You search Google for articles on a career advice or a job search and there you are bombarded with 50,000 results or more. Most often you would click on the first few on the first page and get a lot of information there itself but there’s more to getting what you want for your search.
There’s a lot of information everywhere and you are not alone when trying to figure out which one would help you the most. But the unpleasant answer to this question is that there is no one answer; but in this article I present my opinion on how to sift through the millions to get the ones that can cater to your interests. And the opinions are mine, I invite you to share yours by adding to the comments.
One of the best that I have liked so far is alltop.com, it is one of those Guy Kawasaki’s ideas which makes you bang your fist on the table and say “Damn it, why didn’t I think if it before” although it’s not even 3 years old, it is one of those ideas which just got ahead and caught on fast. Again, “Damn, why didn’t I think if it before!”
Anyway, here’s the short list because we want to know the best of the best here:
Career.alltop.com
Why: You get to see the crème-de-la-crème of the websites on career topics here. If you’ve been searching to know who’s who in which field the probability is high you’ll find most of them (particularly those with a web / blogosphere existence) here at alltop.com. Now to find the best on career topics go to:
Here you’ll see a short list of the most “topular” stories and then a long list of blogs / bloggers who post interesting articles on job search/ career advice. You’ll get a good idea on who is writing what and what suits to your interest the most. Go ahead and bookmark this site for there is something new to learn every day. You can also make you personal ‘MyAlltop’ which “enables you to create a “personal, online magazine rack” of your favorite websites and blogs.”
Oh yes, Careerbright is there too! Well, had to be – CB is amongst the best on career advice after all!
WSJ.com Careers
The Wall Street Journal website comes second on my list of brilliant career articles. Go to http://wsj.com and click on Careers tab.
Why: Here you’ll find a wealth of career related articles right from advice on careers and jobs after college, job search strategies, help toward making a new career move and much more in addition to the latest news from the government and the private sector which might help you identify the current hiring trends or pointers on retraining for a new career. A very retargetful website, must be on you bookmark list.
About.com
Another website worth the mention is the About.com job search career advice – http://jobsearch.about.com/. It has the relevant answers to your questions and enjoys an enviable SEO, so there is a high probability that your queries on Google and other search engines will very well land you on the about.com pages. The only drawback I find is when I read along the articles that interest me, I am soon lost in a maze. Why? Here’s why- there are numerous links to other interesting articles and before I realize I am completely lost after 20 minutes on the website, the mind has to think hard on what was I exactly looking for?
Well, maybe it’s not that much of a drawback since there are so many interesting topics to read about .. but hey we just wanted to keep things simple here. Do look-up this website if you already haven’t bookmarked it for your job search or career development plan.
Again, this article did not aim to present all relevant websites and blogs which offer quality career advice and if we can keep up to pace with the ones mentioned here, I guess we’ll be much wiser and our knowledge pots would still be overflowing.
Free Online Training Websites
Other than the usual job search websites it is essential that you work toward increasing your current skill set. There are websites which help the workforce to re-skill and retrain for present and future changes, here are some that you can look up:
This website has hundreds of free tutorials on technology and IT programming.
Good information on online computer training courses, foreign languages, personal finance and management.
Free online training and retargets in Microsoft Office, MS Excel, MS PowerPoint, MS Visio, HTML and many Adobe applications.
Which websites or blogs have you found helpful for your job search or career development? Do comment and share with others so we might all benefit from your tips!