The virtual world has penetrated deep into our lives and our careers. And just like businesses in the non-virtual world, web-based companies harp upon customization in their efforts to bring focused solutions for our needs through the online medium. The way we search for jobs on the Internet is a case in point. The old generic job boards are giving way to niche job boards, bringing more convenience and efficiency to online job searches.

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	The old generic job boards are giving way to niche job boards, bringing more convenience and efficiency to online job searches.

For a long time, generic job boards have targeted everyone, everywhere. That is, they offer jobs spread across a wide range of geographic locations and industries. For serious job seekers, however, using generic job boards means finding their ways through thousands of jobs they are not really interested in. Obviously, many a savvy job seeker would prefer to keep away from such job boards because they can be a waste of time if the seeker is not interested in relocating or in looking at jobs in multiple fields.

Niche job boards, on the other hand, focus tightly on specific areas of interest for job seekers. One board may focus entirely on posting biotech jobs, while another may focus solely on accounting positions. Such boards perform better than generic boards because they understand their audiences and markets far better, and their services are steeply inclined towards the specific interests and profiles of their audiences. They yield faster job-search results and are better able to attract more targeted audiences on the basis of specific industries or geographic locations.

By focusing on one industry — the marketing industry, for example — a niche job board is able to attract only professionals from that industry and focus on their needs. And as these professionals gain a sense of comfort from sharing an environment with like-minded people, the job board can use this sizeable pool of professionals to build relationships with various industry bodies and businesses. These relationships will in turn help the job board offer greater value to its users by offering better jobs, opportunities to network, memberships in industry associations, career tips from industry experts, and more.

Niche job boards carry a bigger responsibility: they don’t just offer jobs, they offer tools for making a better career. They give job seekers pretty much everything they need to find the right jobs and also offer them resume-building services, industry-specific news and articles, career tips, information on hot industry employers and what they look for in candidates, and much more.

Types of Niche Job Boards

While there are many types of niche job boards, most niche job boards offer focused services based on the following three parameters:

• Geography-specific job boards: These job boards give you job-search results for a specific geographic location. If you are not looking at relocating, then you may want to choose a regional job board that will only show you jobs in a particular area. If you are open to relocating, then you can also try using the “location search” functionality provided by many international job boards to find jobs in the countries or areas of your choice around the globe.
  
  
• Profession-specific job boards: These job boards list jobs based on a specific profession or industry. If you have a marketing background, you can use a marketing-specific site to get information on all available marketing jobs. One site that is quickly becoming popular with marketing professionals worldwide is www.marketingcrossing.com, which has the fastest growing marketing jobs database in the world. MarketingCrossing offers marketing jobs from Fortune 500 companies and other top companies and also hosts interesting articles on the profession and industry trends.
  
  
• Hierarchy-specific job boards: A senior-level executive will obviously want to skip job boards displaying administrative-level jobs. Hierarchy-specific job boards cater to a specific cadre of professionals. For example, www.managercrossing.com is a niche job board designed solely for managerial-level candidates.
  

Choosing the Right Job Board

Go for big industry names: Employers and recruiting companies typically don’t advertise on every job board. Instead, they select the most popular and well advertised boards first. For this simple reason, you, as a job seeker, should check out the more popular job boards first when you start your job search.

Bigger is not always better: Small, focused job boards offer more personalized attention and services. If you do not wish to relocate, employ the services of local job boards to target your desired location for a job.

Check out the market statistics: Find out who is using a particular job board and which companies are coming to this job board to hire candidates. If you are satisfied with what you find, then stick with that job board.

Is the job board user-friendly?: Complicated job boards only end up confusing your job search. Finding the right job is rarely a one-day process, and you will probably need to regularly visit a job board for some time before you find a job. Ensure that the job board is user-friendly, allowing you to perform job searches quickly and easily.

Find out about other services: Job seekers like niche job boards not only for their focused job results but also for their various career services such as resume building, career tips, career analysis tools, and more.

Find out if it’s free: There are new niche job boards popping up on the Internet everyday. Most of them offer free services to establish themselves and build a following. The important point is that some of them are just as effective as the more popular job boards. Why pay when you can get similar quality for free?

On the net:

Job Board Sites
The ABCs of Choosing a Great Niche Job Board
Niche Job Boards Filling a Need

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