HOW TO USE JOB BOARDS EFFICIENTLY
BY RICHARD MENNEVEUX
SHOULD YOU PREFER ANY PARTICULAR JOB WEBSITES?
Nowadays, there are about 500 job websites in France, where you can find more than 400-450 available job offers, in real time. Which websites are the best to begin your job search? I think that most applicants ask themselves this question. I’d say that the first step is to visit institutional websites. For example, for executives, there is the French APEC website. For employees, the French employment organization Pôle Emploi. What you need to know is that job offers issued on these institutional websites are relatively unique offers that you are not going to find on other websites. The second step should consist in using job search engines that gather offers issued both by non-specialized and specialized websites. but also by recruitment firms, and directly by recruiters. Thus, these job search engines are, for example, Moovement, Wanajob, JobiJoba, Indeed. There also are famous non-specialized websites, that can issue several thousands of job offers, such as Monster or also Cadre Emploi and that are often used by recruiters. And finally, there are lots of specialized websites that will enable you to access much more specialized offers. Therefore, I think that a good advice would be to better identify which websites are interesting for your job search and then to visit them on a regular basis, in order to find interesting job offers.
WHAT IS THE BEST WAY TO USE THESE WEBSITES?
The first step is to visit these websites and check their offers as regularly as possible. Besides, in order to make this task easier, you have a Favorites menu in your browser at your disposal, that enables you to bookmark the most interesting websites and, on each of these websites, you can set up alerts. Those are email, RSS or SMS alerts. So you will be able to receive every day, in real time, the latest job offers that match your job search. Then, you will be able to keep an eye on the recruiting companies and thereby to submit a better application.
WHAT MISTAKES SHOULD YOU AVOID?
The first thing you should avoid is to rush blindly into applying, i.e. to apply to all the job offers without checking if they match your job search. You should therefore read very carefully all the offers issued online, in order to select the best ones. Obviously, you should check the job offer’s date, because nowadays, it is better to apply to a recently issued job than to an offer that was issued two months ago, for example, and whose recruitment process is almost over. And finally, I’d say you should have a quality approach, which means you should be able to identify information that is going to be useful when you apply.