looking for work in 2010 2011 how to maximise your job chances uk and usa american jobs market place

looking for work in 2010 2011 how to maximise your job chances uk and usa american jobs market place, Click through the clutter, Whatever your job, wherever you work, following these guidelines will help you get the most from your research.

Start big.

General salary sites such as those run by Salary.com and the Economic Research Institute are the best places to begin. These portals give instant access to surveys for hundreds of job titles and professions in many locations. Many of these inclusive sites also offer career advice and industry and job market overviews to help you put the salary statistics in context.

Use at least one niche site.

As you check out the general sites we discuss below, look for resource links to niche sites that focus on your particular career and industry. These provide even more precise pay figures and in-depth counseling. For example, one niche site, Law.com, posts several salary surveys, including one from the National Law Journal, which covers compensation for law school professors, public interest lawyers, law clerks and public defenders, to name only a few. That kind of detail is likely to be more useful than a salary report for "attorneys" or "lawyers."

Read job descriptions, not just job titles.

Titles can vary from website to website and company to company. You should search under professional categories and read job descriptions to identify the ones that apply. After all, your experience as a sales manager may be very different from the sales manager jobs included in a survey. (Tindillier says he couldn't find any listings for Webmasters on Salary.com, so he used earnings reports for Web security administrators, whose job description matched his experience securing Web servers with firewalls and protecting networks from hackers.)

Consult more than one site.

Cross-check three to five sites to be sure the numbers are in the same ball park. At least one of the sites should be specific to your profession.

Be honest about your skills.

All those dollar signs are worth little if you don't have the skills or experience to do the job that merits them. Look for surveys that are based on skill levels and set realistic goals for yourself.

Know your industry.

In the end, compensation surveys are averages. Salaries for, say, an accountant or an office manager can vary widely from one industry to another. To set a realistic salary goal before accepting your current job, order a salary survey for human-resources jobs in manufacturing firms in Salary Source.