Looking for work is never easy. Looking for meaningful work when you’re over 50, it’s August, and unemployment is at record levels – well, you need all the tools (and friends) you can get.

So here are five online sources I think you’ll find useful if you’re beginning to look for an encore career – or have a friend who is.

• Kerry Hannon, career expert and author of What’s Next?, writes the “Great Jobs for Retirees” column for AARP.org. Recent topics include great health care jobs, great jobs for retired teachers, great part-time jobs, and more. Lots of ideas here!
   
• For lists of nonprofit job postings, go to Idealist.org and CommonGoodCareers. A good look at both will give you a sense of who’s hiring and where the jobs are.
• SecondAct.com is loaded with great content, including a recent post on “Five Need-to-Know Trends in Today’s Job Market,” plus a Career Guide, which lists dozens of useful job boards and career resources for folks over 40.
• Need some help thinking about how to finance an encore career? Check out RetirementRevised, a website written by journalist Mark Miller, author of The Hard Times Guide to Retirement Security.
• And, of course, take a good, long look at Encore.org, the site we publish for folks interested in the new encore stage of life and encore careers for the greater good. Job seekers should check out the “Work” section, where you’ll find information organized in three categories – explore, prepare and find.

If you're not already on LinkedIn, consider signing up. It's an essential career tool whether you're looking around or happy where you are and interested in staying in touch with your network and what's going on in your industry. So many people are on LinkedIn that, when trying to find the most recent contact details for a friend or colleague, I go there even before looking in my address book.