Many of you have heard my opinion of job search priorities. In a job search, your highest priority activity is to be face-to-face with a live person. If possible that person should be in a position to hire you, but more likely they will just know someone else who may need your talents. During normal working hours, when you are not successful at being face-to-face, you should be on the phone trying to get face-to-face. After hours is the only time you can afford to work the less effective methods such as the job boards, internet searches, newspaper help wanted ads, emails and correspondence.

'Net job boards: More hype than helps?'- Many recent media articles, like the one by this title in USA Today, have been very critical of the Internet job boards' effectiveness for finding jobs or for finding employees. For filling jobs, the Internet job boards appear to have taken a similar role in the 21st century as newspaper ads had for earlier times - a highly inefficient method, but some jobs are found that way.

The internet - From my perspective it is a good generator of email volume but not necessarily placements. It is possible a discrimination legal challenge can be made over the Internet inability to reach diversity applicants, since nearly 60% of whites are online, compared with 43% of African-Americans. Some job seekers are being warned not to put their resume on the Internet. "You go into a vast human-resources data dump." And some hiring officials have said they do not want a job-board candidate. They think they're too lazy to do a real job search.

A recent Society of Human Resources Management survey of job seekers reported that only 48% of job seekers said internet job postings are effective, while 65% gave employee referral high marks and 80% said personal contact and networking were most effective.

Information Technology (IT) is an industry that might give different performance ratings to the Internet job boards. The IT industry and the Internet are inseparable and, efficient or not, that is where those jobs are posted and where those people reside.

Despite the success within the IT industry, it is still estimated that about 85% of jobs overall are found through networking - not the Internet, not newspaper advertising and (I hate to say it) not through executive recruiters such as myself. One survey by Drake Beam Morin put the numbers at 68% from networking and 3% from the Internet.

Networking can take the form of an active job search but is also a planned function we are involved in day-in and day-out as a part of our careers or as a way of life. If we are not comfortable with meeting people, and do nothing about overcoming that discomfort, we are accepting a severe social and career handicap. The best buyer or planner is going to know who to talk to about specific problems and how to solicit their help. The best supply chain managers are going to know the movers and shakers in their industry to be able to solve problems and to get things done.