Job Search: Online Sites and Resources I use (University, Tech Job Search Sites)

Lately, I was inspired by Cindy Burn's blog, located here. To be honest, I noticed some comments on her twitter feed and many commented on how good of an idea it was to have a blog chronicling her search because it can not only increase her visibility online (and thus increase the number of potential recruiters seeing her) but also give some helpful advice to those also on the job search (and let them know that they're not alone). I certainly felt that way when I was reading her blog - that I was not alone in this bad economic situation right now.

I had planned to post on my blog after my job search was over but as of yet, it isn't (yes, a subtle hint I am still unemployed). Before I go into my post, let me give you some background and some context - it may help you figure out the resources that are helpful for you.

I graduated this past May 2008 with Computer Science and Mathematics at the University of British Columbia. I figured that with all my work experience both in coop and at UBC (if you're curious as to what kind of experience, you can look at my linkedin profile here ), I was at least going to get several interviews, if not job offers from several companies. Obviously that was not the case and after finishing summer work in October, I looked for work but to no success. That would be my background.

To give you some context of what kind of work I am looking for, I graduated with Computer Science and Math and was looking for technical work, software or web development more specifically. And because I recently graduated, I was looking for some entry-level work. This means that the resources I will be listing will mostly be of the entry-level technical kind (but there are some general sites I use, and a lot of the technical sites have jobs for other specializations, like Commerce, Accounting, Business Administration, etc.).


Now, onto many of the resources I am using / have used:

University:

The first thing that I used was the career services site of the university I graduated from. The site is here and I started looking through all the full time job postings for any entry-level work related to my specializations. While I did not find many, I did find a few and I kept a task list of all the jobs I did apply for as well as some companies that I found interesting so that I may apply to them if future opportunities popped up.

Side note: I started using the zenpages on Zenbe when I first started to help me with my task, filtering all my e-mails through a work-centric gmail (using my name and adding .jobs) but as I applied to job after job, it started to fill up. I decided to switch over to www.rememberthemilk.com to keep track of the jobs I applied to, the job search sites I used as well as the interesting companies that did not have any current job opportunities but that I wanted to keep an eye on. I think the advantage of using rememberthemilk is that I can add tasks from twitter, e-mail or Jott (from my phone) if I needed to.

The idea that I could look through job postings from my university's site inspired me to look at other universities and their job posting sites. You do have to be an alumni to use those sorts of services, but if you're lucky enough to know people that went to those schools and if they are nice enough people, they'll either offer or you can ask to borrow their id and password to use those resources.

Other than being able to access the job postings board of the universities, I almost forgot about checking the human resources site at the universities to look for work in the universities! Doing this is easy enough, just google "human resources" with the name of the university you are interested in and you'll find the site right away. Of course, there's an added bonus of you having worked at a university before because they'll often hire internally but for any other universities, you will only be able to apply to their external positions.

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Tech Job Search Sites:

From very early on when I was looking for work, I was intrigued by the opportunities of new graduate leadership development programs. These programs almost exclusively accepted new graduates (in my case, technical graduates) and was a great way to gain experience working in the different departments of a large company and contributing a lot of value to the company at the same time. You could build up a network of contacts and get a good sense of direction with your career from mentors. I may not have the right resources but it seems that there aren't a lot of sites that list those new graduate leadership program opportunities, rather, you have to be connected with the company somehow to know that they offer those kinds of programs.

What I did find though was a site that searched through all companies in Canada based on your degree and specialization. www.eluta.ca is a site I still like using because it has a great list of companies that have job opportunities in your specialization and it also usually has information about the company's culture, average salary and how many people they've hired in the past. Although I did use their job search feature, I also just went through the list of companies and looked through the career opportunities on each of their sites just so that I wouldn't be missing anything that the eluta search wasn't picking up.


Another job search site that everyone I know keeps telling me about is t-net. The really good thing about this site, other than listing all the local technology companies here in British Columbia, is the fact that it is really up to date with job postings. This is a site I search probably once every couple of weeks just to see if anything comes up (and again, I like to look through their list of companies and look for job opportunities / interesting companies so that I can keep an eye on those things.

More on general job search sites, social networking and other resources that are helpful for job search in later posts :)