Searching for a job in this economy is a very difficult thing to do. Trust me, I’ve been there.

Around mid January I got a call from my manager telling me that I was being laid off. Now this was not a *total* surprise since there were 3 rounds of layoffs previous to this one, but it was still a shock. Truth be told I was actually searching for a new job since the second round of layoffs, but it is DAMN hard to find a job right now and I could not find anything. So, after a month of being on unemployment I can happily say that I start a new job tomorrow.

You web savvy ninjas out there probably know all of this already, but I know for a fact that some people have no clue how to leverage the internet in their job search. I want to outline what I did, and hopefully it will help you.

My job situation is a little unique in that I need to look for a job that will let me work from home. The reason being is that Green Bay WI is dominantly a .Net and Java region. This is great for those people willing to go the corporate road, but for open source web idealists like me it makes it hard to find a job.  My wife and I would relocate, but we are currently held back by the fact that our house is in process of being remodeled, and we just can not sell it for a loss – especially with the housing market the way it is. Combine those factors together and you will come to the same conclusion I did – I need to look for a local job (doubtful) or a job that will allow me to telecommute.

Here is what I did

Since I deal with web technologies as a profession, I turned to the internet to help aid me in finding a new job. There are TONS of job sites out there, and many services that can help you expand your job search beyond the local newspaper. Here are the sites that I used in my search.

1. LinkedIn
   LinkedIn is a very handy social site for corporate networking. This site helps you stay in touch with contacts that you accumulate through various jobs and networking events. The cool thing with this site is that you can leverage your contacts by having them pass on your resume/work experience to contacts they may have that are hiring, and it allows your contact to act as a personal recommendation.  Linked in also has a job board and those postings do not always get posted on other sites.
2. Monster
   Monster is a well know job site. You can search job listing based on location and criteria. These searches can be saved as search agents and Monster will notify you of any new jobs that match the criteria. I set up multiple searches to cover local and telecommute positions.
3. CareerBuilder
   CareerBuilder is another well known job website. I find them a little different from Monster in that my local newspaper posts all their job classifieds to this site. Like Monster, you can search by location and keywords, and you can save the searches as search agents.
4. Dice
   Dice is a technology specific job site. Over the last few years, I have had the most luck finding real leads from listings on this site. Like the other sites, you can set up search notifications that get emailed to you. What sets this site appart is the search option for “telecommute”. This really helps reduce the number of false positives for telecommute opportunites and gave me better search results.
5. Indeed
   Indeed is a job board aggregator that allows you to search multiple job boards at the same time. As expected you can save the search as a search agent to notify you of matching results when they are added to the site. Aggregators will show you results from the major job boards, but they also catalog smaller job boards and return results from places you might not have found on your own.
6. Simply Hired
   Simply Hired is another job board aggregator. The difference between this and Indeed is that LinkedIn shows job matches from Simply Hired, plus there is integration between the sites which is kind of cool.
7. Virtual Vocations
   This is a subscription based site that specializes in telecommute jobs. Each job listed has been hand screened to ensure that they are telecommute opportunities. More than half of the resumes I sent out came from job posting listed on this site, so there is TONS of opportunity being logged here. You can view job postings for free, but you need to have a subscription to get information on how to apply. Now that I have a job, I will probably drop my subscription, but I will continue to monitor the listings looking for smaller/part time opportunities.
8. Job Shouts
   This site is unique in that it is FREE for business to post jobs, and Job Shouts will send out notifications over twitter. Simply follow @jobshouts and you will get notification of any job posted on the site. The site owner is very cool and takes suggestions from the community, and they continually add new features to the site. Although you will not find as many postings as the major job boards, Job Shouts is gaining ground and showing impressive growth. Good luck Tall Geek

Some final suggestions

1. Don’t get surprised by a layoff. Make sure you stay in tune with what is happening at your company and be prepared to act.
2. Don’t make enemies when you leave a job. Networking is important, you never know what opportunites you will miss out on later if you burn bridges when you leave.
3. Ask for letters of recommendation. You worked hard at your last job and your work was appreciated – make sure to ask your manager for a letter of recommendation. You might be surprised how far those pieces of paper can take you.
4. Make sure you have a good resume. I found out 2 weeks into my job search that my resume was not detailed enough. You can either go with a resume specialist and pay for their help, or apply with a technical recruiter/consulting shop – they will rewrite your resume for free in an effort to “sell” you to other companies ;D
5. Be patient. It takes weeks for the process to start rolling. Most companies post a job and collect resumes for 4-6 weeks before contacting potential employees.
6. Be aggressive in your search. I sent out around 100 resumes, got 3 phone interviews and 2 offers. That is a 2% return rate – you need to do a lot of searching.
7. Follow up. Send short and polite inquiries to see how the process is going, and ask for an update on the time frame for the postion to be filled.
8. Be open and honest about what you are looking for, and what your qualifications are. EVERYONE is getting burned by crap employees, and everyone that I talked to thanked me for my honesty and transparency.

What things do you do in your job search?

It has been an interesting month to say the least, and I wish you the best of luck in your job search!