You can combine RSS and a (Google) Reader to search for a job!

By subscribing to a Job Search / Job Board RSS feed and then checking your Reader, you may never visit the job website again!   I repeat….FOR ALL YOUR JOB SEARCHING – on Craigslist, on SimplyHired, on Indeed and other sites … just set up Google Reader …. and see the most recent the job postings – daily.

What is a RSS Feed? A website page content can contain a web feed formats used to publish frequently updated works—such as blog entries, news headlines, audio, and video—in a standardized format.  RSS (most commonly translated as “Really Simple Syndication” but sometimes “Rich Site Summary”) includes full or summarized text, plus metadata such as publishing dates and authorship.

To learn about RSS Feeds, watch this You Tube:

Why is this a good thing? Well, it benefits a website publisher by allowing a content to be pushed out automatically.  It benefits the web surfer (YOU) to receive timely updates from favored websites or to aggregate feeds from many sites into one place. It keeps your inbox from being cluttered and is much easier to keep track of new jobs listings, for example.  An RSS reader allows me to do that without having to go to dozens of websites to see if they’ve got anything new!

What is Google Reader? To view RSS feeds, you need to use an application called a reader. There are many readers available, such as Google Reader. Firefox and Internet Explorer can also be used as an RSS reader.

To learn about Google Reader, watch this You Tube:

Google Reader is a decidedly simple yet very usable and, thanks to a flexible labeling system, quite comprehensive web-based RSS feed reader.

You can even share items easily right from within Google Reader.  And remember, they stay there, so it’s easy to look up a job posting you remember slightly from 3 months ago that seems to be running again.

Google Reader then lets you group and read feeds by label and you can read all items designated with a certain label, too. If you label somewhat consistently, Google Reader offers a high level of organization. Of course, you can search all your items, a particular folder or subscriptions, or all articles carrying a certain tag.

My Categories are:

• Job Search
• News
• Photography
• Social Media
• Thinkers
• Blogs I’m Following

You will be pleasantly surprised with Google Reader!  I highly recommend using it routinely to make your time in front of your computer screen more pleasant.

Final tips:

• Use Google reader to manage your own source documents – set up a searchable personal knowledge base
• The links and summaries you load in the Google Reader will remain there forever.
• Share what you find with others- inside the Reader – so you are then networking within the Reader
• Follow (sounds like Twitter) folks’s shared reader items and see their comments as well.
• Become a subject matter expert (SME) with the Reader

Background Reading about the Google Reader:  http://www.google.com/help/reader/tour.html