When looking for your next nursing job, you will most likely make heavy use of Monster, HotJobs, CareerBuilder and other online job boards to apply to nursing jobs. You might open up an account, post your resume, subscribe to an RSS feed so you can keep up with all the latest jobs posted.
All major job boards make it really easy to stay on their sites for long periods of time applying to an open nursing jobs.
Most job seekers will find it both surprising and disappointing to learn that major job boards offer one of the least effective ways to find your next nursing job.
Sure, the big job boards give job seekers everything for free, but they make all their money by selling both advertising and resume database access to employers.
What you are about to learn is how the major job boards give all the true advantages to the those who pay the bills. In other words, the house odds favor employers, not prospective employees.
What the Big Job Boards Don't Want You to Know
Monster.com gathers together a massive number of job seekers, but they are all competing for a very limited number of jobs. Monster.com offers only 3% of all jobs advertised on the Internet. Most nurses and Internet surfers assume that the big job boards are just like Google and offer access to jobs throughout the Internet. But, Monster.com, HotJobs, and CareerBuilder allow access to their database of employer paid ads.
Of course employers love the big job boards because every advertised job fetches an average of 500 resumes in competitive markets.
Knowing how many resumes a hiring manger receives, it should be no surprise to find that they spend an average of 7 seconds looking at a resume.
What is a great deal for employers actually puts the job seeker into the proverbial small fish in a big pond. Imagine knowing at the outset that you have less than a 1/2 percent chance to be considered for a job interview?
To top off how bad the odds are stacked against job seekers, statistics from several state employment centers show that only 5% of all jobs are found through job advertising.
Even if you thrive in that kind of competitive environment, the online venue at Monster or the other large job boards provide no tools to help you show your excellence to a prospective hiring mangers.
TIP: If you are looking for the most nursing jobs in one place, find a meta job search engine.
Use A Meta Job Search Engine Looking for work is a full time job, don't put in overtime hopping from job board to job board and applying to every job you find. One way you can save time is to search for all advertised jobs from Monster, HotJobs, CareerBuilder, and 5,000%2B more job boards all from one meta job search site.
Now that you know where to find all the jobs, consider how much time to spend on this job seeking tactic. When only 5% of all jobs are found through job advertising, consider turning the 80/20 rule, or the 95/5 rule backwards. Spend less time on the less effective job searching tactics and more time on the more productive job searching tactics.
This is part 1 in a series about rethinking job seeking strategies and tactics. More installments can be found at My-Nursing-Career.
Find all Registered Nursing (RN) jobs [http://www.my-nursing-career.com/jobs/registered-nursing-jobs/index.php], Licensed Practical Nursing (LPN) jobs, and Certified Nursing Assistant (CNA) [http://www.my-nursing-career.com/jobs/cna-nursing-jobs/index.php] jobs.
As a former project manager at CareerPath (now CareerBuilder), and hiring manager at companies like Microsoft, Jeff has a unique perspective on what the most effective strategies and tactics to use when finding your next nursing job.
Wednesday 30th November, 2011 
