The Best Job Sites

Job search has been long established as one of the most viable activities taking place on the Internet. This spells good news for you, since most college students have grown up using the Web for pretty much everything, so job search is just one more extension of its use. If you truly want to find a level playing field for your job search, the Internet is your stadium.

Keep in mind that the purpose of this page is to point you to only the truly productive and efficient sites. The best job sites are far and few. There are many, many out there, but few actually have real content to help you in your entry level job search. Here is our list of the top four:

• CollegeGrad.com — CollegeGrad.com is ranked the number one entry level website in the world (by Google and Alexa) with more entry level career information than any other site on the Web. The site has won more Web awards (over eighty) than any other career site. There is information on job postings (over 1,000,000), entry level employers (over 1,000), resumes (over 100 templates), career info (more than 350 careers), salary info (for more than 1,000 occupations), and more! There are other entry level sites out there, but they're either too small or closed access (i.e., you need a user ID and password to access jobs only for your school), which limits what you can view. CollegeGrad.com is by far the largest and broadest entry level job site. If you haven't seen all the information at CollegeGrad.com, it's time to take a deeper look!
• Monster.com — Monster definitely has plenty of jobs. But many of these are posted by recruiters and are not "real" jobs at "real" companies. The problem with this is sorting through all the "clutter" jobs as well as the "entry level need not apply" jobs to get to the ones that truly matter.
• CareerBuilder — CareerBuilder is majority owned by Apollo Global Management along with minority stakes by three major media corporations (Tegna, Tribune, and McClatchy). So they combine both online and offline (print) job postings. They also generate a large amount of their traffic through partnership links with other sites (such as AOL and MSN).
• Indeed - Indeed differs from the other job sites in that it is an aggregator, so it is pulling jobs from other job sites as well as corporate sites. It is a quick way to search jobs across many different platforms.

Don't get blown away by the sheer immensity of the number of jobs and the exhaustion level you might encounter in attempting to sift through jobs, especially at The Big Four noted above. Once you have a clear focus on what you are looking for, set up a job search alert at CollegeGrad.com as well as the other general sites. That way, you will get periodic emails about new jobs that are posted that meet your specific criteria. But make sure your job search alert is specific enough so that you don't get inundated with useless job postings which do not meet your needs. Do not worry if you get it wrong the first time you set up your job search alert, since you can always change it in the future.

The Search Engine Keyword Technique

After getting used to using job search sites, visit Google to perform a keyword search, just as you would at any job posting site.

For example, if you are searching for accounting jobs in Los Angeles, do a search for "los angeles accounting OR accountant" from the search bar. For software development using Java in Chicago, do a search for "chicago software development java" and for a teaching position in Miami, search for "teacher miami" or simply come up with your own Boolean search phrase combination. Ignore Google's job search feature for now and focus on the regular search results.

Why? Because this search will tap into all of the employers that maintain pages containing those keywords. It could be product pages. It could be press releases. Or it could be job postings on their website. And it could help you in locating employers you might not have otherwise found as one of your "name" employers.

As you dig deeper into each employer you will often find a wealth of information about the company, as well as commentary (both good and bad) about their reputation, product line, position within the industry, stock price, etc. This commentary may be more than you wanted to know, but there can be numerous nuggets of information here that are available nowhere else.

The other interesting sideline is that you may also find personal resumes in your search. Don't be discouraged by the number of others out there or the depth of their experience. Use these resume pages to your advantage. Here's how:

1. Note the name of the employer (or employers) on the resumes you find. If they match your keyword criteria, you may have another match that you were not previously aware of. Do some further research via Google or Hoovers to track down your contacts.
2. Secondly, and this one is a little brassier (but not too much so), send an email to the person who posted the resume. Explain that you are looking for a similar position (describe what you are looking for in detail, yet keeping it to two to three focused statements) and would appreciate any referrals they are able to provide. They may not respond, but then all you've lost in two minutes in sending out the email. On the other hand, if they do respond, they may be able to steer you to potential new employer contacts. Again, expanding your network through the strength of weak ties.

You should use your "find" of resumes of others as your personal inspiration to develop your own HTML resume and get it posted online. Instead of just creating a resume document, use our Quickstart Resume generator. Place your content in our award-winning format and generate a fully editable Word document as well as a public web resume with a shareable URL. Because as you are doing your keyword search from your side of the desk, employers are doing the flip side of that keyword search, looking for resumes. Be there and be found.