There are tons of job boards and employment web sites, and there’s no reason why you shouldn’t take advantage of them. Free resources are especially helpful to those in job seeking mode.

If you’re on LinkedIn, consider joining the Star:Candidate group for up-to-date job listings and tips.

Employment Digest is another place to find help with resumes, job news, and more. Here’s a video interview I did with them. They have lots of other great videos too.

When the job market is down and your competition has decided to sit out the rest of the game, that’s the worst time for you to quit, because now you can have everyone’s attention. There’s actually much less noise out there for your message to compete against. Push now, and you’ll be heard. Leverage smart career strategies, and you’ll get noticed.

The Atlantic has an interesting look at the job postings per capita in several American cities. As you can see, it looks like Washington, DC wins by a landslide. Unsurprisingly, Detroit has the worst ratio.

When the job market is as weak as it is right now, many people focus on how this impacts the seasoned worker: the manager who’s been laid off after 25 years at the firm, or the executive who finds herself without a job when the company goes under.

But for first-time job seekers, the people who are supposed to be starting their careers with a bang, are as affected as well. Recent graduates may become paralyzed with the fear that they will never find a job, let alone one in their chosen field.

Here is a Q&A I did recently with Heather Huhman of Examiner.com. We discuss tips for entry-level job seekers of all kinds. Well worth a look.

No matter where you are in your career and no matter what your salary level, if you have the right mindset, you’ll accelerate your job search and elevate yourself over other candidates in all sorts of tangible and intangible ways. Get the Job You Want Even When No One’s Hiring provides you with both the mindset and skill set to take charge of your career, find a job you love, and earn what you deserve.

The most valuable thing you have to offer to an employer is your mindset, not your skill set. You are capable of things beyond what you’ve done in the past. Remember that potential when you’re looking to be hired.

I was recently interviewed by TheCreativeCareer.com on this subject. Take a listen to the audio interview if you have a moment.

Would you like to know the number-one secret of how to get a job when no one’s hiring? Would you like to know the key—and sometimes the only—difference between people who are out of work for three months and three years? It’s simple: Mind-set comes before skill set.

What really distinguishes new hires is how well they assimilate into the company’s culture, environment, and key relationships. In addition to doing a good job, it’s vitally important that you ramp up into your new role with your eyes wide open. This means paying close attention to what’s going on all around you, creating the right impressions, attending to interpersonal dynamics, and establishing the right precedents.

With a job market as crummy as this one, many of us aren’t bothering to take the time to think about our current job satisfaction. After all, we should be lucky to have any job, right?

Not necessarily. Some of us have managed to secure our dream jobs, the jobs that allow us to use our gifts and explore our passions, the jobs that we might have dreamed of for years, the jobs that offer an ideal and comfortable situation.

It’s easy at a time like this to get bogged down in bad news and frustrating statistics, so let’s try something different. Let’s hear from those of you who have landed that amazing job. Don’t be shy; brag away! How did you get it? What tools were most important? Tell us in the poll below, and feel free to elaborate in the comments.

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If you can demonstrate to the employer how you would address their issues successfully—and in the process make their company more productive, efficient, or profitable—you’ll be able to land a good job in any economy.