In fact, I found my first internship by sending out personalized e-mail messages to newspapers with Web sites and e-mail addresses. By doing a few simple keyword searches on the main search engines (Yahoo!, Excite, Hotbot, Lycos, etc.), I had access to the contact information for hundreds of publications across the nation.

Once I found their contact information, I just pasted my resume text into a message with their name and e-mail address. And, being free, fast, easy and professional, it was a beautiful choice as a college student.

Today, there are a multitude of Web sites dedicated to finding and posting new job opportunities, as well as services such as rŽsumŽ generators to help you find that new, ideal job or employee.

Here are a few to get you started:

First, Monster.com (http://www.monster.com). These guys were one of the original job sites out there. I can't remember how many redesigns I have seen this site go through, but it is a great place to start.

In addition to their vast collection of jobs, they have a great collection of resources for both job hunters and job posters that will help create rŽsumŽs or format cover letters and offer aids for various aspects of online recruiting.

Another site with easy to use career information is hotjobs.com (http://www.hotjobs.com). hotjobs.com has a very simple interface wrapped around a very powerful database of information. I found it quite easy to try out the different features and move between sections of this site.

A third popular job site is Headhunter.net (http://www.headhunter.net). When I logged on, this site boasted 169,165 jobs, 359,537ÊrŽsumŽs and 3,369,000 total users for the month of February alone.

As I said before, there are many more of these types of sites out there, but, if their size and all encompassing strategy seems a little overwhelming, there are also smaller, specialized sites that focus on one field or job type.

For example, Geek Finder (http://www.geekfinder.com) lists over 160,000 Internet-related career opportunities.

And, on the high end, NetShare (http://www.netshare.com) is a career database strictly for executives. There services include rŽsumŽ development, targeted campaigns, executive coaching, marketing services and reference checking services. Most importantly, they claim that over 85% of their listings are for jobs paying $100,000 or more.

If this approach is still too broad or you can't find a specialized database for your field, I recommend a more focused, proactive approach.

Similar to how I secured my internship experience, do some Internet searches for companies that may have positions in your field.

Most of today's bigger, professional sites will keep current job listings posted on their site. And, if not, it doesn't hurt to send and e-mail explaining who you are and how you can help that company.

After all, especially in high tech positions and new start-up companies, the job you can do for a company may not even exist yet. And, as I said before, e-mail is free, easy and instant, so you have nothing to lose.

So, whether you are looking to advance or change your career or hoping to find some new, qualified employees, look to the Internet. You just might find exactly what you are looking for.