It’s hard to believe, but even though we’re just days into the Fall 2010 semester, job postings are going up for Spring 2011 and beyond (even 2011-2012 full-time postings!) Whether you’re actually on the job market or just keeping an eye out on activity in your field (always a good idea), there are several tech-based ways to keep up with job postings. Not all job posts will appear through all of these methods. By diversifying the ways in which you keep up, you guarantee better coverage of the market and are more likely to see posts that interest you.
RSS feeds. Many job listing websites publish an RSS (really simple syndication) feed of updates. If you’ve got an RSS reader, adding the job site’s feed to your list is a, well, really simple way of keeping up. Most feed readers also offer quick links for emailing feed items to yourself or a friend, which is a nice way to either archive the posting or forward it on to others who might value the notification. Look for the RSS universal symbol to know that an RSS feed is available.
Listservs/email notifications. Many sites, such as the Chronicle, enable users to sign up for email notifications for jobs that include a certain keyword. Signing up for a discipline-specific job listserv is another good way to ensure that notification makes it to your inbox. And don’t forget that sometimes job postings are included in listservs that aren’t explicitly geared towards jobs, such as the American Physical Society’s Women in Physics listserv (WIPHYS).
Twitter. Many organizations send out notifications of jobs through Twitter. In my discipline (physics, specifically medical physics), lots of info comes out on Twitter from @argonne, @APSphysics, @aapmHQ, and @physicsteachers. Adding these to your list of those you follow inserts those job postings into your daily Twitter intake.
Bookmarks. With all these tools, never underestimate the power of simple bookmarking. Institutions often put job postings up on their own sites before they ever make it to digital sources. When I was job searching last fall, I created a bookmark folder with the jobs pages of all the institutions that interested me. Each week, I opened up all those bookmarks and looked through the sites to see if anything had come available. This is accomplished easily in most browsers by right-clicking the folder and selecting something like “open all bookmarks in a new browser.”
How about you? Have you found success with any of these methods? Maybe you’ve found other tech-based methods for keeping up with job postings. Let us know in the comments.
[Image by Flickr user gottgraphicsdesign / Creative Commons licensed]