America’s Top Internet Job Sites (2nd Edition)

Description

ISBN: 1-57023-210-5

By Ron and Caryl Krannich, Ph.Ds

#3175   If you’re not using the Internet in your job search, it’s time you did…and in a very smart way. By some counts, nearly 100,000 websites focus on employment.

Faced with a daunting task of navigating through a sea of digital information, many job seekers don’t know where to go online for the best career information, advice, and services.

The second edition of this popular book examines employment websites from the perspective of job seekers who need to integrate this medium into a well organized and implemented job search. While most employment websites are organized by Internet entrepreneurs for the benefit of employers and recruiters, savvy job seekers should also use these sites to their advantage.

Rather than seducing you into immediately posting your resume, browsing job listings, and applying for jobs online, this book stresses the importance of doing first things first.

It reveals numerous specialty websites for assessing skills, developing objectives, conducting research, and networking prior to posting your resume online and responding to job listings.

Focusing on the whole job search process, this well organized and job seeker-friendly book includes separate chapters on:

• using search engines, agents, and directories
• exploring gateway employment sites
• assessing interests, skills, and abilities
• acquiring online education and training
• networking and mentoring
• accessing Usenet newsgroups, mailing lists, and message boards
• identifying the top mega employment sites and databases
• conducting research and acquiring information and advice
• developing and distributing resumes and letters
• interviewing, salary negotiations, and relocation
• contacting a career counselor or coach for one-on-one assistance

Special chapters examine websites for recruiters, employers, individual occupations, and special job seekers, such as college students, military in transition, women, minorities, people with disabilities, nonprofit and international job seekers, free agents, spies, and ex-offenders.

Unlike any other book on conducting an online job search, this one tells it like it really is – including all the positives and negatives of using the Internet in your job search. 272 pages. 2003.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

• The World of Internet Job Sites
• Getting Started in the Right Direction
• Virtual Job and Career Communities
• Gateway Employment Sites
• Mega Employment Sites and Databases
• Assessment and Testing Sites
• Education and Online Learning Sites
• Career Information, Advice, and Research Sites
• Resume and Cover Letter Sites
• Networking, Mentoring, and Q&A Sites
• Interview, Salary, and Relocation Sites
• Career Counseling and Coaching Sites
• Employer and Recruiter Sites
• Specialty Occupational and Job Sites
• Niche Sites for Special Job Seekers

A Click and Stupid Approach

Like mass mailing hundreds of resumes and letters to employers, using the Internet in your job search can be a great time waster if you do not understand, nor stay focused on, what online activities are really important to your job search.

Devoting a great deal of time to conducting an Internet job search can quickly give you a false sense of making progress because you are putting in so much Internet time on your job search.

As you will quickly discover in using the Internet in your job search, motion with your mouse does not equate momentum with employers. Indeed, the frequent lament of many job seekers is that they spend so much time on the Internet looking for a job, but nothing ever happens.

Forget for a moment what you’re really supposed to be doing – generating invitations to job interviews – and your online job search may well be lost in cyberspace!

We understand the many promises and pitfalls of using the Internet in a job search. Not surprising, this electronic communication medium often gets confused with the message.

Although the Internet promises to save time, generate information, and yield key contacts you might not acquire through other mediums, if not put in its proper perspective and used wisely, the Internet with its thousands of employment sites also can lead you down the wrong job search path with false hopes, dashed expectations, numerous distractions, and a great deal of wasted time.

While we believe you must incorporate the Internet into your job search, we are not true believers in the efficacy of the Internet for finding a job.

There are many different ways to find a job which do not involve the use of the Internet, especially through interpersonal networking involving the telephone and face-to-face meetings.

Like a good resume, letter, or informational interview, the Internet can enhance your job search if you stay focused on whats really important. In the end, regardless of all your Internet job search activities, your next job may come from contacts unrelated to your Internet efforts.

Be sure to use the Internet in your job search but do so with a healthy sense of skepticism.

A Focused Job Search Approach

Given our particular view of how the Internet should be integrated into an effective job search, we have chosen a special directory approach that is linked to a process approach for making better sense and use out of individual websites you will encounter.

For us, incorporating the Internet into a job search is the old proverbial forest/tree dilemma: the job search is the forest and individual websites are a particular species of trees that make up one important segment of the larger forest.

Our first assumption is that most readers already know how to use the Internet. If not, they can quickly get started by using the resources identified in Chapter 2.

Our second assumption is that most users do not know how to organize an effective job search. Failing to do first things first, like many users of Internet employment sites, most job seekers are often too quick to start their job search by writing a resume.

Many of the large Internet employment sites, which primarily seek to increase the number of resumes in their databases as well as encourage more online traffic (advertising eyeballs), perpetuate a seriously flawed job search approach reminiscent of the traditional classified ad approach to finding a job.

They encourage job seekers to post their resumes online before these individuals have a chance to do important preliminary job search work, such as assessment and research, for creating a powerful employer-centered resume.

The result is often employment websites with lots of bells and whistles for people who do not know how to conduct an effective job search. The resumes that get entered into the databases or emailed to potential employers do not reflect the writers major strengths.

Our approach is different. We examine websites that are most useful to job seekers in conducting an effective job search based upon a clear understanding of the job search process. Therefore, we’ve organized this book around key steps and issues in the job search process:

We also include several other categories of websites that are essential to conducting an effective job search:

As you will quickly see, the major employment websites tend to be preoccupied with connecting job seekers to employers through resume databases and job listings – our fourth job search step. Other steps in the job search process, especially the critical first step, assessment, are usually neglected or relegated to a few tips or advice from experts.