While visiting the WAHM.com forum this week, I came across an excellent way to keep on top of the online job market. At first I thought Google Alerts was just for individuals who had a passion or favorite niche that they wanted to stay up to date with. I was totally wrong. It can actually be used to locate Internet jobs.



I’ll give you an example of how Google Alerts works. I go to their homepage and type a search query in the box. Since I work as an online article writer, I would type something like “article writer wanted.” If you had a different type of job in mind, just type in the search query box what an employer would type if he was seeking someone in your field.

Next, you select the result type. I leave this as “everything“, but you could search only the news, or only blog posts, etc. Now you have to tell Google Alerts how often you want the results sent to you. I like to get one post per day. That is manageable, but you can ask to have the alerts delivered as they happen. You can always go back and change it to once per day if you end up getting to many alerts.



Finally, select whether you want “only the best results”, or “all results.” I stick with “only the best results” because the other results don’t seem to be relevant. Choose the email that you want the alerts sent to and then click the “create alert” button. That’s it. I created an alert is less than 10 seconds.



Keep in mind that you can create more than one alert if you are experienced in more than field. This is just one tool you can use to get ahead of the competition.