In my humble opinion, one the hardest parts of finding a new job is researching job postings and companies that you’re actually interested in applying for online. It’s easy to waste hours scrolling through endless job postings trying to find positions that are worth pursuing. Thankfully, technology is to the point where you don’t have to spend hours and hours doing online research anymore, you can set up an RSS reader to do the leg work for you and deliver customized job search and company research results to you much more quickly and efficiently. Setting up an RSS reader to “grab” job search preferences from the net is also a great way for passive candidates to stay on top of the job market without having to go to the trouble of checking the job boards. Even if you’re not looking for a new job, it’s always good to know what’s out there and which companies are hiring in your industry and region.
If you’re not familiar with RSS it’s really, really easy to set up. Think of it like TiVo for the internet – you set up your preferences and it delivers the results right to your reader. For example, if you check out 4 different news web sites every day for current events (foxnews.com, cnn.com, msnbc.com, huffingtonpost.com) you can set up your reader to “grab” the stories from all of these sites so you only have to go to one place to read all of the news stories. Staying on top of 4 web sites doesn’t sound too challenging, but if you need to monitor 54 web sites – then using a reader is a huge time saver. Now apply this to your job search – you can set up your search preferences to deliver job postings, company news, industry news, and even training and development conferences that might be coming to your area – and it all comes to one place so you can quickly scroll through the results in minutes!
Here’s a great Common Craft video showing you step by step how to set up your Google reader: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0klgLsSxGsU
Once you’ve set up your reader, you need to subscribe to the web sites that you’re interested in monitoring. Here are some websites that I suggest:
-Run a search on Indeed.com (“public relations” 63102) and view results. Click the “RSS Feed” link in blue – then copy and paste the link into your reader. Voila! Now you will receive all new public relations job postings in the St. Louis area. Customize your search based on your industry and location. You can also do this on Monster.com and most of the other job boards.
-Next, go to PRSA.org. You can grab the feeds for PR events, news, and career opportunities. I also suggest grabbing the feed of your local PRSA chapter. Now you can stay on top of news, events, and conferences in your area.
-Let’s say that you want to monitor a specific company, most company web sites have RSS feeds too. You can usually find them right on the home page, careers page, or the news/press page.
The possibilities are endless. I actually use this tool in the opposite way – I’ve set up my reader to find you! My preferences return updates on PR bloggers, PR resumes and CV’s posted on personal web sites, agency research, employee promotions/transfers/new hires, and industry trends. It’s a huge timesaver and I think it’s only wise to take advantage of all this technology to work smarter not harder!
I hope these tips help to make the research portion of your job search a little bit easier!
Filed under: Digital, Job Hunting | Tagged: 2.0, Digital, Indeed, Job Search, RSS
