It used to be all about the classifieds, but not anymore!
Job boards have taken over the task of the classifieds. It was actually spawned by the classified ad industry and will be your biggest resource. It seems as if everyone has started a job board and there are so many it is hard to know who to trust with your information. There are the really large ones like Monster and Indeed and really small "boutique" and "millennial focused" ones too. Everyone wants you to sign up for an account and they all want your email address and resume, which is a pain in the neck if you don’t want your data floating around in cyberspace. But there are still many job boards that CAN help you in your job search so it’s a good idea to learn how to use them properly.
Some job boards have a really great feature when you sign up that keeps your information private. Typically, you sign up for an account, apply to a few jobs, and then it seems every single recruiter on the planet is calling you, and that is because everyone can publicly see your information. Some recruiters are so bad at their job, they may contact you for jobs that you are not interested in or are not even suited for. This can include a hospital's own in-house recruiter as well, so you always want to be kind and professional on the phone when people call you because you don't know where they are calling from. There is a way to turn this feature off so that your information is kept private and the only people that can contact you is the person who actually posted the job.
Indeed is the #1 job board in the country and they do really well because they have mostly staff positions posted on there. The majority of positions in the country are staff positions and they get a lot of turnover so Indeed gets a lot of traffic because of it. However if you are looking for an upper management position, you won’t find a lot of Director or manager jobs there. A job board is still a company that needs to make money, and Indeed’s business model is to bring in as much traffic as possible by posting as many jobs as possible. Management jobs do not have the same high turnover rate and are much less represented there.
Indeed bought Glass Door, and that one isn’t as bad. A company might list all their jobs on their site and you get to see ratings and reviews of the employer. So you can do a bit of due diligence and also apply to jobs at the same time. You will see a lot more management jobs on Glassdoor too, so that can be a good resource. They are trying to broaden what the standard job board offers.
LinkedIn is a lot of place people look because they are already on there anyway, and, as the opposite of Indeed, you will see a lot more management jobs available. It is extremely expensive to post a job on LinkedIn. The management sector is extremely competitive and there are a lot of executives looking and LinkedIn knows this. Since LinkedIn is expensive, some of the best jobs won’t be posted directly by the hospitals, and instead by recruiters that have much bigger budgets for posting.
Networking is always great because you may find out about a job before it actually opens up. Pursuing a position that no one else knows about reduces your competition, and if you are told by someone who is in management, you may have a built in reference and someone on your side when you interview.
Another way, is if you have your top companies that are local, you can go to their websites and look at what jobs they have open. You may have to keep checking back over a few months to see if the jobs are regularly updated because they may not be. If you go to a hospital’s website, you may want to hold off applying on your own and try to find the recruiter that is in charge of filling that job. Otherwise you end up in the "black hole" of HR.
Of course I am biased, but I think recruiters are the best way. We are in charge of filling jobs that are mostly confidential, harder to find, or unique. A lot of jobs are confidential because an employer might need to fire someone but want the replacement person hired before they do so. This is why sometimes you might see a job on the job board that doesn’t give you an exact location.
By the way, confidential jobs are only knowable through using a recruiter. So you can imagine all the jobs out there that you will never, ever know about because they are kept confidential.
Facebook and Google are also trying to get into the job board business as they have the personal data on everyone. They know what you do, where you live, and if you are looking for a job. To me this is very scary, and I would stay away from them. They want a piece of the action, but they are really not in the industry so do not leave your resume in their hands!
Unfortunately there is no one surefire way to find a job. The only honest advice I can give is to use all the available resources out there, including a good recruiter (like me :)). If you see a job on a company's website, and you know a good recruiter, simply tell him about the job and let him work to get you an interview. If he can’t, then A- he is not a very good recruiter to work with, and B- you are no worse off than before. Good luck!