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The official online job search resource hosted By Dick Bolles, author of "What Color is Your Parachute"
Web Sites for Job Hunting Research | Geography/Moving/Where to Live
Web Sites for Job Hunting Research
 
 
Geography/Moving/Where to Live
The traditional three secrets in real estate "location, location, location” are the secrets of a job-hunt as well. Geographic focus, when looking for a job, when posting your resume, or when doing research, is key to your success.

You can research any place in the country, or the world, simply by typing its name into your favorite search engine's query line, together with any additional words you want to use in order to narrow that search, then hitting the Search button, and seeing what turns up. Also, try these sites:

The Best Places to Live in America 2000
Want to move to a new city, town or country place? Wonder which one is best for you? Money magazine's site, here, not only has the statistics, weather, housing costs, etc., on over 1,200 cities around the U.S., but also a wonderful interactive feature called "Find The Best City For You." You rank nine criteria by how important they are to you, and then their search engine will tell you which cities (or places) fit the criteria as you ranked them.

CareerJournal.com
Want to move primarily for the sake of finding a job, and you wonder where the unemployment is so low that finding a job should be a cinch? This site "from the Wall Street Journal folks" lists precisely which U.S. communities had the lowest (and highest) unemployment rates in a recent month (for June 2006, the lowest was 2%, highest was 14%). You know that numbers alone don't show the whole picture, but hey, it's a start. And while you're in the neighborhood; the WSJ also sponsors the Real Estate Journal, which has a section on relocation at www.realestatejournal.com/relocation/.

American Journalism Review NewsLink
Much information on a city can be gleaned from their newspaper (the smaller the town, the more true this appears to be). Here you can find links to more than 4,000 newspapers, grouped by city and state. The site also has listings of radio and TV stations, magazines, and international publications. An absolute gem.

Chambers of Commerce Directory
Need to know more about a city or town? Interested in a business located in that city? Start at the Chamber of Commerce. Here is a good list of city/town chambers of commerce, with links to their Web sites and email addresses.

The Weather Channel
Need to research the weather in a certain location? Want to go visit the town or city in question? You can get a driving forecast, with road conditions, special circumstances, weather at your destination, etc. Decided to fly there? If you're flying commercial, go to www.weather.com/activities/aviation/ for destination weather, flight times, and so on. If you have a pilot's license and are flying yourself, get winds aloft, enroute weather, NOTAMs; or maybe you just want to know if it's gonna rain at the barbecue tomorrow, or when the sun will set, or see a local Doppler map.

U.S. Census Bureau
Type in an address and find out more than you thought possible about a town or city, county, people, businesses, housing; very current info, too, not just from the well-known decennial census. With all of this data riding on the work they do, it's no wonder the Census people get so testy when you don't fill in the forms they send out.

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