Web Tools for the Job Hunt

Post by David Pierce. Find me on Twitter.

This was originally my column for my school newspaper, the Cavalier Daily. But as seems to happen periodically, it’s just right for The 2.0 Life too.

As an outgoing college student with zero interest in actually going to grad school immediately, I’m on the job hunt. Unfortunately, that puts me in league with a crazy number of other people, both students and non-students, in a time when there are fewer and fewer jobs to be had.

It really is a scary time to be looking for a job (or even a summer internship), but thankfully, there are some great tools on the Web designed to help you not only find, but land, the job of your dreams.

There are tools for sprucing up your resume, for making connections to people you should know, and for actually hunting down jobs in any field you can think of. Out of the many (just Google it), these are five of the best tools helping you with your job search.

LinkedIn

LinkedIn is one of the biggest and best places to both network and get a job available to us. It’s a huge social network, full of millions of people in every stage of life, every profession, and with all kinds of interesting experience and advice to share.

Building a profile is easy – you can update all your information, or even just import your resume, and LinkedIn fills in all the information for you. Once you’ve got a profile, the best thing to do is start connecting. Find people you know, people you’ve worked with, and people doing things that interest you (the Groups feature is great for that). They’ll be an invaluable resource as you look – and you’ll keep yourself on their mind when they’re looking for a colleague.

Razume

Razume isn’t just a super-cool way to spell résumé; it’s an awesome place for building yours. Razume lets you upload your resume to its site, or build it online using its simple tools. Then, Razume has a community of people, mostly professionals, who will critique and improve your resume.

Little things like wording and order in your resume can make a huge difference, and having people with experience look at your resume can help it a lot. You get to have the online community build your resume, and they do an awfully good job.

Magntize

Magntize is a great place to create your hub online. Instead of always uploading and attaching your resume, it’s pretty cool to be able to just point people to a link, with all your

relevant information in one place. Magntize lets you store all your contact information, all your various links – to your Facebook page, online version of your resume, etc.) – a bio, and more, in an attractive and easy-to-read way.

Magntize serves as your digital dashboard, and your home on the Web where you can store and share all the important information about you. Being Web-savvy’s an impressive thing to show an employer, and even if you’re not Web-savvy, Magntize makes you look like you’ve got game.

Craigslist

Unless you just moved here from Mars, you’ve heard of Craigslist before. But what you might not have thought about is that Craigslist is widely considered the best job search tool in existence. Because it’s so easy and cheap to use, tons of employers are putting their jobs onto Craigslist before they go anywhere else.

Regardless of your field, Craigslist is probably the place to start looking for jobs – there’s no sign-up necessary, no fee to pay. Just start searching.

CareerBuilder

CareerBuilder is the other place to start when you’re looking for a job. It’s the most popular tool for job searches, which means there’s always a lot of jobs available. It also means there’s a lot of people seeing the same jobs you are.

CareerBuilder makes applying for jobs easy, though, so you can cast your career net extremely wide. It’s got jobs of all shapes, sizes, and levels, so you’ll definitely find something that works for you.

Finding a job or internship is tough, and it’s tougher now than it has been in a long time. But with a little help from the Internet and your friends, landing in the right place, whether it’s for a summer or forever, isn’t quite as tough.

How did/do you look for jobs? Online, or somewhere else?

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