10 Best Tools to Help You Land Your Dream Job [2021]

Have you thought about leaving your job for the career of your dreams? You are not alone. Employees are leaving their jobs in record numbers. But an employment search takes planning.  And if you’ve worked in the same position for years, you might need some brushing up on your office skills and resume building too.

From portfolio building tools to resources for your career search, we’ve provided the 10 best apps and tools to land your dream job in 2021.

Top Tools to Prepare for Your Career Search

Grow with Google for Career Preparation

Grow with Google offers free online tutorials and productivity tools to bring your office software and application skills up to date. You’ll also find a wide selection of ongoing online and in-person workshops for entrepreneurs, job-seekers, and students. Plus, Grow with Google provides low cost, paid courses for certification in trending IT and programming fields. There’s a lot to discover—check it out.

Resume.com to Build Your Resume

This resource allows you to easily build your resume online for download. You’ll find numerous templates to get you started in a professional, organized fashion. And although the designs appear basic, they do so for a reason. Each template is compatible with Applicant Tracking Systems (ATS) for digitized processing. Resume.com also provides resume samples from various industries to get you started. And it offers resources to write your cover letter too.

WordPress for Your Online Portfolio

You’ll find many online portfolio creation and hosting tools. But we recommend WordPress for its versatility. With paid and non-paid versions, the countless templates allow you to create a unique website suitable to your career goals and field of expertise. And with so many plugins and an inherent blogging capability, it’s a platform you will never outgrow.

LinkedIn for Skills Learning and Networking

This website and handy mobile app does much more than attract recruiters in your job search. Where LinkedIn really shines is in its social media engine for networking. Easily connect with colleagues and classmates while following leaders from every industry around the world. A paid account provides additional features as well as access to more than 15,000 online courses.

Top Career Search Websites and Apps

Indeed

Indeed easily tops the list of best career search apps. Simply put, recruiters will find you there. That’s because it is the most used job search resource in the world. Easily upload your resume to create an online version and start your profile. From there, Indeed easily allows you to search jobs by profession, skills, and region. Just as importantly, you can create alerts to stay up-to-date on job openings that match your career goals. Where Indeed really stands out is in its testing feature. If a hiring manager requires a certain skill, Indeed likely has a short test for it to help you stand from the crowd.

Glassdoor

Along with Indeed, you’ll likely want to include Glassdoor in your arsenal of job search websites and mobile applications. Although it serves largely the same function as Indeed, it remains the top tool for finding company reviews from current and former employees. You can even find information regarding job interviews at specific companies to help you prepare. Glassdoor also provides a salary estimator to understand the basic range of salaries based on your experience, occupation, education and region. For company research, Glassdoor remains in a class of its own.

Monster

One of the oldest web search tools, Monster remains one of the largest and one of the best. A favorite among recruiters, Monster provides one of the sleekest interfaces on both its mobile application and website. They also provide a great blog with career advice plus a salary tool to help you in negotiations.

FlexJobs

Changing lifestyles and technologies have increased the demand for remote and gig work. And COVID-19 concerns have brought that demand to the forefront. Although many remote and contract work websites exist, none compare to FlexJobs for quality and legitimacy of work. With a paid subscription, you will receive a strong flow of remote and contract job listings across industries of your choosing. You will also have the opportunity to attend quality learning webinars. Most importantly, the employers here are carefully hand-vetted to ensure. That added layer to ensure legitimacy makes FlexJobs the top gig work website around.

HigherEdJobs

Specialized career searches at Indeed and others have largely cut the need for niche job websites. We’ve included HigherEdJobs as an exception for two reasons. One is that many colleges and universities still rely on it exclusively. Second, although the industry may be niche, the jobs themselves aren’t. Yes, there are faculty listings, but they have staff listings too. These range from marketing professionals to kitchen staff, entry level janitorial to executive leadership. And since many of them provide ample state benefits, you’ll likely want to include HigherEdJobs in your career search arsenal.

USA Jobs

Another niche industry that covers a wide range of career types is federal government jobs. And USAJobs is the best place to find a career with the government. As with most other job search sites, you can upload your resume and make it searchable. Positions exist all around the U.S. and beyond for virtually every career field. Note, however, that you should read the job calls especially carefully to ensure you qualify in areas such as security clearance or veteran preference.

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