Best Tips For Finding a Job on the Internet

Are you currently out of work and looking for a job or just looking for a new job? Well, I don't recommend using Monster.com. All you will get is the occasional call from a contracting company wanting to hire you for a short-term job that pays you next to nothing or some company trying to get you to sell insurance and other financial products.

If you find a job at Monster.com that you want and submit your resume, you will never hear back from the hiring company. If you do hear back from them, then you're really lucky.

Here is some advice for finding a new job:

• This is the most obvious, create an up-to-date professional looking resume and cover letter. Have several people review it, and use their suggestions to improve it. Make sure that your resume is loaded with relevant keywords that are related to the job you're looking for. This will help you later as companies look through their resume database looking for possible candidate.
  
• Tell all your family, friends, associates, and strangers that you're currently looking for a job. Also be prepared to tell them the type of job you're looking for in clear and understandable terms. You should prepare an 'elevator speech', that describes what you do and what you're looking for in under 30 seconds.
  
• Submit your resume directly to companies web sites if they allow you to, you will have a much better chance at getting a job that way.
• If you have to use a job search engine, use the small niche based web sites, such as Dice.com. Employers generally don't get overwhelmed by resumes from these sites.
  

I recently found a great job search engine called 'Indeed', it is like the Google of job search engines. It allows to search for jobs from over 500 job sites, newspapers, associations and company career pages.

As a bonus, here are some interview tips. Note, some of these are going to be obvious but I have meet several people who need this clue:

• Dress as professionally as you possiable can, as the old saying goes 'you only get one first impression'. The first impression will make you or break you.
  
• Know how to get to where you're going to be interviewing before the interview date, don't assume you know where it is you will probably be wrong. I generally drive to the interview location a few days ahead of so I know how to get there before the interview date.
• Leave in enough time to get to the interview early, also be prepared with extra copies of your resume. Don't forget to bring a pen with you, you will be filling out a lot of paper work.
  
• Turn off your cellphone during the interview process. I don't feel I need to explain why.
• Make sure that you know something about the the job you're interviewing for, and the company you're interviewing at. You can generally find this information on the company web site.
  
• Keep your opinions to yourself, and only speak when spoken to. This will help you from sticking your foot in your mouth at a critical time.
• Be confident in what you know, and who you are. You're selling yourself during this process. Above all do not be cocky or lie, this will only ruin your chances of getting the job later during the selection process.
• Don't be afraid to ask the interviewer questions about the job, but keep the questions relevant to the topic at hand if possible.
• Be prepared to answer personal questions about yourself, and what you have done in your last job. I always hate questions like, "Give examples of ideas that you had or that you implemented."
• Finally, there is always the questions about salary, try to save these questions for the end of the interview if possible. I realize that how much money you're going to be paid for the services you provide is going to be important, but do not make it your first priority. Also know how much you have to make in order to survive, you might get into some type of salary negotiation and you don't want to under cut yourself. Be careful not to price yourself out of the job, if you request too much money the company will sometimes go with the candidate that will take less money.
• Bonus: Try to send a thank you letter to all the people who interviewed you; this can only work to your favor. To the interviewer's contact information. ask for their business card.

Other Job Interviewing Resources:
I know I trashed Monster.com at the beginning of this post, but you should check out their Interview Center. This site has some good information and tools, a great tool is called 'Random Question Generator'. This question generator asks you real life questions that you might actually get during an interview. There is another great tool on the site to get salary information (the basic information is free).

Here are some more resource sites that you should check out:

• Yahoo HotJob - Career Tools
• CareerBuilder.com - Career Advice

(Note: As I get more information, questions, and feedback about this post, I plan to update it over the next few days so you might want to check back again for more information).