Day 12 Better fishing holes for job postings

Early in my search I was tempted to look at every job posting that showed up on a job board. Not a smart idea. Do you know how many hundreds, no, thousands of postings there are for just one website like Monster? You have to narrow your search.

One thing I discovered that job boards seem to do a very poor job of selecting jobs that fit me.Even narrowing my search down to an industry and a geographic area proved unproductive. I would register for free service and select the job categories I wanted. The job board would then send me daily notices based on my criteria. What I found was that I got a lot of junk job postings that I had to wade through to find the ones that might fit me.

What I finally discovered was that the best job boards were highly specialized. I joined a professional association for Trainers and Developers. They had their own regional website and a section devoted to training and development jobs in the Portland area. I also connected with the local HR network and likewise found great leads in the Human Resource field through them.

I read a recent article that detailed where were the best places to look for job postings. Would you believe it? In one study last year 20% of the people hired for jobs found the job on the company website.

When fishing on the Internet look for professional association websites and company websites for employment. They are more productive then the big job boards. It takes time and effort to find these smaller websites but its worth the time and effort.