Tuesday, May 12, 2015

Ask CJ: Good job search engines?

A longtime reader writes in with a request: 
Right now I'm set up with a bunch of job sites sending me updates with "new" jobs. Many of them seem terrible, and there's a ton of redundancy. Also many of them give me the same jobs over and over, not just new ones.  
It's more time consuming than I'd like to go through all of them, so I was hoping to reduce the number. (And add any if you have any better suggestions...) 
My list is currently:
Glassdoor
Monster
C&EN Jobs
[redacted]
ResearchGate
CareerBuilder
ZipRecruiter
LinkedIn
The reader is not looking at academia, but looking broadly otherwise. Recommendations?

I would drop ResearchGate and I don't know ZipRecruiter. I am quite fond of Indeed, but I don't know, others may have different opinions. Readers, your thoughts?  

13 comments:

  1. Sadly, I have lots of experience....Indeed, LinkedIn, Biospace & less frequently, SimplyHired

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  2. I find Indeed to be one of the best. It aggregates postings from many other sources (monster, carrier builder, local boards, etc.). This can lead to some redundancy, but it's better to see something twice than not at all.

    The society boards (ACS/C&EN, APS, AIP/Physics Today, MRS, OSA, etc.) tend to be high-quality, low-quantity boards. Many allow you to post a searchable resume. Don't underestimate that. I have had a few companies contact me after seeing my resume in the MRS database.

    If you are targeting a specific city/region, craigslist can be surprisingly helpful sometimes (Yes, even with PhD-level jobs.)

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  3. AngelList is really good for startups. https://angel.co/

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  4. If you're open to a federal job, usajobs.gov.

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  5. I like BioSpace and agree 100% on Craiglist (sci/biotech section), especially for small company/starting positions.

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  6. I must confess to having detailed knowledge about all of the preceding sites, except for Biospace and angel.co . Here is my assessment:

    Indeed - good, not only because it agglomerates, but also lets you place simple boolean filters to remove the junk-jobs (e.g., tutoring and adjuncting)
    Craigslist - more useful at the BSc/MSc-level than the PhD. But allows boolean filters.
    usajobs.gov - beware: the job descriptions which you will find by searching for e.g. "chemistry" or "organic chemistry" usually do NOT correspond to real job openings. Instead, they are just potential job openings. I even called them up to clarify this point.
    Glassdoor - redundant, but useful to read about what others think of their employers
    Monster - sometimes useful, but very limited. Have been contacted by recruiters several times via Monster. However, they just read my phone number and don't even look at my qualifications.
    C&EN Jobs - recently, extremely few positions for organic chemists, and increasing numbers of 0% chemistry jobs (for example, do you want to work as a "Hearing Science Researcher I"?....guess the upper echelon at the ACS really is hard of hearing....)
    ResearchGate - largely advertises post-doc jobs
    CareerBuilder - not very current
    ZipRecruiter -waste of time, very little ability to filter out irrelevant positions
    LinkedIn - relatively useful, but discouraging, because you can see the numbers of people who have applied for the position in question.

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  7. you may want to include Taber's Organic Chemistry Portal, the sidebar is useful place to look for synthesis-related industrial jobs: http://www.organic-chemistry.org/

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  8. The "angel.co" start-up site was an interesting idea. However, after entering all of the required info, I did a search, specifying full-time job + "anywhere" + "chemistry" : no hits. So please save yourselves some time, I think.

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  9. Juju.com casts a very wide net but it also snares a lot of junk and dead links.

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  10. I have had the most success during previous job searches using:

    Indeed, LinkedIn, C&ENJobs, Google Alerts.

    In general, I've learned to strongly distrust scientific corporate recruiters; I'm much more likely to get an interview if I correspond directly with a scientist in the hiring department.

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  11. VentureLoop has a startup jobs

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  12. Chemistry World jobs has the occasional North American position - and it's pretty easy to filter geographically...http://jobs.rsc.org/jobs/

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looks like Blogger doesn't work with anonymous comments from Chrome browsers at the moment - works in Microsoft Edge, or from Chrome with a Blogger account - sorry! CJ 3/21/20