And The Best Job Search Sites Are . . .

And The Best Job Search Sites Are . . . If youve been in the ranks of those seeking employment in the last few years, you know how many job sites there are out there.  How do you know which are the best job search sites?  Do you use them all, assuming you have the time to do that?  Or is there a way to pick a couple that offer the best potential for results? Reviews.com recently did an exhaustive, and I do mean exhaustive, analysis of job sites.  Rather than even attempt to duplicate their research and review, the summary and methodology of it is below.  If you do have time for a lengthy read, the complete study is here. The only point I might add is that if you are in a more specialized niche, its worth considering very targeted sites.  For example, FlexJobs is excellent for telecommuting.  Efinancialcareers.com    narrows the focus to careers in the finance industry.   Since the objective is to find that awesome position or gig you deserve, being creative and keeping an open mind is always important. Summary of Reviews.com Site Reviews Most of us have searched for jobs online. That’s where the postings are, right? Yes, but that’s not where the hiring is done. According to the experts we talked to, the best job sites will have fresh, frequent, and relevant unique posts, as well as a scraping algorithm that helps aggregate posts from other places on the web. Best Overall Glassdoor Like Yelp, but for the job seeker. Our experts said what really gets you the job is all the metadata these sites provide: What companies are hiring? Who do you know who already works there? And, can you tell if you’d actually love that job? Thats where our top pick excels. You Should Use These Too Indeed Tons of fresh, relevant but bare-bones listings make this the Google of job sites. LinkedIn If youre on the job market, you should have a robust profile on LinkedIn â€"  and you should be working your connections. Note from the editor of reviews.com January 25, 2017  We were curious about the start-up ZipRecruiter, so we added it to our contenders list and did another round of testing. ZipRecruiter couldn’t hang; the results confirmed our top picks. How They Were Chosen A 2015 Pew Research Center report revealed that 79 percent of Americans seeking employment in the previous two years used online resources as part of their job search â€" more than personal connections or professional contacts, and twice as much as hiring agencies, traditional ads, or job fairs. Nearly one-third of job hunters said the internet was their most important resource. Convinced that finding the best job site is important? We are. Our goal was to evaluate general-appeal job sites; nothing niche or industry-specific (although we touch on a few below). We had a few priorities. We wanted to be able to filter by date. Job sites try to list the most relevant search results first, no matter when they were posted â€" but we at least wanted the option to sort for fresh posts so we weren’t sifting through the same jobs again and again. Even better: Sites that also let us view only the new posts since our last visit. Mobile apps were a major plus. That same Pew study found that of the people who owned a smartphone, 94 percent used it to research job postings, and 50 percent used it to fill out an online job application. Half of those job seekers also reported encountering “challenges navigating the job search on a mobile device” because content wasn’t displaying properly; another third “had trouble entering a large amount of text needed for a job application or had difficulty submitting the files or other supporting documents needed to apply for a job.” Mobile-friendly sites can fix the first problem. Only an app can conquer both. And we required the option for daily email alerts. Alerts deliver relevant opportunities straight to your inbox â€" no searching required. It makes the job of looking for a job one step easier. 13 job sites were put through a month-long gauntlet to find the best.  Heres the 13: Beyond CareerBuilder Career Jet Glassdoor Indeed JobIsJob LinkedIn LinkUp Monster Resume Library SimplyHired Trovit ZipRecruiter Images via pixabay.