By Frank Laughlin /Ideas2apply

Searching for a job and reviewing the employment opportunities available can be one of the most stressful times in your life. Especially when it comes unexpectedly due to a massive layoff at your former employer. Worrying about how to pay the bills and take care of yourself becomes top priorities. There are several resources available to you for finding a new job. You could set aside time every day and log into the various websites where jobs are posted, or your time might be better spent improving your resume and practicing for interviews. Let’s check some automated ways you can identify new career opportunities.

 

Sign Up To Receive Alerts

Two of the most popular job search websites monster.com and dice.com both allow you to set up email notifications when a new job is posted which matches your criteria. Merging all of your job alerts into a single place, such as your email Inbox, will save you a lot of time without having to click through a web page after web page having to ignore jobs which don’t fit your skill set.

The Employment Opportunities You Are IgnoringThe Employment Opportunities You Are Ignoring

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Record A Video

If you are not camera shy, take out your cell phone and prop it up to record a video of yourself for posting to YouTube. Explain who you are, what you are looking for, and show excitement throughout the video to grab the viewer’s attention. Include a link to your video on your resume and it may cause recruiters to take a second look when they are filtering through the stack of paper on their desk. Keep the video short and sweet because nobody wants to sit through a 10-minute monologue unless the job you’re applying for is for a stand-up comedian position.

 

Check Out Your Local Newspaper

Your local newspaper likely has a classified ad section available on their website. However, they might not have a built-in method of notifying you of new listings. The free tool changedetection.com Is perfect for this task. You create a free account, enter the website address you want to monitor, and it will email you when it finds something new. For example, if you are in Dallas, Texas and you want to monitor the employment listings in the Dallas Observer you would use http://adindex.dallasobserver.com/classifieds/category/employment-100.

 

If This Then That

Another popular monitoring tool is called IFTTT (If This This That). IFTTT has several built-in channels you can create triggers to do an automatic task. For example, if you want to monitor Craigslist then you would choose the “Classifieds” channel. First, you need to identify which area of Craigslist to monitor. Next, you create a recipe that reads something like  “if a new listing on Craigslist, then email.The Employment Opportunities You Are Ignoring

 

Keep An Eye On Twitter

IFTTT also has a Twitter Channel where you can configure a recipe to search for keywords and monitor specific users. Identify several hiring managers at a business you are interested in and set up a recipe so that every time they tweet you will receive an email notification.

 

Google Alerts

Sign up for Google Alerts for notifications of when new websites are published on the internet. You will need a Google account to add an alert. After you log in, enter search terms, and then you can decide how often to receive updates of new web pages. You might receive multiple emails at once, however when it comes to finding a new job, every second counts. Don’t let someone else get their foot in the door before you do. You can always change the frequency of alerts later if your Inbox becomes overwhelming.

 

The Employment Of Cold Calling

You may have heard of the term “networking” for finding a job. The trick is to know who to talk to and when to ask about upcoming opportunities. Identify several businesses you are interested in working at and call them. Don’t outright ask for a job on the first contact, instead, you need to start a relationship with the decision makers. Find out what the business is up to and check in every so often to discover what’s new. This technique’s not ideal for those looking for an immediate job opportunity, but rather those who are thinking of changing careers.

 

Where Are You Going To Look First?

If you use these tools, then there is no single place to use first as you will monitor new job listings everywhere at the same time. Try setting up an account at ChangeDetection, create an IFTTT recipe, configure Google Alerts, and don’t forget the classic mail list subscription options offered on all of the employment websites.

 

About the Author:

My name is Frank Laughlin and I’ve been with my current employer, a small office, for over eleven years. My previous employer of nine years is a large international company with multiple locations and thousands of call center employees working in cubicles. My goal is to bring creativity and innovation back into bureaucratic environments through www.ideas2apply.com