One theme that I have harped on for years is the notion that there are job openings if you just look for them. Of course, anecdotes are interesting but not always helpful. I have heard (and have shared) stories of so called boom towns that have zero percent unemployment. I have read stories of people picking up everything and simply moving to one of these towns. This week I ran across an online tool that takes the whole idea of a nationwide job search to a new level. Not only will you be able to find boom towns, but regions that are booming with openings in your specific occupation.

What if you could see a map of the entire United States and a visual breakdown of which area has the most openings within your professional niche? What if you could simply point your mouse and see the number of potential jobs you could go after in any metro area? Well, this is now a reality with a free tool from Glassdoor.com called Job Explorer. The idea of single websites aggregating job listing data is not new, but I have never seen a visual tool like this. Listen to Jim Paris discuss this article by clicking on the play button below.

My wife was in my office this morning while I was test driving the Glassdoor search tool. She is a music teacher (happily employed) and we thought it might be interesting to do a job search for her own occupation. We typed in 'music teacher' into the seach window and we were amazed at the number of job postings. One feature that is especially helpful is to see what regions/states have the most openings for a given job. We immediately noticed a density of opportunities (indicated by the darkest shade of green on the map) in the state of Texas where there are 291 music teacher jobs. Next, we saw 372 music teacher openings in Indiana!  

Another great feature is a button on the left side of the screen that says 'other jobs to consider.' This takes your current job title and gives you ideas for other jobs that are similar in nature. For example, when I clicked on this after searching for music teacher it showed jobs like music therapist, substitute teacher, orchestrator, band director, etc... If you don't want to limit the search to a particular job, you can also simply choose a job category from the pull down menu for broader seach results.

Please use the comments section below to share your own results using the Glassdoor job explorer and if you know anyone needing to find work, please share this article.

Helping you make the most of God’s money!

James L. Paris 
Editor-In-Chief ChristianMoney.com 
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