Advanced Job Search – How to use Google for a job search

For many people, finding a job has changed drastically. Many workers have found themselves displaced by the economic times. Some of them have not been on the job hunt since the Internet became mainstream. Want ads in newspapers and storefront windows have evolved into job boards, search engines and social networks.

The competition for jobs is fierce. Fortunately our friends at Google have built this incredibly powerful search engine. An engine that is very hungry for content.

If you’re using Google to look for a job, you are probably using in the typical job board search method; skill set + location. You can do much better. Those type of search results are typically content from the 3 big job boards: Monster, Careerbuilder and Yahoo’s Hot Jobs.

While those sites often have legitimate opportunities, they are often so congested with job seekers that  getting through to the hiring manager is nearly impossible. Imagine a company with two sales positions inundated with over 1000 respondents. They may not have the resources to even look at 10% of those responses in any kind of detail. How do you stand out?

Be proactive – get ahead of the game! This is where your advanced tools come into play, including Google. Advanced search is a very powerful method of locating information. Online job ads are just that; pieces of information shared in cyberspace. You can find job opportunities in a wide array of methods; Search Engines, social networks, coffee shops and networking events.

How to search Google for Jobs

Have you noticed the advanced search link at google.com? Just to the right of the text field in little tiny letters, is the advanced search link. This is where Google can help you immensely. A plethora of options are presented to the search savvy user. Be specific with your questions for Google (called queries). For those with specific skill sets, make sure your search string includes those skills. Use your location as part of the search string as well. Other locations in your area can be combined using the boxes separated by the  Boolean operator OR. You may search for exact phrase matches, you may also exclude phrases. You can search specific sites by entering what sites to limit your search to. Linkedin.com and craigslist.org come to mind. You can find fresh content by clicking the Date, usage rights, numeric range and more option. This will help by only showing content that has been added to Google’s  index within last hour, day, week , month, or year. You can sort by date, or relevance. Hopefully by now you are beginning to see how powerful this tool can be in a job search. Often times when a company posts a job on their own site, it is indexed by Google rather quickly. The downside to this is that almost no one knows about that employers web or career portal. Company results rarely show up in Google’s organic job search results. When they do it is almost always because it is sponsored on a popular job site. Guess what? Many companies have stopped using the big 3 to post their jobs.

Do you see where this is going? Think outside the box, be specific in your search, try new methods. Use Google’s advanced search to your advantage. Do you really just need a job, any job? Search the last 24 hours or the last week in several neighboring cities. If you find something interesting, again be pro-active get more information about the company using a tool like jobshouts.com socializer web search to locate people on social networks. You can search for company names, people’s names or job skills.