One of those better options is Twitter. Twitter has the advantage of being a great way to open a direct line of communication between yourself and a potential employer before you even forward your work history or even any professional information at all. It’s almost the virtual equivalent of landing a job based on a conversation with a seatmate on an airplane.

JobDeck aims to make the process of looking for work on Twitter even easier. It provides a refined search that allows you to drill down and find job offers and information about prospective employers and employees, and it does it all in the familiar environment of TweetDeck, so as long as you’ve used the popular Adobe AIR-based Twitter client in the past, you won’t have to go learning a new interface all over again.

In fact, JobDeck really isn’t much more than a standard install of TweetDeck with some colorful rebadging and a couple of very special unique columns that will help you in your job search efforts. All the regular features are there, too, so you have access to your main timeline and all the time-wasting fun that could potentially go along with that. My advice? Create a new Twitter account devoted solely to job hunting in order to keep your focus and avoid distraction.

As mentioned, there are two new columns introduced in JobDeck, which is powered by TwitJobSearch, a site that provides search results from Twitter pre-filtered and tailored to job hunters. The first is a “Job Search Experts” user list. It’s a good way to pick up tips and find interesting articles about the job market and career development in general, and it has the benefit of allowing you to keep these people out of your main Twitter feed, where they might not be as appreciated or could get lost.

The other column is a dedicated column that returns results from the TwitJobSearch main feed, which searches the web, returns relevant job search results and organizes them into a single stream. As of right now, a lot of the traffic is related to the JobDeck app itself, but scrolling through the feed reveals that it does do a decent job of collecting career hunting info. Unfortunately, it’s also hit or miss, including info for jobs ranging from KFC front-line employees to iPhone app developers.

It’s nice, but it isn’t yet impressive enough to merit its own dedicated client in my opinion. It reminds me more of the Blink-182 branded TweetDeck release than a new and unique tool. The TwitJobSearch site itself is a much more useful tool, with customizable advanced search options and an experimental job map feature. Not to mention that the interface is quite attractive and highly usable, and there’s a browse function that lets you see job tweets by category in case you aren’t yet sure what exactly it is you’re looking for.

If you’re already using TweetDeck and you’re looking for work, using the JobDeck special edition isn’t going to cost you anything, and might provide you with a few useful links and/or tips. If, on the other hand, you’re looking for something that will dramatically change they way you look for work, skip this release and just use the web-based or iPhone version  of TwitJobSearch, especially if you’re not a fan of the TweetDeck interface.

Landed a job through Twitter? Tell us about how you did it!

asapLocal displays many different types of information specific to your location, including job openings.

Career Bliss provides inside information about companies, including salaries.

HireSyndicate shares real-time job info from recruiters.

CLBFree provides mobile access to Craigslist, including the job section.

BusyBee finds freelance and contract opportunities in your local area.

JobTweet Job Search utilizes Twitter for search for open positions online.

JobRadio.FM is a 24/7 Internet radio show dedicated to careers advice.

InterviewBuddy offers a slew of advice, tips and tricks for interview preparation.

GetApps Done is a little different than the other apps in this roundup. It caters to the development community, connecting those who are looking for development work and those looking for developers.

Interview Buzz Lite is another interview preparation study app with 32 free questions. The Pro version includes 300 questions.

A Mighty River specializes in assisting African-Americans with finding new job opportunities and goes beyond that with career guidance.

CBT Nuggets lets you watch many free IT training videos to help you sharpen your skills.

JobServe Connect is the official iPhone app for the service that’s been around since 1993.

UK Jobs is useful for finding jobs in the UK, not just for those living there but also for those thinking about moving across the pond.

Job Search provides a bunch of videos with advice on how to find the right job for you.

techVenture Job is from a Silicon Valley search firm that connects investors, developers and co-founders.

JobFinder serves the U.S. and UK with a powerful search engine that taps into some large job sites such as Monster.com and Indeed.com.

LinkUp Job Search Engine is different from the other apps here, in that it only lists jobs from company web sites.

TechCareers searches the niche markets for tech and engineering jobs.

SnagaJob uses your iPhone’s GPS to locate jobs within a five mile radius of where you’re standing. It also uses zipcode searches to locate positions anywhere else.

JobCompass is another job search app that utilizes the power of the GPS and displays available jobs surrounding your current position. This comes in handy when traveling to a new town or even while you’re on your way to a job interview. You just might find other positions while en route!

CareerBuilder taps into its massive 2-million job database and provides notification of any replies to job applications you’ve made on its system and new positions that become available.

High Paying Jobs claims to search more job sites than any other free job app.

ALB Legal Jobs caters to finding positions in the legal sector.

Which apps have you found useful in your job hunt?

To some freelancers, keeping track of these leads is just as easy as remembering them. But for those freelancers — like me — who are on the forgetful side, we need to have a system in place. Because of this, I’ve created a spreadsheet to manage my leads. After all, I don’t want to leave potential clients hanging.

Here’s how you can make a similar spreadsheet yourself.

The Columns on the Spreadsheet

The image above shows an example of the spreadsheet I use, but with fictional entries. You can create additional columns if necessary, since we all have different needs. Add whatever factors are important to you. Some freelancers might want columns for expected pay, expected total work hours, etc. As for me, I just included the ones that I’ve found essential to keep track of, such as:

• Organization. This column contains the name of the organization, business, or company that’s planning on working with me. If an individual is hiring me, I simply put his or her name in this field.
• Job type. Since most freelancers wear different hats, we tend to be interested in a variety of projects. In the example above, a freelance writer’s job types may include writing e-books, blog posts, sales letters or site copy. On the other hand, a graphic designer may have the following items: logo, web site, or product packaging. For automatic input, I made a drop-down menu listing all the job types, which means that I don’t need to type in the text.
• Contact person. When communicating with an organization, I only find myself coordinating the details with one contact person. So that I don’t get names mixed up, I make sure to include the contact person for each lead. That way, if I need to know more about a job I know who to talk to. On a separate column is the contact information such as their email address or phone number.
• Submission date. This is the date that the query was submitted — whether I’m the one who applied for the job or the lead came to me.
• Last contact date. Knowing the last date of contact allows me to follow up on the lead appropriately. If it’s been a week since I last heard from the organization, I may need to follow up on the lead. Instead of searching my email or social networking inboxes for the last contact date, I can easily refer to the sheet.
• Status. Like the “Job Type” field, I made a drop-down menu for the status of the lead. This tells me if I got the job, if it was rejected, or if the decision is still pending. For easy reference, I applied conditional formatting to the different status items. For “Rejected” I used a dark blue font color, green for “Accepted”, and bright red for “Pending”. This is so that my attention is drawn to the pending projects whenever I’m looking at the sheet.
• Notes. Any miscellaneous notes, comments, and other remarks go to this field. Filling this in is optional.

Tips and Resources

I use OpenOffice Calc for all my spreadsheets, but you might be more at ease with another program altogether (Excel or Google Spreadsheets, for example). Here’s a list of relevant tutorials that can help you compose your own lead tracking spreadsheet on your favorite program:

• Google Spreadsheets. Here’s the official tutorial on how to apply formatting rules. Unfortunately,  users can’t create drop-down selection lists with Google Spreadsheets so you’ll have to input the job type and status items manually.
• Microsoft Excel. For Excel, this tutorial shows you how to do conditional formatting and here’s how you can make a drop-down list.
• OpenOffice Calc. Applying the necessary formatting rules in OpenOffice Calc requires similar steps to those of Excel. To be specific, though, there are two tutorials from the OpenOffice Training blog on how to do conditional formatting and creating a drop-down selection list in Calc.

How do you keep track of job leads during busy months? Are you able to remember them all or do you need a more thorough system?

Photo credit: stock.xchng user michu633

Follow directions. This might seem like common sense but, as someone who’s been on the hiring end, I’ve noticed that many applicants still fail to follow directions.  If you don’t follow directions from the ad, you’re telling your potential client that you will have a hard time following job instructions as well.

Get a name, if you can. “To whom it may concern” is never a good opening line. Most job ads include the name of the contact person, and it’s a mistake not to take advantage of that. If there’s no name attached to the ad, look at the company web site or call them to get the name of the person you’ll address the application to. Keep it as short as possible. Even if you’re required to answer several questions, keep the text concise. You’re competing with dozens of applicants, most of them writing paragraph after paragraph about their unrelated work experience and maybe even their life story. As someone who prefers receiving short but clear messages, I do my best to keep outgoing messages that way as well. It pays off, too. Many of my clients have replied to my applications by saying, “What a breath of fresh air! I was getting tired of reading 40 long emails about this job.”

If you’re worried that you might not be saying enough about yourself, remember that your portfolio and work experience will speak for you.

Have a template ready, but always modify it before sending. Templates are useful for freelancers, but sending these without customization gives off the wrong impression. Unmodified templates indicate that you’re sending the same application to several other potential clients, showing that you’re not that committed to a particular job or project. Whenever I hire contractors, the template applications go straight to the trash bin.

Know how to follow up. When I was looking for a researcher two years ago, one of the applicants immediately emailed me the day after, “Do I have the job?” I politely told her that I’m still going through applications and, as I mentioned in the ad, I will contact all applicants within the week. Again, she emailed me the day later, as well as the day after that. While I understand how excited and anxious one can be during the application process, it’s best to keep these feelings to yourself. Constantly following up on your application can drain your energy and annoy your potential client.

Still, you have to be responsive when you’re asked to submit additional requirements or to schedule a phone interview. One of my friends is so afraid of phone interviews that she doesn’t reply to such requests. If you’re not comfortable with some of the requirements, communicate with the prospective client. Don’t leave them hanging.

Although you have to keep several things in mind when responding to online job ads, it gets easier with practice. Don’t get intimidated by these things, as they’re part of the reality of online freelancing. After all, it’s still easier than wearing out your shoes by rushing from building to building and spending long hours in the waiting room for an interview.

Do you have any special tips for freelancers responding to online job ads?

Image by lusi from sxc.hu

In using the site, it’s clear that there are a lot of potentially valuable tools and resources for job seekers within, but you have to be a little bit focused and savvy in digging them out…qualities that motivated job seekers need to have in any event!

GlassDoor is arranged into three main sections: Salaries, Reviews and Interviews. Salaries, for example, can be looked at from the perspective of things like popular jobs, by industry, location, company and occupation. Digging deeper, into the Business Analyst Salaries area, for example, reveals a number of “sneak peaks” of salary ranges for business analysts at companies like Accenture, Deloitte and JPMorgan Chase. For those three companies, we’re told that business analysts at Accenture make between $44,000 and $75,000; between $36,000 and $73,000 at Deloitte; and from $34,000 to $106,000 at JPMorgan Chase.

I’m not sure how much value there is in seeing those broad salary ranges (which obviously will vary based upon experience and specific needs), but when you dig even deeper to the level of, say, business analyst at Accenture, there’s the potential to obtain interesting information that you would not ordinarily find out until a company is in the process of making a formal job offer. This includes what kinds of bonuses companies might provide (cash, stock and profit sharing), sales-based compensation and tips. The information is provided by GlassDoor community members, so there is the potential for it to be anecdotal or incorrect, but still, the insight provided could be difficult or impossible to obtain elsewhere.

While some areas of the web site are provided on GlassDoor as “sneak peaks” at present, for many selections you’re triggered to register or log in, and are heavily prompted to provide input about companies that you have experience with to augment the community’s knowledge base. (Penelope Trunk calls this “a great moment in altruism” as GlassDoor promotes “helping other people to get a job without knowing how doing so will help you.”) This makes browsing around the site while not logged in feel a bit awkward, and, overall, while looking at GlassDoor I kept asking myself questions like, “Why do I have to log in to see this?” and “Why are salaries, reviews and interviews kept in such rigid ’silos;’ why not just create comprehensive company pages that integrate all of the content and information associated with them?”

Another impression is that GlassDoor will be most useful for people thinking about working for large companies. Large companies have the potential to get greater numbers of user-generated responses on salaries, reviews and interview-related questions, for one. Additionally, in terms of learning about what to expect on an interview, a large company is more likely to have clearly defined job descriptions and hiring guidelines that will be of use for job seekers. That said, there is great potential value for small companies as well, provided that those leaving feedback are not merely disgruntled current or former employees looking to get even!

Overall, it’s clear that the time has come for a community site that provides deep detail on company salary information, hiring practices and cultures. GlassDoor has the potential to own this space, and I’d fully expect the user interface and site architecture to further improve as the community grows.

What job seeking resource sites do you use? Share your tips in the comments.

Raveal is aimed at the job hunter, promising to represent those who list themselves with the service as people, not assets. It’s an attractive prospect when you’re coming from a situation where you feel significantly less than human in the meat market that is Monster. And it has a distinctly simple, clean Web 2.0 look that at least shows the site’s designers take their job seriously.

Once I got into the process of actually creating a profile, though, I began to wonder if the look and feel of the site were the only things that distinguished it from its predecessors. The information asked for when setting up your public profile is suspiciously similar to the information you’d be asked for on Workopolis or any similar site. I suppose the basic search criteria that employers will use doesn’t vary that much, so maybe Raveal using it can be excused. Still, for a modern Web 2.0 app, I found the categories provided to be pretty traditional and restrictive.

Raveal’s resume creator is a little more free-form. The standard “Objective,” “Experience” and “Education” fields are all there (although you can customize even these basic section titles), but you can also add as many additional custom categories as you want. Each section has entries within it, which consist of a title and a description or details. It’s a very simple format, but it does allow for considerable customization.

Finally, the “Portfolio” section offers what is perhaps Raveal’s most important distinguishing feature. In it, you can write a brief bio for yourself (or, optionally, use your resume objective), and then add “Galleries” to fill it out. For each gallery you can set a title and decide whether or not it is publicly viewable, and you can add as many items as you want, up to your storage limit (100 MB on free accounts, 1 GB for Pro users). File types supported include images, videos, audio, and Flash files, and also entire web sites, so long as there is an index.html file and your internal links are relative. This could be very handy for web designers who have templates or designs not hosted elsewhere.

Raveal’s Portfolio feature saves it from becoming yet another Workopolis or Monster. It gives you a visually rich way to present your work to prospective clients, without having to link them off to a bunch of different locations. So far, I don’t see any reason to jump to a paid subscription just yet, but this is an early release, so we’ll see what Raveal brings to the table in future iterations.

Share your online job search experiences in the comments.

Thing is, I realized that was what it was like before I became a web worker, when my ideal job was still a cozy 9-to-5 in an office somewhere, with a salary, benefits and a paid lunch hour. Once I gave up that ideal in favor of pursuing freelance opportunities online, the dreaded Job Hunting Process, which I thought was written in stone, largely ceased to exist. Sure, what replaced it wasn’t exactly a walk in the park, either, but for all its faults, it definitely beats the cold dread of Workopolis and Monster.com.

Instead, when I want to find work these days, I generally tap friends and contacts in one way or another. Often, people will suggest me for projects that seem to be up my alley when they come up in conversation, and I’ll get an informal request for more information at least, and a contract at best. If I’m actively seeking work, I’ll likewise ask friends in industries I’m targeting about relevant work. This might be as easy as sending a DM via Twitter, or as complicated as arranging a meet-and-greet portfolio presentation. Or if all my personal network leads are cold, I know my field well enough to start some cold-emailing that results in a positive response often enough. More so than a Workopolis job search, at least.

This got me wondering if this is a shared experience among web workers, or if I was alone in finding it easier to search for and land work. What do you think? Is part of the appeal of working online that finding work is easier, or do you actually find it harder, but with a bigger pay-off?