Are you one of the millions of people searching for a job online? Before you send another resume out into cyberspace, there are some important things you need to know about how and where to find a job on the Web.

Despite fewer job openings and more job seekers, real opportunities exist. Employers say that one third of all new hires last year came through the Internet. However, only about 15 percent of those hires applied through the big job boards such as Monster.com, CareerBuilder.com, and Hotjobs.com, according to a new study by CareerXroads, a recruiting technology group in Kendall Park, N.J. Industry-focused niche sites were slightly more effective; 17.6 percent of new online hires came from sites like Medzilla.com, a pharmaceutical industry site, and IEEE.org, the electrical engineering association's Web site.

The best place to find work on the Web: a company's own site. Employers say that a whopping 67.9 percent of Internet hires came from their own backyards last year. "So, what they're saying," explains Gerry Crispin, who coauthored the study by CareerXroads, "is that no matter where you find the lead about us, we want you to apply through the company Web site."

Why do companies prefer their own Web sites by such a wide margin? "It saves them money, brands them with candidates, and builds a good pool of candidates," says Kevin Marasco, director of marketing for Recruitmax, which makes workforce management software for fortune 500 firms.

Name dropping. Simply sending your resume directly to the company's Web site is not enough, however. Experts say you need to include a referral from an employee of the target company in your application if you want your resume to shoot to the top of the pile. The person referring you doesn't have to be your best friend, just someone in the company willing to let you use his or her name. "I'd never apply to a company today without getting an employee to refer me," says Crispin. "I believe that the advantage is 100 to 1. I'd even stand outside and offer an employee $5 to refer me because it means that much to me."

Ironically, the tried-and-true technique of networking is one of the latest fads in Internet job hunting. Social networking sites like LinkedIn.com, ZeroDegrees.com, Spoke.com, Tribe.net, and Ryze.com have begun hooking up professionals in formal and informal ways. In fact, LinkedIn.com, which lets a member leverage his E-mail address book into a huge web of professional contacts, has taken referral-based job hunting to the next level. It has just announced a partnership with the Direct Employers Association, a job board whose 200,000 listings link directly to corporate Web sites. When LinkedIn members go to a listing, they'll not only get the job description but also find out whom they know who could introduce them to a person already working at that company. Even the largest job site of them all, Monster.com, is getting into the act. It is introducing a networking feature that lets users enter their own professional profiles, search for someone else's profile, or try to find people with similar professional experience. "We match people who wouldn't otherwise meet," says Monster's senior vice president of consumer products, Michael Schutzler.

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