Conducting a job search is almost like running a small business. You have a product to sell (yourself). You have an advertising campaign, which consists of your resume and other job-search tools that will get your name out there. Just as you would if you were running a small business, you are going to need some tools to help you with the demands of your job search.

You will need a personal e-mail account, since you never want to use your work account for your job search. Many employers will ask you to send your resume by fax. If you don't have a fax machine, you will run up quite a bill faxing resumes from your corner drugstore or print shop. What about receiving phone messages from employers when you aren't available to take calls? Do you want to change your home voicemail message to make it sound more formal, or would you prefer to have a voicemail service dedicated to your job-search campaign? Fortunately, there are Web-based resources that provide many of these services.

Free E-mail

Is your only e-mail address your work account? Or does the personal email address that you use to communicate with your friends not sound very professional (for example, honeybabe@email.com)? You should never use your work e-mail account for your job search, nor should you use an address that sounds less than professional. You can set up a free e-mail account dedicated specifically to your job-search campaign. You will put this address on your resume, cover letters, and anywhere else you are asked to put contact information.

Google offers free e-mail accounts through their Gmail service. You can store an almost unlimited number of e-mail messages on their server. You can also get a free Yahoo! e-mail account. Other free e-mail services are AIM (www.aim.com) from AOL (you don't need to subscribe to AOL), MSN Hot-mail (www.hotmail.com), and Inbox.com (www.inbox.com).

Fax Services and Voicemail

Web-based fax services let you send and receive faxes online. You send a file to the fax service as an e-mail attachment. They then convert it into a document that is sent to the recipient's fax machine. You can even send a scanned document by saving it as a file and attaching it to an e-mail message. When you use one of these services, you also receive faxes as e-mail attachments. These services give you a local or toll-free telephone number.

MaxEmail (www.maxemail.com), eFax (www.efax.com), and jConnect (www.j2.com) are Web-based fax services. They all charge a monthly fee and a small fee per fax. If you only need to send and receive faxes during your job search, it may not be worth buying and setting up a fax machine. This type of service will fit your needs.

MaxEmail, eFax, and jConnect also offer voicemail services for an additional fee. Messages are sent to you as e-mail attachments. MaxEmail and jConnect also let you listen to your messages over the phone, which is great if you are away from a computer.