Culling the “top 100” from a field of probably hundreds of thousands was a mighty effort, and Eric Shannon (who runs LatPro.com and DiversityJobs.com) has generously shared his findings here.
On the same topic, Jason Alba offers some very sage advice about using job boards, from the first-hand experience of someone who spent “60 hours a week” job-boarding and thought he was running a productive job search.
Key takeaways:
- Choose a handful (not dozens or hundreds) of job boards that offer a good selection of jobs in your target areas. The more specialized, the better, in general.
- Use technology tools to make your job board activity (reviewing and responding to ads) as quick and efficient as possible. Set up email alerts around tight parameters, and have a quick process for tailoring and sending your cover letter and resume.
- Integrate your job board activity with other, less passive, job search strategies. If one of your target companies is advertising, mine your network to get a connection rather than simply zapping off a resume.
- Realize that time spent on the job boards is time not spent in more active and fruitful activities. So (1) limit your time and (2) don’t count job-boarding as a “real” job search effort.
- Don’t get frustrated when you don’t hear back even when you are a 100% match for a posted position. Given the enormous response that ads draw, employers might be looking for 110% (and you don’t even know what that elusive extra 10% is) or might simply have garnered a strong candidate pool from the first wave of responses.