Indeed, sir.

Several years ago when I was out of work and looking for a new job, I initially relied heavily on Monster.com. There were a couple reasons for this. Among them:

• Laziness: Would you overextend yourself if you were living comfortably in your parents basement and collecting unemployment? Didn't think so.
• Ignorance: I didn't know where else to search. The newspaper? Faugh! Not in the "information age."
• Naivete: Or maybe not... I just like the word, and it seemed appropriaite given I was unemployed for nine months.
  

At the time, Monster had the reputation of being... well, the MONSTER (no pun intended) of job search engines. If you couldn't find a job in my field (systems administration... by the way, I really like using parentheses and dashes - can't you tell?) on Monster, you were probably more than a little simple or just completely unemployable - all of which were true, mind you, but still...

So with my whopping one year of experience in the field, I threw my resume up on the Monster board and waited for the potential employers to come begging. I waited a long time, as it turns out... and none of them begged. None of them even called actually, save for a few slimy recruiters who never had any job prospects but wanted to convince their superiors they were doing something. The reason? Largely supply and demand. There were too few available jobs, and virtually every out of work techie (which at the time was a VERY substantial amount) had the same idea I did.. i.e. just use Monster and you'll be fine. I eventually found my current job the old fashioned way - through the newspaper want-ads and an actual printed out resume mailed via the US Postal Service. Whoulda thunk? Further, no one I know (save for a few people working in sales) has ever had much luck with the Monster board. Too many of the jobs nowadays are fakes posted by recruiters to get you in their clutches, etc...

That said - while surfing other blogs today I found a link to a new and relatively unknown engine called Indeed. This thing is remarkably simple... Type in your keywords and the city where you want to work, and it pulls back a ridiculous amount of jobs from various job boards, career journals, and industry publications (and no, I don't think Monster is among them, but I'm not sure.) Think of it as a Google for career hunters. Give it a shot - I was throughly impressed..... not that I'm looking for a new job or anything... Jesus, I didn't give my website address to anyone I work with, did I? Yikes.... nevermind. Move along now.