When Mike Jones was looking for a new job in the pharmaceutical field last year, he began by exploring some of the big job-search Web sites — Monster.com, HotJobs, CareerBuilder. He started applying for jobs directly through these sites, as thousands of job seekers do every day. When he realized his phone wasn’t exactly ringing off the hook, though, he got aggressive.

Jones, 28, began to view the major job Web sites as simply a starting point in his employment search, tools that gave him an overview of the market. He then looked at more localized job-search sites to see what they had to offer. And when he saw postings at a company in which he was interested, he went directly to that company’s Web site, using the company’s job-search engine to find other positions and to apply directly. He made repeated inquiries about the status of jobs for which he’d applied, sometimes reapplying if he noticed the position was still open after a few months. Jones finally landed a gig as a chemist for an analytical-instrument company in Milford — a job for which he’d applied six months earlier.

"If you’re persistent and show a concentrated interest in a job, they’re going to see your rˇsumˇ," he says.

Jones attributes his success to his perseverance, and that’s one quality that successful job searchers in today’s economic climate must have in spades. A position posted online can generate responses from hundreds — even thousands — of qualified candidates, so a successful job-search campaign now includes many components.

"Posting your rˇsumˇ online is not job searching. It was five years ago, but not anymore," says Pam Dixon, author of Job Searching Online for Dummies (John Wiley & Sons, 2000) and Be Your Own Headhunter Online: Get the Job You Want Using the Information Superhighway (Random House, 1995), which she says was the first book published about online job searching.

Dixon says when she asks most job hunters what steps they’re taking in their search, posting their rˇsumˇs online is one of the first things they mention. A typical candidate will post his or her rˇsumˇ on all the big sites, often on the same day — which can be a costly mistake, says Dixon. Since many recruiters and employers pay for access to more than one job-searching Web site, you often need post your rˇsumˇ to only one of them; additional postings will be redundant, and worse, look desperate.

"If your rˇsumˇ shows up as the new one on the block for all three sites, you look panicked," says Dixon.

The big job-search Web sites boast that they possess databases of literally millions of rˇsumˇs. Monster.com promises employers that it adds 20,000 new rˇsumˇs to its site daily. Against those odds, Dixon says, posting your rˇsumˇ on a major site is simply a waste of time, as is applying for a posted job through a third-party Web site. Posting your rˇsumˇ online at a specific company’s Web site, or applying online for an advertised position on the company’s site, are much better strategies.

Dixon says job seekers are often turned off by the time-consuming process of applying for a job at many companies’ Web sites, but she says the data fields and questions shouldn’t deter you. "You’re basically entering your data directly into their back-end job system," she explains. And, she says, most companies keep rˇsumˇs in their own databases for up to a year; those databases are the first place they look when filling a position. That’s what happened to Mike Jones, who says his boss told him later that he pulled Jones’s rˇsumˇ out of the company stack when a position opened up.

Another reason to hit specific company Web sites is that generally they have newer postings than large job Web sites, and more of them. "What you’re going to find is that most companies only post about one-fourth of their available jobs on a third-party Web site such as Monster," says Dixon.

She also recommends industry-specific Web sites, which post jobs in only a particular field, as another valuable resource. "You’ve got to go to the specialty sites," Dixon says. "That’s where all the good action is."

One such site is Mediabistro.com, a five-year-old Web site that focuses on professionals in the media, public-relations, advertising, and production industries. Mediabistro began as a cocktail party, says CEO and founder Laurel Touby, and although the company still hosts parties and networking events in eight cities, it has evolved into much more.

The site currently posts close to 200 job listings, ranging from associate research editor at Bon Appˇtit in Los Angeles to senior editor of Body and Soul in Watertown. Touby says the site’s employer base has doubled in the past year. "Niche job boards are really the way to go in the future," she insists. And almost every industry has job Web sites geared specifically to professionals in that field.

"In the beginning, it was a couple of techies and really forward-thinking people [creating job Web sites]," Touby says. "Now no one even looks at the newspaper."

In addition to job postings, Mediabistro also offers daily industry news and tips on landing freelance-writing gigs. Soon, says Touby, the site will add a freelance-writing marketplace, where writers can post their portfolios and rˇsumˇs for employers to browse.

Another resource all job seekers should use is industry trade associations, most of which have Web sites with job postings. The American Association of Pharmaceutical Scientists is one such trade organization. AAPS’s Web site, www.aaps.org, features a whole section devoted to careers, including advice for students, a rˇsumˇ-posting service, and job postings.

Chris Reed, AAPS’s career-center manager, says the career section of the site was totally revamped about a year ago when the organization realized how many of its members used AAPS for information about job postings. "It’s one of the cornerstones of the products AAPS offers," he says.

While some employers do post positions on the larger job sites, Reed says, in such a competitive niche industry more and more of the major companies are turning to smaller, more-focused sites, where they know the audience they’re reaching is one of qualified professionals.

"The best feedback we get is that a lot of the rˇsumˇs don’t stay online for more than 60 to 90 days, which we take to mean that they have found a job or are refocusing their job search," he notes. Within the next year, Reed adds, they’ll be adding more features to the career center, such as rˇsumˇ tips and advice on salary negotiations.

With the seemingly endless supply of job-seeking resources online, it’s easy to chain yourself to your computer, tirelessly looking for the perfect job. But Dixon says the best way to land a job is still through working your contacts, which is how 70 percent of all positions are filled. Unfortunately, her advice on building up a list of contacts will come too late for many job seekers.

"Before you’re looking for a job, keep up your contacts," she says. "The best time to network is when you’re working."

Kim Weidman can be reached at kweidman@hotmail.com