Using Google to Find a Job
With a little extra effort in how you conduct your online job search, you can greatly improve the quality of the jobs that you find, while also learning significantly more about the companies offering these jobs.
Tip #1: When you use quotes in Google, you are able to search for an exact phrase. So if you type in: jobs in Illinois, you will find many pages that include both the word jobs and Illinois. (Google basically ignores the word in). However, if you type in “jobs in Illinois” Google will only return results with that exact phrase somewhere on the page. This can be very useful for finding specific information that you are looking for.
Tip #2: When you’re not sure of what search term to use, Google will help you figure it out. For example, should you search for Illinois jobs or Illinois careers or Illinois employment? It doesn’t matter if you use this symbol: ~ (It’s at the far left on your keyboard, top row, next to the 1) If you search for Illinois ~jobs Google will give you results for Illinois jobs, careers, employment, and other like terms.
Tip #3: Another helpful search symbol is - (the minus sign). You can use it before terms that you would like to exclude. For example, if you would like to search for jobs in Illinois but you are not interested in working in Chicago or Rockford, type in: jobs in Illinois –Chicago –Rockford or if you would like to search for jobs in Illinois but you do not want to see the results from Monster or career builder, type in jobs in Illinois –monster –career builder
Tip #4: Just as you can force Google to leave out terms, you can also
force Google to include terms. To do that, you use the + symbol. For example,
if you are looking for work in Arlington Heights but you only want to see full time jobs, you would type in: jobs in
Arlington Heights +"full time" (You need the quotation marks around full time so that Google will search for both words together.)
Tip #5: If you’ve landed on the web page of a company you’re interested in but you can’t find anything about jobs there, you can search through every page until you find what you’re looking for or you can have Google do it for you. For example, you’re interested in the company widgetmaker, but the site is huge and you are not finding what you’re looking for. You can type in the search box: site:http://widgetmaker.com ~careers (do not use the www)
Tip #6: You can combine search symbols. Perhaps you would like to search for jobs in a non-profit organization in Chicago. That search would be: site:.org ~jobs +chicago
Tip #7: An interesting approach to job searching is by zip code. For example, if you are interested in jobs in Bensenville, try this search: 60106 ~jobs
Tip #8: Be aware that the although the term job and the term career mean essentially the same thing to you, whether a company offers a career or a job does make a difference in searching. As noted in Tip #2, you can use the ~ in front of a word to retrieve hits with similar words, but the distinction between career and job can be quite significant and it is worth constructing two searches, one for each term.
Tip #9: If you’re looking to get in-depth dirt on what it’s like to work at a company, a search for “working at (insert company name here)” can be truly enlightening. You should always put this search in quotes when you enter it in Google, otherwise you’ll get too many irrelevant results. Sometimes you’ll find a page on the company’s corporate site that details employee experiences, or you may find posts on message boards ranting about how much the company is hated (take these with a grain of salt – every company has angry ex-employees who take to the Internet to try to right the wrongs done to them.)
Other searches that might yield results: “life at (insert company name here),” “a day in the life (insert company name here),” “(insert company name here) fired,” “(insert company name here) work/life balance.”
Tip #10: You probably have Googled your name to see what comes up. If you haven’t, it’s a good idea to do so. Realize that when your resume crosses someone’s desk, Googling your name might be the first thing that they do. If things come up that you may not want to be a first impression for an interviewer, take a look at this website: Life Hacker
It may not be possible to have something about you removed from a Google search or perhaps you have just the opposite problem – there is absolutely nothing that comes up when your name is searched. Look into developing your own website or blog. Both can be done very inexpensively or even free, and you totally control the content.
Tip #11: You can save time and energy by having Google perform search for you on a regular basis. Go to Google Alerts and follow the directions to set an alert. This is particularly helpful if you are trying to stay current with the latest developments in a given area. Perhaps you would like to get an alerts on a daily basis of any new developments in the search for a corona virus vaccine. You can set Google to do the search for you automatically.
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