6 Online Resources for Improving Your Job Search

As the number of job positions seems to be decreasing, online help in finding a job is becoming more detailed, comprehensive and easier to find. Serious job seekers nowadays should not have a problem getting organized and obtaining the most up-to-date information on how to most professionally present themselves to their potential employers.

Available web resources, tools, apps and sources of job-related information range from those that only list job openings to those that thoroughly organize your job-hunting activity.

In helping you get started, we’ve compiled a list of helpful online resources from 6 different job-seeking categories that you might want to check out.

1) Resume Building

Resume or CV is still your number one asset when it comes to presenting yourself to an employer, so make sure you pick a great resume builder tool when creating your resume. It won’t be of much help if you don’t do well on the interview, but it certainly decides whether you’ll even get an interview appointment.

Many people have a .doc or .docx version of their resume that they send as an attachment with their job application email. However, since sharing is becoming increasingly popular and is slowly replacing the “sending” option, it is probably wise to upload and manage your resume using one of the convenient online resume hosting websites. Here are four most popular resume hosting websites:

• Resume.com
• ResumeCoach
• About.me
• VisualCV.com

2) LinkedIn

Though LinkedIn actually belongs to at least two career categories we are mentioning today, it can very well stand as a category on its own, since it now has a reputation of the most relevant job-related network.

Aside from allowing users to present themselves to the business audience and connect with potential clients, employers and employees, LinkedIn is often adding new helpful options like evaluating and endorsing other people’s skills, writing recommendation letters for others, etc.

Another very valuable option LinkedIn offers is built-in tool for exporting the resume into a PDF file. This is very convenient when sending and sharing resumes with potential employers, since nowadays it is more likely you will regularly update your LinkedIn profile than you will a .doc resume.

3) Organizational Tools

It is very important to stay organized when searching and applying for jobs. After applying to several different job openings, it might get difficult to keep track of which companies you contacted. It would certainly seem unprofessional to apply for the same position twice.

There are several very neat online resources that help you stay organized:

• JobGizmo is one of such web resource that manages your contacts, resumes, information and places you’ve applied to.
• JobPad is another very professional platform for keeping all job-related activity in one place.

Since these two organizational tools are not free, some of the very reliable and cost-free options are:

• JibberJobber
• DayViewer
• Google Calendar, etc.

4) Career Search Websites

If you are only looking for updated lists of job openings, the most popular job searching websites are:

• Monster.com
• CareerBuilder.com
• Craigslist.org
• Indeed.com

5) Networking Resources

There’s no doubt that social networks’ popularity has sky-rocketed in the past few years, and is still on the rise. If you are not on any social network, there’s high chance you’ll miss out on amazing opportunities, because it’s been a while since these platforms stopped being only entertainment venues. They are increasingly serving as places to acquire business contacts and to find work.

LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter are still the most popular networking websites and it is advisable to sign up with these free services if you want to boost your chances of finding work.

6) iPhone Apps

iPhone users can easily access many helpful job searching applications through their App Store service. Some of the most popular and free apps are:

• CareerBuilder
• Indeed
• Career Search – similar to the previous two job-listing websites, Career Search allows you to discover many work opportunities, including information about the salary and number of specific openings.