In the current economic climate, finding any job is tough, but finding the perfect job for you can sometimes seem impossible. Traditionally, job search engines were relatively simply places. You set up a profile, submitted an online resume and searched for jobs in your field to send your details to. Once you’d done that…it was time to sit back and wait!

Today, the role of the job search engine has change significantly.  Rather than being a simple portal for jobs and job seekers, good ones now offer comprehensive advice, detailed company profiles, and some even rank jobs and organisations based on a number of different criteria.   This enables the jobseeker to actively filter the positions that are available and narrow down the ones that they feel best suit them.

Unfortunately, job search engines are not all created equal, in fact, there are in some cases vast differences and it is important when seeking that perfect job that you use one that offers the advanced features that can help you to narrow down your search and provide you with the useful information you will need to find the job of your dreams.

The Leading Job Search Engines

The industry leaders in terms of job search engines are monsterjobs.com and careerbuilder.com.  On the positive side, you can upload your resume and send it directly to employers, streamline your searches and gain valuable insight into many of the larger organisations through the “featured employer” sections.

In addition, there are excellent features, such creating job alerts, there are also a comprehensive range of resources to assist you with resume writing and performing well during an interview and news of upcoming job fairs, etc.  However, there is a down side.  The search results are limited to the employers that opt to post their openings with that particular service, narrowing the number of suitable positions significantly.

Meta Job Search Engines

A great time way to save time on your employment search is to use meta-job search engines such as Indeed.com and MyJobesearch.com which search up to 514 other job portals and return suitable positions that have been advertised elsewhere.  Unlike monsterjobs.com and other industry leaders, these are not websites that you ca you can upload your resume to and you can not apply directly from the site.

Rather, they are places to find openings that you would not normally find through a traditional job search engine.  There are some useful functions such as salary checker, handy career guides and job seeking tips, but overall, this type of job search engine fails to impress.  They tend to be rather minimalistic and offer little in the way of detailed information about the position or the company.

Niche Specific Job Search Engines

In recent times, there has been an increase in job search engines that specialise in particular fields and industries, such as dice.com.  The advantage of using this type of search engine for your job seeking is that you minimize those ‘stray results’ that are outside of your field or area of interest and drill down on the employers that are industry leaders.

Dice.com describes itself as ‘the career hub for tech insiders’ and is one of the most popular job search engines for technology professionals.  The helpful discussion forum helps techies to interact with each other and with potential employers.

Up and Coming Job Search Engines

A new wave of job search engines is springing up, that aims to find more ways to support job seekers and provide them with the tangible information that really matters.  The beauty of these search engines are they offer comprehensive information about the companies and organisations that interest you, including independent reviews and salary information.  One of these new style job portals is CareerBliss.com.

CareerBliss.com boasts almost 400,000 company reviews, growing at a rate of some 2000 per day.  Many of which are provided by current or former employees and it is wise to consider that some may be written by disgruntled individuals.

So, where is the best place to start when seeking that perfect new job?

Ultimately, each different type of job search engine has its own set of merits and in all honesty, your best chance of finding the perfect job for you is to cast your net far and wide.  After all, the bigger the net the more fish you’re likely to catch!  Meta-search engines are excellent resources for finding jobs that you perhaps wouldn’t discover through more traditional sites but offer little in terms of functionality and job seeking support.

Incorporating several different types of job search engine in your job seeking efforts is a sound strategy because it enables you to utilize the functionality of the industry leaders, the valuable  resources of the new wavers and the capacity of the meta search engines.