The Online Job Search: Part 3

by Jennifer Sedna
NelsonJobs Contributing Writer

Seven Effective Ways to Supplement Your Search

As job boards have exploded and newspaper ads have declined, job seekers have been forced to get more creative. Listed here are seven contemporary approaches to help you decrease the competition and increase your job search smarts. When used to supplement your job board search and build your social network, you’ll have the tools you need for a comprehensive online search strategy.

1. Using a search engine to find a job. There are several good reasons you should not rely exclusively on job boards. In addition to stiff competition from dozens of other applicants, not all available positions online are actually posted on the boards. Using Google or Yahoo!, you can obtain accurate hits by entering ‘job’ in the search criteria, followed by the job title (e.g., “Accounting Manager”) and city or county you want to work in. If you are willing to wade through a lot of hits, leave off the word ‘job.’ Among the results you will find company sites that may include employee biographies and job titles, along with a link to the site’s career page. While these companies may not be actively recruiting, you can still submit a resume. At worst you won’t get any feedback and the company doesn’t keep your resume on file. At best, the company calls you in for an interview since their Accounting Manager has just given notice, or they keep your resume on file for future reference.
2. Use job posting-aggregators to speed your search. While search engines can provide you with new resources for work, you do have to wade through loads of hits to get to the gold. Enter job aggregator sites. Sites like SimplyHired and JobSniper gather jobs from a variety of sources, including job boards, company sites, and other types of career sites, providing you with fairly comprehensive results. If you’re open to working abroad, try Careerjet.com, which claims to gather jobs from over 49,000 websites across the globe!
3. Discover new companies. Chances are that, even if you’re a Bay Area native, you’re not aware of all the potential companies that are a good match for your skills, interests, and career goals. A large portion of the Bay Area population commutes to work outside of the city or county in which they live, so the possibilities can be staggering. If you are willing to commute to a great job, one quick way to identify potential companies is to look up your local Chamber of Commerce website, or city or county website. Online corporate research sites such as Hoovers.com are also great resources to find companies by industry or geography.
4. Identify professional groups to join and seminar/classes to attend. Joining an association or professional group will help you gain access to new opportunities and meet new acquaintances, on- and offline. Most industries have at least one relevant association that professionals can join. For example, administrative professionals can join IAAP and network online with other professionals as well as attend local chapter events. Another good resource is your Alma Mater. Many universities and colleges have very active alumnae associations that meet regularly. In general, alums from smaller colleges feel especially connected to other alums and are usually glad to help a fellow graduate.
   
   Online or evening classes are also a great way to improve upon your knowledge base and make connections with like-minded individuals. Classes are often offered through city-run programs, local schools, or private institutions.
5. Create and maintain your own website. The internet is full of personal websites that don’t get any significant traffic, so how will yours be any different? Well first, since many employers perform internet searches on job candidates, they will easily be able to find your site. Also, it is an excellent tool with which you can sell yourself—it’s one of the few cyber spaces where you have complete control over your image.
   
   There are several resources to get a site on the cheap, including Vistaprint.com, which offers Web hosting and design starting at less than $5 per month. Networking sites such as Ziggs.com, for example, offers you a personal site combined with your networking profile for less than $15 per year. Both services provide pre-designed, user-friendly formats that you can use like a Word document, so you don’t need to know any HTML. It’s a great place to showcase samples of your work (e.g., photos, reports, articles, etc.) and testimonials from your references.
6. Brand yourself. Do you remember the girl at school who always painted her nails to match her outfits or the guy at the office who wore a Hawaiian shirt every Friday? By creating distinct, memorable traits, they “branded” themselves and so have you, although probably not consciously. Called e-branding when done online, basically you look at your passions, your vision, and what you represent then ‘sell’ yourself by developing a consistent, recognizable image. What that image looks like will depend upon your industry, your expertise, your target audience, and your personality.
   
   Dan Schawbel, self-branded as the Personal Branding Gen-Y Expert, defines branding by four elements: personal appearance, personality, competencies, and the differentiator (i.e., your unique benefit to your audience). “It’s what you do that makes you who you are and how you project that to others that makes you memorable,” says Schawbel. More detailed advice can be found on his blog, PersonalBrandingBlog.com.
   
   In short, your brand is how you are perceived by the outside world, at work, at play, and at home. Hence, those three-word emails you always send out have become your brand. The trick is to develop a conscious, effective brand that consistently portrays you as an active, interested professional. After all, wouldn’t it be better to be known as the person who always leaves a nice send off (e.g. “Have a terrific day, Sarah”), than someone who can’t even bother to write your name?
7. Do something to distinguish yourself. What better way to embrace the creative technology of Web 2.0 than with a creative approach! In her May 29th article in The New York Times, author Lisa Belkin featured stories about several job seekers who were successful with their “wacky” ideas, and some who were not. Candidates did everything from passing out business cards that offered a free pizza to anyone who got them an interview, to answering a traditional question using the David Letterman-style Top 10 list, to offering to make someone a sole heir if he or she could find the job seeker a well-paid sales job. The first two are gainfully employed and the third is still waiting to find his next heir.

While experts caution that standing out is safer for the seasoned professional, the tight job market all but demands the use of your imagination to stand out from the crowd. Time to get out there and get creative!