We have investigated recently on the number of job postings on popular job board sites such as Monster, Career Builder, Hot Jobs and Craigslist.

Our conclusion is that job opportunities are still low and available opportunities are scarce.  Many job boards are not even effective because many times, the job opportunities are posted on as a formality, required by law.  In addition, there is a cost to companies to actually advertise job opportunities on job these boards.

One problem from personal experience is the sheer amount of junk mail that follows up after signing up for these job board sites.  The variety of junk opportunities are endless.  Here are a few we get in our my inbox.

• $100,000 a year as a sales executive at some random insurance/financial company unnamed without any contact information for obvious reasons.
• The Nigerian scam; old person contacts you and needs you to funnel or transfer money for them through your account because of inheritance or some other bullshit lame excuse.
• Work at home opportunities requiring only data entry to make $500 a week.

Those are few examples typically found.  There are also many other variations but the concept is the same.  With a bit of imagination by the scammers and spammers and a bit of naiveness on the desperate job seeker; its quite a magical formula.

The most effective listing is actually Craigslist.  Most postings are local and posted by the principal.  This means direct contact with the company.  Typically, you will have a reply within the day if the company is interested.  An interview will come next.  No headhunters or hiring agencies involved.  Of course, the bad thing about finding jobs on Craigslist is you will need to filter out the spammers, scammers and junk while scanning the listings but you won’t find too much junk in your inbox by just browsing the site.

Craigslist has a nice job boards comparison analysis and how effective each board is.  So if you are looking for a job, hit up listings on Craigslist to find opportunities.  If your real diligent, start contacting companies directly to open your own opportunities.