We still say "thumbing through the want ads" to indicate searching for a new job, but with the print age swiftly drawing to a close a number of internet sites offer potential job seekers with more the listings they could ever hope to find in the paper. These sites typically offer tens of thousands of listings from all around the world. Whether you want to be a farmhand in Idaho or a foreign exchange specialist in New York you can find what you are looking for on a number of job seeking sites. This comparison of job seeking sites will help you get a handle on some of the best features of the big names in the business.

Probably the most popular spot for job seekers today is Craig’s List. Completely free and offering ads for everything from a date for Friday night to a used bicycle, Craig’s List gets thousands of employer ads every day. There are two areas of the site dedicated to listing employment opportunities. The jobs section breaks the listings down to various fields like education, customer service, etc. The gigs section offers work from home opportunities and one off money making ventures broken down into a number of fields. Craig’s List has its popularity and the fact it is free going for it. But for those very reasons scams and less-than-disciplined employers go here first. If you are smart and keep on the watch for these things, however, you can find a job here as easily as on any site.

Almost as old as the World Wide Web, Monster.com has been around since 1994 and offers millions of job listings. The first job listing site on the web, it is still among the most popular and is in fact one of the most visited sites on the entire internet. You can sign up for an account for free, with a number of sophisticated employment services available at various costs (though still reasonably priced). These include training in interview skills, resume consultations, assistance in getting on with various online colleges and other features. More than anything Monster.com is a sort of one-stop job, career, financial and personal development center that brings the best resources from around the economy and around the web into one place.

Monster.com’s biggest competitor is CareerBuilder. Also founded in 1994, CareerBuilder is the biggest job site online. Most of what can be said for Monster.com is true for CareerBuilder as well—they offer great career counseling services and make it easy to find a job anywhere in the country. Its layout is perhaps a little less flashy, but as a result it loads faster on your computer and works more efficiently. When you undertake a search they have a nifty feature which allows you to narrow the results by category, location (city or state) and company. This makes it rather easy to find the right job out of the hundreds of thousands listed.

Times are tough right now and a lot of us are in the market for new jobs. In the old days you had to stick with the local paper or hitch out of town. Now you can search for work from the world over from the comfort of your home, a process made even more comfortable by these fantastic sites.