Margaret Dikel is a Maryland-based consultant who has been helping employers and employees find each other on the Web since 1994. She runs the popular job-hunting gateway rileyguide.com and is the author of the “Guide to Internet Job Searching,” now in its seventh edition.
While Dikel knows the value of Internet resources as well as anyone, she still says most people should spend no more than a quarter of their search time combing through job lists. The bulk of time and effort, she says, should go to developing contacts by phone and e-mail, refining résumés and meeting people face to face.
Thousands of sites list job postings. Where do you start?
I would say start with a directory like mine. Another good one is jobstar.org, which is based in California. We’ve gone through and looked at literally thousands of these job sites. We’ve just tried to put together a good starting point.
After that, I like to advocate a moving-around policy – a couple of big sites (like monster.com or careerbuilder.com), some local sites, some niche sites based on your industry or affinity group. And then work that group. Don’t go to the same site day in and day out.
There are sites like indeed.com that search all the job boards at once. So why would you even need to go to a niche site, or for that matter to monster.com?
In the first place, indeed.com does not find everything.
And in the second place, you’re going to get so many responses and it’s going to take a long time to filter through all that stuff. What I like to advocate is to look at indeed.com and find out what site it is indexing. Then go to that site. Once you’re on that original site, you can do more targeted searching.
Is there much of a difference in what’s available on the big-name sites like monster.com and careerbuilder.com and smaller niche sites?
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There is a bit of a difference. Some of the big boards are too expensive for smaller employers. They don’t want to shell out $500 to place an ad, so they are more likely to go to a niche board – either geographically local or targeted to the job they are trying to fill. (Often) if a company is looking for a specialized person, they will go to a trade association job board or a union board or a professional association board.
If (as an employer) I post on a big board, I am going to get inundated with résumés from people who actually don’t have the qualifications I seek. Whereas if I go to my professional association, I am going to get obviously a smaller group of people looking at my advertisement, but the quality of the résumé that is coming in to me is going to be much higher: fewer eyeballs, but better results.
What about looking for jobs on Craigslist.org?
Craigslist has its positives and its negatives: The positive is mainly that they’re very low cost (for employers); the negatives being that because they are such an open board, there are numerous scams. I say to people: Go ahead, look at it, put it in your arsenal – but be critical.
You have to be careful with monster.com, with careerbuilder.com, with any of these open listings. If somebody thinks they can make $2,000 off you by buying a $350 ad somewhere, they’ll try it.
Any strategies for picking keywords to search on?
You should pick the keywords that are in your résumé. So sit down and work on the résumé first.
If you’re not finding direct matches, you may need to rework your résumé. Go out and look for the kinds of jobs that you want. Look at job listings and see what specifically the employers are writing about. And then get those words into the résumé.
Some sites – especially “executive search” sites – ask job seekers to pay for their services. With so many free sites out there, when is a fee-based site worth the money?
It’s hard to say. Generally, you can duplicate probably 90 percent of what’s out there (at a pay site) by going to a free site. I want to see a sample before I pay. I want to know that these are current jobs, that they’re valid jobs and that they’re relevant to me. And I want to know that my résumé is going to be so well-guarded that not even my mother is going to know I’m job-searching.
Those are the kinds of things I might pay for. But I want to see it before I start paying for it.
What’s a good site for people just entering the job market or without much experience?
The first place I would start is CalJOBS (www.caljobs.ca.gov, run by the state Employment Development Department). It’s going to have local listings and, let’s face it, you paid for it (with your tax dollars). Also hit the local newspapers. And there are a couple of Web sites dedicated to hourly jobs, like restaurant and retail – snagajob.com is one.
How about for construction and trade jobs?
There are sites out there for HVAC professionals, concrete workers, bricklayers – all the trades. They don’t get the press or the advertising, but if you look around, you’ll find them. I have several on my site, so try there, too. There are also folks who run job forums that operate on a buddy system, where people post jobs they hear about.
What fraction of all job openings are unadvertised?
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You always hear that 80 percent of the jobs available are never advertised. But I’ve never seen an actual report that validated that figure.
How has job-searching on the Web changed in the last five years?
Well, social networking is a huge change – LinkedIn, Facebook, MySpace. My only reservation about them is there’s this idea where just because I know a guy who knows a guy who knows a guy online, that’s going to be an immediate “in” for me. And that’s still not the truth. (Networking sites) are great ways to connect with people, to maybe make some professional connections. But still, deals are closed with handshakes, face to face.
By Jim Downing
March 22, 2009
source: sacbee.com