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Looking for a job on the Internet can be daunting. Where do you start? What Web sites are best for your industry?

If you’re suffering from “job search overwhelm,” take heart. Remember the adage about how to eat an elephant one bite at a time.

Your quest for employment is the same.

It’s less overwhelming if you slice the online job market into bite-sized pieces instead of trying to visit 1,000 Web sites in a single day.

Here are 4 ways to divide the online employment market into smaller niches — and get hired faster.

1) Search For Local Job Sites

Like politics, most job searches are local. You’ll likely get hired by an employer within 20-30 miles of where you are now. So it pays to find Web sites that list local job openings.

Tip: look for job listings at the Web site of your local newspaper or TV station. You’ll almost always find something. Examples: startribune.com, kstp.com, detnews.com, nytimes.com. You’ll often find links to other regional job sites this way, too.

A second tactic is to type your state or city name and the word “jobs.com” into your Web browser and see what turns up. Examples: Minnesotajobs.com, Chicagojobs.com, Phillyjobs.com.

2) Search For Jobs By Industry

No matter what line of work you’re in, there’s probably a Web site with employment postings for that industry. So doing a Google search for “job title + jobs” should produce leads.

Another good Web resource is SearchSimpleton.com. It has links to more than 1,000 industry-specific Web directories, from Accounting and Finance to Travel, Hospitality and Restaurant job sites. It’s a good place to narrow your search to a specific industry or job function.

3) Search For Unadvertised Openings

Here’s a neat trick. You can get hired by companies before they even know they need you, according to Rich Milgram, founder and CEO of the 4Jobs.com Career Network.

All you have to do is think beyond your title.

“Most people take their job searches too literally. If they don’t find an exact match for the position Software Development Manager, for example, they give up. This is a mistake. Instead, look for companies hiring lots of software engineers and go pitch yourself as a manager to that company. That’s because employers tend to fill lower-level jobs first over the Internet, so you’ll be there ahead of their need for a new team manager,” says Milgram.

How do you pitch yourself to employers before they’ve listed a job opening?

Research the company, make contact with people who work there, then send a networking letter. According to Milgram, your letter should say something like: “I’ve been in your shoes before, here’s what you’re going to experience as you hire new people, and I’d be happy to talk to you about it.”

“The successful job search is not about you, but about the growth and the future of the company you want to work for,” adds Milgram.

The sooner you realize that, the sooner you’ll get hired.

4) Contact Old Classmates

You already know that networking can uncover the best job leads. It’s essential that you tell everyone you know about your job search. But don’t stop with those people.

Talk to everyone you used to know — folks you haven’t been in touch with for years.

And the easiest way is to contact people you went to high school or college with. Even if you haven’t talked to them in 20 years, you have something in common and they ought to be glad to hear from you (unless you stole their lunch money or did something equally inapt).

Two Web sites to help make contact with old school friends are Classmates.com and Linkedin.com. Also, most college Web sites will help you get in touch with fellow alumni — try yours and see.

Now, go out and make your own luck!

Kevin Donlin is President of Guaranteed Resumes. Since 1996, he and his team have provided resumes, cover letters and online job-search assistance to clients in all 50 states and 23 countries. Kevin has been interviewed by USA Today, CBS MarketWatch, The Wall Street Journal’s National Business Employment Weekly, CBS Radio, and many others.

Tags: careers, cover letters, employment, finding a job, job hunting, job search, resume writing, resumescareers, cover letters, employment, finding a job, job hunting, job search, resume writing, resumes

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If you are already a sales person, or if you are hoping to gain a sales position, then you should consider your resume to be the first step in a sales presentation that sells you as an employee to your prospective employer. Even if you consider yourself to be somewhat of an expert in sales, you might find that selling yourself using one or two sheets of paper is much more daunting than selling items on a sales floor. This is where a sample sales resume can be an invaluable tool.

With a sample sales resume, you’ll learn that your ability for selling must become notably more fine-tuned so that you can compete among many other sales-oriented people. It will help you to create a resume that will sell your uniquely ideal candidacy to the hiring authority - even if it is by way of an intermediary who will be briefly scanning over the resumes.

Try to think of it this way. You’re trying to make a sale by emailing your best sales pitch to the attorney of your prospective client. As you can see, your resume will need to be as close to perfect as is possible in order to make it past the first hurdle to the person who will ultimately make the decision as to whether or not to meet you for an interview.

Sales professionals very commonly seek the assistance of professional resume writers in order to ensure such precision and accuracy. Therefore, if you decide to write your resume yourself, you will likely be at a disadvantage against these professionals - depending on your writing experience and skill - so you will need to work at least twice as hard on your resume as anyone else.

Fortunately, if you’re using a sample sales resume as a tool to assist you, you already have the help of a professional on your side. After all, the odd are that a professional resume writer wrote the sample sales resume, so all you need to do is apply that template to yourself, and perfect, review, and edit until you are certain that you’ve made it as good is it can get.

How good is enough? Ask yourself the following questions:

Is my resume ready to beat the 95% of applicants whose resumes will be discarded, even if they have been created by a professional resume writer?

Is my resume written in a way that clearly and quickly demonstrates my ideal candidacy for the position and gets the results I want?

Before you even think of emailing, faxing, or snail mailing your sales resume, you must have a “yes” answer to both of those questions.

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Tags: resume template, resume writing, sample resume writing, sample sales resumeresume template, resume writing, sample resume writing, sample sales resume

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Do these things

Include your full name - don’t use nicknames or abbreviations

Use a telephone number that you can always answer - use a cell phone if possible or make sure there is an answering machine at the listed phone number

Use bullet points to highlight information - it is much easier for an employer to absorb relevant information while scanning your r

Tags: interactive resume, resume writing, template resumes, vision resumeinteractive resume, resume writing, template resumes, vision resume

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