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Many job-seekers and career changers fall into the trap that all they need to do, or can do, is search for jobs on an online job board such as seek.com.

Online jobs boards are one important tool in the job search and career change process but they are just that, one of a number of important tools.

I highly recommend that once you embark on a decision to change jobs or careers that one of your first steps is to register with one or more online job boards and to set up mail alerts regarding relevant jobs. The obvious job boards are seek.com, mycareer.com, careerone.com and for working mums seeking jobs with flexible arrangement job boards such as careermums.com.au is an excellent tool too.

I’d also recommend that you register with, or sign up for alerts from, recruitment agencies that specialise in the industry you are hoping to join.

So how do you work out which recruitment agencies specialise in your industry? There are two easy ways to go about this:

1. Firstly get the careers section of your newspaper and see which recruitment agents have multiple positions for jobs in your industry; and
2. Secondly you could do a Google search with ‘recruitment agent [industry]’ for example ‘recruitment agent Procurement’. In Procurement for example there are procurement specific agents such as Procurenet and others that have a high proportion of procurement roles such as Jigsaw Search, Hays and Vertical Talent.

Once you have narrowed down the top 3 online job boards, sign-up and set-up email alerts thinking of all the possible job titles and keywords that would match with your career aspirations (tip: if you don’t know the job titles grab the careers section of your weekend paper for ideas).

If you are targeting specific employers from Tip no. 1 set up job alerts with the company name as a key word so you never miss an opportunity.

Finally, narrow your job alerts by location and salary to reduce the amount of listings you have to look through each day.

As I alluded to before job boards have their place in the job search but some of the negatives are that you are often applying for jobs that have already been filled as they are out of date, your resume goes into a large database and it is difficult to stand out from the crowd and this is often the ‘last hope’ to fill a job.

I have personally used job boards in the past as more of a research tool to learn about:

• How many jobs of the type I am looking for are advertised,
• Which companies hire for such roles,
• What is a typical position description for such a role,
• What are the education and qualification requirements; and
• What is the average salary and conditions

I still fundamentally believe that networking or researching to find out the name(s) of the key decision makers in the hiring process and then contacting them direct about the advertised position or not yet advertised potential opportunities is a far more effective way of making an impression, getting an interview or coffee chat, building a relationship and getting your dream job!

Next week we will look at how you can undertake this networking and research to identify who you should contact when you want to direct market yourself to a specific company.

So this week do some research and identify 3 job boards with which to register and set up job alerts, these can be general sites, industry specific or through a recruitment or specific company. The key is, take action and start getting those alerts, learning about your industry and potential jobs.

What did you think of this week’s tip? I’d love to know so post a comment below!

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Source by Kathryn Hocking