TweetDeck, the client I use for Twitter, has a special version that they call JobDeck which builds on top of a site called Twit Job Search.  All this really does is skin TweetDeck and add in two columns, one for Twit Job Search and one is tweets from “Job Search Experts.”  I’ve gotten a lot of good links this way – no leads for actual jobs but lots of good information on job hunting, resumes, interviews and of course utilizing social networking sites in your job search.

Here’s a few things I found today.

Fortune’s list of 100 Best Companies to Work For 2010.  If you’re going to directly target companies rather than relying purely on recruiters, why not target the best places?  Checking out the web sites for 100 companies, seeing which ones have decent presence in the region, seeing if any have any currently open positions that are a fit, sending them tailored resumes and cover letters – yes it takes time but hopefully could lead to an interview or two.

Another category is scams that appear on the job search boards, even the legitimate ones like Monster.  I can tell you from first hand experience that my resumes on these boards generates a lot of junk responses – especially from JobsDB, where I get about a dozen offers to train to become a financial investment manager each time I update my CV there; and from Monster, where I get those “too good to be true” offers that undoubtedly originate in Nigeria. Here’s a good summary of the various kinds of scams a job seeker may encounter.  It makes sense from the criminal perspective – people who are desperate for work may more easily fall prey to some of these.

Aside from those unscrupulous companies that advertise fictitious jobs in order to build up their resume database, there is another class of job listing that I didn’t know about, again jobs that most often are advertised as “Financial Manager” or “work from home” and that are actually fronts for money laundering organizations!  Two web sites that focus in on jobs, What Would Dad Say and Diggings have more details on this “money mule” scam.

Diggings also has a link to a good post on Ask The Headhunter regarding job sites that charge the job seeker to post his or her resume on their site or to search their listings, in this case a site called The Ladders that charges you US$180 to search listings of jobs paying over US$100k – you pay the money, search the listings and only then find that a significant number of the posted jobs pay far less than that or that the advertised job doesn’t even exist!

So people, if you’re in my current position or unfortunate enough to find yourself here in the future, beware.  Job searches on the web are every bit as scam-prone as everything else.

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