Activate Job Posting Radar

This is where you actually start putting up a figurative antenna to automatically hear about jobs that are posted online. While many job opportunities may not be formally posted online, many are. So why not be aware of those too; you won't hear about all opportunities from just your networking activities. This part of the process is automated because you can direct job search engine sites to automatically send you e-mail alerts telling you of postings that fit whatever criteria you specify for them. Once you tell them what you want, and how frequently you wish to receive them, then that part of the process is on autopilot. All you do is check your e-mail regularly to keep up with postings.

The strategy recommended here is to try to limit the number of e-mails you will receive to a manageable level. A manageable level is suggested to be that where reading through your e-mails, and the postings contained therein, not take more than one hour (on average) per day. The reason for this suggestion is to keep the bulk of your time every day available for networking, since that is where the majority of jobs and opportunities are often found.

Even if you don't choose to check online postings to find jobs, scanning various postings can still be valuable. By reading postings you will gain an insight into what employers are looking for in qualifications when it comes to positions you may be interested in. You can then adjust your skill sets or positioning for the job as appropriate. An additional benefit, is that you will see many postings that are made by placement agencies. You will begin to get a sense then of who the most active placement agencies and recruiters are in your field.

An efficient strategy is to use a combination of "vertical job search engines" (aka VSE's, meta job search sites; job aggregator sites) and any specific sites that might be specialized trade sites pertinent to your background or job target. Vertical job search engines comb job posting boards and many company job boards and pull out all the jobs that fit criteria you give it. The big benefit of course is that you don't have to individually visit the thousands of job posting sites that are out there to cast a wide net for search. In addition to the VSE's, some selected professional sites that may be relevant to you should also be watched as they may be so obscure that the VSE's might not scan them. Important to note, there are many VSE's so you should stick with the big ones to maximize the yield. Also, if you have a target list of companies you're interested in and they post jobs on their site, check to see if postings there are being caught by the VSE's to be sure you're not missing a potentially important source. If in doubt as to whether a particular job site (be it a general board or a particular company's board) is scanned by a VSE, send the VSE an e-mail asking if they include that site in their scanning.

One final comment: Many of the top VSE's are free, but there are some, such as EmploymentCrossings, that charge a fee for their use (aka Premium Sites). The advice here is to try the free ones and some fee based for a month or two to compare results. You will likely find that the free VSE's are quite adequate for your needs, obviating the need for the premium sites. You might wish to experiment around a little to see which VSE's work best for you, but starting with the big one or two should get you off to a good start, and make a great "radar" for your search.

More discussion on Job site aggregators here

Job boards in general -

While job search engines draw a lot of their information from various job boards, some job boards may not be scanned by these VSE's. Hence such job boards may require directly accessing them if they have particular relevance to your job search. Because of the many job boards out there, their quality and usage should be kept in mind and checked when part of a general search strategy. Here are some perspectives on the matter:

Start with Indeed.com and/or Simplyhired.com (the top two VSE's in terms of usage per Compete.com and Google Trends).
(Note: the techniques shown below can be applied to individual job posting boards that offer e-mail alert services).
Within each, establish selection criteria that:
- make sense for you;
- are broad enough to generate new postings every day;
- are narrow enough to generate a manageable number of postings every day (suggest target no more than 20 postings with each criteria)
Search criteria generally scan text in both posted job title and short description. If your target job has predictable titles, then would suggest doing search only on titles.
Use advanced search functions (if available) to get as specific as possible, and use as same criteria across VSE's as possible. This allows you to not only specify what keywords to look for, but where to look in the posting, what geography to look in, and how recent the postings are (i.e. only postings that made in last 24 hours, last 7 days etc.)
Align the posting age capture with your intended e-mail frequency. For instance, if you're going to have e-mail alerts sent on a daily basis, then specify showing any listings that have been posted in the last 24 hours.
Use Boolean logic (when possible) in the advanced search mode of the VSE to cover many possibilities of spellings. For example, if you wish to search for VP positions only then specify VP OR "Vice President" OR V/P as part of your search criteria to accommodate different ways a title might be listed as. Another example might be "Senior" or "Sr".
Likewise use Boolean logic (when possible) in the advanced search mode of the VSE to cover two dimensions implicit in a job title -- position level and position functional area. For instance, if searching for VP of Finance positions, then several criteria terms will have to be strung together as: (VP OR "Vice President" OR V/P) AND (Finance OR Fin). TIP: Functional indicators may be adjectives to. For instance to search for a position in Finance, one might search for Finance OR Financial, as a title could be VP of Finance or VP of Financial analysis. Similarly for position in Strategy; search for Strategy OR Strategic.
To help you structure your search criteria use a table like the sample below:

The search string to enter in the "Search Title" box of Indeed.com or Simplyhired.com would then be:

(VP OR "Vice President" OR V/P OR AVP) AND (Finance OR Financial OR Fin OR Accounting OR Acctg OR "Business Analysis")

Note: double quotes are used to treat two words as one in a search.
Both Indeed.com and Simplyhired.com also allow for excluding postings that contain terms you don't want. For example, the title "Manager, Business Analysis" could be a financial role or it could be an IT role. If you only wanted the Financial version, then you'd exclude jobs whose titles, and possibly job description, contained the terms: "IT", "I/T", "Systems" and "computers".
As there is variability in titles in terms of level and responsibility across different sized organizations, you will want to "range" the level of position you're search for. So if looking for a Director position, for instance, you may still want to search for titles adjacent to that level, such as VP on the high side and Sr. Manager on the low side.
When structuring your search criteria, you may want to break them up a little to easier tracking. So instead of setting up one criteria such as below:

(VP OR Director OR "Senior Manager") AND (Finance OR Financial OR Fin OR Accounting OR Acctg OR "Business Analysis")

Break it into three searches:

(VP) AND (Finance OR Financial OR Fin OR Accounting OR Acctg OR "Business Analysis")

(Director) AND (Finance OR Financial OR Fin OR Accounting OR Acctg OR "Business Analysis")

("Senior Manager") AND (Finance OR Financial OR Fin OR Accounting OR Acctg OR "Business Analysis")
Each of the three sample search criteria strings above can then be used to generate 3 separate e-mail alerts. Label each e-mail alert with a meaningful name so you can classify them easily in your e-mail inbox.

Heads Up:

Setting up logical search criteria such as this will take some time and focus, but once done, you will have a powerful and reliable automatic scanning tool (or "Radar") to alert you to opportunities. You will need to test them a little bit at first to make sure they are working the way you think they should. This process will also help you confirm just exactly what it is you are looking for as a position. You may find that the title you think you desire really describes something else in common usage. If you run into problems using the particular sites advance search features, then contact them. Many sites are responsive in this way.


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