Job Search in Austin Texas

I heard on NPR the other day that the unemployment rate in Detroit was 22%. Holy crapsville! There's a debate going on at the Austin citydata forum on whether or not Austinites should continue to tout the region as a good place to move to, as we're starting to show signs of an economic slowdown ourselves. But when you compare our unemployment level (in the low 6%) to Detroit's Great Depression levels, and the fact that our houses are still gaining in value, it would seem like merely belching out the Texas State Anthem would have people running to our area. Luckily for readers of this blog, I have never mastered the art of on-demand burping, nor have I ever figured out how to upload videos to Youtube. You're safe.

Moving on, here are some job searching resources I would recommend for newcomers and old-timers alike. Good luck in your search.

• Austin Texas Craigslist - good for most professions.
  
• Indeed.com - It's a metasearch engine for jobs. For some fields, its great - especially those with specific job titles that don't show up in other fields. For others, (like my poor husband) it sucks. Try typing in "Austin Texas Architects" and you get all sorts of stuff for IT, engineering, and anyone else who applies that word to what they do (Cake Architect?). There's no way to filter it down to just Architect, plain and simple.
• So if you are an architect, go to the Austin AIA website instead.
  
• For fellow graphic designers, may I suggest the local AIGA website, the Austin Ad Fed, or Aquent.
• Medical professionals should try our largest hospitals, Seton or St. Davids, or a huge clinic in town, Austin Regional Clinic.
• Want a government job? How about a job at the University of Texas? Or work with our school district?
  
• Some of our big tech employers are Dell, IBM, Freescale, 3M, Apple, Hewlett Packard, AMD, Applied Materials, Cirrus Logic, Cisco, Hoover's, Intel, National Instruments, Samsung, Silicon Laboratories, Sun Microsystems.
  
• Film/tv production, gaming and animation jobs are here.
• You could also try our local newspaper, Austin Statesman.

Another good resource is the Texas Workforce Commission, which has career centers that offer job training, seminars and networking opportunities. I had to go there in order to get on unemployment last lay-off, and I was really impressed by what they have to offer.

Happy hunting, y'all.