Associates,rich@chaloner.com