By ANDREA KAY

Gannett News Service

It would be easy to say that your next job can be found on one of the major job boards on the Internet. But I'd be lying.

Despite wishful thinking, you won't find most job openings listed anywhere. Not on the Internet, in newspaper ads or with recruiters. Especially today.

It's simply not feasible for most companies to post all their openings at a place like Monster.com. For one thing, it's gotten extremely expensive. It costs an employer $225 to list a job for 28 days and $750 to have access to the resume database for three months on one such job site. Most have similar fees. That adds up. And even though things are picking up, employers aren't in a hiring frenzy, so they aren't posting a lot of jobs.

Finding a job is still a matter of common sense, which means you must tap many resources. Talk to live people. Target a list of companies in your industry. Go to their Web sites and check out their job listings where not every job will be listed either. Write letters to these companies and follow up.

Part of your strategy can be to check out niche sites that focus on your field or area of interest. It doesn't hurt to cover all your bases. You have to subscribe to some of these sites. And none of them will list all openings.

Having said that, here are some of those niche sites I've discovered that focus on specific situations people have asked me about: