Dean Charleston has been unemployed for more than two months. He was laid off from his manufacturing job earlier this year and has been spending most of his time at Workforce Connection trying to land his next job.

"A couple of nibbles here and there," says Charleston.

Charleston has been using the state's newly revamped Illinois Job Link website, and says although the service has pointed him in the right direction, he hasn't found the right position just yet.

"All of it though has been stuff way out of my way so I can't really get to it," says Charleston about job opportunities that were too far away. "Some of it OK, but not quite around the pay wage I'm looking for or that I'm used to."

Employees with the Illinois Department of Employment Services are trying to connect local business owners with unemployed residents by sending them to the free website, which has thousands of Illinois job postings.

"Commercial job boards like Monster.com and Careerbuilder charge up to 400 dollars to post one job," said Illinois Department of Employment Services director Jay Rowell. "IllinoisJobLink.Com comes at no cost to Illinois employers, and it has all of the tools, all of the searching tools, to find the right employees that those commercial job board has."

Dean Charleston says the site helped him secure a job interview scheduled for later this week. He's hoping his recent trip to the unemployment office will be his last.