Looking for a job online? Well, you are not alone. In fact, you are among the new breed of millions of job seekers who are hunting for their next job online. If someone were to argue that online job sites are little more than hot air, you only need to compare the success rate of offline job hunting efforts with that of online job hunting.

Why Search For A Job Online?

Here is a statistic to give you an idea of how big the online job industry is. Certainly it is very hard to quantify the overall number of resumes on the Internet. Monster.com has about 54 million resumes in its database and CareerBuilder.com has about 14 million. But how does this information benefit you? Here are a few key areas:

1. Jobsites have huge databases of up-to-date jobs, which allow keyword searches just like you would with a search engine for information.

2. Unlike traditional newspaper job searching, you can save your profile, resume, applied jobs, and set alerts for newly posted, categorized jobs to be emailed to you.

3. You can transmit your saved resume to any number of jobs instantaneously by turning on the auto-apply feature.

4. You are least likely to lose a new job opening (through alerts to your mailbox).

5. You get to use their resource center to refine career skills, choices and get tips on preparing for interviews. You can find highly specific job postings, such as careers in Six Sigma on online jobsites.

6. Above all, it provides functions to search by city, state and/or industry.

Which Ones To Use; There Are 1000s Of Jobsites!

Not one jobsite publishes all the jobs available. It is also not practical to upload your resume to all of them. Having said that, the top 5 job sites publish almost 80% of job vacancies. Here are the top 5 jobsites nationally:

Top 5 Jobsites

The rankings of these sites are not based on just one criterion. The number of vacancies posted is the most important one among them. The rest of the reasons include how user-friendly the site is for both job seekers and employers and whether they charge a fee for their services.

1. Monster.com. The most popular international database of job openings with highest number of resumes.

2. CareerBuilder.com now stands at number 2. It provides fantastic search functions and is very user-friendly.

3. Americas Job Bank connects you to state job banks in addition to others. Search options include Military Occupation Code or Job Number search. Free.

4. Yahoo!HotJobs.com is a new entrant to the list and is promoted by Yahoo! You must see to believe the speed with which you can conduct searches and the options available from one of the pioneer of search technologies.

Why Do Employers Post Their Vacancies Online?

Almost for the same reasons that you go to search for a job online. The ease and speed of posting as well as the ability to sift through and short list candidates are the top reasons that employers post their job vacancies on online job boards. Above all, they know that in this age and time, all the best candidates are online too.