I’ve been in the recruitment business all my life, and the only thing that changed in the last 30 years is:
Online job boards are a great way to find out about openings, but you can’t assume that every posting is legit. These days, job sites abound with listings by scam artists hunting for financial info. “You wouldn’t believe the number of calls we’ve gotten from people who’ve fallen for this,” says Pam Dixon, executive director of the World Privacy Forum. Warning signs: Ads that are incredibly vague (no company name, extremely broad job requirements), or an “employer” who pushes aggressively for you to sign a contract and furnish financial information without an in-person interview.
It’s also time to look past the big, catch-all job sites. “Monster.com is a great site if you’re entry level and don’t have a lot of experience,” says Michael Mellone, a senior consultant at outplacement firm ClearRock. For senior-level professionals, he says, industry- or executive-specific sites are the way to go.
Some to try for jobs in…
Nonprofit: Bridgestar (bridgestar.org).
Financial services: eFinancialCareers (efinancialcareers.com).
Higher education: HigherEdJobs (higheredjobs.com).
Human resources: Society for Human Resource Management (shrm.org).
Marketing: MarketingJobs (marketingjobs.com).
Biotech and pharmaceutical: BioSpace (biospace.com).
Media: JournalismJobs (journalismjobs.com) or MediaBistro (mediabistro.com).
Various industries: ExecuNet (execunet.com): This site for senior-level executives requires a membership fee (pricing varies by plan), but experts recommend it above other sites.
Some of the best job sites are traditional job boards, like Monster and CareerBuilder. Others, like Indeed.com, allow you to search many job boards, company career pages, associations, and other sites that list jobs.
There are also sites that focus on certain types of positions or match you with employers, like Realmatch. All of them are worth incorporating into your job search, because not all employers list on every site, even though it may sometimes seem that way.