Chapter 15. JOB SEARCHING

Remember the boom times of the late 1990s? It seemed that there was a job on every corner and all you had to do to get a salary, stock options, and benefits was to show up to an interview on time and have a pulse. Those days are long, long gone.

Despite that, the Internet remains an excellent resource for job hunting. Not only job hunting, but getting career guidance and finding out what jobs are hot (so you don't proceed into that career as buggy tire repairman without knowing what you're getting into).

There are many commercials on television about job resource sites. The commercials give you a great impression: visit a site, plug in a couple of search terms, and blammo! You'll instantly find the job of your dreams. That would be pleasant, wouldn't it? Usually it requires a bit more work than that. And hey, why limit yourself to a job search engine? Working with a regular search engine will often get you some good results. If you really want to use job-oriented resources, there's a series of steps you should consider.

You can do all these steps or none, in any order. But note that job search engines are only one out of five! There are lots of career resources on the Internet.

Let's start, though, with visiting individual sites and plain old search engines.