Job Hunting Goes Online

Looking up jobs and applying for them is no longer about walking out of the house everyday at 6.00 am with a lunch box. Job sites have revolutionised the job hunting process

“The internet is becoming the town square for the global village of tomorrow.”
                                                                                                          Bill Gates, Chairman, Microsoft

Indeed! Internet is increasingly being consumed as a staple diet by millions. Today illiteracy is measured in terms of a person’s knowledge of the internet. Even when it comes to jobs, the employers and the job seekers all owe a lot to the internet. Job sites make it possible for job seekers to find jobs with the click of a button. 

Job sites

Most of the job sites first want you to register with them. Then you have to identify which areas you want to work in and fill in your professional details. The site then pulls out all the matching job vacancies from their database. Thereafter you can send your application and resumes to the appropriate companies. Some sites just want you to submit your resume online and then the companies interested in your profile approach you for interviews.

Job search engines make it possible for people to apply for jobs in far off places as well. Let us say that you are living in Delhi and wish to start working in Bangalore. All you need to do is visit a job site and look up vacancies in Bangalore. For people who dream of working with companies in the UK, USA or Australia now do not need travel all the way to hunt for a job. Thanks to job sites they can find and apply to jobs online.

Job sites are also useful for employers. Companies save money in print advertisements. Employers prefer to know as much about the candidate as possible. These sites by providing personal information about candidates make it much easier for them to figure out a candidate’s suitability.

Social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter and Linkedin are giving job sites a lot of competition. Big and established job sites, though, do not see business or social networking sites as competition. They believe that these sites have a very different target audience than them.  Active job seekers log on to job sites and do not rely on the social networking sites.

Be careful

One has to be careful and judicious when applying for a job online. There are reported and very real threat of identity theft and fake information online.

1. Hackers have started stealing personal data from job sites which is then sold out in the black market. Identity thefts can be very dangerous.
2. They also send fake mails to applicants and then blackmail to extort money out of them.
3. People also misuse the site to weaken the competition. For example, they put fake jobs online and ask people who are competing with them to interviews. This is done to understand the other person’s business strategies and work with those to perform better than that person. It could also make a person quit a stable job in the hope of finding a better one.
4. Monster.com, world’s largest and most popular job site, was hacked sometime back. Such cases can actually deter job seekers from putting up their contact information on the sites.

Always call up the company’s contact person before giving in to their request for personal details. Try to mostly rely on larger and established sites because they are relatively safe.

Success story

Hoping to bank on the extreme popularity and success of the phenomenon of job sites, International School of Information Technologies has launched a job site (www.access2campus.com) exclusively for freshers. It has addressed some of the shortcomings of the existing sites to carve out a niche for itself in the market. The HR teams will not have to hunt through all the resumes to find freshers. Data is deleted after a year as this site only intends to cater to freshers. And, it has also introduced precise qualification search tools which further make the process of getting the right employees and right jobs less time consuming. In order to ensure authenticity of its users, they confirm all details given by users from respective college principals. They have introduced some special features like video resumes, applying for jobs on behalf of the applicants, giving them information about job events and even organising interviews with companies.