How To Search for a job online by Lesley Malcolm

How to search for a job online

Traditionally there were various ways of finding a job; newspapers, sector specific publications, recruitment agencies, head hunters, Job Centre Plus, to name but a few and it pretty much depended on what type of role as to what method you used. However the internet has now pretty much encapsulated and overtaken everything else; for example generally if your job is in the newspaper or sector specific publication it will be on the internet as well, in fact many newspapers offer internet advertising that as part of the agreement to post in the newspaper. If you go to a recruitment agency, they will be posting roles online on their own site and on external job boards. So it’s pretty much everywhere and to not use the internet is like trying to find a job in the dark!

When you apply for most jobs on the internet you generally have to e mail your CV, so it’s important that you have an e mail address set up and that it’s an e mail address you would be happy that employers use and not something like sexygirl@...... , your name@ ..... is more appropriate.

Ensuring you get the best from your job search, it is important to maximise your search by ensuring that you input as many variations or possible job titles that you can think of. Remember that the job title you know the role as may not be what it is called elsewhere. For example an Human Resources Assistant may be a Personal Assistant, a Staff Management Assistant, an HR Officer or an HR Advisor to name but a few! So it would be sensible to input HR, Human Resources, Staff Management & Personnel to ensure you capture all possible roles.

But so that you don’t have to put in all possible titles in every time you log on to job search, most job sites generally allow you to set up a profile and input all the key search words along with other relevant factors such as geography and salary scale and they will then send you an e mail with all jobs that meet those criteria on a regular, generally daily basis. The more specific you can be in terms of titles and other factors the less likely you are to receive irrelevant e mails. For example if you just put the term engineer in, you are likely to receive many irrelevant roles and this becomes very off putting when doing your search and also may mean you actually end up missing a good role because you tend to skim your e mails as you get so much ‘junk’!

Also to refine your search you can use Boolean language – by placing words in speech marks the search will be for an exact phrase “administration manager”, without the “ “ results can feature jobs with either word.

Whilst the job site may automatically may automatically send you an e mail, it is important to not get lazy and just wait for the e mails, you should be pro actively searching on a daily basis as each job site will update their information at different times and also your job may be on multiple sites and others who are actively searching may get their CV’s off first. Whilst a canny employer would ensure that they review every CV, with the numbers of applications some companies are getting they may chose to not review anything after a very short period of time as they have so much volume, even though initially the vacancy may have been open for a longer period, they may choose to close it early.

Be clear about what you want – just trying to find ‘a job’ on the internet is a bit like trying to find a needle in a haystack – there are so many! Think about either what specifically you want to do or if you are genuinely not sure, think about what skills you have and try putting them in the search engine and see what kinds of jobs come up!

Lesley Malcolm, Director, Clearwater Brookes Ltd, 0141 582 1474

Clearwater Brookes are a Human Resources and Training and Development organisation that specialises in management development, leadership, employee development and executive coaching