Do your research on a company before accepting offer!

Aside from googling or asking around within your network in your industry, there is a useful website to use when researching a potential employer that you may be considering going to work for. It can even help you prepare for interviews! The concept is quite simple and one much like any social media website, in that it consists of real people writing reviews and their own experiences and opinions on company's, the interview process, interview questions and experience and even salary info if company's they have interviewed and/or worked for.

I got drawn into the site rather easily and found myself plugging in not only company's I had worked for in the past but also company's that I recruit for and of course recruit away from as well. The results were interesting!

As with any review or public opinion posted on the internet, we all know anyone can write just about anything they want on any company out there. Lots of disgruntled employees or employees who just didn't have an overall positive experience with an employer may find it incredibly eays and obviously tempting to leave a bad review. For all you know a bad review was written by someone from that companys competitor. The internet is...well, the internet. You never truly know who you are dealing with and whether what they say is truly valid and reliable.

The benefit I think is that what is reliable is that there are often truth in numbers. If a company has consistantly gotten negative posts from several people...chances are there is a common theme going on. However, most people are more apt to go out of their way to leave a negative comment than a positive one (unfortunately!). Your own common sense should easily prevail in making a partial judgement on a company by utilizing the array of resources there are out there to dig up any dirt that may be out there. Worse case scenerio, you may be able to get some good interview tips or hints on questions that are asked during interview process for specific company's and mamy tips unspecified to a compamny that may assist in your interview skills also!

Bottom line is do your due diligence...you wouldn't buy a house without getting it inspected...or buy a car without test driving it (I did that once - huge mistake!). Take advantage of the many resources, most importantly your own contacts to research any company you may consider going to work for. Afterall, most company's now will research you whether it be on google, facebook, myspace, twitter searches and background checks.

So, having said all that...The website is: www.glassdoor.com The site allows you a free preview for a few searches, then will require that you register (it's free!) and leave your own positive or negative review of a company whether it be their interview process, salary info or comments on company in general. Many company's I searched had no reviews...so assuing as with anything, only a matter of time until more and more people learn anout and utilize this site.

Enjoy!!

The top 30 Job Boards for 2010

I still say the best jobs are never found on job boards or advertised at all for that matter. Yet due to many, if not most recruiters utilizing job boards to automate and post the searches they are working on and also spend countless hours searching for candidates on job boards, this list was worth sharing. This post came from one of my favorite and informational blogs....reCareered (posts some amazingly great tips and useful job links...also on Facebook, if you are on there and want to stay informed of job related news.

Weddles.com recently published its 2010 User's Choice Awards, based on year long surveys of recruiters and candidates.“We believe customers count most,” says Weddle’s Publisher and CEO, Peter Weddle. “While pundits can make their own picks, it’s the people who use the sites who really know which are most helpful.”

When considering these top sites, it’s especially relevant to remember that job boards are just over a dozen years old. Twelve years ago, candidates had just a couple of choices other than Monster. These are the thirty best sites of the over 50,000 job boards now in existence, and only Monster existed a dozen years ago.

For the category of general job boards (in alphabetical order):

CareerBuilder.com

DirectEmployers.com

Indeed.com

Job.com

JobFox.com

Monster.com

SimplyHired.com

Yahoo! HotJobs

EmploymentGuide.com

GetTheJob.com

TopUSAJobs.com

And let’s not forget the niche job boards:

Absolutely Health Care

AfterCollege.com

AllHealthcareJobs.com

AllRetailJobs.com

CollegeGrad.com

CollegeRecruiter.com

Dice.com

DiversityJobs.com

Execunet.com

Hcareers.com

HealthCareerWeb.com

HEALTHeCAREERS Network

Jobbing.com

JobsinLogistics.com

TheLadders.com

Net-Temps.com

6FigureJobs.com

SnagAJob.com

VetJobs.com

The top websites were from a number of different industry segments. Health Care was represented by Absolutely Health Care, AllHealthCareJobs.com, HeathCareerWeb.com, and HealthECareers.com . Dice was the only technology job board on the list. Hcareers.com for hospitality jobs made the top 30. AllRetailJobs.com focuses on the retail industry. Weddle’s recognized JobsinLogistics.com for excellence in the logistics vertical.

Additionally, a few job boards focus on the type of companies recruiting. DiversityJobs.com targets companies who seek to actively improve their diversity initiatives in their hiring process. Companies looking for a top site to target Veterans for hiring can look towards VetJobs.com to help find candidates.

Jobbing.com was the only firm with a regional focus to be named in the top 30. Jobing has 48 city or regional sites focused on jobs in a specific geographic area.

Eleven sites were general purpose job sites. The largest sites (Monster, CareerBuilder, HotJobs all made the list. The aggregators Indeed, SimplyHired, and TopUSAJobs also were awarded with spots on the top 30. Other general purpose sites include DirectEmployers, Job.com, EmploymentGuide, and GetTheJob.com.

Personally, I don’t recommend you use all 30 job boards … that’s just too much for a candidate to keep track of. Plus, many companies and recruiters advertise the same job on multiple sites. I recommend you choose 3 major boards to follow and 2 additional ones. I’d choose one of the aggregators, one niche board for either industry or demographic, and one niche board for either geography or company type. Use the tools that a job board gives you to make your search easier and more automated. Most job boards will send emails or RSS feeds for all jobs that meet your specific search criteria. This makes your search more manageable, so you can spend more time customizing your responses, and less time searching the job boards.

Even the top 30 job boards are not the end-all be-all for your job search. I don’t suggest ignoring job boards, nor do I suggest that they should be your only source of job leads. They are just one opportunity channel, and a competitive one at that. Don’t forget about the other opportunity channels that can help you: Networking, social networking, recruiters, government career centers, and inbound marketing (social branding) are all opportunity channels that I recommend today’s job seekers explore.

Job Hunters, Beware!

Here's a fantastic article from Wall Street Journal - Career Journal - by Stephanie Needleman. This article held so many truths and great reminders that I felt were definately worth sharing.

Often when in job search mode, and especially in this tough economy it is difficult to not "over do" your job search. Afterall, no one enjoys being out of a job and in this uncertain economy it is a scary and often desparate time for many. As such, it is quite easy to ake a few, if not many of the online job seeker mistakes as outlined in article below. In my recruiting career there are certain candidates that I will probably never forget (and not in a good way!) that have made many of the mistakes highlighted below. I along with many other recruiters and employers often check facebook or google a candidate's name to see what we can find out on social media sites or the internet in general. You'd be surprised what is out there often! Enjoy the read!

There's been no shortage of warnings about the career dangers of posting racy content on sites like Facebook and Twitter. Yet many job hunters still don't heed that advice, and others don't realize they're doing just as much damage by doing things like bending the truth or spamming their résumés. Recruiters say such faux-pas can result in immediate and lasting career damage.

"You're going to be remembered—and not in a positive way," says Colleen McCreary, chief people officer for Zynga Game Network Inc., a San Francisco developer of social games including FarmVille. "Recruiters move around a lot from company to company, and that can carry on with them for a long period of time."

You won't get off the ground floor with these job hunting mistakes. Ms. McCreary says candidates consistently damage their reputations by sending cover letters that disingenuously claim a specific position at the company is their dream job. With a check of Zynga's applicant-tracking system, she can see that those people submitted the same letter for several other openings, too. "They've now lost all their integrity," she says. As an alternative, she recommends that job hunters write about the two or three positions they're most qualified for in a single letter.

Job hunters also regularly flub by submitting their résumés to multiple recruiters and hiring managers at a single firm. "What they're doing is a huge turn off because it sucks up a lot of time for people," says Ms. McCreary.

Likewise, job hunters repeatedly derail their chances by applying for positions for which they don't even meet the basic requirements. "There are a few people out there who seem to see it fit to apply to every job we ever post," says Dan Goldsmith, a managing partner at AC Lion, an executive-search firm in New York. "Those people just go right in the trash folder."

There are also job hunters who repeatedly send the same recruiters their résumés year after year, which can give the impression that they're desperate or a job hopper, adds Mr. Goldsmith. Liars make up another category of memorable job hunters. "People will say they graduated from [a] school and you find out from looking online that... they just took a course," says Ms. McCreary.

Executive recruiter Russ Riendeau says he checks candidates' résumés against their LinkedIn profiles and often discovers discrepancies. "It's helping me assess whether candidate is indeed who they say they are," says Mr. Riendeau, a partner at East Wing Group, a search firm in Barrington, Ill. Résumés should tell a candidate's full story, he says. Meanwhile, many job hunters are also continuing to overlook the dangers of posting provocative photos and other dubious content on social-media sites. Case in point: Recruiter Lori Fenstermaker says she lost interest in a recent candidate for a legal-assistant job after finding her raunchy MySpace profile. "She represented herself in a way that would not align with the company's philosophy and ethics," says Ms. Fenstermaker, founder of Automatic LLC, a search firm in Grand Rapids, Mich. "Anything someone publishes online could knock a person out of the running per se."

There are also some job hunters who are unwittingly going out of their way to spoil their prospects. Last year, a candidate for a senior client-services position invited Mr. Goldsmith to be part of his Facebook network. After accepting, the recruiter found a semi-nude photo of the candidate, prompting Mr. Goldsmith to withdraw this person from consideration. "It was so horribly inappropriate," the recruiter recalls. "To flaunt that with such a lack of sensitivity to professional decorum is very disquieting."