What are some of the sites you guys have used for finding jobs? The most advertised ones (monster, career builder) just spit back spam at me and are pretty much worthless. Also, have you ever used a headhunter to land a job? I'm tired of working down here in south texas and would love to find something in the pr/media relations field somewhere in the northwest, but would be willing to look outside those paths as well. Any help you can give me would be great.
I don't know about where to get pr/media jobs, but here's what I'd try if I was in your shoes: 1) Ask everyone I know who works in that field how they'd go about looking for a job. Take any good advice, ignore the bad. 2) Try cold-calling a few companies that are the sort of place you'd like to work, with the following playbook: "I'd like to speak to your HR department"... "Hi HR person, I don't want to waste your time but I am hoping you could give me a bit of advice. I'm just wondering, if a company like yours was going to advertise a position like [...], where would you advertise it? I'm looking for work in the area but don't know quite where to start". If you are a smooth talker, you'll get some useful information. If you are a smooth talker and lucky, they'll tell you to send them a resume. 3) Depending on what level you are at, you may need to relocate before you'll get a nibble. Lots of employers aren't willing to consider non-local candidates, unless the position is hard to fill from local talent. No, I haven't ever done any of that myself. It's something I just made up to answer your question, so the end of suggestion #1 above may come into play here. I'd be real skeptical of headhunters, unless they truly specialize in exactly what you want to do - and I don't think such headhunters exist, unless what you want to do is be a CEO, CFO, or the like. You can google just as well as the average headhunter. barfo
try linked in. import all your contacts and people you've worked in. i don't know if people actually check it. I've written a few recommendations, I don't think people take them really seriously. But people seem to use it I guess. find a PR/Media group in Portland to follow on facebook/twitter. often they will have job postings. Most PR/Media jobs are a bit fluffy though, just a warning. Headhunters...it sounds like you're entry level, and they aren't going to help you at all. oh, and improve your Klout score. Its all about your klout score.
To do well on Monster, you need to SEO your resume, meaning you need to make key words highly visible. major companies have automated systems to weed out resumes and they search for certain words, so keep that in mind. Oh yeah, another thing is follow some PR groups on facebook in general. They have a few networking events, where a bunch of unemployed people put on suits and try to find jobs. Its a bit annoying but it will season you in a bit. I've been to a few, usually some food and booze and hot chicks, at least around christmas time when I went to them last year.
indeed.com is good. It pulls all the job sites in to one search. I actually found a good amount of success with craigslist as well. You'd be surprised how valuable a tool it can be for job searching. If you're super diligent about checking craigslist you can be one of the first people to respond which I also found to be very important.
