Rita Ashley, Career Coach. Field tested advice for executives.

Job Search Engines

If you are engaged in a serious job search, you have run into job search engines. They aggregate job descriptions from a variety of sources, most directly from the hiring company. They tend to duplicate one another, but they are all worth using for those exceptions.

They are not job boards.  If they require you submit a resume, they are a job board, not a job search engine. Their only function is to list companies with job openings.  They don’t charge money and they don’t require resume submission.  They simply list opportunities and you select whom you want to contact.  The occasional job board or recruiter listing slips in, but you can ignore them in favor of direct employers.

My test for a director of development showed many jobs on The Ladders and other job boards but those same jobs were also shown at the company web site for direct connections.

If you use these job search engines, understand that not every company uses the same terminology for the same job. Use a variety of titles to round up the greatest selection of jobs you might want. Some of the sites will update you on new opportunities for your title choices.

This is a partial list as new job search engines crop up all the time, especially in specific geographies.  Be sure to check out your own town’s web site for job listings.  Understand the difference between job boards and job search engines so you don’t waste time with job boards.  Don’t submit your resume to the web site.  Look for connections who can introduce you and you jump to the head of the line.

simply hired is a template for most job search engines. The site aggregates results from major job websites, newspapers, company websites, associations and other online sources. Employers cannot post jobs. Site is strictly for job seekers. Users can search by occupation, job title or location.

indeed is the oldest of the group of job search engines.

Juju – A job search engine that sorts by job title and location

Jobs online – A job search engine that sorts by job title and location

Job Volume – A job search engine that sorts by job title and location.  Includes Govt Jobs.

hound requires sign up but will send out opportunities.

Jobpier requires log in and user information.

Joes Jobs is all about software development openings. And lots of them from around the world.

37 signals has listings for web developers and designers, for the most part.

Creative has a site for about any creative type you can imagine and even allows users to post their portfolio. This is a sophisticated site with a variety of services.

LinkUp LinkUp is a job search engine that searches for jobs within company websites. Here are five search tips that will help you use LinkUp more effectively.

Yahoo Hot Jobs Yahoo Hot Jobs is one of the largest and most well known job search engines on the Web.

LinkedIn.com LinkedIn.com has listings of jobs submitted by members as well as those culled from direct employers.  A useful feature is Alerts can be set to monitor activity on your choice of companies.

Craigslist There are all sorts of interesting jobs on Craigslist. Just find your city, look under Jobs, then look under your job category. Non-profit, systems, government, writing, etc. jobs are all represented here.

For those of you in Seattle, a job board that acts like a job search engine is eggsprout.com.  As of this writing, most of the jobs are listed by corporate HR departments.

For lists of specialty search engines and local options http://tinyurl.com/as27e and http://tinyurl.com/9p6l5

My suggestion is to use more than one site to discover the direct path to the job since using any of the job boards just means you have more competition. A direct approach is always preferable and a referral is even better.

Chances are there are specific companies in which you are interested.  Set alerts on search engines using key words, job titles and names of companies.  Often this provides you with knowledge of jobs before other’s by days and weeks.

For clear, step-by-step advice on what to do after you discover a job opening, read, “Networking Debugged.” If you would like a job search tune-up, purchase,  “Job Search Debugged.”

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