Your online job search is likely to be focused on job boards such as Monster or Workopolis but there is a tool that you likely use every day that is also one of the best job search resources in the world. Yes, it’s Google! Willy Franzen has an excellent post, How to Use Google to Find a Job. The following are just a few tips he shares that could help in your online job search using Google.
When you use quotes in Google, it allows you to search for an exact phrase. If you search, jobs in Toronto, the results will include all types of pages including the words jobs and Toronto. If you search, “jobs in Toronto” your results will include only those with the exact phrase and will provide you with more specific information.
If you put ~ in front of a search term, it will search for the words you use as well as similar search terms so Toronto~jobs will also provide results for careers, employment and other like terms.
In order to narrow your search, you can use – in front of the search word so Toronto jobs-monster-workopolis will not include results after the -.
If you are searching for a specific company but can’t find their career page, type in site:http://companyname.com careers (leave out www.) You may also want to change careers to jobs as some companies have a jobs page and some a careers page or try ~careers.com search
Narrowing the results in your search can also be successful if you use site:.edu before your keywords to search jobs at colleges and universites. Or searching for jobs at non-profits, try site:.org in your search and for results in a specific country, Italy, try site:.it with your keywords.
If you find your job search results are outdated you may want to add to the URL that you have found in order to get results within a specific time frame. Each piece of the url after an & has a different meaning. If you add, &as_qdr=d3 at the end of the url your results will include the past three days. &as_qdr=w2 will include the last 2 weeks and &as_qdr=y1 will include the past year.
Search tips that work with Google searches also work with Google’s blog search, which may provide some additional information if you’re looking to get in-depth dirt on what it’s like to work at a specific company.
So don’t overlook Google in your online job search as it can help you find anything you would on other job search sites and maybe more!