Alison Doyle, Job Search Expert at About.com, is asking for the 2013 Readers Choice nominations for job search sites. Here’s the link, and below are MY nominations/thoughts.
I should say that nominating ONE is pretty hard since there are many great resources (hidden amongst a lot of crap). Also, what might be an a
wesome resource for a $7.50/hour person might not be useful to a $40k/year person, and what they like might not be useful to a $90k/year person, and a $400k/year person might get value somewhere else…
I’m keeping JibberJobber out of this, even though it might qualify for some below, and is freaking awesome and useful…
Best Job Site: LinkedIn. Most people aren’t using it right. That’s why I wrote the book on LinkedIn, and have my LinkedIn for Job Seekers DVD. Although LinkedIn continues to do ridiculous stuff, they are still the powerhouse in this space.
Best Job Site for Students: LinkedIn. I was thinking of where students actually go, or where they could get student-friendly stuff, but really what they need to do is get on LinkedIn and DO STUFF (like network, etc.). Second: sometimes their career services website. Many are weak, some are very, very good.
Best Site for Career Networking: Tie. this is between LinkedIn and any niche site that is in your industry or profession (like GitHub). I would say LinkedIn but really, if you can find a site where all your peers (or people one or two levels above you) are networking, GO THERE. More about this fascinating concept here.
Best Site for Company Information: Glassdoor.com. Definitely NOT LinkedIn. Yahoo Finance was my first thought but I think the info is to sanitized. I think Glassdoor will have some very rich information on your target companies. If not, there’s always Google.
Best Resume Site: ?? I’m not sure what this is. I network with hundreds of resume writers who have excellent information and samples on their sites. Outside of those sites I can’t imagine what a best resume site could be.
Best Salary Site: Salary.com or Payscale.com. They are the same to me…. I never go to either site. From my experience, HR and hiring managers hate the numbers on those sites because it gives unrealistic expectations to the interviewee.
Best Facebook App for Job Searching: None. Just using Facebook well to share your brand, find relevant contacts and nurture relationships is my advice.
Best Mobile App for Job Searching: Probably the LinkedIn app. If you are on the road, what are you doing in your job search? Probably looking up people you just met or are about to meet. I can’t think of any other useful mobile app for job seekers.
These are just mine… I hope this helps you in your own job search / career management.
Check out Alison’s page to make your own nominations (and you can include JibberJobber if you want :p).
Hi Jason,
Thanks for your thoughts on these sites, and I pretty much agree.
With regard to your comment that HR / recruiters think Payscale and Salary.com are giving candidates unrealistic expectations – I wonder whether they mean that these sites are consistently overstating salaries? Or just that people are failing to take these sites with a grain of salt and are getting too fixated on specific figures they’ve seen there?
Anybody care to comment on that?
Thea, thanks for the comment. My personal experience is that candidates (job seekers) go into an interview or salary negotiation armed with data from those sites, and they are too high. I’m not sure why, maybe the company was backwards, but even when a manager called peers at competitors (friendly industry) in another state the had the same complaint.
So, it gave the job seeker an inflated perspective, and that perspective was carried through the conversations, and became a rub in the process 🙁