It has generally been my principle that job boards are great for determining who is hiring, but not for submitting your resume for a given opportunity. Why? Well if the job is listed in the open, so many others will be applying. A friend, an internal recruiter for a major corporation once told me that when she placed a job on Monster, she received hundreds of resumes. Most were unqualified. She looked at the first hundred and deleted the balance.

Recently there have been a few new job boards appearing on the jobseeking scene that may be worth considering for a revised strategy. Specifically I have witnessed successes from CareerBuilder (see the new job search box on the right side of this blog), TheLadders.com and LinkedIn.

Each of these offers a more refined and targeted audience, one where a resume received is of a higher perceived quality. LinkedIn (where I had my most recent personal success) has an audience of business networkers', those that get it. TheLadders focuses on the $100K crowd and where the jobseeker pays for the list of jobs. CareerBuilder has built their brand and resource rich web presence for serious minded job seekers.

Does this mean that Monster & HotJobs aren't worthy? Actually they are, for what I call the "pull" search. Build your profile on these boards and let recruiters and companies call you. This works GREAT! However, they are simply too big, where (IMHO) your submitted resume will be lost in the deluge.

Try it out for yourself. Conduct a search for your ideal jobs on LinkedIn, CareerBuilder and/or TheLadders, click through and submit your resume to a prospective employer - and see if this approach is successful for you.

Please note: I continue to believe that the use of job boards should be a small percent of your overall job seeking strategy. Utilizing the "pull" strategy, networking and recruiters should be where you place your emphasis.