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Use the Web to find your perfect job

Employment Web sites have made job hunting easier than ever, placing hot opportunities from around the globe just a few clicks away.

But with so many options at your fingertips, it’s easy to get lost in the alphabet soup of search engines, networking sites and professional organizations. The playing field changes almost daily as new sites emerge as the hot places to hunt for work, and networking is the new buzzword in online career development. Some sites are huge and advertise just about any job you can imagine. Others target specific fields or people with special skills.

Before you start this mission, you’ll need a plan of attack — and a list of targets. To gather essential advice and some of the best sites on the Net, we talked to career transition experts, job-search site officials and one service member who made the switch to the corporate world.

Do your homework

Cmdr. Dave Jones was working in the National Reconnaissance Office in Chantilly, Va., and retirement was about a year away.

Jones, a Naval Academy graduate, served as a supply corps officer during much of his career in the Navy. His final assignment, working in engineering, was different. It was also the assignment that led to his second career.

“I knew when I took my last assignment that I was going to try to retire after that assignment,” Jones said. “That job encompassed dealing with a lot of government employees as well as a lot of defense contractors from a lot of companies. ... I had a lot of exposure for work opportunities.”

Research and networking helped Jones, 42, handpick the company he joined last June: BAE Systems, where he’s a senior specialist engineer.

Jones took note of the contacts he’d made while working at NRO, and about a year before he retired, he turned to the Web to research potential employers.

“I did a lot of independent research on the Internet, looking closely at companies and seeing what they were about — their mission, vision, strategy, direction — where they were headed,” Jones said. “I talked to a lot of service members who were transitioning with me or who had recently transitioned.”

Where to look

Online job boards such as Monster (www.monster.com) and CareerBuilder.com have been around for years, but job search engines including Simply Hired (www.simplyhired.com) and Indeed (www.indeed.com) have taken trolling the online job postings a step further.

Whereas job boards post employment listings, Simply Hired and Indeed allow users to search postings on newspaper Web sites, corporate and industry specific job sites, and online job boards, combining the results in a single search.

Phil Carpenter, vice president of marketing for Simply Hired, characterizes the site as the “young kid on the block.” The site launched in March 2005 and now sees about 1 million unique visitors per month — making it relatively unknown when compared with an established job board such as Monster, which was founded in 1994.

And even with the scores of opportunities listed on job boards and ferreted out by search engines, your online job hunt shouldn’t end with those sites. Companies often advertise openings on their own Web sites, and many allow — even require — candidates to apply online.

Earth Tech, for example, doesn’t accept mailed or e-mailed resumes. To apply for a position at the consulting, engineering and construction services firm, job seekers must fill out the company’s online application form.

Although it’s possible to attach a résumé, you still have to fill out the online application, said Debra Acklen, Earth Tech’s senior human resources manager. As more candidates apply through Earth Tech’s automated system, the company adds to its database of potential employees.

A single posting can draw hundreds of applications.

The volume of applications has made one job-hunting tradition obsolete in Earth Tech’s case: the cover letter.

“I’m really mainly concerned with the resume — the qualifications,” Acklen said. Most of what recruiters want to know, including education and employment history, is included in Earth Tech’s online application.

Increase your odds

The right keyword and a few clicks can net hundreds, even thousands, of job possibilities, depending on how specific you are. So while you’re following up on all those leads, why not give recruiters the opportunity to contact you, too?

Posting your résumé on career sites boosts your chances of being noticed by prospective employers who search those sites for recruits. People who post their résumés on Monster, for example, are twice as likely to find a position through the site, according to Tara Murray, a spokeswoman for Monster Worldwide.

But as intuitive as some career sites have become, they still can’t read your mind (as far as we know).

That’s why the New York State Department of Labor’s Veterans Program emphasizes using quality keywords in your online job search.

Program coordinator Thomas Rielly suggests that military people ready to trade camouflage for business casual take their cues from Defense Department documents such as training records and completion certifications, particularly the Verification of Military Experience and Training form. Such paperwork provides valuable keywords and phrases describing your specific skills.

If you take the time to describe your skills carefully in plain language, your qualifications won’t be lost on recruiters for lack of translation, Rielly said.

‘Cast a wide net’

The transition from Navy life to a new civilian career was nearly seamless for Jones, thanks to a year of careful planning. He identified BAE Systems as his employer of choice four months before his retirement and sent a resume to one of his contacts there. Jones retired from the Navy on June 1 and reported to his new job four days later.

To follow in Jones’ footsteps, Carpenter recommends starting with a broad search and narrowing it as you determine which fields, and even which companies, might be right for you.

“Cast a fairly wide net at first when considering your options,” Carpenter suggested. “Go from general to precise gradually over time. Don’t jump to the end of the game. Finding a good job should be a process of exploration.”

Carpenter recommends taking advantage of career sites’ advanced search options once you have a good idea of what you’re looking for. Simply Hired offers the ability to search for jobs with Fortune 500 companies, those that are mom-friendly or eco-friendly, and even companies that are dog-friendly.

“You really can slice and dice this information in different ways,” Carpenter said.

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