How to Search Job Boards You Never Heard Of

Do you know how many job boards there are online? What are you thinking? 20… 40…? 100…? There is an organization called “International Association of Employment Web Sites” and according to them there are more than 40,000 employment sites that serve job seekers, employers and recruiters worldwide. (See for yourself at: www.employmentwebsites.org )
That being said, how likely is it for you to search everyone? Pretty unlikely? Well, don’t be so sure. Eventhough there are 40,000+ job boards out there, Yahoo has done a pretty good job of indexing their content. As such, if you search Yahoo a certain way, you will be able to search most (if not all) of those employment sites. In doing so, you not only find jobs that your jobseeker competitors might know about, but you will also discover niche job boards that focus on your particular skillset. For example, let’s say that you are an accountant looking for an Accounts Receivables position. This is how I would look for that job with Yahoo.

• intitle:accounting (intitle:job OR intitle:jobs OR intitle:careers) (apply OR submit OR eoe)

At this writing, there are 217,000 results! Not bad and since… what? (My spider sense is telling me that you have no idea what I just did.) Hmm… Let me explain to you what I just did with that search.

• intitle:accounting – Yahoo look for web documents that have accounting in their title
• (intitle:job OR intitle:jobs OR intitle:careers) – Hey Yahoo, while you’re at it, look for the words job or jobs or careers in the title of web documents as well.
• (apply OR submit OR eoe) – Just before you show me anything, check those webpages for the words apply or submit or eoe. Why? Job descriptions typically say “apply for this job” or “submit your resume” or have eoe on it somewhere. (Equal Opportunity Employer)

Just in case the lightbulb is flickering in your mind (but not quite fully lit), here are a few more examples to spark your online curiosity.
This is how I would find an accounting job in Atlanta:

• (404 OR 678 OR 770 OR 912) intitle:accounting (intitle:job OR intitle:jobs OR intitle:careers) (apply OR submit OR eoe)

This is how I would find an accounting job with great benefits:

• “excellent benefits” intitle:accounting (intitle:job OR intitle:jobs OR intitle:careers) (apply OR submit OR eoe)

This is how I would find an accounting job where I could work from home:

• (intitle:”work from home” OR intitle:virtual) intitle:accounting (intitle:job OR intitle:jobs OR intitle:careers) (apply OR submit OR eoe)

Although I am using Yahoo as the searchengine of choice, since their results are being powered by Bing, you can run the same searches there as well. In doing so, you may stumble across additional results? Why? Although the same search technology is powering both websites, they still have different indexes. Sure there will be some overlap, but there will always be some results unique to each engine. Hmm… for that matter, let’s take it a bit deeper and try this search on the metasearchengine – Dogpile. (What? What’s a metasearchengine? Oh, that’s a searchengine that searches other searchengines. Can you dig it?)
Hmm… Check out what I found when I used this search string:
See the search string and the rest of Jim Stroud's article