Enter LinkedIn Jobs.
Not content with just connecting people around the world, LI now offers a full job search engine that draws both on its own listings and those of the postings aggregator Simply Hired.
After taking LI Jobs for a spin and comparing its results to my prior findings on Indeed, here are my takeaways:
Pros
- More advanced filtering features - just like with LI connection searches.
- Easier to go from company contact research right to job postings.
Cons
- Takes longer to load, since it searches LI and then Simply Hired, sequentially.
- When using the company field, you need to put in the parent firm (e.g., Mattel), not the subsidiary (e.g., Fisher Price) - even when you only want results from the latter.
- Found the same results as Indeed for major companies but missed many of the postings from smaller firms, ultimately generating 29 fewer points than my prior search.
Conclusion
Although the time change between my first search and this one may be a culprit in the listings discrepancy, I'll be sticking with Indeed for now!
OK, now for the trickier part: Tracking down connections at the firms I like but where I don't know anyone. I'm going to turn this post into a showdown between the two latest social question-answering services:
Key Insights: This was mostly as expected - big firms were not only more likely to be hiring, but hiring MBAs and for marketing internships. As a result, however, in those rare cases when I saw a smaller firm (Leapfrog, 2tor) hiring for my specialty, I was especially excited!
Key Insights: I assumed this step would be paralyzing. After all, trying to rank 78 of anything can involve countless close calls and ruminations, let alone 78 firms that may define your life in a few months. But using the limited rating system meant I could quickly establish an internal rubric (5 = dream, 1 = never heard of it) and breeze through the task. Also interesting to note that, while most of the firms came from my original dream list, firms sourced from other areas are starting to pop up. 
Key Insights: Although I could have used my schools' alumni sites, I found that LinkedIn data is much more up-to-date. After all, who wants to update their ever-changing resume on a dozen different sites when just about everybody uses LI? And for me, being able to search multiple alumni bases at once (Company = Swarthmore OR "University of Michigan") meant that I could breeze through 78 companies in no time. Finally, because just about every company had a Wolverine on staff at some point, I stuck to firms that currently have an alum onboard to generate better discriminating power.
Key Insights: The Internet needs to be regulated immediately. Seriously, searching for anything involving trends just sucks you into a wormhole of ideas and links to more ideas. The only saving grace is that many articles and posts don't talk about companies, slowing down my manic pursuit of trend-setting potential employers.
Key Insights: Indeed, a dumb name for a website, but a very useful resource - indeed! It's good to see that so many firms are hiring, even if applying through the site would be a sucker's mistake.
