Job Search Lessons: LinkedIn + Indeed = Win

I have just wrapped up a successful job search and embarked on a great new opportunity.  I feel like this is the first "real" job search I have ever performed, because my prior jobs had been a long string of being recruited into the next job.  I learned a lot about the process and a little about myself along the way.

In today's job search, the job search site is ubiquitous, and they all promise to be better than the rest. Well, they surely cannot all be right.

LinkedIn + Job Search Site = Good

Early on, I figured out that LinkedIn should remain one of my search tools.  Primarily this was because, I found jobs on LinkedIn that were not in the dedicated job search sites.  Also, it can be incredibly easy to apply to a job on LinkedIn with an almost "one click" process.

Because LinkedIn has the most comprehensive view of your work history, it can make pretty good recommendations for jobs.  They are not all winners, but I found they had a pretty good track record, given that I was not giving them keywords for my ideal job.

Franchise Spam

I need to explain this, because I will be complaining about it soon.

Basically, you get something like this:

Dear $firstname,

I saw your resume on $site and I can see you are pretty freaking awesome.  Are you interested in an opportunity to own your own business, make lots of money, and be even awesomer?  If so, then you should totally click on the link below and set up an appointment, because goodness knows this email address is not legit and you probably will not pay any attention to any creepy agreement I might slide past you. 

And wow, there was a week where I received dozens of these.

Indeed.Com Was My Favorite Job Search Site

There are many job search sites.  I tried the following:

• Indeed.com
• Careerbuilder.com
• Simplyhired.com
• Monster.com
• Dice.com

Simply hired was buggy.  Simply put, I would go there and links just did not work.  Also, when I signed up, the feedback on the process was lacking, leading to a confusing sign up process that was off-putting.

Careerbuilder.com was not bad initially, but it became a source of recruiter spam and franchise spam.  It was not long before I was getting spam and it kept going after I turned off notices from careerbuilder.

Monster.com was noisy.  I was worried about a low signal-to-noise ratio with monster.com and that is what I saw.  Was I biased by my expectation?  I will never know.  Such is that nature of biased expectation.

Dice.com was the worst for recruiter spam and off-base job opportunities. Dice has a very stripped down profile mechanism.  You can upload resumes, and I did, but apparently none of the recruiters there actually read them.  For example, I know MySQL, but my resume clearly does not qualify me as a Senior DBA.  Even worse, the spam has continued and I deleted my profiles and resumes weeks ago.

Indeed was my favorite, hands down.  They had:

• Great search capabilities
• A very lean, functional site
• The alerts worked well for me
• I liked their mechanisms for saving and applying to jobs
• And I cannot recall any spam they generated

LinkedIn + Indeed.com = Win

So, in the end, I settled on LinkedIn and Indeed.  They complement each other well and I recommend them for anyone looking for a job.