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It can be a daunting experience, for many reasons, to do an employment search. Equally challenging, you might feel, is the employment search you do online. You might have caught on by now to Craigslist, but if not—or if you want to extend the search—you either start there and/ then consider the many kinds of networks and job banks and boards that fit your skill sets, income needs, and other particulars. This can get intense. Employment searches can lead you to agencies, advice, and attitudes you feel overwhelmed by. Breathe. There’s a way to "narrow" your search, making efforts pay off, literally and figuratively. Now, as a freelance writer, I access specific banks and boards, but my example will hopefully help you clarify your own employment search process. 1) COMPANY and LOCATION SEARCHES Find job boards that have updated classified for employment in your area and in major companies you might be interested in working with. For the Bay Area, for instance, Tribe (sanfrancisco.tribe.net) features a search engine and drop-down menu to look for jobs by company and category (field). Considering your area of expertise, find the companies who employ your type, and visit their help wanted/employment search/seeking XYZ pages. For example, I consult many sites—like Pearson Education-- belonging to publishers, visit their employment/jobs section, and look from there for any gigs I might be good for. 2) CAREER SEARCHES That is, for example, if you are a journalist, seek journalist, press, news, magazine, periodical ads at such places as NewsJobs.net, which offers postings for NewsJobs in the U.S., NewsJobs in Canada, and NewsJobs in the U.K.. In the same respect, when you do an employment search on a major search engine and are typing in different and varied words and phrases, be as thorough and thoughtful as you can. If you are a carpenter, look for more than just carpenter jobs. Type in all the variations you can think of for the word carpenter—"carpentry," "builder," "building," "construction"—and all the different words you can think of for jobs—"careers," "help wanted," "needed," "places for." I found, for instance, a great publication called Places for Writers, which is not dens and coffee shops and what we would likely first think of when we read the word "places", but which is places calling for submissions. 3) SUBSCRIBE to NEWSLETTERS in YOUR FIELD Newsletters are one of the greatest cogs in the Internet machine. They are used by webmasters and web mistresses to get visitors to their sites, but they are—unlike a lot of advertising that drives us nuts—most valuable sources. Besides plugs for doo-dads and stuff to buy or pay for, they have advice columns, special interest sections, and calls for experts/job announcements. And they are free! I subscribe to five different newsletters for writers. Because of those, and because I read every little box, frame, passage, entry in every one, I have garnered about 50% of the job/gig leads I followed up on and landed. 4) GO DIRECTLY to the SOURCE Well, sort of directly. The newsletter editor is the one who runs a site that centers on your field. Visit the website. (Don’t gloss over the many links that say "click here", in other words, no matter how many filters you have up to visually block all that linkage.) Those same writer newsletters have vested interest (creative, intellectual, financial) in doing the same work you are making an employment search for, and typically feature a job board exclusively for professionals in your field. A daily newsletter with writing leads also features high-paying and low-paying (ugh) job sections on the parent site, Freelancewriting.com. In fact, besides a super archive of articles on writing, the site is primarily one great, great (in size and quality) job bank. I have gotten at least 25% of my gigs there. 5) OPTION: NETWORKERS Just as many other professionals care enough about humans in the workforce and getting them into that workforce that they have built businesses to connect employers with employees and free agents with clients. Yes, they usually cost something, so you might want to be the kind of person who believes that it takes money to make money. But many are quite successful at what they do. I have—in my reading and employment searching and career developing hours—read many accounts of how beneficial these networks are…networks such as ScriptLance.com, Guru.com, ELance.com, for specific types, and, for general sources, such network solutions planners as Careers.com, HotJobs.com, JobSeeker, and Jobvertise will work for you and with you to find you a job in your area of expertise, location, emotional and intellectual setting, and income bracket. Of course, the other 25% of my income comes from doing my own employment search elsewhere: in-person networking, word-of-mouth (be good at what you do every time you do it!), and, of course, the beneficent, beneficial, benefiting and fitting Craigslist!!!! Muna wa Wanjiru is a Web Administrator and has been researching and reporting on Internet Marketing for years. For more information on Employment Search, visit his site at Employment Search
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