The 30 Best Job Sites For IT Professionals

Great IT job sites are helpful, and even more so if you know the formula for getting the most from them.

Using IT job sites to their best advantage requires more than trolling through them for attractive openings.

Sure, you can continuously scan the big IT job mega-portals, like CareerBuilder IT Jobs, Monster.com IT Jobs and Yahoo Tech Jobs. Another popular option is Indeed’s Computer/Internet Jobs, an aggregator of listings from other sites.

But to get the most from these IT job sites you need a formula to guide your search. One such formula goes like this: 2 general purpose sites + 3 niche sites. That is, use a total of five sites, combining two mega-portals like Monster IT and three niche sites like Java Jobs and SAP Jobs.

This formula was created by Peter Weddle, editor of the famed Guide to Employment Web Sites. Its goal is to cover the entire IT job market without requiring you to scan every site.

Key point: After you pick your five sites, it’s a good idea to use the automatic notification tools these sites offer, the daily or weekly emails. Also, keep in mind these Tips on Getting a Better IT Job.

IT Job Sites

IT Manager Jobs

Hosted by Salary.com, IT Manager Jobs ranges from Application Development to Database to the always-needed Project Manager. Note: Salary.com is worth searching for virtually any IT job.

Dice

Arguably the best known and most popular of the IT-centric job boards. Its listings have fallen dramatically in 2009, yet at last count it still posted some 55,000 IT jobs.

JustTechJobs

Covering a broad range of IT professionals, it offers a plethora of sub sites like JustJavaJobs, JustSAPJobs, JustWebJobs and JustNetworkingJobs.

DevBistro

Focusing on programming and Web development, along with fresh listings for SEO, software architect, Q/A testing and others.

Graduating Engineer

Sure, it’s not reasonable to think the highest paid jobs are here, but this is an interesting and needed IT job niche site. For fresh grads, it offers a list of starting salaries (churned out by Salary.com), along with job interview tips.

Craigslist: Search by City or State

The sprawling Craigslist grows bigger by the day. The site requires you to drill down by city or state. The upside of Craigslist is its size, with many employers using it. The downside is that some employers complain that they get a slew of unqualified applicants from this mega site. Still, it’s considered a good place to hunt for an IT job.

37Signals Job Board

This site provides IT job listings from plenty of other sites. It offers programming and design jobs, as well as a cornucopia of other tech jobs, from project manager to digital user analyst.

JavaJobs.net

Java DB, Java Studio, Java ME – a full menu of jobs requiring skill in this most popular programming language.

Java Job Network

If your Java pro, post your resume or scan the full range of Java jobs.

Oracle Jobs

Oracle skills: database architects, consultants, designers. (Sure, Oracle itself just suffered a round of layoffs, but that doesn’t mean Oracle skills are highly marketable.)

The Ladders: Technology Jobs

Lists jobs that pay $100k or more a year, many of which are IT jobs. (In fact, after management jobs, the largest category at the site is technology jobs.)

PHP-Freelancers

Check out the prices bid for freelance PHP coding. Are you getting the going rate?

Google Job Search

Not an IT job site but a directory of job sites, you can filter the job sites by category. Also helpful: the directory offers lists of resume advice and job recruiters.

The Rx for IT Professionals

Vendors providing healthcare IT products, along with hospitals and healthcare organizations and practices, are looking to hire IT professionals.

With an Obama administration promise to stimulate the healthcare IT market to the tune of $19 billion, you might expect a windfall of career opportunities to follow. And you’d be right.

According to Christine Chang, analyst of healthcare technologies at Datamonitor, a business intelligence firm located in New York, almost all vendors providing healthcare IT products as well as hospitals, healthcare organizations and healthcare practices will be looking to hire IT professionals.

“Electronic health records (EHR) is the main focus of the Obama stimulus for healthcare IT, but there are so many technology pieces to add onto that,” she says, noting that there will be a strong call for IT professionals who can provide systems integration.

EHR systems will penetrate the hospital market as well as the physician’s office. “There are currently hundreds of companies vying for market share, some are start-ups; others are more established players in the healthcare IT market,” says Chang.

Back in April 2008, Dr. William Hersh, professor and chairman of the Department of Medical Informatics at Oregon Health and Science University and the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS), reported on Capital Hill that the nation’s healthcare system was in need of an additional 40,000 IT employees.

CEJKA Search Inc., a healthcare executive search firm, St. Louis, Mo., surveyed 75 CIOs in December 2008 and found that 60% hired someone in the clinical information technology area in 2008 and 57% expect hiring to continue in 2009.

“Of those jobs, 53% will be clinical informatics, 25% will be project management leaders and about 14% in the ambulatory systems area to connect medical practices to hospitals or healthcare facilities,” says Bonnie Siegel, vice president of the healthcare IT practice at CEJKA.

The biggest demand will be for the implementation of EHR and Computerized Physician Order Entry (CPOE) systems, she says.

According to Chang, the healthcare IT industry was in a growth mode prior to the recent billion-dollar infusion that targets computerizing medical health records and expects the demand to be that much greater with healthcare organizations pressed to implement computerized systems.

Fitting in

How to get a foot in the door to IT career opportunities in the healthcare sector? Be healthcare savvy. IT professionals with medical degrees or previous experience in the industry will rise to the top, according to industry experts.

C-level positions likely will require physician credentials.

“In the area of medical informatics, for example, healthcare organizations will be looking to hire physician champions who can manage the IT, executive, MD relationship,” says Siegel.

Medical informatics also includes a segment for nursing informatics. IT professionals with prior nursing credentials or experience may want to add those skills to their resume.

IT professionals looking to acquire knowledge about the healthcare industry may want to consider gaining that knowledge by working for a IT consulting company or solution provider organization with a healthcare practice.

Change suggests that vendors in the healthcare sector will be looking for IT professionals for product development or to join their sales teams.

IT security specialists, particularly those holding the Certified Information Security Manager (CISM) credential from ISACA or the Certified Information Systems Security Professional (CISSP) designation from (ISC)2 will be in demand, according to Seigel.

“Five percent of healthcare CIOs report that they’ll be hiring security leaders because of EMR,” she adds.

On the tech side, the healthcare industry also will be looking for individuals with experience in wiring, networking and infrastructure. Individuals with strong technical skills may find opportunity as a CTO or technical director.

Whichever door you walk through, a combination of technical skills and good communication skills will be required for both hiring and promotions.

“The job candidate must be engaging, personable and be able to talk on all levels; be familiar with clinical terminology and communicate with healthcare executives,” says Siegel.

Given the scope of the upcoming opportunity in healthcare IT, Change says it’s never too late to get started.

Managing Your Boss: Your Biggest Job

Much attention is paid in IT these days to processes, with Operations Management, Change Management, and a raft of Something Managements. Perhaps the most important thing to manage is seldom mentioned: your boss.

Managing your manager is as important an activity as the function you are employed for, or managing your personal finances or your household. It should receive the same thought and effort.

Without Management Management, you have no control over the most important influence on your career; your boss. They write your reviews, set your pay, assign you work, decide your moves and leave. Without Management Management you are at the whim of that person. Think about that. It is seldom an attractive prospect (and you are very lucky if it is attractive).

The process of Management Management involves three strategic goals: look after yourself, look after your boss, and look after the organisation.

Look after yourself

In my work, I found many who had no awareness of their own situation and no plan or actions to protect and develop their career. Work is work: your first priority is to yourself and your family or other dependents. There has been any number of books and articles about putting yourself first, about work/life balance, about working to live not living to work. This is not the place to re-visit all that, but in the context of Management Management the main reasons we manage our manager are to protect that work/life balance and to nurture our career.

In order to look after yourself, the first step is to understand your boss: their KPIs (what is it they are measured on and answerable for?), what drives them (why do they come to work?), what turns them on (in a work context, of course). Also understand the context within which they operate: what the business is doing, what it wants, where they fit, what threats there are to you and to them. Develop some "corporate situational awareness":

What are the strategies of your organisation, both the official ones and the real ones what changes are coming, or are likely to be coming who is really in power, locally and at the top who are in the inner circles Second step is to make sure you are seen - don’t hide your light.

Technical people are appallingly bad at this, at least in the cultures I know. Don’t expect the formal processes to automatically generate recognition for you. Don’t expect your boss to do research to learn how clever and useful (and profitable) you are. When you do something good, tell someone. Tell everyone. Practice doing this humbly, discretely, but practice making sure people know. Especially your boss.

Third step is to let your boss know what you need. Don’t expect them to guess or find out (or care). If you can frame a deal, all the better: find a win-win, something in it for you and your boss. If you need something and there is no quid pro quo for your boss or the organisation, it will hardly be a high priority. Make it explicit (don’t leave things implied, don’t be circumspect) and remind them occasionally (without being annoying).

Once you have practices in place to be aware of your environment – especially your boss, to make others aware of you, and to communicate your needs to your boss, then you are ready to work toward the second goal…

Look after your boss

Give them what they want. You might have your own ideas about what is important and what the priorities should be, but consider who is paying you and what they are paying you for. If they are paying you to set the priorities then you probably don’t need this article. If setting priorities is in your job description, good for you. If it isn’t, better you work to your boss’s priorities not yours.

When it comes to review time and pay-setting time and promotion time, the person who gave most to the boss will be the one at the front of your boss’s mind. There are three ways to deliver to them: help deliver their KPIs, take away (or prevent) some pain, or make them look good.

If you have worked on the first goal well, you will know what your boss needs to deliver to their boss. If their number one KPI is to get a certain project in by end of year, or to cut costs by 10%, and you serve that up to them, it will never be forgotten.

A related deliverable is to realise what bugs them and make it better. Don’t make the mistake of thinking this is just as good as delivering on a KPI – it isn’t. But pulling a thorn will win points.