Want to know the secret to landing your dream job? Hard work.

Victoria Young has figured this out, and she's still in college. The 20-year-old senior at the University of California, Los Angeles, has set her sights on a marketing position in an entertainment company. She already has interned with Sony Corp. and is now interning with Disney Worldwide Outreach, a division of Walt Disney Co.

She has been active in the Bruin Ad Team, UCLA's student-run marketing group, which participates in an annual competition sponsored by the American Advertising Federation.

She's a skilled networker, e-mailing friends, former co-workers and current Disney colleagues to let them know of her job interests and handing out the business cards she received through her part-time job as a campus sales rep for Dell Inc.

And she reviews her resume at least every other month: "It's a constant work in progress."

Young's leave-no-stone-unturned effort will pay off, experts say. Divining your dream career requires introspection and honest self-assessment. Getting hired is all about doggedness and focus. It means throwing yourself out there over and over again and facing rejection. Again and again.

Along the way, there are seven things you should do:

1. Post your resume online.

You should buy high-quality paper and fresh ink for your printer, because even these days, some employers want to hold your physical resume in their hands, and there's more on that below. Meanwhile, accept that there are virtues to going digital — those being that it's easy, fast and puts you in the nice position of being immediately accessible.

www.Monster.com lists hundreds of thousands of jobs in virtually every occupational category and works with 90 percent of the Fortune 1000 companies, according to spokesman Steve Sylven. Other sites target specific fields, with www.jobsinthemoney.com focusing on accounting and finance, for example. www.Computerjobs.com focuses on the obvious (computer jobs) and www.philanthropy.com and www.opportunitynocs.org focus on the nonprofit world.

Posting is generally free to job seekers — an advantage that's also a disadvantage. With 75 million resumes on www.Monster.com, yours can get lost in the shuffle.

Security also has been a problem. Last fall, Monster Worldwide Inc. said an internal investigation found that criminals used passwords belonging to legitimate corporate recruiters to scour posted resumes, giving them access to e-mail addresses, home addresses and phone numbers.

2. Apply directly to a company, both online and off.

Many companies post openings on their Web sites, but responding blind could land your application in a "black hole," says Gary Kaplan, founder of Gary Kaplan & Associates, an executive search company in Pasadena, Calif. Do it the old-fashioned way, too: "Get the name of someone and write to that person."

3. Tap the "hidden" job market.

Tell relatives, friends, friends of friends, trusted colleagues, your rabbi, your uncle's dentist, the deli clerk — almost anyone and practically everyone — that you are on a job hunt. For all the sweep of the Internet, the word-of-mouth route, also known as networking, is still invaluable.

Networking landed Diana her first job in consulting three years ago. She started with a computer search to build a list of companies where she might want to work and wrote directly to people at each specifying the type of job she hoped to find. The employers she met then didn't have openings, but she made such a strong impression that one found a place for her in the company within a couple of months. The 20-something Los Angeles woman doesn't want to use her full name because she's hunting for a new job and plans to mine the hidden job market this time, too.

"I figure it's better than putting your name into a big pile of online resumes with people just clicking buttons," she says. "It's not personal at all."

4. Contact a recruiter.

Employers hire executive search companies to help them find high-level managers. These companies find prospects by combing through their resume databases, soliciting resumes and calling hot shots they hear about from former clients. And many headhunters will be happy to hear from you. The Directory of Executive Recruiters — known as the Red Book — is available in libraries and bookstores and lists virtually every recruiter in the country.

It's "smart networking sense" to take calls from recruiters even if you're not looking for a job. Kaplan advises.

5. Polish your resume.

Putting your best self on paper or into pixels is a "craft that has to be mastered," says Richard Bolles, author of the job hunter's bible "What Color is Your Parachute." First-timers and veterans can find plenty of resume tips on the major job search sites and at the library. Some rules of thumb: