Last week one of my long term contracts came to an end … a little more abruptly than I’d been expecting! No dissatisfaction with the quality of work, but the vagaries of the economic climate and the lack of job security that’s part of life for a freelancer. Means a busy time pitching, but luckily for me I have a great resource set up that give me early alerts on potential new work. Not only that, the service is entirely free (or can be, I pay a small charge for one part of the service, but that’s by choice).
Don’t Waste Time Trawling The Web
You can spend a lot of time trawling fruitlessly through multiple sites looking for work. It’s time consuming and maddening when 90% of your search results aren’t what you’re looking for, or are looking for ridiculous minimum wage prices.
RSS feeds are a decent option. Lots of websites for job hunters or freelancers have feeds for specific disciplines, e.g. Design, as well as their general feed. So you can subscribe to a bunch of those feeds and have jobs emailed to you or appearing in your feed reader every day. Good, but still not great. A bit time consuming, and I know I like to use Google Reader to find enjoyable reading content, not job feeds.
A while ago I realized that Google does provide the best option for a great at-a-glance job search. iGoogle seems to be one of Google’s lesser known services. I’d had it randomly set as my home page for ages without ever using anything apart from the standard search bar. But once I utilized it for professional purposes it became invaluable.
Everything In One Place
It’s pretty easy to set up. If you don’t already have a Google account (and if you work in IT, how can you not?) then just sign up for one and when you’re signed in go to google.com/ig. Add a tab to the left menu bar called “Work” or something similar, and open that tab. Now choose “Add stuff” in the top right. Ignore the gadgets and themes, instead look to the bottom left of the “Add stuff” page, and click “Add feed or gadget”.
All we’re really doing is pulling together an “at a glance” selection of RSS feeds that are relevant to finding new work, contracts and (in my case) freelance design jobs. The advantage is that you can have all the feeds displaying their first two or three items on your homepage, all in one place for easy reference and response.
Choose Your Feeds Carefully
There’s a lot of crap out there when it comes to job boards and freelance advertising. I don’t know about you, but I’m not keen on pitching for a week long job that pays $50. So you’ll need to cut out a lot of the dirt cheap job boards and choose your feeds carefully. I have six job board feeds on my front page, all but one of them is a free service.
- WordPress Jobs (WordPress Designer Positions)
- CSSMania Jobs (Design)
- AuthenticJobs.com (Design)
- FreelanceSwitch.com (Design) – this is the paid job board. It costs a trivial $7 a month and is absolutely excellent.
- Krop
- 37signals Job Board (Design Jobs)
Don’t Neglect Twitter
Twitter Search is great, and particularly great because you can set up an RSS feed for any search term. Combine that with iGoogle and you can pull down relevant work related information from Twitter to your job search homepage. I have a main search term that I monitor live via TweetDeck, but I can widen that search effectively using Twitter Search and RSS. It’s amazing how much relevant work and potential contacts come up via these searches.
I use feeds for the following Twitter searches;
- Know web designer
- Need web designer
- Web designer Texas
- Web designer Houston
- Freelance web designer
The Twitter results can be more variable in terms of their relevance, of course. But they make up for that in the volume of information.
Regular Pitching Means Targetting Your Market, And Acting On It!
Of course I don’t rely solely on the iGoogle page, because personal contacts, news stories or even cold calling can bring in new work as well. But like every freelancer out there, whatever the industry, I know that I always need to be looking at new business and extending my client base. The iGoogle job search page is an invaluable tool in keeping your finger on the pulse, and making sure you don’t miss out on potentially great new contracts. The cost of this great resource to me? $7 a month. That’s a bargain.
9 Comments
While I admit that your iGoogle solution looks snazzy, and provides an excellent way to view the content at a glance, I still have a personal preference for a Google Reader-based solution. I use Google Reader for both work and play, and segregate the two by placing the “work” feeds in folders that are separate from the “play” feeds.
For me, one of the most powerful features of Google Reader is the “star” option, which lets you flag an item and return to it later. This can be useful in various circumstances, including the ability to flag a nice job or contract opportunity. Perhaps iGoogle offers a similar function, but I’m not aware of it.
However, this is all a matter of personal preference – I’m sure that there are a lot of people that use email to organize their job search – and the iGoogle solution looks like a good one.
Hi John, thanks for your comment.
Good point on the star option in Google Reader, something I’d overlooked and a very useful tool. I suppose it depends somewhat on how you approach your pitching as well. I tend to batch process job pitches on a daily basis, so I go through the potential contracts and address them there and then. Means I have less need to mark them to be checked later.
Great option for iGoogle John. I also use it for LinkedIn Answers feed, another great opportunity to network. I use it to monitor feeds for clients and myself and it has saved me a great deal of time. Thanks for sharing your tips.
Hi Karen
Thanks for stopping by. And great idea about also using the LinkedIn Answers feed. That’s a resource I use from time to time, and definitely adding it to iGoogle is a good option. I’m not sure I’d add it specifically to the job search page – I find that the LinkedIn answers section is less specifically related to potential contracts and work. Of course it’s all personal preference, and I’ll definitely be looking into using the LinkedIn Answers RSS feed in some manner.
Hello John, thank you for kind sharing. In general, as you said, the iGoogle job search page is an invaluable tool in keeping your finger on the pulse, and making sure you don’t miss out on potentially great new contracts, but I think it indeed a helpful tool for us to apply great reference online. Therefore, I am going to bookmark this page for my site and my visitors can read and enjoy in it.
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This article gives the light in which we can observe the reality. Also this is very nice one and gives in depth information on the iGoogle job search. I know that lots of websites for job hunters or freelancers have feeds for specific disciplines but in fact it is not easy to find out a good page for this.
I find that the LinkedIn answers section is less specifically related to potential contracts and work. Of course it’s all personal preference, and I’ll definitely be looking into using the LinkedIn Answers RSS feed in some manner
That’s a resource I use from time to time, and definitely adding it to iGoogle is a good option. I’m not sure I’d add it specifically to the job search page – I find that the LinkedIn answers section is less specifically related to potential contracts and work. Of course it’s all personal preference, and I’ll definitely be looking into using the LinkedIn Answers RSS feed in some manner.
Many thanks for your advice. With his help I found a job for a few days. Now I work in a stable company and I get a lot of money. Thanks again.