Earlier this week, I spoke with Joe Goodwin, president of Atlanta-based executive search firm The Goodwin Group. He says it's taking out-of-work executives an average of 12 months to find a new job during this recession.

Time for a reality check: Your lack of progress in your job search isn't due to any personal or professional deficiency, says Executive Recruiter Mark Jaffe.

On occasion, CIO.com receives e-mails from IT executives asking us to remove certain blog entries and negative comments about their leadership from the site. These requests demonstrate that IT leaders are beginning to understand the damage the Web and social media can do to their reputations and to their careers. But I'm concerned that with the exception of John Halamka, JP Rangaswami and a few others, CIOs generally aren't doing enough to protect their reputations online. I get the sense that they're just doing damage control and that most don't realize their careers are truly at stake until it's too late.

Many career experts warn job seekers against taking lower-level jobs. They argue it does a disservice to the job seeker's career. But in this economy, taking a lower-level job might actually be a smart career move. Here's why.

I recently wrote about the things job seekers do that annoy recruiters—things like tying up their time, sending generic e-mails and spamming them with résumés. I have more do's and don'ts (okay, mostly don'ts) to add to the list, based on subsequent conversations with other headhunters.

Employers are increasingly trolling the web for information about prospective employees that they can use in their hiring decisions. Consequently, career experts advise job seekers to not post any photos, opinions or information on blogs and social networking websites that a potential employer might find offensive. Instead of cautioning job seekers to censor their activity online, we job seekers and defenders of our civil liberties should tell employers to stop snooping and to stop judging our behavior outside of work.

These user-friendly open source tools can help you step up your job search without spending any money.