Posting an Online CV and Using an Employment Site

Most things these days can be done online and that includes searching for jobs and making yourself available to employers. Some sights, like LinkedIn for example, allow you to post snippets about yourself and your skills and interested LinkedIn members can ask for more if they are interested. On the surface this type of site is offering increased exposure to job seekers within a professional network. The downside is it doesn’t afford specific opportunities to the job seeker.

More specific sites are also available for jobs within a field of interest or a career genre. These sites often offer a professional network, resources within an industry and an opportunity for members to post their entire CV online for perusal by any companies or organizations affiliated with the site. Often the person tasked to hire for these companies will choose to search potential candidates rather than invite interest simply because it is less time consuming and provides a narrower scope for them. In times of significantly rising unemployment rates that difference matters. If you don’t have a CV posted online with a site that caters for your career, or desired career choice, you may be missing opportunities that won’t present elsewhere.

Head-hunters Hunt

In fact, some of the larger companies don’t post jobs at all anymore and that is particularly true in academic fields like research where the type of employee required is highly specialized. For high volume research employees the competition is too fierce and the sheer volume of applicants from public job postings is just too great. By searching through a specialized site these employers are able to narrow the focus of their search significantly. By searching CVs based upon desired criteria, employers are able to whittle down that volume to a smaller number of applicants who they will then invite to apply for the position.

For research job seekers that information is vital to successful employment. It isn’t enough to simply browse jobs occasionally in hope of success because there is a very good chance your dream job will never be posted online or elsewhere. In the competitive research marketplace that’s an edge you can’t afford to waste. Uploading a CV to an employment website is usually simple; a couple of basic questions about what you’re looking for and copy/paste of your existing data. Most of the time you do not need to reinvent your CV and you don’t have to fill in fields in a time consuming process. Just copy paste and you’re done.

Job Agents

Another excellent feature of some job sites are a thing called job agents. You define the parameters of the kind of job you’re looking for and when a job that fits is posted on the site, you receive instant email notification. This is an extremely useful tool because it means you will be notified immediately when a job matching your criteria is posted.

Well reputed job sites that host professional research facilities and multinationals have an obligation to you, the job seeker, to ensure you are given a premium service, but they can only do that for job seekers who avail themselves of all the possible options. Things to bear in mind and suggestions to maximize the usefulness of your job search site are:

• Posting your CV to an online professional database enables employers to search for you
• Posting allows you to see how many times your CV has been viewed
• You decide whether your information is private or open to view
• Create job search agents to receive jobs by email for the latest openings in your field