If you didn’t know already, let me break it to you gently… over 80%
of all jobs are found through networking.
That is not to say search sites don’t work, they do… to an extent. I think
of them as the gambler’s approach to looking for a job - you are basically playing
the odds. A hundred resumes may get you one, maybe two face-to-face interviews,
if you are lucky.

Moral of the story: don’t spend all your time online looking at job search
sites.

There are thousands of search sites out there. Northern California alone boasts
over a dozen (e.g. SanFranciscoCareers,
BAJobs.com, EASTBAY
Works, valleyjobs.com, just to
name a few). Below are the few I like:

• craigslist - in my experience,
  companies who post on craigslist - in general - almost always take the time
  to send you an acknowledgement once you submit a resume, which is more than
  you’ll get from most other firms these days.
• Monster - one of the megasites; they also
  have one of the largest job databases. You can apply directly online using
  your saved resume.
• CareerBuilder.com - another
  megasite. Try the ‘Advanced Search’ feature.
• HotJobs - acquired by Yahoo! in 2002,
  making this Web site a powerful contender as a top career site.
• America’s Job Bank - developed by
  the U.S. Dept of Labor.
• Dice - I use it mostly to look for contract
  work.
• FlipDog.com - affiliated with
  Monster, but for some reason the same search parameters yield different results.
  I prefer them over Monster.
• Employment911 - the UI is atrocious,
  but the site gives you the ability to search all of the above sites at once.
  It’s not much of a timesaver, since you need to click on each link to see
  the results.

Next time: the key to landing a job… networking.