Shaky Economy Signals Opportunity To Refine Online Job-Hunting Skills

In a shaky economy, are you hoping to find a new job?
Even if you're tech-savvy, you may need to fine-tune your approach in today's quickly changing job market, experts say.
"There is a growing tendency, especially among younger job seekers, to turn to the Internet when they need to find a new job," said Gad Levanon, an economist at the Conference Board.
Sure, the Internet makes it easy to find and apply for jobs. But it also makes it easy for other applicants to compete for the same position.
At Monster.com MNST, potential candidates applied for 107 million positions and posted 16.4 million new resumes -- an average of 40,000 a day -- during the past year. Rival CareerBuilder.com lists more than 1.5 million jobs each month and works with more than 300,000 employers, including 93% of the Fortune 500.
Initially, these sites focused on management positions. But they have broadened their reach to a wider range of job categories encompassing everything from advertising to zoology.
While convenient, the influx of these new job sites creates new challenges for job hunters.
Security is a big one. Last summer, hackers attacked Monster.com and stole the personal details of several hundred thousand users -- names, addresses, phone numbers, e-mail addresses and other information.
And in November, hackers embedded malicious software into Monster's Company Boulevard pages, a section of the site designed to help job seekers research companies. Instead, the code turned visitors' PCs into remote-controlled zombies to deliver spam and malware.
The attack affected employment ads for a number of major brands, including Eddie Bauer EBHI, GMAC (NYSE:GM) Mortgage, Best Buy BBY, Toyota Financial TM and Tri Counties Bank.
Another challenge is finding the right job among all the clutter.
The Conference Board reported that online job sites had 4,270,000 listings in September. Sorting through all of them can be a full-time job in itself.
To make matters worse, the low cost of placing an ad makes them easy to forget. Some employers leave the listing up long after they've filled the position.
The first step in sifting through the mire is narrowing your search.
Start by searching the major job databases using keywords to describe the preferred position and other variables such as salary range and location.
Job-search engines from companies such as Indeed.com, SimplyHired.com, Juju.com and JustPosted.com compile listings from all the major job sites, capture new job postings and tailor the results to individual users.
Another way to narrow searches is by using job-hunting sites that target particular industries or regions.
"One recent change has been the growing popularity of regional job sites," said the Conference Board's Levanon. Regional sites list fewer positions than the megasites but offer more-targeted selections.
Jobs.com breaks all of its listings down by geographic area. JobCircle.com offers jobs in the Mid-Atlantic area exclusively.
Other sites focus on particular industries: Jupitermedia's JUPM Mediabistro lists positions in the publishing industry, while Chicago Computer Guider lists technology positions in that city.
Again, these sites don't have as many listings as the larger sites. But for certain job seekers, they'll have just the right ones. Newstex ID: IBD-0001-23168690
Originally published in the February 21, 2008 version of Investor's Business Daily.