If you're an active internet user - particularly for blogs, social media and job search sites - and you're not yet using web syndication to simplify your search and optimize your reading time, you're missing out on a fantastic tool!
Web syndication is most often found in the form of feeds, Atoms or RSS (which stands for Really Simple Syndication). It's a technical solution that allows published web content from one site to be dynamically and simultaneously posted elsewhere, whether it's another website, a desktop application or a web application. It's easy to recognize sites that use web syndication by buttons which read "Subscribe", "Follow", "RSS Subscription", etc., as well as the following icon:
Let's say, for example, that you read three blogs and two news sites regularly. To read them each day, you have to visit each one separately to see if there are new articles. However, if you subscribe to their RSS feed, you can make new results from each site all appear in one place, allowing you to check only one site (rather than five!) to read all the latest articles.
If you have an account with Google or Gmail, the easiest solution to start using RSS feeds is Google Reader. However, there are many other free applications providing the same service. In any case, to use them, you'll have to first go to the site to which you'd like to subscribe, find the link to their RSS syndication and copy the link address by right-clicking the link with your mouse and selecting "Copy Link Location". Next, go to your web syndication application (Google Reader or otherwise), where you should find a button or field to enter a new subscription. Paste the link location you've just copied, follow the steps to confirm and voilà! You've subscribed. From now on, to read the articles on the site in question, you'll simply have to visit your Google Reader (or other application) to read all the newest content rather than having to visit the original site. The more subscriptions you add, the more time you'll save yourself!
Many job offer sites, as well as numerous Facebook pages and LinkedIn company profiles posting job offers, offer their content dynamically via RSS feed. In some cases, you can even set up syndication results in real time for a specific search, such as "Montreal nurse". It's possible that there's no posted job in your field right now, but by subscribing to an RSS feed, you'll have quick access to all the latest job offers as soon as they're posted from your Google Reader account. This will allow you to optimize your job search.
Always be on the lookout for keywords and icons related to web syndication when visiting your favourite sites. For example, this blog has both a "Posts" and "Comments" button with the RSS icon in the right column. Can you find them? This will allow you to subscribe to our blog.
If you work in a community or employment centre with good web resources, you can also try using RSS feeds to post job offers automatically and dynamically to your website. Try talking to your web administrator to see if this might be feasible for your team.
You also can find a fairly extensive list of free, available RSS feeds on various websites, such as Feedzilla.
Sources:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_syndication
http://annotatedgabbs.wordpress.com/2011/02/06/exploring-the-interwebs-part-1/
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