Job Search Websites

When we talk about job search websites, many job seekers think of some giant sites like Monster, CareerBuilder, HotJobs etc. Granted, these job sites provide tons of job opportunities, however, do you know how effective they are in job finding and job filling?

Let's look at some numbers. In 2000, during the dot com heyday, Forrester Research conducted a survey and reported that only 4 percents of job hunters found their jobs through internet. Three years later, CareerXroads.com conducted another survey and asked employers what percentage of their new hires came from different sources. It was found that of all hires in these companies, 26.8% come from employee referrals, 4.8% come from newspapers, 3.2% come from job fair and 27% come from internet sources (among them, 15.5% come from company website, 3.6% come from monster.com, 1.5% come from careerbuilder.com, 0.5% come from hotjobs.com and 6.8% come from other niche job sites).

Now you have the conclusion: leading job search websites are not as helpful as you may think. But why people still use them anyway? Course they are everywhere and it only takes you one minute to upload your resume online. And most of all, many job seekers just don't know other good alternatives.

So does the low hire rate means that you should never go to those job sites again? You decide. But online hiring is picking up its way. As a comparison, CareerXroads.com reported that, in 2001, only 1.4% of all hires come from monster.com, 0.39% come from hotjobs.com and 0.29% come from careerbuilder.com.

One more piece of advice, if you do use those giant job search websites, remember to update your resume DAILY. There are more than 24.5 million resumes in Monster and new resumes are added daily, pushing yours down the list. You may be the perfect person for the job, but no one will see your resume if it isn't in the top 10.

So here is my recommendation: use one or two major generic job sites or just use resume distribution services to do the work for you, devote most of your time to corporate websites, industry niche job sites and regional job sites. Also spend some time at online job search, networking and other job search options.