After I prepare a resume for someone, the first thing they do is rush out and post it onto the job boards. This is certainly a great idea. However, many of them stop at this step and then wonder why they arent acquiring calls. There are subtleties to job board posting and knowing these will improve your effectiveness rate.

Did you understand that the larger job boards have an effectiveness rate of less than 3% in getting many people jobs? Thats not very successful . In fact, many smaller businesses dont post to Monster and the big boards because they are too expensive. This is significant because MORE THAN 90% of the jobs in America are within small businesses - in fact the SBA estimates that 75% of new jobs are with small businesses. So the first tip is to do some research and find the smaller job boards. Most importantly focus on the boards that specialize in your field. For example, if you are looking for a job in accounting, check out accounting.com or jobsinthemoney.com. If you are looking to get into pharmaceutical sales, look at go2pharmsales.com. The other thing you should do is look for professional organizations in your field and see if they have a job board. (Readers who would like a costless list of these kinds of job boards should send an e mail to dgoodman@gotthejob.com with Job Boards in the subject line).

Most importantly, contruct sure you have a GREAT resume and that it is formatted appropriately for the job board. If you do not have the right keywords in your resume and it doesnt contruct you stand out, then consider working with a professional resume writing firm. A few hundred dollar investment that gets you a paycheck sooner is well value the investment. (Readers who would like a free of cost evaluation of their resume may send it to dgoodman@gotthejob.com with Free Evaluation in the subject line and well give you some honest feedback about whether your resume does you justice).

Note that you can not just cut and paste your MS Word resume onto the page - it will look terrible. Create an ASCII or .txt file and paste that. You can do this by opening your resume in MS Word, hitting File-Save As and choosing Text Only. This will create a .txt version of your resume. Close the document , reopen it and edit out any stray characters left over from your bullets and other graphics characters. This file will now cut and paste into web sites and e-mails and automatically format itself.

Now, when you are posting your resume, see if the site has search agents. This is where you indicate the type of position you are seeking (location, title, etc.) and whenever a new position is posted that meets your criteria, you are notified. This allows you to be one of the first to respond so your resume will be at the top of the pile.

Another neat little trick is to update your resume twice a week. Just change a few things here and there and the job board will see your resume as newly posted which brings you on the radar screen of employers and recruiters.

Using job boards is the first thing you should do with your resume, but certainly not the only thing. Remember that most jobs are not advertised and networking, recruiters and direct mail programs should be considered as part of your job search strategy. Use the above tips and you will be optimizing your effectiveness from job boards.