“Skimpy searching will give you skimpy results.”

Can't take your boss anymore?

Or the coworker who hogs all the glory (or the only chocolate donut in the box)?

Thinking of switching careers?

Laid off?

We job hunt for many reasons, and the Internet has made it easier by a thousandfold. At the same time, finding the right sites can be hit or miss. I’ve job hunted for full-time jobs, part-time jobs, and freelance, so I’ve seen many different avenues to pursue and they were (and are) confusing!

Until I found Job-Hunt.org at http://www.job-hunt.org. It became my one-stop shopping trip and there are days when I wonder if I’ll ever get through everything on it. (A freelancer’s life is a never-ending search for work.)


Articles
Job-Hunt.org begins by offering articles to help you get started. Some of the more important ones are “Protecting Your Privacy,” “The Dirty Dozen Online: Job Search Mistakes,” “Beating the Job Search Blues,” and “Tapping the Hidden Job Market.”

I thought I knew all the angles in my search, but these articles proved me wrong. The best part (for me) is that a number of them are written for people who aren’t new to the hunt, a welcome relief from the ole “make sure your resume doesn’t have any spelling mistakes” tip. Note to those new to job searching: These articles offer a lot of good basics too and are pretty matter-of-fact about it.


Site Links
For every site Job-Hunt.org especially likes, a little smiley face goes in front of the link. That doesn’t mean they don’t like the others. But the site in favor usually has something that makes it stand apart. Still, it’s subjective—I’ve found some sites that weren’t flagged to be more useful to me. So it’s really your call.

Listings
Job-Hunt.org’s other easy-to-see symbol is the highlighted word “new,” which tells you that a new listing has been added within the past 30 days. This makes searching go a lot faster on return visits. I also appreciate the simplicity of this site so that I don’t have to keep checking a legends list to see what the symbol means (as I’ve had to do elsewhere). Graphics and ads have been kept to a minimum and are to the point, which is something I appreciate, given the relatively short loading time. This site means business.

At the top is their category Job Networking and News, where recent articles on the job market are listed along with resources such as Associations and Societies, which in turn lists over 300 groups. Clicking on that link breaks it down into categories and then general sites to search for more. While these associations are also available in the job hunting links discussed below, it’s still worth checking this category out. Here you will find general sites that you might be interested in but that wouldn’t fit into the category you want. If you’re serious about your search, check everything out here—it’s a gold mine. Skimpy searching will give you skimpy results.

Job Hunting
Okay, enough lecturing. Let’s move to the hunt itself. Each of the links takes you further into the world of finding that job. The next category listed is Job Sites and Career Resources, which lists different paths to follow. Most people know about the major players and here they lump them under Employment Super Sites and offer some great choices, like America’s Job Bank at http://www.ajb.dni.us and CareerJournal at http://www.careerjournal.com.

Presently, two choices, 6FigureJobs at http://www.6figurejobs.com and Job.com at http://www.job.com are site sponsors. The fact that Job-Hunt.org is up front about saying this goes a long way in my book. The Guidelines link at the bottom of the site is very clear and specific about why and how sites are accepted for listing.

What’s also interesting is the “Be careful” warnings Job-Hunt.org offers about some of the sites and their privacy policies, with a special note of uncertainty about Monster at http://www.monster.com. They do say that they aren’t sure of the validity of what they’ve been reading, but pass along the information so that you can decide.

My personal irritation with Monster is its refusal to remove ads that are not job listings but a blatant request to “come to our site and spend your money to buy our list of potential employers.” My request to remove that specific ad went unanswered and it still clutters my mailbox due to the automatic agents I’ve created. A small aside: A most welcome feature about Job-Hunt.org is its information on the super sites, especially when these sites merge. I had no idea that FlipDog was acquired by Monster until I read it here.

You can also search by industry or profession and a multitude of links are offered to sites in such categories as Academia and Education Jobs; Law and Law Enforcement Jobs; Engineering Jobs; Freelancing, Consulting, Contracting, and Temping Jobs; and Science Jobs, among others.

Dipping into the Academia and Education Jobs link brought me to enough sites to make my head spin. They really do try to cover every level, so you have to sort through the choices. But I was very impressed with the selection. There are links from Academic360.com at http://www.academic360.com to National Teacher Recruitment Clearinghouse at http://www.recruitingteachers.org/index.html, which is organized by state, to Psychological Science at http://www.psychologicalscience.org/jobs. Job-Hunt.org provides each listing with a short explanation to help you decide what you want to visit.

Farther down the list are other categories to help in your search, such as Employer Sites, which allow you to go straight to the individual school and check out their offerings to Professional and Industry Associations for Educators, which includes links from Learning Disabilities Association of Canada at http://www.ldac-taac.ca to Association of Research Libraries at http://www.arl.org/index.html. And finally, the category Recruiters Specializing in Education and Teaching offers a number of search firms with a brief explanation of their function. I really do like that it stresses whether or not a privacy policy is in effect.

Whew! That was just from one link on the main page, which led to other links, which led to other...well, you get the idea. You might want to keep track of the routes you take when you start jumping. I once jumped from link to link until I didn’t know how I got to where I was and realized that keeping track would prevent this. Job-Hunt.org says there are 8,178 links on its site—and I believe them.

You can also search by location by clicking on the link to Job Sites and Resources in Every State in the U.S. The word “new” next to a state tells you that a new listing has been added inside that state.

Job-Hunt.org offers other job sites and career resources as well, including Classified Ads, Newsgroup Searches, Job Fairs, and Reference Material. Clicking on Reference Material led me to links that didn’t necessarily offer jobs but did contain solid information on helping me to package myself better, such as the Creative Job Search Guide at http://www.mnworkforcecenter.org/cjs/cjs_site/cjsbook/contents.htm, which happens to be by Richard Bolles, the author of the What Color Is Your Parachute books.

Newsgroups
I was interested in what Job-Hunt.org had to say about Newsgroups, which mostly consisted of a lot of warnings, well taken, and a few links to explore, such as CyberFiber at http://www.cyberfiber.com/index.html and JobBankUSA Newsgroups at http://www.jobbankusa.com/newsgrou.html.

Aside from the terrific links on locating jobs, Job-Hunt.org provides links that help with the basics. Basics doesn’t mean these sites should be overlooked. Their resume links should be required reading, even for someone who thinks their resume can’t be beat. The name of the game, folks, is, “If you get complacent, your job hunt lasts longer.”