I think it would be a stretch to say it is wasting your time but considering that surveys consistently show that nearly 85% of job-seekers find work as the result of a referral from networking and only 2-4% land jobs from Internet job boards, I highly recommend spending most, if not all of your time, creating contacts and building the network you already have. The only caveat here is new grads. When you are just out of college and your network consists of your buddy in the frat house, internet job boards (which tend to post tons of entry level jobs) may not be as much of a long shot.
Here's the deal with job boards. They post hundreds of thousands of jobs every day. As a result, Monster alone averages 40,000 new resume posts every day! They boast that they have more qualified candidates across location, occupation and skill level than any other career site, which is really great for them but what does it mean for the job seeker? It means that you are one of thousands and those are not the best odds. But, let's face it, posting your resume to a job board is infinitely more easy and less intimidating than doing what it takes to build your network so most people fall back to this route. Unfortunately if you rely heavily on this option, you will likely find yourself out of work for some time.
But, there is one very good way to use job boards that many people fail to use. This is also true of ads in newspapers or trade journals. Use the job boards as a way to get information regarding who is hiring and in what positions. If you spend time scanning the boards and then suddenly see a company posting more jobs than usual, it might be an indicator that something is going on in the company and you can use this as your foray into it. Do more research, look for press releases and announcements in the paper and see what changes are going on. Find out if you know anyone who works for the company and if you have no contacts, you can still use this information to write a targeted letter to someone in the company. Mention that you read about their company or principle in the paper and how you noticed such and such changes and how you would like the opportunity to discuss how your background, education, and experience could contribute to solving their problem or contribute to their initiative.
In a market like this, every chance you get to stand out must be taken advantage of. Job boards are certainly one avenue to use but think about the other information you can get from them as well to get you even closer to the door.
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