Career Supplement | Get on Board

For David Baker, landing a job in 1990 meant paging through newspaper help wanted sections, visiting the career center at University of California, Los Angeles to research biotech companies, sending lots of snail mail, and waiting weeks for an offer. The whole process took nearly two months.

The second time around, his job search took about two weeks.

Baker, now a research scientist at Halozyme Therapeutics in San Diego, started his second job hunt in 2003 after several years at Idec Pharmaceuticals and a few years spent traveling. He began by checking out http://www.biospace.com, met representatives of Halozyme a few days later at a career fair sponsored by the site, went back to the site to research the company and the position he was interested in, sent in his resumé, and got a call for an interview.

"It was about one week from the job fair until I accepted the ...