I was in a "career transition" seminar last week where the lecturer flat out said, "You will never find a job by simply tweaking your resume for each online post you see..." He says only 5-10% of people get their jobs through online job postings. In most other cases, people got their jobs by knowing someone.

In my own experience, that has been pretty much true; Nearly every job I've landed has been through a referral or an agent. (I probably wouldn't have even been hired at UCS if you weren't on my list of references.) :)

After my recent job shakeup I made a point of telling everyone I ran into, "Hey I lost my job - do you know of any openings." That proved to be more effective in getting me interviews than e-mailing my resume through Monster - which resulted in non-responses.

It's all about "networking" (gulp.)