Recruiters can register and advertise their jobs on JobServe.com, and the site will email their listings to candidates, provide RSS feeds to job seekers, provide recruiters with candidate databases and more.

If all of this sounds a bit familiar, that’s because it is. While it’s true that JobServe provides up-to-date technology for its site visitors, and streamlines its job search capabilities through the use of a handy tool that remembers your last search, or a global map that shows what regions you’re searching, with the ability to choose larger or smaller regions - it’s hard to feel as though any of these gadgets are truly innovative anymore.

There’s a double-edged sword to being the Internet’s “first” of anything. That’s because, while it may be impressive to create an innovative online tool to search jobs, many others have done so since, and have created more and better user-friendly capabilities to do this exact same thing. It’s an unfortunate fact of traditional marketing that age and experience are not necessarily advantages on the Internet where the thing that’s getting the most traffic and serving the most people at any given time could very well be only 16 minutes old.

None of this is to say that JobServe.com isn’t a valuable site, because it certainly performs well and seems to deliver on its claims. The fact that the site segments its content across three different global regions and delivers job seeker information for millions of opportunities is a pretty significant feat and worthy of notice, especially for those recruiters and job seekers who are not limited by the traditional 50-States-and-no-more approach that restricts the capabilities of many other websites of this kind.

Sponsored by SmashFly Technologies, Provider of WildFire, The First Job Marketing Platform

“¢‚¬¦a rigorous and disciplined methodology that uses data and statistical analysis to measure and improve a company’s operational performance by identifying and eliminating “defects” in manufacturing and service-related processes.”

If you’re already familiar with the Six Sigma methodology, the i Six Sigma website has a wealth of content for you, whether you’re a recruiter or job seeker. If you’re not a tenant of, or curious about, the Six Sigma process, there’s not much for you there, but it’s also not a website you’d likely stumble across if you weren’t interested, anyway.

i Six Sigma provides comprehensive resources to businesses at every level of the Six Sigma maturity. The site offers searchable job listings, a resume database with over 19,000 professionals, blog posts, newsletters (where job postings are promoted to over 38,000 subscribers), events and conferences, forums and more, all designed to assist readers in learning new skills, advancing their careers and contribute to the success of their companies through the use of Six Sigma.

Job recruiters focused on finding prospective clients or researching companies that subscribe to Six Sigma would certainly find a lot to do at i Six Sigma. Among the best resources on the site are the discussion forums, where hundreds of career- and company-related chat threads can be searched and surfed to find Six Sigma-related topics. One possible use for the forums would be to research specific companies that use the methodology, or to learn common concerns and themes in Six Sigma-prescribed employees who are seeking ways to advance their careers.

The site also has a fairly involved blogosphere area with multiple authors and plenty of topics and opinions on all things Six Sigma. While the i Six Sigma site can be a bit tricky in terms of navigation - due at least in part to its copious advertising banners that flash, blink and otherwise grapple for your attention - it must be said that anyone researching Six Sigma and its attendant capabilities would do well to make i Six Sigma their first stop.

Sponsored by SmashFly Technologies, Provider of WildFire, The First Job Marketing Platform

What it has, however, is the ability to use all of the other job board sites to your advantage.

Essentially what eQuest offers is the ability for human resource departments and recruitment professionals to post their company’s available job listings to multiple online job boards all at once, thereby eliminating the need to visit multiple sites re-enter information multiple times and pay multiple vendors for essentially the same service. According to the site, eQuest manages the flow of job-posting transactions to more than 1,000 unique job boards and reaches more than 200 countries and territories worldwide daily.

And eQuest offers additional tools besides simply posting your company’s job listings on multiple sites. eQuest will also track those sites for you, providing detailed analytics in terms of where candidates are finding your listings, where they’re clicking when they find them, and which job sites are working best to bring you serious, qualified job candidates.

Ultimately, eQuest provides a fairly specialized service for a specific clientele; but it’s simple to see how a large corporation with many open job assignments at any given time would be able to realize savings of time and money by taking advantage of eQuest’s services.

Sponsored by SmashFly Technologies, Provider of WildFire, The First Job Marketing Platform

Employers can also post jobs for a fee for job seekers to search and apply to through the Hcareers website.‚ Many large employers in this industry use this site for finding candidates for their open positions; a list of all employers registered is available from a link on the main homepage.‚ 

Another feature of this site is an area called “Resource Center”, where job seekers can get advice and tips on searching for a new job, acing interviews, and putting together a resume.‚ There are also newsletters that both employers and job seekers can sign up for; the employer newsletter focuses on recruitment strategies and opportunities for training, and the job seeker newsletter highlights new job opportunities or companies and strategies for job searching.

Sponsored by SmashFly Technologies, Provider of WildFire, The First Job Marketing Platform

When you first arrive on the Medzilla homepage, you’ll notice that the site’s primary navigation is split between “Job Seekers” and “Employers & Recruiters”. Very quickly it’s clear that the site is designed and created first and foremost to appeal to its users’ needs, which of course is always a good thing.

Clicking on the “Job Seekers” tab provides a keyword-based job search, an interface to create an online account and submit a resume, develop a job search agent, access articles and forums and more. For recruitment professionals, the “Employers & Recruiters” navigational tab results in quick access to the site’s resume database, where site visitors can search via keywords or location radius. Employers can, of course, also create an account with which to post available job opportunities.

Medzilla also supplies a helpful means for both recruitment personnel as well as job seekers to search open assignments via company. The site displays about 70 corporate logos, each of which navigates to a job search result page when clicked. To be sure, it’s a great way for job seekers to find available openings at a given company, but recruiters can also discover value here in seeing at a glance what kinds of openings are currently available at a company-wide level. The search results are grouped according to location, which is also very helpful in terms of targeting recruitment opportunities. In terms of strongly serving a niche market, Medzilla more than fits the bill.

At first glance, it would appear that Workforce Management is primarily a resource for news and little else. And while there is an abundance of news on the site - latest news, top articles, recent blog posts, lead story, more stories, etc. - one doesn’t have to look very far to find more interactive online resources such as job listings, upcoming conferences and webinars, e-newsletters and downloadables and pretty much everything in between.

Take a look, for example, at this portion of the Workforce Management homepage, where “Topic Channels” break archived articles down into quickly-referenced topics on the top left. Or, on the bottom‚ right of this screenshot, notice the “Featured Jobs” box in which dozens of clickable, nationwide HR positions scroll endlessly by, complete with company name and locations. This area clicks through to WorkforceHRJobs - a site exclusively dedicated to HR related jobs. Employers can post HR jobs and request resumes there.

There’s a lot to find and a lot to do on Workforce Management, and recruiters can discover a great deal of information specifically geared toward their interests, often via links labeled “for recruiters” and the like. Site visitors can also subscribe to the printed version of Workforce Management and register for “full access” to the site. It’s a crowded, busy site where a great many links demand attention - but as packed as it is, Workforce Management still doesn’t feel confusing or overwhelming. It’s organized intuitively and leads you to make certain navigational decisions as you delve deeper into the site.

Just make sure you’ve blocked out enough time to do it.

As an employer member of the site, you are able to post jobs and search their extensive database.‚ Candidates have to pay to view job postings, which narrows down the chances of your company receiving resumes from under-qualified or unqualified candidates.‚ ‚ A great feature of the site is the ability to see a quick preview of each candidate’s profile on the results page without having to click through multiple pages.‚ You can hover your mouse over the candidate’s name and a small window pops up, giving you the basic information including industry, job title, salary range, summary and more.‚ One catch is that the job posting function will not allow you to post jobs if the salary that you enter is below $100k.‚ 

Using this site to recruit senior and executive level candidates will give you access to the “cream of the crop” candidates who are serious about their careers and their job search.‚ 

Each‚ profile includes information like geographic location, hourly rate, and the freelancer’s skill set.‚ These gurus are also rated on the projects that they have completed for employers who have found them through Guru.com.‚ The employer can write a review on the person’s work, and some freelancers include some work samples in their profile so you can get an idea of their previous projects. One other thing that you’re able to see in the profiles while performing a search is how much money the freelancer has made from these projects.‚ You may want to choose someone who has had several projects this year instead of someone who hasn’t yet worked on any projects.‚ If you’re interested in learning more about any of these gurus, you can easily request a free quote or ask them a question.‚ See the example profile shot below:

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The interface of this site is really easy to use and there are tons of freelance consultants of all backgrounds for you to choose from.‚ This site‚ represents a good alternative‚ for companies to find talent for very short term projects, or perhaps to open the door to a long-term relationship with many different consultants for use outside of the site. On a‚ final note, the site does have “vendors” that represent themselves on the site as well. Using Guru.com as a middleman to work with vendors now represents another option at your disposal.

As with most career websites, their are free and pay plans to choose from. Jobster has a variety of different packages designed to meet most recruiting needs. Jobster has partnerships in place with companies such as‚ Facebook and ZoomInfo to provide a wealth of contacts and additional sourcing data found outside of the Jobster network. Posting jobs gives you the option to pay $25 up front and receive unlimited applicants, or pay nothing upfront, and pay $5 only when a job seeker‚ applies to your posting. There are other ad options and upgrades, such as sending a feed of all your company jobs to be included in their search engine.

The free option lets you create a user profile and search across their network by key words and locations. Each profile can be filled with work history, resumes, personal information, videos‚ and tags.

Here is an example search. I want to find people with sales experience located in Miami, Florida. Please note the arrows in the screenshot. Each profile has what Jobster calls “superstar tags” which are key words a user picks out to best describe themselves. There are ways to refine your search on the right hand side, such as filtering profiles to find only those who are “job hunting”.

An example of a profile I clicked on is here. Alot of profiles have resumes attached to them, and there are ways to reach out to each user by “leaving a note”.‚ Users can get set-up in their system for notifications on notes, candidates, profiles, you name it.

Here is a look at the site in action. Say I want to find groups focused on Information Technology local to Pittsburgh, PA.

I note one group titled DotNext-Pittsburgh and click on it.

I see that this meetup group is for people who like to learn new skills in the technology arena. This group has 4 ways listed where a member attending the meeting could get involved. For example: you could introduce‚ your company’s product or service (making it relevant to the group) and make an impression on why your company would be a great place to work.

I continue further, and click through on the organizer of the group and note that there are a few ways to reach out to him without attending the meetup. Say for instance the group really frowns on recruiter attending. So I may send the organizer my contact information and see if I can share my company and openings with him and the group at the next meeting. It sure doesn’t hurt.

The site is set-up with the ability to search a particular topic and communicate with the user of‚ a page or “lensmaster” as the site calls them. This makes the site especially useful for recruiters and sourcers as they can either search the Squidoo site for people with expertise in a particular skill set and reach out to them, or set-up their own lens on their company or a particular topic and drive traffic to their open positions or website. I found many lenses on the site to give links directly to open positions they are currently recruiting for. This ultimately will lead to more candidates and more leads for open positions. In addition, The site acts as a medium for recruiters to really get the word out about their company and their expertise. The site currently has 117,641 members each with their own lens.

Here is an example lens set-up for job openings:

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A great lens to start out with is the guide to creating a successful Squidoo. This will give you ideas on how to effectively use the site moving forward.

This site gives recruiters the ability to post open contract software positions and search for contractors numerous ways - by keyword, location, preferred working location, name, et cetera.‚ Another way to search is by using the “Search by Skill Set” function, which breaks down almost every technical skill set that you could ever think of.‚ This website is especially helpful when you are searching for hard-to-find skill sets that aren’t as prevalent on major job boards.‚ 

The screen shot below shows an example of the results that come up while doing a skill set search on SAP FI/CO contractors.‚ Next to each contractor name, the site shows you whether or not the contractor is currently available (if they regularly update their profile), and where they are willing to work.‚ This site is free for employers and recruiters, and the contractors post their contact information in their profile so they can be contacted directly.‚ 

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Gmane has great potential for the recruiting community.‚ Everything archived‚ has‚ some form of user contact information listed per article, some with just email, while others have full names and companies they work for. It’s a safe bet that someone giving a detailed answer on Java code must have some experience with Java. Wouldn’t this be someone you may want to reach out to‚ for your job openings?‚ Another solid assumption would be that if one user from a certain company identified on Gmane is using Java, that other users‚ at this company‚ are as well. That company would‚ represent a good lead to pursue further.‚ This especially comes in handy when you are identifying a very obscure or niche skill set not found in many places. In addition,‚ I saw several job postings in mailing lists - so there is always the option to introduce yourself and your open positions by posting to a certain list.

The‚ screen shot‚ below shows a quick search for J2EE (a Java based skill set). Gmane searched across roughly 50 million emails from various groups and pulled up close to 184,000 articles‚ where J2EE was being discussed among users of the site. You can see by the arrow that email contact details identify each user.

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The one downside I see from Gmane is that you can’t identify very easily where people on mailing lists are from geographically. So if you are trying to locate technical talent in Java from say New York, you may have to take additional steps in your search, such as looking up the company name a user works for, or “googling” a users name to see information on where they may live. A previous post on Pipl may help here.

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Craigslist is a very good alternative to the major job boards such as Monster and Careerbuilder in that there are options for posting positions here, and searching across resumes posted‚ to the site‚ as well. Posting is free in most of the‚ cities, with small fees in some of the major cities including NY, Los Angeles and Washington, DC. More than 1.5 million jobs are posted to the site every month. In terms of traffic, the site gets 8 billion page views per month - so you are guaranteed to have alot of people see your postings. I did a quick search in their resumes section and found 75 “Software Developers” in the San Francisco area. Here is a screen shot of the resume searcing capabilities:

Craigslist has expanded well beyond it’s northern California roots to encompass every major city in the U.S. as well as Canada and many other countries overseas. The site covers 450 cities worldwide.‚ I have heard many success stories from using Craigslist as a strong alternative to other career sites that have forced employers’ hands with huge fees.‚