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The Job Hunters Chronicles

Systems Administrator: "Never Buy the Sunday Paper Again!"

There's no going back for one IT professional who has found his last three jobs using online job boards, search agents and networking tools

By Alex Alborzfard

Few years ago I started using online resources for job hunting and I will continue to do so. In fact, I found my last two or three places of employment through use of web-based job boards. With the ever increasing prevalence of computer technology, in particular the Internet, in our daily lives, I think this is a no-brainer. I realized many advantages of the Internet job boards over the traditional newspaper "Help Wanted" advertisements.

These advantages from my perspective are the following:

1- Convenience

This is perhaps is the number one reason for using Internet job sites. 

I have accounts on some of the most popular ones such as Monster, DICE, and CareerBuilder. I have posted my resume and created what is known as email "agents". In them, I have specified my skills, years of experience, field of work, preferred geographic locations, expected salary range, employment authorization status, and type of desired employment (permanent, contract, consulting). I get daily emails from these sites, listing current openings with brief description of the job requirements and contact information.

Therefore, instead of having to buy newspaper to search for jobs, I look through the list in my email and find suitable employment opportunities.

2- Ease of use

If you are looking for employment, it is much easier to find them through web sites than reading pages of newspaper ads. That is unless you are among the rare few, who do not know how to use computers and navigate through Internet.

3- Time

I remember few years ago when I quit my job, it took me only one week to find another one and even start. In fact, I had to take few days off; otherwise it would have been even sooner! Now granted that was in the heydays of Dot Coms and I was working in the hot field of IT, but even today, the time it takes to find jobs is a lot less than what it used to before. All thanks to Internet and web-based job sites. If you have your resume already stored on these sites, as I do, it will be literally minutes from the time you apply for an opening and receiving an email or phone call from the hiring manager or the recruiter.

4- Cost

Although when it comes to finding a place of employment money is no object, but imagine how much money you save by not having to print your resume and mail or fax it. This cost savings is not only for job seekers, but employers also benefit from this.

As a side note, and to show the maturity of online job search, I should mention LinkedIn.com. This is a web site, which is not a typical job board like Monster or DICE, but by using the element of online social networking, can be very beneficial in reaching potential employers and finding employment opportunities. 

I have created an account and profile on this site, free of charge, where I have listed my employment history, along with education and professional achievements. Then it allowed me to go through my email address book in Outlook, Yahoo and GMAIL (Google email) to find my current or former co-workers or classmates and create an online network. If the person has already created an online profile, I can invite them to mine. If not, I can still invite them to join LinkedIn and then connect to my profile. In addition, there is a place to write recommendations for people in your network. 

One great benefit of this network is being able to reach many people, including possible employers, whom you had no way of reaching before, in a short amount of time.

A new feature on this site is job postings by companies. Since joining the site, I have not only been able to keep in touch with my former colleagues and classmates, but I have also applied for jobs and have been approached to act as a reference at my current company.

In the end, Internet has revolutionized the job searching market and experience forever. If you haven't tried it yet, do so now. I promise, you will never have to buy the Sunday paper to read its Help Wanted ads!