When you need a new job, searching online is the way to go. Many fewer people are reading print media, so hiring managers aren’t using these outlets as often.
And of course, no one really expects to see a Help Wanted sign in the window of a professional company. The trick is finding the best job portals for your particular needs.
You want the largest possible number of job leads, but may find that sifting through a mountain of postings to separate the legitimate offers from the employment scams is exhausting. No matter the job title you want, you should be able to find a selection of sites to post your resume, build an impressive professional profile, and search for the perfect job opening.
Indeed
First, go for volume. Indeed is currently the most popular job posting site in the world, not just the United States. It was once a web crawler that would scan the web to locate and aggregate job openings posted elsewhere, but it has morphed over the years into a giant job board.
Indeed receives over 180 million unique visitors every month and maintains a huge resume database. Not only will you find thousands of job postings, but you can also upload and store a resume that’s searchable by employers. When it comes to applying, you can use your Indeed resume, or upload a specialized resume from your computer that better matches the job.
Glassdoor
Glassdoor is designed to give a voice to employees, allowing them to review their employers, rate the experience of working with specific companies, and report their salaries in an effort to improve transparency.
Employers have realized that it pays to be where the employees are, which is why they post job openings by the thousands and willingly pay at least $99 per post. Glassdoor also allows you to upload multiple resumes and apply easily to jobs using any one of them.
As the first major professional social networking site, you need to have a presence on LinkedIn whether you are job searching or not. Directed mostly at white collar professionals, LinkedIn is where individuals and businesses alike share what makes them leaders in their industry.
LinkedIn has huge reach and is always growing its number of active users. More and more companies are posting jobs there. It’s also a great place for hiring managers to explore potential candidates, even if they haven’t directly applied. When you take care with your profile, you show a much more rounded view of your employment potential than can ever be shown by resume alone.
Google for Jobs
Though Google for Jobs is relatively new, having just launched in the summer of 2017, it is a natural offshoot of the fact that Google Knows All. Serious businesses spend considerable resources to be the most visible to Google in their niche, including making it possible for Google to find and display their job openings.
Google for Jobs is an embedded feature that curates job listings when people search for terms like “jobs near me” or “tech jobs”. For job seekers, this is a super easy and seamless way to find job openings in your area of interest. Basically just ask and you shall receive.
There are several ways to use Facebook when you’re looking for your next great job, and many of them are free. You can search up and join various job posting groups, for starters. Another strategy is to join groups that are industry-based and network there.
Many businesses maintain a business page on Facebook, and they can create specialized job postings there. If you are targeting a particular company, you can discover whether they are hiring as well as learn more about the company culture. This sort of preparedness is very appealing to employers.
Craigslist
Craigslist has grown to be the busiest classifieds website, and it features a job posting hub that is targeted mostly at blue collar positions. Employers pay a small fee to post their job openings, but it is free for job seekers to search up listings and respond to them.
However, because Craigslist is so affordable for employers, it also attracts a fair number of employment scams. Usually these scams advertise a job that doesn’t exist as a guise for collecting the information necessary to steal your identity.
It can be hard to distinguish scams because all legitimate employers eventually need your social security number as well as bank account details if they offer direct deposit. Just be sure that your hiring process follows an expected order – be wary of any employer who asks you to wire money and don’t provide your social security number until after you have been interviewed in person and formally offered the job.
Flexjobs
Most job sites are free for job seekers and charge employers to post their openings. But there are also sites that offer added value to job seekers and charge for the service. Flexjobs is one example. This site aggregates postings for jobs that offer some level of flexibility, whether that means work from home, freelance, or in-office work with a flexible schedule.
Many of the job postings are available elsewhere, but the difference is that they are vetted first. This can save you a lot of time in wading through the scams. Flexjobs also offers useful job search checklists, more than 170 expert skills tests, webinars from hiring businesses, educational courses, and discounts on career coaching and resume writing. To join Flexjobs, you’ll pay $14.95/month or $49.95 a year.
Successful online job searching is a matter of filtering out the noise and targeting only those jobs that truly fit the bill. When you search multiple sites, you will end up seeing a lot of the same jobs, but you’ll also be able to build a more complete list of opportunities that match your qualifications.
It’s also important to have your resume out there in as many places as possible so that you are discoverable by hiring managers. A well-rounded profile on LinkedIn is important for this reason as well. And while it’s not necessary, you may find that you save a lot of time when you subscribe to a paid site that vets those job postings for you.
Best of luck in your job search!