Job Search Engines Blog

Like most people, you need to eat well enough to be comfortable.  Eating requires money to buy food, unless you’re privy to some handy barter scheme.  And unless you’ve won the inheritance lottery, you’re going to need to work for your food money.  What this means of course is that you need to find a job.  Now sure, you could make do walking door-to-door and looking for help wanted signs, but the most efficient way to search for jobs is going to be through the Internet.

For a long time the newspaper classifieds and word of mouth were the only two ways you could do a job search without going door-to-door knocking.  Note that word of mouth may still be perhaps the best way to search for jobs, as over 60% of jobs are never publicly listed.  As the saying goes, it’s not what you know but who you know (and how you manage to use your network of connections).

Be sure to ask relatives, past business associates, and friends if they know of anyone who’s hiring.  This can be especially important if you’re searching for a job in a specific and/or narrow field.  If you can’t score anything by word of mouth, the classifieds may still be worth a read, but now days many newspapers publish their classifieds online anyway, so an Internet search will still make things easier while keeping your options open.

Two of the most widely used and therefore most helpful job search sites are Craigslist.com and Monster.com.  As with most forms of communication, the sites with the most traffic are often the most helpful (it doesn’t do you any good to own the only telephone for example).  Monster and Craigslist have thousands of job posts every single day, and both are searchable by geographic location, employment type, and salary.  You can also post your resume and allow recruiters to come to you.

Many other smaller websites allow you to search for jobs in your immediate area or in your area of expertise, though the latter listings are often nationwide.  It is important to note that not all internet job postings are what they seem; any recruiter who asks you to pay money upfront before starting is probably running some sort of a scam, pyramid or otherwise.  Imagine if you were to apply for a job in your hometown and the business owner offered to hire you as long as you first gave him a $20 bill.  Internet scams, often billed as “work at home” opportunities, are equally dubious.

However, if you stick to legitimate job search sites and present yourself as an attractive job candidate, the Internet will allow you to search for jobs faster and easier than searching through the daily newspaper with a highlighter.  Give it a try – it’s generally free to post your resume at sites like Monster.com and HotJobs.com and search for jobs using a specific criteria.