Straight talk from a recruiter – job searching with careerbuilder.com

Job boards such as careerbuilder.com are still being used by recruiters and employers to search for potential candidates. Professional and social networking sites have become a hot job searching tool, but they are not going to replace job boards.

Quick Facts about Careerbuilder.com:

More than 300,000 employers post over 1 million jobs on careerbuilder.
In five years, careerbuilder.com became the nations largest online job site.
Careerbuilder.com powers career sites for more than 9,000 websites including 140 newspapers.

I recently went through a recruiting training using careerbuilder and learned some great tips and techniques for searching candidates. For example, I can upload a job description and careerbuilder will return candidates that match the criteria in that job description. For a job seeker, this is important to know and it’s worth taking a look at all of the job opportunities that are related to your field and look for keyword trends. The more your resume matches a job description the better chances your resume will be returned in a search. Another great tip is that once you find a job, I wouldn’t be so quick to take down your resume from careerbuilder. Recruiters can search the resume archive which goes back 2 to 3 years. Most of my searches are for resumes that have been posted within 1 year, but when I’m searching for passive candidates or for a challenging requirement, I search those resumes posted a few years back. My results? I find some great candidates who may have recently been laid off or happen to just be starting their job search.

I wouldn’t recommend spending hours on job boards looking for a job, but I do recommend getting your resume uploaded into the careerbuilder database and making sure your resume has keywords that recruiters and employers are searching for. Take a few minutes every day to do a quick search on any new jobs posted that would match what you are searching for and make changes on your resume every few days to keep your resume active. Recruiters can search resumes that have been edited within the last few weeks or last 3 months, so making little changes on your resume once a week can keep your resume showing up in recent search results.