With such high levels of unemployment and massive competition for jobs, candidates may need to be making multiple job applications to a number of employers. To do this effectively will require a structured plan of action and an organized approach. 

Fortunately, there are tools out there, which, if used correctly, can help you to organize your job search campaign very effectively.

Starting with the traditional job sites like Monster, Career-builder and Totaljobs.com; they all include features which enable you to create a user account, set-up saved searches, make job applications and observe your application history. You can also set up job-alerts which mean that suitable job vacancies are e-mailed directly to your in box. These tools enable you to organize your job search activity well.

While the approach mentioned above is effective, it has a shortcoming in that you have to login to two or three separate application management systems to establish your full job application history at any one time.

Therefore, certain jobseekers who need to apply for jobs using more than one jobs board might find that indeed.com is more suited to their needs. Indeed.com is a jobs board aggregator; this means it lists the jobs from a variety of jobs boards. Jobseekers can set-up a user account on indeed.com which enables them to organize their job search, which allows them to save searches, add comments to saved job listings, and set-up job alerts. This means that the jobseeker can use one system to track and organize all their job search activity and application history. This will save the job seeker a lot of time.

Another online tool which provides similar job search management functionality is jibbberjobber.com, which describes itself as an online career management tool. Jibberjobber.com uses the indeed.com job search database in order to provide job-seekers with the ability to search jobs from all the major jobs boards across the web. This means that jibber-jobber is also a one stop shop for job search and you can manage your entire job search from one place which will save you a lot of time. In terms of organizing your career search, jibberjobber has excellent functionality to help jobseekers to do this. In fact, is is far more advanced than indeed and it includes over 100 job search management features. It calls itself a ‘personal relationship management system’ and includes all the features of indeed.com and much more, including having social network functionality.

While jibberjobber.com is free, you need to upgrade to gold or silver to get access to the more advanced features.

Of course, you can use a program like excel to set-up and track your job search activity, but why reinvent the wheel. It makes sense to take advantage of the functionality of these free job search management tools. If you don’t your competitors certainly will.