Using RSS Feeds

Posted by JobShouts | January 21, 2009 | How to ...

By now, every internet savvy job-seeker has heard about Blogs. These are typically websites that take the form of an online journal. But what you may not know about blogs and job boards is that there’s a great way to stay current with your favorites: you can subscribe to them!

Most boards & blogs have what’s called an RSS feed (Really Simple Syndication) which makes it easy to stay current. In fact, these feeds have become so popular, that even large organizations like the NY Times has their own feeds.

Using RSS feeds is fairly straightforward; you just need to follow three steps:

Choose a news reader google has one that you can sign up for free. Outlook as well as a plethora of other mail applications also support this feature.
Find news feeds that interest you. Indeed, and Simply Hired are job aggregators. They form the bulk of the jobs available at aplace4people.com
Subscribe, then read at your convenience

The rest of this article will walk you through these steps.

Choosing a News Reader

To view a RSS feed, you’ll need to use special software called a news reader (sometimes called a news aggregator). There are many news readers available, many of which are free.

First, you’ll need to decide which type of news reader would be best for you. There are news readers that are Web-based, which means you don’t need to download any software to your computer. This is a good choice for someone who wants to stay current with job-boards and blogs from more than one computer (e.g., from work and from home, or while traveling).

Other news readers are programs that you download to your computer. This is a good choice when you primarily use one computer, or if you’d rather not maintain your list of subscribed blogs on a hosted service.

Finding News Feeds

Once you’ve got a news reader, you need to subscribe to some sites! If you’re already a blog reader, you can look for its RSS feed, which is often indicated by an image like this: Other blogs may advertise their feeds by links such as “Syndicate this site” or “RSS feed” or even just “RSS” or “XML”.

Subscribing to a Feed

Subscribing to a feed is relatively simple. For most readers using outlook or a googled machine just click the feed and the correct application will start.

This may sound a bit tricky now, but once you get started, it can be very easy to get hooked on the convenience of having news & new jobs come to you rather than having to go find it. Enjoy!