Scouring a pharmaceutical job board in search of the perfect position can be a daunting task. Gone are the days of opening a newspaper and finding a few dozen jobs you could apply for at your leisure. These days, a typical job board offers thousands of jobs. How do you go through all the posts to find what you’re looking for?
Thankfully, the same technology that has given us online job boards has also given us the ability to search them quite narrowly. Tailoring searches to narrow terms mitigates the need to go through thousands of listings just a find one or two posts.
Here are our tips for successfully using a pharmaceutical job board:
1. Find One You Like
First and foremost, find a job board you like. By that, we mean a job board you actually enjoy using. The reason for this a simple: if you find a particular job board unpleasant to use, you will not use it as often as you should. You might faithfully go on every day for the first week, but then you’ll skip a day or two. Then you will skip weeks at a time.
Everybody has their own preferences. You might appreciate the navigation on one site while someone else doesn’t like it at all. Find one that fits your style. Find one that you can navigate easily, is pleasant to look at, and is laid out in a way that makes sense to your brain.
2. Familiarize Yourself with Categories
Almost all pharmaceutical job boards have categorized postings for easier browsing. Jobs can be categorized by geographic location, educational requirements, work settings, salary, and even full- or part-time status. Also note that posts can overlap categories. Familiarize yourself with those categories in order to help you refine search terms.
3. Practice with Search Terms
When you get started on a job board for the first time, plan to spend 30 minutes or so just playing around with different search terms. Not all job board search engines work in the same way. So use different keywords and variations to see what types of job posts pop up. Settling on the right search terms will make future searches more efficient.
If you are the forgetful type, write down the search terms that yield the best results. That way, you don’t have to repeat the process of determining the best keywords next time you log on.
4. Utilize Tabbed Browsing
If you are the kind of person who easily loses your place navigating a long list of posts, make use of tabbed browsing. When you find a post that you actually want to look at, don’t click directly on the link to open it in the same window. Instead, right click and open it in a new tab. When you are done, simply close the tab. Your original window appears right where you left off. You will not be scrolling up and down trying to find the last post you looked at.
Tabbed browsing is a godsend for people who like to compare multiple jobs side by side. Just by opening each post in a separate tab, you can click through the tabs to compare everything from hiring requirements to salary and benefits.
Pharmaceutical job boards can easily list thousands of open positions at any given time. The best way to make maximum use of them is to treat them like search engines. In essence, that’s what they are anyway. So search for a site you find intuitive and pleasant to use, learn the right search terms, and make use of tabbed browsing. You will do better that way.
Disclaimer: The viewpoint expressed in this article is the opinion of the author and is not necessarily the viewpoint of the owners or employees at Healthcare Staffing Innovations, LLC.
