This is a method I have used when searching for jobs in previous years that I also found was a good technique for keeping your eye on the local job market when not looking for jobs, which has plenty advantages as well.

Essentially this technique is to filter various job posting sites that deliver content via RSS then subscribe to those RSS feeds. In this way can have an ongoing view of job information that you care about.

If you have never used yahoo pipes, take a minute to check them out now. I find them pretty easy to use. Pipes is designed to be a model driven programing interface, meaning you can create and design pipes through a GUI and never actually write any ‘code’. Pipes are actually kind of like a extremely simple cloud enabled version BizTalk or windows workflow, which I spend most of my time in these days. The nice thing about pipes is you can search and see other pipes that other uses have created and uses them as examples or templates. Since 9 out of 10 things you want to do will probably have been created by someone else already you can just use theirs if you would like.

Next spend some time researching various companies and organizations located in your city, particularly ones in which are in your industry, or ones that you would be interesting in working for. Then do the same for nation-wide companies and organizations. You will find that most of these companies will have a page where the post jobs, and that for many of these you can subscribe to an RSS feed. For me, there are several very industry specific blogs and websites that I frequent that also have some job postings areas as well and I find that jobs posted here are of incredible quality as well. If you have any sites like this jot them down as well.

If the job pages does not have an RSS feed by default you can use a service called page2rss which I have found works okay. Essentially it will publish changes to a page you point it at as an RSS feed.

For each one of the feeds, create a yahoo pipe that filters specifically based on the incoming feed. For instance: if you have a feed that is posting jobs nation-wide, you will want to have a filter that only lets through items containing the name of your city or the name of several cities in the metro area. If the company is national or local you probably want to filter on your job title in either case.

Next step, subscribe to the resulting yahoo pipes RSS feeds, in your favorite RSS reader. If you don’t have one already I’d suggest Google reader. Now as time goes by you will receive various postings.

I am not looking for a job currently, but I have an excellent finger on the pulses of the software industry in the Atlanta area. Sometimes recruiters will contact me and make a vague reference to a job they are trying to fill. I can occasionally spot the job that they are hiring for because the company will, in many cases, also publish the job on their site as well. Or if you are looking for a job, then you can have a live feed of current jobs in your area that you care about, and apply as soon as they are posted.

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