Surfing For Careers
Using the Internet in your job search can be a Monster undertaking.
John Bendel
Technology Editor
If you're looking for a job as president of a major carrier, you won't have much luck on the Internet. But for many other jobs in trucking and fleet management, the Internet offers opportunities.
Type "trucking jobs" into any popular search engine and you'll find a long list of sites for recruiting drivers — everything from Layover.com to BubbaJunk.com. Some of these sites carry openings for diesel technicians as well.
It's a different story for anyone else in the industry. You won't find a centralized clearing house for jobs in dispatch, operations, finance or fleet management. But you can find jobs in those categories if you know where to look.
The best place to start is on the local and regional web sites in your own area. Most are operated by or affiliated with a daily newspaper. If you don't know your local paper's web site, simply type the name of the paper into a search engine, such as www.google.com or www.yahoo.com, and it will probably be at the top of the list.
Beyond local sites are the big national employment web sites. Most are necessarily general in nature, spanning many industries and types of jobs. Almost all of them allow you to search listings for free.
To begin, most sites ask you to select your home area, an industry — say, manufacturing — or a job category like human resources. And they allow you to enter a keyword as well.
Where commercial trucking is concerned, jobs are most likely to turn up under a banner like "Transportation and Warehousing," a category on the Monster.com job web site. Private fleet operations are another matter. Jobs there can turn up in specific industry categories. On Monster.com that could be "construction, mining and trades," — "manufacturing and production" or "retail/wholesale," among other categories.
A keyword search helps yield the best results. Enter a specific job title, "dispatcher" for example, and you'll see all listed jobs with dispatcher in the heading or job description. If you haven't chosen a location or industry, you'll see all dispatch jobs across the country, including jobs outside trucking — for service or limo dispatchers, for example. Monster.com yielded 663 such jobs in a recent search. Adding a geographic location such as Chicago, Ill., narrowed the results to 13. Finally, adding the "Transportation and Warehousing" category brought the available jobs down to six.
You might also try keyword terms like "LTL" or "truckload" on the commercial side, or the term "private fleet" in specific industries.
With that in mind, here are some of the major national job web sites:
WWW.MONSTER.COM
Monster.com is the biggest job-search site on the web. In fact, among all web sites worldwide, it ranks number 96 in total Web traffic and works rather well, as described above. In addition to those functions, Monster.com will suggest alternate, related job titles when you use their keyword function. The site offers cogent help, including lessons in Boolean terms that can focus your search.
You can also search Monster.com on Microsoft's MSN.com site. At http://jobsearch.careers.msn.com you will find all the Monster.com jobs under the Microsoft logo.
HTTP://HOTJOBS.YAHOO.COM
On Yahoo's job-hunting site, a search of the "transportation/logistics" category turned up 1,000 jobs nationwide, including everything from 3PL brokerage director to deckhand on a tugboat. But you can sift returns by re-searching results with another keyword. Using the keyword "fleet," for example, we pared things down to 126 jobs, including commercial trucking jobs from safety director to driver.
The site's "advanced" search allows you to sift for jobs using three job categories. You can search only jobs from staffing companies or with direct employers or both. You can search by location, experience level and use a keyword besides. HotJobs also provides the opportunity to apply online.
WWW.CAREERBUILDER.COM
Here the most relevant job category is "Distribution/Shipping" and the same search principles apply. In "Distribution/Shipping," CareerBuilder.com yielded more than 1,600 jobs. Keywords like "sales," "LTL" and "private fleet" all turned up jobs in those specialties.
WWW.RECRUITERSONLINE.COM
The Recruiters Online Network is a web site for third-party recruiting companies. You don't have to be a member to search the job postings or post a resume. Select your industry, your function — or as close as you can get — your section of the country, and check the available jobs. You have to contact the posting recruiting firm to apply.
You can find many other job hunting sites, but they vary in quality and may offer less than those listed above. For example, http://careers.wsj.com, the Career Journal site of the Wall Street Journal, promotes a high-end, top-job image. But not all the jobs listed here are high-end, and trucking jobs are hard to find. For instance, a search for "fleet manager" turned up three jobs with the word "director," but none that involved fleets of any kind.
Another site that turns up prominently in Web searches is www.jobbankusa.com, where we used the keywords "terminal manager" with no geographic restrictions and came up with one listing for an "Administrative Assistant Government and Customer Relations" in Waco, Texas. "Fleet Manager" got zero results. A search for "driver" turned up five jobs, none of them for drivers.
You'll find help beyond job listings on the Web. For example, JobHuntersBible.com (www.jobhuntersbible.com) is a site maintained by Dick Belles, author of "What Color Is Your Parachute?" It offers insights on the job search process, both on off the Internet.
Be careful about using your current company's Internet access to look for another job. You may run afoul of company policies and, since many companies monitor employee use of company networks and the Internet, you could be caught.
Remember, you can search for a job without posting your resume on job-search web sites where your current boss could find them as easily as anyone else.
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