Online Job Search Techniques

There're many ways to conduct online job search. However, many job seekers only think of posting resumes and searching opportunities on big job sites like monster.com, hotjobs.com and careerbuilder.com etc. There's nothing wrong with it, but according to a survey conducted by careerXrooads.com, of all hires in 2002, only 3.6% come from monster.com, 1.5% come careerbuilder.com and 0.5% come from hotjobs.com. Morever, many companies only advertise their job openings on their own company websites and some other speciality websites. Wouldn't it be nice if you can use search engines to find these opportunities that are ignored by other job seekers?

Before we go any further of how to conduct online job search, I would like to talk a little bit about Boolean Logic. If you are a math or a computer student, you may have already known it. Actually, it's very powerful, yet simple to use in search engines. The following are some of the most popular Boolean operators, modifiers and field search commands.

AND: Collects documents that include all terms.
Google default operator.
Example: job AND nursing
OR: Collects documents that include at least one of the terms.
Example: nurse OR rn
NOT Collects documents that include the term that precedes it but not the term that follows it.
AltaVista: AND NOT; Google: - (e.g. –submit); All The Web: ANDNOT
Example: manager AND NOT sales
NEAR Collects documents with both terms that are within close proximity to each other (usually 10 terms or less).
AltaVista ONLY. Useful for finding contacts within a specific location.
Example: manager NEAR marketing
Quotation Marks “” Specify an exact phrase
Example: “SAS programmer”
Parenthesis () Define a search subset
Not used in Google
Example: (iowa OR ia) AND (manager OR director)
Wildcard Symbol * Matches any type and number of characters.
AltaVista ONLY.
Example: manag*
url: Look for keywords in the document URL.
Google: inurl
Example: url:position AND ibm
title: Look for keywords in the document title.
Google: intitle
Example: title:position AND merk
link: Look for pages linked to a particular URL.
Example: link:dell.com
host: Scans a specific computer or host of a URL.
Example: host:mit.edu
domain: Looks for pages within a specific domain like .com, .org, .edu.
Example: domain:.org AND nurse
like: Looks for pages related in content
AltaVista: like:
Google: related:
Example: like:dell.com
filetype: Looks for pages with a specific file type attached or documented
Example: filetype:xls OR filetype:pdf
Now, let's say you're a pharmacist and is looking for a new job in boston area. So you can go to www.altavista.com and conduct online job search using the following string:

url:job AND pharmacist AND contact AND position AND boston

If you use www.google.com, you don't need to type in AND since it's default operator in Google. So you can just use:

inurl:job pharmacist contact position boston

Now look at some more complicated online job search examples:

(url:(job* OR opening* OR position* OR employ*) OR title:(job* OR opening* OR position* OR employ*)) AND send AND benefits AND opening AND EOE AND contact AND "SAS programmer" AND boston

("resumes@" OR "jobs@" OR "careers@" OR "hr@" OR "human resources") AND (apply OR "send us" OR "send your" OR submit OR "fax us" OR "fax your") AND ("organic chemist" OR medicinal chemist") AND (synthesis OR synthesize)

Now you see the power of online job search? Try different key word combinations and use them in different search engines. Some links you find might be junk links, but keep trying, as long as you pick up right key word combination, you should be able to find many job opportunities that are buried in deep deep web and are ignored by other job seekers.

Happy searching.