While the popularity of online job boards puts millions of jobs at one's fingertips, it has also made the job applicant pool that much bigger. For this reason, national job search sites and the Internet as a whole have gotten a bad rap from some industry professionals as an ineffective job seeker tool; on the contrary, the Internet actually can be a great resource for job seekers -- they just need to know how to use it.

Are you having a tough time job hunting? Do you need to get your job hunt in gear?

These job hunting tips will help you focus your job hunt, get to contacts at companies, learn how to effectively follow up, get a promotion to a new job, and utilize the top job search strategies that will ensure your job hunt succeeds.
When it comes to a fruitful online job search, successful job seekers follow these guidelines.

Top 10 job search strategies:
1. Connect With Your Contacts
2. Research companies inside and out before you interview.
3. Become an expert in social networking.
4. If you know someone who works at a company you are interviewing with, spend some time with them before you interview.
5. Get to know the top search professionals in your area.
6. Have informational meetings with people you know in the industry.
7. Join professional and industry organizations.
8. Learn as much as you can about the interviewer before the interview and prepare questions before the meeting.
9. Send follow-up thank-you notes to everyone you meet with.
10. Dress professionally and act professionally. Remember, everything counts

Know What You're the Best At
"Know what you're the best at. Know where you will shine brightly." Become crystal clear on your three or four best traits, talents and skills. Document and acknowledge how you excel and what you've accomplished with them. Make these talents the 'STARS' of your job search, and allow them to guide your answers in interviews and your path to a new position.

Job Search Efficiently
With jobs posted on thousands of company sites and job boards, it's important for every job seeker to be efficient during their search. Using a Job board for jobs like jobsmarshall.com helps you do this by providing best fitting jobs through it`s highly robust job search engine. jobsmarshall.com offers an array of tools to support an efficient job search. This reduces your time spent searching manually, and updates you with the freshest opportunities.

Stay Focused on Your Job Search
Stay focused in your search on the employers that interest you, the industries that excite you, and the locations that draw you. Limit your search for employment listings to those resources that focus on these same topics, and network with others who share your interests, both online and in person. And always take advantage of the opportunity to meet new people in casual settings that may turn into new professional relationships.

Why Did You Fail to Make the Sale?
Many over 50 candidates who interview for jobs for which they believe they are uniquely qualified fail to get a call back. The accusation of ageism leaps to mind. Yet, the employer saw your resume and already knew your approximate age and chose to interview you. There was something in your background that caused them to believe you were the right person for the job and they wanted to learn more. If you failed to make the sale, look to your interview for the reasons. Did you talk outcomes? Was your appearance age appropriate? How was your energy level? Did you 'explain' or relate your experience? Employers look to your stories to tell them if your recent accomplishments compared to their needs. Solution? Examine the job description and for every line item, write down a relevant example with an outcome. That puts you ahead of the competition and in line for a call back.

Establish Goals
It is critical that job seekers maintain a proactive and positive approach to the job search process by establishing concrete goals and setting aside adequate time each week for searching and applying to jobs. Job searching can be an exhausting experience, even more so than a full-time job, and when responses from employers don't immediately come flooding in the natural tendency is to often become discouraged and slow down or even abort the job search process altogether.

Identify Companies That Are a Fit
Don't even think about starting a job search campaign without first identifying and researching companies that will be a mutual good fit, so that you can build your brand and all your career marketing communications around what will resonate with them. If you don't know who your target audience is and you try to cover too many bases, your resume and other career documents won't hit home with anyone.

Get Current Job Listings
If job seekers would use jobsmarshall.com as one of their top tool to search for a job, they would find those jobs that are only listed on company websites and that are currently open. So much of the jobseeker frustration comes from applying for jobs that no longer are open because most job boards have out of date postings in order to look "busy."

Know What Makes You Stand Out
There are numerous qualified applicants for each open position. To be successful in your job search, you need to understand your personal brand. An important element of your brand is differentiation. To determine your differentiation, think about what you have in common with others who are seeking the same position. Then, think about what makes you stand out - what unique value you have to offer. Once you know that, you can modify your career marketing tools to reflect that unique value. This is the key to effective personal branding.

Research the Company
Before an interview, research the company online using all means available. Spend at least two hours preparing for a job interview by reading about the company online. Comb through the corporate web site (particularly the "about us" section) and search for articles in Google news to learn more about what's going on in the workplace. If you know the names of the people you are about to meet with, look at anything they've written professionally or any public information on their social networking profiles. You need to be prepared to tell your potential employer why you're excited to work specifically for the company and for her. Bonus: if you can connect with a former employee of the company on LinkedIn and ask them questions, that can also help you prepare.

Stalk the Company (Almost)
The behavior we're seeing emerge is that before an opening gets posted to a job board the hiring manager will try and see if they have any friends or colleagues who might be interested. We see that whether it's a status update on LinkedIn or Twitter or Facebook, or a blog post, or even an industry event, hiring managers will try these free and trusted sources first. Before spending money on posting a job or time sifting through hundreds of resumes, these social networking (online and offline) approaches to recruitment are starting represent more than half of all placements. We build tools that help job seekers listen in on these conversations but it's still important for them to get to events, follow these individuals on Twitter, connect with them on LinkedIn and to really and truly almost "stalk" the companies they'd like to work for. Read their blogs, press releases, tweets, Facebook pages, LinkedIn updates, because in today's market, jobs are being filled before the general public even knows there are openings.

Follow Up
One area that I believe to be deficient in many people's job searches is follow up. Most people just email the resume or submit the application in the hopes that someone will reply, but to be successful you must be proactive. There should be a least three attempts at following up including phone and email. It should be much more than just checking to see if the resume was received. The voice mail message could be an abbreviated elevator speech, and the follow up letter could summarize all of the ways in which they are qualified. Linked in can be a great tool for following up too. Every job sought requires research and it's own follow up strategy.

Relocate For a New Job
People hate it when I say it, but unless you are a superstar, in this economy you are almost wasting your time. If you have to or want to do this, two tactics: 1. Get an address or borrow a friend's for snail mail in the target city. A resume and letter are contact points, not declarations of residency. BUT, you need to be ready and prepared to interview and move at your own expense. 2. In your letters, pick a week in the future and let companies know "I will be in your city on these dates and am looking to relocate there." Then, depending on the responses, you can decide if you make the trip - because if no one says 'Yes', then no one cares you'd be coming anyways.

Give Seasonal Work a Try
For those with an adventurous spirit or simply wanting to take a different approach to their job hunt, we recommend giving seasonal work a try. One major perk of a seasonal job is to be able to fully commit and try out a new field, location, or job without the full-blown expectations of accepting a year-round job with similar scope. Anyone can do a job for three to six months and see if they like it. This type of work may also be a good fit for the recently laid off to fill in the gaps while looking for full time work. In our experience, seasonal jobs can play a major role in your work / career discovery process. Knowing that many are out of work and re-assessing their skill sets, this type of work might be just the ticket to send job seekers on a new and exciting path.

Work on a Promotion
If you want to get a significant raise or a promotion begin that discussion several months before annual reviews are scheduled. Make your case and then ask your boss what else you have to do to get the raise or promotion you want. Most people have that discussion at the time they actually are given their review or shortly before. By then it is much too late. Decisions about raises and promotions have not only already been made by then, but also have gone through an approval process. Once that is done it is extremely difficult, if not impossible, to get a decision changed. Your boss will be extremely reluctant even to try.

Top 3 common mistakes that job seekers make:
1. Being under-prepared for an interview. If someone has not researched EMC and the business they are interviewing for, they will likely not get by the initial screen.
2. Being too comfortable, especially when the candidate knows the interviewer.
3. Showing up lat