You’re a busy professional. You don’t have time to look for a new job but you want to also want to make sure you don’t miss out on any potentially great job opportunities. Job boards and similar sites are tedious and time-consuming while social networks subject. So what is the best way to go about finding new job opportunities if you are currently employed?

1. Respect Your Current Employer’s Time

One thing you should not do is conduct any sort of job search while on your current employer’s time. Your employer is paying you to do a job, and you should respect the agreement with them and do the job you are paid for.

2. Be Discreet

You don’t want to jeopardize your current job by openly looking for another one or giving the impression that you are. Many companies track employee activity on company equipment. Seeing you spending a lot of time on job sites can tip them off that your looking for another opportunity and, if caught, they may help you free up your time to look. Likewise, be careful of your activity on social networks. Major updates to your profile are announced to your network, as are new connections you make. If your connected to anyone you work with they will see and may question this recent activity. For example, if you are suddenly making connections with quite a few recruiters and you are not in HR in your company, this will look suspicious to your current employer.

3. Be In Control

Don’t allow your career information or résumé to be available for anyone to get a hold of. It can cause you to be subjected to a lot of spam for jobs that don’t interest or even apply to you – wasting your time. You should make sure you know exactly who is getting your information, for what purpose, and that you have an interest in the position before you release this information.

4. Don’t bother searching

Current job sites produced very little in results. Your simply spending a lot of time to through in your application with tons of other responses and your have little control on what happens with your information once you send it. If you think about the number of jobs you’ve already had in your career, you’ll most likely discover most of the jobs you have had have found you. What you ideally want is for companies to be able to find you, saving you a lot of time and wasted effort, but make sure you do it while maintaining control of your information and keep it all discreet.

5. Avoid any type of spam job site

So many sites advertise how their matching engines will ensure you get great opportunities. The reality is you get spammed with a lot of jobs that don’t apply to you. If you are currently a Vice President, for example, you will find yourself getting a lot of Executive Assistant to Vice President jobs in your inbox. Likewise, if you market technology products, you will frequently find developer positions showing up in your inbox because of technology keyword matches. They typically are playing to the numbers – throwing a few hundred jobs in your inbox and hoping one of them might match what your looking for. Avoid these type of sites if you want to avoid wasting your time.

6. Focus on sites that strictly focus on jobs

This is particularly true on social networks in particular. Do you really want to be looking for a job on sites that have such a broad focus? Your activity is out their for everyone to see in addition to your job search being mired in a ton of activity which has nothing to do with job search. Do yourself a favor and limit yourself to sites where the focus is on one thing and one thing only – jobs.

7. Make sure human contact is involved

As I mentioned earlier, little results from any type of random application or job spamming. You want to make sure that if a relevant job opportunity presents itself, you are connecting and communicating with a real person as early in the process as possible. Make sure you know who is getting your career history and for what purpose. This way, if it is a position you are really interested in, you can have a direct dialog to try and convince them how you are a good fit.

Typically, it is only possible to do all of the above with fairly manual methods through third-party recruiters. Most job sites are not focused on you, but on job seekers. Booyango is the first site created that offers job search specifically for working professionals and incorporates all the capabilities mentioned in this post.

Remember, you need to be discreet and in control of your job search and also want to make sure you don’t miss out on good opportunities in the future.