With Google News Alerts, you get results for your specified search terms sent directly to your email inbox whenever Google finds matching web pages — which is quite often, as you’ll find out if you use the service.

I’ve been using Google News Alerts to find RFPs and contract jobs that suit my interests.

Meanwhile, with so many people posting their resumes online, Google News Alerts could also serve as a recruitment tool. Search terms could include job titles, industry buzzwords, and the city where you need to fill an opening.

Anybody who has used the news alerts knows that the biggest problem with the service is how inclusive the results are. You’ll get some results that aren’t very useful even after you’ve gotten better at coming up with good search phrases.

Coincidentally, my work started to get busy again right after I set up my news alerts. So I haven’t paid close attention to a lot of the emails, but I have looked at some of them. In some cases the searches have turned up things in my field that were of interest to me, even if they weren’t actually RFPs.