Smartphone, Smart Job Search

“This ‘telephone’ has too many shortcomings to be seriously considered as a means of communication. The device is inherently of no value to us.” – Western Union internal memo, 1876

A little miscalculation by Western Union (the quote above), the phone has come a long way since 1876. Which is a great segue to today’s topic – Smartphones. While there is no agreed definition of smartphones, a broad definition according to Wikipedia is “A smartphone is a mobile phone offering advanced capabilities, often with PC-like functionality (PC-mobile handset convergence).

For many people, the first thing that comes to mind is the iPhone, but there are many types and brands of smartphones out there today and all can be leveraged in some form or fashion for job search. So why, you may ask, is this important? There are many reasons, in today’s “real time” job search world, you need to be able to research, respond and react wherever and whenever needed.

Say, for instance, you are not in your house, a recruiter calls and asks you to forward your resume immediately. With a smartphone you can do it. But what if the recruiter didn’t call you but sent an email to you instead? No problem, with a smartphone you can read your email and respond. But using smartphones also extends to some of the great apps and websites that will give you that extra edge you need.

Smart Money, Smart Jobs, Smartphone – Leverage your Job Search – My first post on this topic, there are a number of links to iPhone apps for job search, the future of mobile computing and much more.

New Mobile Job Search Application Puts 300,000 Jobs At The Fingertips Of Professionals On-The-Go Each Month – A very long title to an article from employmentwebsites.org, describes a smartphone application (created in partnership by Beyond.com and Viigo) that works with the Blackberry and Windows Mobile devices. Once you’ve downloaded the app you can access the Beyond network directly from your smartphone. The application is free to download. There are a few links in the article, definitely worth the read.

Now You Can Find a Job Anywhere, Anytime – A job search app for Google Android powered smartphones is what this article (by jobboarders.com) is about. The app (there is a link in the article), allows job seekers to find jobs by searching Craigslist and other job search boards. The application is free to download.

Search and apply for your dream job – Anywhere Anytime – This article, from articlealley.com, discusses a free app by iMobile which allows you to search for the newest job openings (as do the apps mentioned above). The article contains links to download the app.

LinkedIn Goes Mobile – This article, by Alison Doyle of About.com covers the LinkedIn mobile version. This is a mobile web based version of LinkedIn, which means that it is smartphone web friendly. The article gives a better explanation then I’ve just given and also provides additional related links.

Mobile Web Job Search – Following through on the topic raised in the prior link, I’ve listed popular job search sites that have mobile versions of their website (which generally allows easier and faster access from your smartphone’s web browser:
- CollegeRecruiter.mobi
- Jobmob.mobi
- Careerworld.mobi
- MyITJobs.mobi
- EOTW.mobi (executive job search)

Good luck in your search.