your net:// Brilliant careers only a click away

"You're only three clicks away from taking charge of your career."

Encouraging words on the mother of all job search sites. The United States-based www.monster.com is currently carrying a whopping 456,132 job postings.

Taking the first click - search the jobs - I type "journalist" into the search engine. In a flash there are 72 matches. "Kansas City, Independence-Editor." Hmmm. I click again.

"Are you a reporter who is ready to move up? Or an editor with a talent for reporting? Consider becoming the editor of Liftlink.com, the online version of Lift Equipment and CraneWorks magazines."

Oh dear, the ups and downs of lifts and cranes were not quite what I had in mind. In a few mouse clicks, I'm not in Kansas now, but in Georgia.

The Augusta Chronicle Online wants "a journalist with in-depth internet experience." Sounds like me, but the salary is in the $US24,000-$US28,000 range. Even in American dollars that doesn't sound great.

Remembering there's no place like home, I disengage from my American fantasy - which with job sites all around the world could have just as easily happened in the UK, Australia or anywhere else I chose.

Back home I go straight to the place I've always gone to whenever I've been in the job market - the classified pages of this newspaper.

A search of "journalist" on the online version throws up three jobs - none of which appeals.

Likewise on other New Zealand sites such as Netcheck and Seek - some possibilities but nothing great.

Widening the search to "media" produces a lot more options, especially in new media jobs, and also in PR.

The latter is a well-worn path for journalists, but as enticing as the salaries look, I'm not swayed to move to the dark side.

Thinking perhaps I was doing something wrong I return to Monster and click on career resources - something you can do on any decent job site. Via such links, you will find encyclopaedias of information on finding the job that's right for you, exploring your options and untapping the elusive secrets of job happiness.

You will also find great resources for building and maintaining a top notch CV. The step-by-step online forms and sample CVs are really very good and would give great confidence to anyone wondering where to begin with a job application.

But wait, there's more - conversation scripts on how to make the first call when applying for a job, sample questions (and answers) to deal with the job interview, plus some great resumé faux pas, such as "Here are my qualifications for you to overlook," or "suspected to graduate early next year."

The beauty of online resumés is that not only can they instantly be made available to thousands of prospective employers, but they can also be quickly tailored to specific job applications. Some job sites allow you to keep up to five types of CV online which you can either activate so employers can view or store privately for your own use.

United States sites such as CarreerMosaic which recently merged with Headhunter boast 700,000 resumés. Similarly, www.blastmyresume.com proclaims "with one click you can now send your resumé out to 8724 recruiters, headhunters, and direct hiring managers."

The better job sites will also let you keep track of all the job applications you've made and create automatic "job search agents" which e-mail you when a job listing matches your criteria.

One of the drawbacks of online searches is not being able to scan job ads as one does with a newspaper. The better sites do provide this option with lists of ads in various sectors. If you are job-hunting, it really is worth checking these out because it's often the ad out of left field that leads to a new career move.

But while industry hype says the future of recruiting is online, employers and job-seekers say using recruitment sites to fill vacancies or take steps up the career ladder isn't everything it's cracked up to be.

According to a study from Forrester Research, which interviewed 3000 online consumers and 50 recruiters late last year, "online recruiting isn't the promised panacea."

The study found the quality of jobs offered on the net is below average, and online resumé databases generate little response among employers.

Only 4 per cent of respondents found their last jobs using the net, compared with 40 per cent who landed jobs from referrals and 23 per cent from newspaper ads.

There are however some big advantages for employers who can use big sites such as Monster and HotJobs to cast a wide net for dramatically less than the cost of newspaper advertising. Recruitment agencies can see those benefits.

But they see a downside too. Like being overrun with low quality applications and having to work harder to retain candidate exclusivity.

The Forrester study also showed while the big sites get the people, it's often the smaller specialist sites that win results - in much the same way as some ink-and-paper specialist trade publications also carry job advertisements.

Despite the criticism, job site growth is unstoppable. Monster now has 8 million registered job seekers and records 1600 searches a minute. In June it recorded 4.3 million unique visitors.

Like so much on the web, job search sites are not perfect. But they are getting better by the day and provide an excellent jump-off point for launching the next chapter of your brilliant career.


www.myjob.co.nz

www.netcheck.co.nz

seek.co.nz

www.monster.co.nz

www.jobs.govt.nz

www.nzjobs.co.nz

www.jobnetnz.co.nz

www.jobnetwork.co.nz

www.alljobs.co.nz

www.careermosaic.com

www.headhunter.net

Herald netclassifieds

www.hotjobs.com