You know how sometimes, your horoscope seems to eerily correspond to what's going on in your life? A similar thing happened to me but instead of communing with Miss Cleo, the magic was with my RSS reader.
While I was going through this job contemplation process these last two weeks, it seemed articles about finding jobs popped up in my RSS reader almost daily. Also, during this time I had friends and family sending things my way to help. I like to consider myself a compiler of useful content so here are some of the more useful links that have come my way.
There are some neat online training videos at www.lynda.com to help make yourself just a little more marketable. There are courses of substantial length about most things tech, from custom CSS to databases (of which I know anything about—I just tried to pick things that sounded smart). By length, I mean hours of video on a particular topic. (Ten hours of custom CSS? Now that's what I call a fun weekend!) You have to pay to use but at $25 a month, it's a little more hands-on then you and the instruction manual but a lot less expensive then a college course on the subject. As things are moving more and more online, more IT knowledge couldn't hurt anyone, though I may be a little biased. (via my friend Mike)
The 30 Best Websites for Job Hunters turned out to be a list of the most popular job boards online, as voted on by their users. If you are posting on job boards, this may help to try one you haven't tried yet or maybe don't even know about. (from CNN Money) Full disclosure: I have never gotten a job off a job board so I'm more skeptical about this method of finding employment.
A very recently launched website www.peopleahead.com combines the function of a job board with the ease of social networking and an eHarmony-esque matching service. (An added surprise: if you have a LinkedIn profile, it'll transfer all your profile information into its system for you.) After creating a "profile", the site will match you with jobs that are a good fit. Check out this link if you are interesting in learning more about the site (via Xconomy).
Then, of course, right around the the day of my informational interview, Get Rich Slowly sung the praises of informational interviews as a tool towards job search success. The only reason I got the interviews at all is that I met someone from www.compete.com at an alumni networking event. He was kind enough to ask for my resume and forward it to some key individuals on my behalf. To summarize, informational interviews do work as a low-pressure way to meet with the kind of companies you want to work for.
Happy hunting!