Five career sites to help you in your job search

If you're looking for a new career, don't waste your time with the newspaper. There are a slew of outstanding job search sites across the Web that make it easier to find the career of your dreams.

Here are five prominent job search sites worth looking at, and why. See also our reviews of five lesser-known job search services.

CareerBuilder
CareerBuilder is one of the largest job search sites on the Web, but it's also one of the best. Combining millions of listings with extras like resume help and free career tests, the site is an ideal job search service.

CareerBuilder may feature a slightly cluttered home page, but with all the features it offers, it needs to. The site goes beyond simple job searching and allows you to browse by industry or work with partner sites to get personalized help in finding the perfect career. It even remembers your location after you leave the site, so you'll automatically be updated with new job listings every time you return.

Overall, I was impressed by CareerBuilder's bank of jobs. Searching for every job listing within 10 miles of New York City yielded more than 12,000 available positions. When I searched for accounting jobs within 10 miles of the city, it returned more than 2,500 listings. To some, that may be overwhelming and scrolling through them may be difficult. I understand that, but I'm a firm believer that the more jobs there are, the better the chances of finding the right fit. That said, I found that approximately 15 of the listings I examined were old and almost 20 others weren't available after I clicked on them. Maybe the site needs to do a better job of removing stale listings.

CareerBuilder also features a "Narrow Search" function under the search field, which allows you to pick specific companies, locations, and categories. It's a useful function that cuts down on search time and significantly improves your ability to focus on a handful of positions you're interested in. But if you're unsure which company you'd like to work for or exactly where you'd want to work, this feature probably won't come in handy.

Indeed

Although Indeed isn't nearly as popular as competing services like CareerBuilder and Monster, the site is simple and easy to use, making it an ideal choice for online job searchers who don't want all the extras you'll find elsewhere.

With the help of a simple layout--two search fields and nothing else--Indeed makes it easy to search for a job in any given area. Indeed allows you to search online job listings, newspapers, and other job boards, but it also provides salary information, forums to connect people of similar interests, and a job trends search field that offers solid insight into the state of any industry.

I used Indeed to search for jobs in fields ranging from accounting to law and it worked well. It even did a fine job of finding obscure positions like volleyball instructors and piano lesson tutors. In fact, I found that Indeed had more job listings than its major competitors in most of the searches I performed.

But if you're looking for extra features like resume guidance, Indeed isn't the ideal destination. It does have some extras, but most of them fail to compare on any level to those offered by competing services.

Monster
Monster is a well-known site that has solidified its position as a major force in the job search market. But the site's suspect design and relatively few search results leave much to be desired.

If Indeed offers the simplest design, Monster's is the most cluttered. The site sports a basic job search field next to a location search, but below that, the page is inundated with ads, extra job search features that the average user may not care about, and a worrisome warning from the company saying its database was illegally accessed and sensitive data was stolen. Needless to say, it doesn't instill confidence.

When I started searching for job listings in New York, I was surprised that Monster only returned 5,000. Thinking it was a small issue, I then looked for accounting jobs in the city and the service only returned 544 active listings. That's less than half of what CareerBuilder and Indeed returned, but it should be noted that unlike CareerBuilder's results, every Monster listing I read was active. Unfortunately, Monster doesn't offer a "narrow search" function like CareerBuilder, so finding a specific company's listings was made more difficult than it could have been. That said, I was happy with how quickly the site returned search results. It was the fastest in this roundup.

Where Monster really shines is in its extras. The site features tons of career advice, resume help, interview guides, and application history so you can see which jobs you've applied for. One of the best features on the site is Monster's Career Benchmarking tool, which asks for information about you and determines where you stand in your field as compared to your colleagues. It's a great way to find out if you're achieving your career goals.

Simply Hired

Simply Hired is relatively new to the job search market. But that doesn't stop it from providing an outstanding search feature, which makes it a fine choice for job seekers.

Simply Hired's design reminds me of Indeed. It's not overrun with ads and extra features and its search field is prominent and readily available on any page. The service remembers your recent searches and in case you're looking for something specific, you can subscribe to a particular job search via RSS or e-mail alerts to keep you updated whenever a new listing is added. I found that to be one of the site's most useful features.

Unlike its competitors, Simply Hired doesn't just collect job listings from companies and keep those on its page. Instead, it scours the Web and other job search sites to find listings in a particular location or field. It then sends you to that listing on the vendor's site. It works. When I searched for accounting jobs in New York City, I was brought to a slew of fine companies that had positions available. I even found specific job listings on obscure topics like volleyball and, believe it or not, cricket.

While Simply Hired's search may be nice, it should be noted that the site provides few extra features. Career benchmarks, help with interviews, and other valuable services sites like Monster offer are nowhere to be found on Simply Hired. It does provide salary data and employment trends, but even those features are bare-bones. But if search is all you're looking for and you don't want to be trapped on one site to find job listings, Simply Hired is an ideal choice.

Yahoo Hotjobs
Yahoo's job search service, Hotjobs, doesn't offer any unique extra features. But as a job search, it's outstanding.

Much like Yahoo's other pages, Hotjobs features an annoyingly cluttered design. Sure, it has a prominent job search field at the top of the page, but below it, the site is overrun with ads, job categories, and featured career articles that combine to create a page that detracts from an otherwise useful service.

When I performed searches on Hotjobs, I was pleased with its performance. It found over 10,000 active job listings in and around New York Cityand when I looked for accounting jobs in the city, it found over 1,500 positions--a number that easily eclipses many of the other services in this roundup. From obscure positions to common jobs, Yahoo's job search continually provided outstanding results and much like CareerBuilder, narrowing results to companies, salaries, or area was simple.

Hotjobs offers extra features, but I was generally disappointed with them. The articles it displays on the main page are not very useful in helping you find a job and its career tools page is poorly-designed and packed with too much information, rendering it useless. Once again, Yahoo's suspect design and its desire to pack pages with as much content as possible is a major issue that takes away from an otherwise viable service.