I am looking for work in the Chicago Loop (Downtown) or areas easily
accessible (Within 20 minutes) of the Chicago Near North area by
public transportation. I want to know what the BEST websites are out
there to find contract and contract-to-hire work in this limited area.
The work needs to be programming, and web-development related (I.e.
Java/J2EE or Microsoft VBScript/ASP/.NET).

The Chicago Suburbs are *not* an option, except for Evanston.

Hi there!

Our search returned the following results:

This site offers a multitude of IT/IS employment opportunities in
Chicago and surrounding areas. By using the advanced search, you can
narrow your search to contract positions and those located in any of
the given area codes.

http://chicago.computerwork.com/

Alternatively, other subdomains of this site offer the chance to
search jobs specifically by their "type" (ie. Java or VB). Here are
the ones that would interest you:

http://asp.computerwork.com/
http://java.computerwork.com/
http://objectoriented.computerwork.com/
http://visualbasic.computerwork.com/

Here is a promising link to a recruiting firm that deals with
positions specifically in Chicago. Here's what they have to say:
"We are technology/financial recruiting specialists, placing the most
qualified candidates in the best jobs, accurately and effectively."
http://www.roytalman.com/

Although this next link didn't have many listing that meet your
criteria, it has a large base of resumes that employers can view along
with many other good resources:
http://www.brainbuzz.com/

This one is my personal favorite..and although it is not specifically
Chicago based is it by far one of the most highly used job-posting
mechanisms for IT/IS positions:
http://www.dice.com/

Another job site that narrows the search to the Chicago area..there
are a lot of postings here as well:
http://www.chicago.computerjobs.com/site_drilldown.aspx


Here is an individual company, but they seem to be offering a lot of
the types of jobs that you are interested in:
http://www.syn.net/employment/employment.asp

Feel free to post a clarification if you have trouble with anything :)
Hope this was helpful!

Cheers,
answerguru

---

Request for Answer Clarification by kenn-ga on 02 May 2002 12:22 PDT

Hi there -- thanks for your response. Sadly, I've already got Dice,
ComputerJobs, and and ComputerWork in my repertoire, and was hoping
for something perhaps that I hadn't seen already. I purposely didn't
list the sites I had already tried to see if the sites I was trying
were among those considered to be the best right now.

Roy Talman and Associates is primarily a financial services recruiter,
and for whatever insane reason pretty much requires that their
programmers have some experience working on financial projects (don't
ask why...). I've already tried them as well.

So, I take it that there's just nothing out there that is considered
"the best" as a kind of market for people wanting to do contract work
specific to the Chicago market, based on what you have turned up?
Yeah, I suppose I'm pretty good at researching these things myself,
but I was hoping I had missed something obvious!

---

Clarification of Answer by answerguru-ga on 02 May 2002 12:34 PDT

Hi again,

Unfortunately there is no single authority in this area, especially
when you filter for location, work type, and skill set. The services
that I found are the largest ones that serve your area, so looking for
anything smaller might meet your requirements but the chances of
employers posting positions on any so-called "specialty" job sites are
dramatically reduced.

Stick with those resources, hopefully they will come through for you
:)

Good luck in your job search.

answerguru

The answer paired with the response to my clarification was exactly
what I was looking for in an answer, if not the answer I wanted. You
can't shoot the messenger! At least it verified for me that I'm taking
the correct route in my job search.

The May Report (http://www.themayreport.com/) is a good newsletter
covering the Chicago internet/IT scene.  The site references jobs
available and local recruiters from time to time, but is probably
better in just getting an overview of what's happening in Chicago. 
Can't hurt.  Good luck (from a fellow Chicagoan!)