Network your way to a new job!

There seem to be an endless and never-ending array of professional and also personal networking sites popping up these days. It can easily become all too harrowing to try and navigate through the maze of networking sites available and truly determine which ones are worthy of investing your time at. Whether you are a job seeker, an employer, a recruiter or just want to reconnect with former colleagues, there truly are some great sites and resources out there to tap into these days.

I have links to most of the sites I personally recommend here on this Blog, yet I continue to check out several of the new and also older ones occasionally as they are great sources for me as a recruiter to tap into the more passive candidate and also gain some phenomenal industry referrals from. In an effort to help you all tap into some good networking sites, here are both my recommendation of sites and also some sites that I have heard of, yet cannot vouch for as I have yet have to check into yet fully.

Good luck with your job searches and networking efforts...and while I truly hope that I am the recruiter who places you in your next dream job, I am also hopeful that some of these sites may be of use and benefit to you in your career search or just to network more extensively with industry contacts. You all continue to be so wonderful in providing me with some great references (thank you!), so I am hopeful this list may help give you ways to connect you with new industry contacts, former colleagues, etc.

Sites I recommend:

www.linkedin.com Most of you who know me and are in my network, know that I am a big fan of LinkedIn. A great and easy tool to keep in touch with your contacts and also reach out to many new contacts across just about any industry. I rank this site top of my list!

www.konnects.com This is a newer site for me and I have not diligently checked it out in great detail yet. However, as new as it is to me, it appears the site is growing rather quickly as I have received many communications or request through the site thus far.

www.xing.com This is another site that I have received several communications and requests form professionals looking to reach out to me at, ye have not researched it heavily enough to form an opinion one way or another yet.

www.naymz.com

www.spoke.com

Other sites that may be worth checking out that I have heard or seen reference to these, yet just haven't had enough time to thoroughly research and personally review all of these yet. Please let me know your experiences on any of the below listed sites and I will post a follow up here in a few months to give everyone an update:

http://www.fastcompany.com/cof/

http://www.ecademy.com/

http://www.jigsaw.com/

http://www.networkingforprofessionals.com/

http://jobs.realcontacts.com/home.asp

http://www.ziggs.com/

http://www.zoominfo.com/ (this is more of a great researching tool - much like a Hoovers, you can search for company data or by individual name - a great resource!)