In Hunt for High Pay, Be Specific

When Scott Wood began his search for a job paying around $130,000 earlier this year, he did what many senior professionals do. He reached out to recruiters at executive-search firms about his interest in a senior law position at a large East Coast company. But recruiters typically pursue job candidates, rather than the other way around, so it wasn't surprising that his efforts failed to generate any interviews.

Eventually, Mr. Wood, 36 years old, tried theladders.com, a job site that advertises positions only if they pay salaries of $100,000 or more. Within a few weeks of signing up, he says, he applied to 40 employers, landed six interviews and secured three job offers. In April he accepted a counsel position at Lowe's Cos., a publicly traded chain of home-improvement superstores based in Mooresville, N.C. "I got the salary I wanted, and I like the benefits," he says.

If you're in the market for a high-paying job, consider narrowing your search to online career resources specifically aimed at experienced professionals. Many job boards that service professionals at all career levels don't list salary ranges, leaving job hunters uncertain as to how a position fits with their financial expectations. Meanwhile, a growing number of lucrative opportunities have been showing up on job sites in the high-paying category in recent years. For example, theladders.com now averages about 70,000 job listings at any given time, up from around 40,000 in 2005, according to a company spokeswoman.

Before discovering theladders.com, Mr. Wood, who holds J.D. and M.B.A. degrees, says he searched general job sites such as Monster.com and CareerBuilder.com. "They didn't really cater to anything that I was looking for," says the attorney and U.S. Air Force veteran. "The jobs weren't senior enough."

Some other job sites aimed at experienced professionals include 6FigureJobs.com, ExecutivesOnly.com and Ritesite.com.

It's also possible to land a job if you initiate contact with an executive-search firm. Many of them use their Web sites to advertise the high-paying jobs companies hire them to fill, plus give you an option to apply to them directly. Others don't disclose their search assignments but welcome unsolicited résumés via email. To find search firms' Web addresses, you can search free online recruiter directories such as recruiterlink.com, onlinerecruitersdirectory.com, searchfirm.com and i-recruit.com.

If you apply for a job on a search firm's Web site or even just send in your résumé, your information will frequently be filtered automatically into the company's database, where it will be available to all of the recruiters on staff. That's what happened last fall when Michael Filak applied for several sales jobs in the $200,000 to $300,000 range listed on the Web site of executive-search firm Korn/Ferry International. Though none of his applications generated interview invitations, he was contacted soon after by a recruiter who had seen his résumé in the database to discuss another job that matched his qualifications. By February, Mr. Filak had landed that position, a senior vice president role at Exigen Group Inc., a private global information-technology outsourcing firm based in San Francisco. "I got what I was looking for," says Mr. Filak, who is 51 and works from his home in Plano, Texas.

Since 2003, Korn/Ferry has filled slightly more than 650 top-level positions through its Web site, says Michael Distefano, the Los Angeles-based recruiter's chief marketing officer. While the company also uses a highly targeted approach to attract candidates, Mr. Distefano says, "you never know what the Net might bring in."

If you're not finding ads for jobs that interest you, consider networking with other experienced professionals online. Neil Livingston says he gives out 10 to 12 leads a month to fellow members of the Financial Executives Networking Group at TheFENG.org. "If I help out FENG members, they naturally want to help back," says the chief executive officer of Wraith Technologies LLC, a consulting firm in Avon, Conn.

Senior job seekers should note that many of the job boards and networking sites designed to help job hunters find high-paying positions charge a fee. But most allow you to tour some of their pages at no cost or offer free trial periods. Mr. Wood says he sampled theladders.com, which offers free limited access, before paying $180 for one year of membership, the most expensive package available. The option includes access to the roughly 1,800 new jobs added daily to the site and a weekly e-newsletter about job hunting.

Some executive-networking sites also feature job listings, so you may be able to get more for your money by joining these.

When Barry Johnson's small employer went out of business last fall, the 53-year-old reached out to fellow members of the networking site ExecuNet.com for leads. Meanwhile, he also signed up to receive email notifications from the site about newly posted jobs in his areas of interest. Soon an ad appeared in his inbox for a manager of customer growth at Supervalu Inc., a publicly traded grocery retailer and wholesaler based in Eden Prairie, Minn. He applied, and a week later he had an interview for the position set up by a third-party recruiter. That led to a job offer, which he accepted, that he says boosted his total annual income by about 20%.