The New Rules of Web Hiring

By Barbara Kiviat

When Monster.com launched in 1994, the jobs website contained just a few hundred postings, nearly all of which sought tech workers. Today, job supersites like HotJobs.com and CareerBuilder.com along with Monster, host hundreds of thousands of listings for everything from marine mechanic to molecular biologist. But in a job market that is only beginning to warm up, these sites can start to feel like dark voids where resumes go in and offers seldom come out. Monster alone receives 40,000 new resumes a day. Says Monster founder Jeff Taylor: "Prepare for a competition." Here are some tips:

BRANCH OUT "You can't ignore the big sites, but you also have to look beyond them," says Sandra MacKay, a recruiting consultant at King & Bishop in Waltham, Mass. Go to corporate sites or try Directemployers.com which lets you search jobs by location and industry, and then links you to employer sites.

IF YOU HAVE A FOCUS, TRY A NICHE SITE "There's a greater connection," says Josh Maybar, who hires for the Trust for Public Land and advertises openings on Idealist.org a site that caters to nonprofits. Jobhunt.org lists many niche sites, from Medzilla.com (for biotech and health-care workers) to Careers.findlaw.com (for lawyers). America's Job Bank, at ajb.org has links to state government job banks.

MEET AND GREET Networking is still the No. 1 way to land a job, and increasingly, part of that can be done online. "It's an easy way to talk, and you can reach a broader base of people," says Chris Johnson, who found a job in computer support earlier this year through a Chicago-based online news group. Industry-specific boards are proliferating, as are broader business networking sites such as Linkedin.com and Ryze.com Early next year Monster plans to roll out its own networking service.

STAY ENGAGED Shotgunning your resume to countless sites isn't likely to get great results. To attract interest, "search job announcements to get the right language," says Margaret Riley Dikel, co-author of Guide to Internet Job Searching. "Do people advertise for a quality-assurance expert or a QS9000 expert? Those are the words you want to get in your resume."

BE CAREFUL Keep tabs on where your resume is going. The nonprofit World Privacy Forum last week published a study documenting instances of personal information sold, even identities stolen, from job-search sites.

MOST IMPORTANT, DON'T FORGET TO GET OFF-LINE "It's easy to sit at your computer all day," says Susan Joyce, who runs Jobhunt.org "But people are still hired by people. You still need the face-to-face." --By Barbara Kiviat