Carl Bradford

In a July issue of BusinessWeek, corporate recruiter Elisa Bannon of US Cellular in Chicago was quoted as saying, “I use to spend up to $4 million a year to post jobs through three of the big job boards – Monster, CareerBuilder and Yahoo! HotJobs.”  Not any more!

Her 2009 budget was slashed to $1 million and with 2,500 openings to fill as Director of Talent Acquisition, she left these big boards and moved to the social networking site LinkeIn.  Now instead of spending $4 million she spends $60,000 and feels like she has a high quality of job candidate by tapping into more passive job candidates.  This has extremely critical implications for your job search!

If you think you’re conducting an effective job search by relying on the big job boards and networking with a few current and past colleagues, you would be wrong.  You’re missing out on job opportunities that now appear on the social networking sites like LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook to name a few.

Finding Unadvertised Jobs

There are also a number of jobs that can also be classified as “unadvertised”.  There is a way to uncover those jobs, but you won’t do it by using conventional methods and relying on the big job boards. This fact is supported by an article in the April 13, 2009 issue of Fortune magazine.

Finding these jobs will take more work, but when you find those job opening gems using unconventional job search methods, you will also find much fewer candidates who will be your competitors for these jobs.

Bannon also reports not only is she saving money, she has made one hire per day in the previous 30 days for a position that has normally taken six months to fill.  This points out how much quicker you can be hired when discovered through these alternative job search methods.

Smarter Job Hunting Skills Are Required

It takes some newly acquired skills to understand just how to conduct an effective job search using these new methods, but if you’re up to the challenge, I can show you just how to accomplish that.  If you’re already using some or all of these resources, you’re likely not working them at peak efficiency.  Because I’ve been in the recruiting and employment world for over 40 years – see my bio here – I know colleagues who specialize in teaching you just how to pull this off and you can start now.

Here’s How To Acquire Those New Skills

I can connect you with information that not only shows you how to really take advantage of these social networking sites, but they also have some super sleuthing methods of find unadvertised jobs.  These methods are worth a fortune in career success for those willing to spend the time and effort to utilize these new strategies.

See also my related post about Twitter, Face Book, LinkedIn and using social media for find jobs by going here.