Looking for a job online

Although I’m no expert, I do have a lot of experience looking for a job online. Too often I’ve found myself unemployed. So I assembled the best job search advice I could find. I also wrote some Vancouver specific advice after I was contacted through the blogosphere. I’ve definitely invested way too much time into this blog and can not recommend blogging your way to a better career, so not all expert advice works for everyone. You will need to experiment to see what works for you.

Start with LinkedIn

If I could only recommend one online job board, it would be Indeed though you also need to be on LinkedIn for personal branding purposes so you end up using LinkedIn more than any other website. There are job boards specific to certain careers such as eFinancialCareers and numerous tech specific job board but Indeed and LinkedIn seem to be the big two these days.

Setup Job Alerts

One of the best tips anyone can give you is to learn to use RSS feeds, or otherwise create search agents and subscribe to them, this is a big timesaver and key advantage over newspaper ads and even the original online job boards. Set up smart, keyword focussed, search agents. 

You can also use email and social media to create job alerts.

Try Other Online Job Boards

My profile on LinkedIn and my resume are generally always up to date but you need to tweak your resume and target it as much as you can. You also need to upload your resume to various job boards and websites unless you are sufficiently desirable and well known that work comes to you.

Monster.com

Monster.com is the grand daddy of online job boards. I’m not sure if it is still the biggest, I wouldn’t even say it is the best, but it has a lot of brand awareness bought through TV commercials so you may want to post your resume there. It does have reasonable RSS/email search agent features so it is one of the first places people turn to look for jobs online.

craigslist

Craigslist in Vancouver has basically zero barriers to entry, anyone can post, most anything for free. Craigslist itself warns you of scams and they have lots of anti-spam tools and ways to report people who abuse the system, but it still is the most chaotic job board on this list. You can set up a search and subscribe to that RSS feed. If you’re more adventurous you can subscribe to a particular job category. I’ve done that in the past and it results in too much garbage automatically sent to my computer.

CareerBuilder

CareerBuilder is apparently as old as Monster.com and about as big as Monster and I actually like it better than Monster. It lets you subscribe to search results by email which is inferior to RSS and less anonymous too. It also suggests jobs. I prefer LinkedIn’s algorithm. You can pay for premium features at LinkedIn which improves their recommendations somewhat.

But what about?

Workopolis or working.com or Dice, all are worth a look, I should probably update my information on Dice and try to set up an RSS feed or an email alert. It seems more popular in America than Vancouver. Glassdoor and Stack Overflow have also become more popular, but unfortunately the best jobs often do not get posted to any online job board which is why LinkedIn, social media, and old fashioned networking are advocated so heavily.

Where Glassdoor has become useful in my opinion is after you have an interview. You can read current and former employees opinions on the company or organization and maybe even get some insight into their interview process. So consulting Glassdoor has become part of my pre-interview preparation.

Working remotely is an option I have not considered much but it has grown in popularity as internet connectivity speeds and apps have improved.

More Job Boards

• T-Net British Columbia
• Job Bank run by Service Canada
• Simply Hired
• Eluta.ca
• FreshGigs.ca
• Jobbio

Recruiters/Headhunters

In Vancouver these are the following recruiters that I have experience with or discovered via Google:

• Corporate Recruiters
• Robert Half International
• TEKSystems
• McNeill Nakamoto
• Goldbeck Recruiting
• Summit Search Group
• Swim Recruiting
• Hays
• The Mason Group
• MacDonald Search Group
• SIGnature Recruiting
• Smart Savvy and Associates
• Horizon Recruitment
• IT | IQ Tech Recruiters
• David Alpin Group

Some of them may be exclusively tech focused some may focus on finance and accounting. You should definitely see which one is willing to actually assist you in your career.

Major Employers in your area

The biggest employers often don’t use the online job boards or headhunters, they get enough qualified candidates through their own websites. Sometimes these corporate career websites suck, but you still have to use them if you want to work for a particular company. Not all corporate career websites have job alerts and the algorithms they use are often inferior to those used by major online job search boards. You should Google to find a list of major employers in your area here is one for Vancouver.

Social Media

Facebook and Google have entered the job search arena. Twitter is also used to advertise jobs. If you want to work for a specific company or in a specific industry or niche you should follow the appropriate accounts and hashtags on Twitter. Job searchers are definitely going to be googled themselves and have their social media accounts reviewed for any position with any authority or profile. So you should review your own social media and google yourself regularly as part of your job search.

If you have a tip or a link or a question about finding a job online you can leave a comment below. In 2024 I cleaned up the busted links so hopefully this webpage will be of use to someone, because I take website maintenance seriously, at least when I have the time.

This entry was originaly posted on April 26th, 2010, it was last edited on May 20th, 2024 and is filed under: Advice and tagged: Job Search, LinkedIn, Social Media.