For better or worse, companies seem to take a much stronger interest in a job candidate when they know that individual has been talking to their competitors — and possibly interviewing with them, to boot! So if you’re currently in discussions with a given employer, or even recently got turned down by a specific employer that interested you greatly, do some research and turn up the names of a handful of companies that are in the exact same industry space. At that point, reach out to any appropriate person there (e.g. a recruiter, HR professional, or hiring manager) and mention that you’re “currently in discussions with XZY company” (their competitor) but wanted to keep your options open and explore additional opportunities within the industry, as well. While this technique for generating leads certainly isn’t foolproof, we’ve had a number of people get responses, interviews, and job offers by leveraging an existing discussion with one company as a “springboard” for opening up talks with other similar firms in the same market space!
Do you have some friends/acquaintances on LinkedIn whom you suspect would be willing to help you, but you’re not sure HOW they could help you, exactly? Or who they might know that might be useful to you from a referral standpoint?
If so, one great trick is to use the little-known “Connections Of” filter on LinkedIn to look through the connections of people you know (before reaching out to them) in order to identify a person or two, specifically, to whom you can ask an introduction. To do this, go to the LinkedIn main page and follow these steps:
— Run a blank search in the top search box and then click the “People” button underneath and the “All Filters” button on the right
— In the “Connections Of” menu, type in the name of somebody in your network that you think would be willing to make a referral for you
— Go down through the rest of the menu and use the Location, Industry, Title, and other filters to clarify a certain kind of person you might want to meet
— Run the search and you should see the names of any people your friend knows who fit your desired parameters
— Identify a person or two of interest, from a networking standpoint, and then just reach out to your friend and ask them if they’d be willing to introduce you!
Note that while the above approach works well in the vast majority of cases, certain people on LinkedIn have their “shared connections” setting turned off, which would prevent this technique from working effectively — since it would only show you people that you already know in common with the person in question. There won’t be any 2nd Degree connections list. In such cases, just move on and try somebody else in your network who might not have this particular setting enabled.
While few people think to utilize this strategy, there are thousands of recruiters/managers on LinkedIn who are actively announcing that they’re hiring and that their company is growing — so you might try running a search for any individuals in your local area who have openly stated that they’re looking for new candidates.
To do this, go to the main LinkedIn search box and run a search using the exact keyword phrase “we’re hiring” OR “now hiring” OR “currently hiring” OR “actively hiring” OR “join our team” OR “working for us” — and then when the results come up, use the Location menu at the top to set your specific geographic preferences. If you get TOO many results in your search, try clicking on the “All Filters” button at the top of the results page to narrow down your results further using the Industry menu and other options.
Seeking to take the drudgery out of a certain task? Try using “gamification” principles and making a game out of it! To do this, brainstorm some specific rules, goals, rewards, or (gulp!) punishments you can apply that will add structure to your routine and increase your motivation to hit certain targets. For example, perhaps you allow yourself to take an hour-long break for every two hours of focused effort you put into job hunting. Or maybe you treat yourself to a latte each day, but only after you make five networking outreach efforts. Or you don’t let yourself watch television or surf your phone until you’ve successfully sent 10 resumes to 10 new people/places you haven’t approached previously. Ultimately, just like dieting or exercise, having some kind of tracking system, goals, and incentives in place can be a key factor in jazzing up your routine and making steady progress!
As a general rule of thumb, companies that attract new financing tend to be ramping up on hiring, so consider doing research via Google, the Seattle Times, Geekwire, Crunchbase, Puget Sound Business Journal, and other sources to find companies with recent cash infusions – and then track their jobs page and/or reach out to the company directly to pitch your skills.
A quick way to track down sources of information regarding companies that have received new financing is to run a Google search for phrase like seattle company funding, replacing the word “Seattle” (if needed) with any other city or state you might want to target. After running this search, you can also click the Tools button on the right side of the page and limit the results to “the past year” or any other specific time frame you might want to focus on.
As we all know, there’s a sea of content out there on social media and behind every posting, tweet, or article there’s an individual who took time out of their busy day to write up the content in question and publish it. Such people are frequently well-connected, interested in dialogue, and excited to get feedback on what they produce — and as a result, can often be more helpful than the average individual if you approach them with a mix of flattery and/or requests for help.
Given this, try searching for LinkedIn postings, blog articles, Twitter feeds, and other social content related to your field or to specific companies you’re targeting in your search. Then, once you’ve found some content of interest, contact the authors to share some positive feedback and ask for a bit of advice regarding the person’s field of expertise or the company with which they’re associated.
LinkedIn’s “posts” search option is a great place to start in this regard, if you haven’t yet experimented with it — and you also can look up specific companies on LinkeIn and hit the “follow” button to track any emerging jobs/content that the organization puts out. Additionally, ChatGPT does an excellent job of turning up useful articles and content sources if you enter questions like “top blogs about Microsoft” or “social media articles about Expedia” or “tweets about docusign” on the site’s search interface.
When it comes to networking, the more people out there who you aware you’re on the hunt for a new job, the better — at least if you’re not in a confidential employment situation at the moment.
On top of this, while the average person literally knows hundreds and hundreds of people through various avenues of life — family, friends, coworkers, vendors, customers, service providers, neighbors, church acquaintances, etc. — many professionals tend to limit their initial networking efforts to just a small handful of people who work directly in their field or industry. In reality, however, it’s almost impossible to predict where a great job referral might come from and it can pay dividends to get the word out far and wide to everybody you know, maximizing your chances of somebody spotting an appropriate lead on your behalf.
To facilitate this type of “broadcast” announcement, some people post an announcement out to all of their contacts on social media sites like LinkedIn and Facebook — whereas others use a more old-fashioned method and just email a note out to everybody they know, copying everybody’s email address in the BCC: field. Whichever option you might consider, the simple truth is that if you get word out about your avaiability to dozens (or hundreds) of new people who don’t yet know you’re looking, your odds go way, way up of receiving a useful referral or, at the very least, a ton of moral support!
Ask any career counselor or read virtually any book or web article about job hunting and you’ll be told, time and time again, that one of the most critical steps in any job hunt is to network, network, network with lots of new people. As a result, thousands of networking groups and events have sprung up in recent decades, providing strangers an opportunity to mix, mingle, and meet others in their industry or professional field.
The irony of this, however? In some respects, these events dedicated to networking can actually be WORSE places to network than many other options you could consider. For starters, if you’re networking among a group of people who have skills very similar to your own, it’s unlikely they’d be sharing any hot jobs or personal connections simple due to a fear of competition. Secondly, many of these erstwhile “networking” groups are populated mostly by people who are also looking for jobs — limiting their ability to help in some respects — and also aren’t usually geared toward helping foster long-term relationship-building.
One alternative to the above approach that often pays greater dividends is to get involved in organizations that AREN’T specifically designed for networking. Look into joining some local community associations, or philanthropic groups, or hobby clubs, or social meetups where all of the people there share a common interest — and are likely going to be coming to multiple meetings, not just a single event, allowing you to get to know them better and build a higher level of trust/familiarity. For even better results, you might even look into volunteering to help run the group or to serve as an officer of the organization, since that would give you an even more powerful platform to connect with people and get the word out, in an appropriate way, about your current career situation.
In one respect, people just aren’t all that complicated. They tend to respond positively to “random acts of kindness” and think highly of those folks who seem to respect them, value their friendship, and make them feel good.
Luckily, in today’s world, there are a ton of creative ways in which you can brighten somebody’s day and strengthen their appreciation of you — increasing their potential willingness to help. For example, you might look up some folks you’ve worked with (including distant past acquaintances) on LinkedIn and submit a “recommendation” on their profile that chronicles your positive experience working with them. Or you might share a kind comment on one of their social media posts, devote some time/money to a cause they support, or share an article or personal referral that in some way relates to their world and might be of benefit to them. The sky’s the limit, truly, if you just practice a bit of thoughtfulness. And the side benefit of this approach? You’ll probably feel good about yourself, too, for doing a good deed!
Ultimately, while such beneficial gestures shouldn’t be made simply for the sake of expecting reciprocity, it’s fairly likely that the people you contact will express their appreciation and inquire about your current situation. Should that happen, there’s no shame in informing them about your current employment search and career goals, just in case they might be able to help in some way or perhaps provide a useful referral.
These days, there are a great many job hunters who will ONLY consider work-from-home roles, and many employers (right or wrong) have become annoyed at folks who act like telecommuting is a god-given right, instead of a privilege.
As a result, if you live nearby a particular company and/or are actually more interested in traditional on-site employment — or hybrid opportunities — you might be able to differentiate yourself from the crowd by reaching out to these employers and stressing both your eagerness, and ability, to find a job where you physically show up at the workplace each day. See if you can pique the interest of a suitable recruiter, HR person, or hiring manager by writing them a note indicating that you live closeby and are actively seeking companies that have on-site positions to fill, versus remote roles. Stress the benefits that you feel derive from being together with a team and doing a job in person, which might endear you to a hiring manager frustrated from dealing with job candidates who are not willing to come into the office on a regular basis — or ever!
While it might be self-evident, a great many benefits often arise when an individual with some free time on their hands (e.g. a job hunter between assignments) decides to devote some bandwidth to helping out a local nonprofit or philanthropic organization. Not only does it simply feel good to contribute to a worthy cause, but if you choose your opportunities carefully, you might find volunteer roles that would expose you to local hiring managers and/or allow you to use your professional skills in a manner that will keep them razor-sharp.
In addition to simply asking around in your network to see if anybody knows a suitable place you could volunteer your talents, there are also a number of online sources for tracking down advertised volunteer opportunities or to locate nonprofit organizations in particular fields or industries. Examples include:
· Volunteer Match (www.volunteermatch.org)
· VOMO (www.vomo.org)
· Do Something (www.dosomething.org)
· Volunteer.gov (www.volunteer.gov)
· JustServe (www.justserve.org)
· AmeriCorps (www.americorps.gov)
· VolunteerWorld (www.volunteerworld.com)
· GuideStar NonProfit Directory (www.guidestar.org)
· Craigslist Volunteer Opportunities (http://seattle.craigslist.org/search/vol)
For whatever reason, the concept of “humor” isn’t one that plays a particularly large part of the modern job hunting process. Most people consider finding work to be serious and sobering business, or are simply in a tough spot, emotionally, and as a result you almost never see people attempting to leverage their sense of humor to try and improve their odds of success out there.
So while one could obviously go too far in this regard, and come up with concepts that are too corny or silly to produce results, there are still numerous cases where a bit of levity might make one’s materials stand out from the crowd. Perhaps you try creating a resume version that contains some colorful or creative ways of expressing your talents or building rapport with employers. In one instance, I saw a resume version that stated in the summary “Lastly, I’m not a prima donna; I pride myself on a no-ego work style and eager desire to learn from constructive criticism!” In another, I saw the resume of a customer service professional that led with the phrase “Simply put, my whole career has been about dealing with ticked off customers, talking them off the ledge, and restoring their faith in the company’s brand.”
Or you could go a step farther and follow in the footsteps of some people who have produced funny short videos to endear themselves to a given employer — or who come up with exceedingly clever interview answers or cover letter strategies. Again, there’s a fine line you don’t want to cross and you obviously still need to have the basic skills to do the job in question, but if you generally are a person who looks at the world through a lighthearted lens, you might try infusing your search with a bit of humor to see if it “clicks” with any of the hiring managers you’re trying to win over!
Fairly or unfairly, companies these days get bombarded by tons of unsolicited resumes, spam messages, and out-of-left-field networking requests and a result, tend to be fairly unresponsive to many inquiries — leading to many job hunters feeling “ghosted” time and time again when they try to make contact.
If you want to raise your odds of prompting a response, think hard about whether there’s a certain aspect of your background or upbringing that another select group of people might share — and feel a sense of affinity around — that you could use in your outreach efforts. For example, if you went to a small-to-mid-sized college, you can use LinkedIn or the college’s alumni office to identify and contact other people in your area who attended the same institution. If you’re a veteran of the armed services, you could seek out fellow veterans (or companies that actively state they welcome veterans) to see if this camaraderie helps you spark a conversation. Same thing if you speak a non-English language, hail from a certain part of the world, have a disability, belong to a certain faith, or possess a somewhat interesting and unorthodox hobby. All of these items are ones that often create a sense of community and if you try searching LinkedIn for individuals with similar backgrounds, there’s a better-than-average chance that they’ll respond if you highlight this common bond in your outreach materials!
While introverts may cringe at this suggestion, one powerful method for boosting your networking exposure and enhancing your career marketability, potentially for years to come, is to step up and form an online/offline group of some kind that relates to your occupation or industry.
Having trouble finding a group where product managers can get together to share best practices? Interested in chatting with other accountants about the latest federal tax regulations? Wondering if there are other stay-at-home parents facing some challenges in terms of returning to the working world? Again, if you can’t find a group that already exists around such a topic, consider taking the bull by the horns — forming one — and inviting appropriate people to join it.
Again, this could be a group that meets together regularly in person, on a formal or informal basis, or could be an online community such as a “LinkedIn Group” that you decide to pul together. Regardless, leading such a group would not only amplify your networking to a great degree, but also might give you a creative new angle for contacting local employers, recruiters, guest speakers, and other parties to learn more about their organizations.
Given that job hunting in the modern era can be a very isolating experience, where you largely work from behind a computer, it can pay dividends (both for mental health and inspiration, as well as generating leads) to get out of the house on a regular frequency and to attend to some meetings/events in your professional field. To find appropriate gatherings, check your local newsaper for an “events calendar” section, in addition to doing some Google searches using the following format — just changing the first word and/or city (if needed) to track down organizations and events in your local area:
e.g. accounting AND seattle AND (meeting OR conference OR event OR association)
e.g. “project management” AND bellevue AND (meeting OR conference OR event OR association)
e.g. sustainability AND chicago AND (meeting OR conference OR event OR asssociation)
When attending events, make a point to engage others and seek out the officers/organizers of the event, to introduce yourself, since they’re frequently outgoing individuals and can help point you to appropriate resources and/or attendees relevant to your goals.
Also don’t limit your efforts strictly to professional events in your field/industry; sometimes attending meetings focused on your personal interests, hobbies, or community topics will bear more fruit from a networking standpoint since you’d be interacting with a more diverse group of people — all of whom appear to share a common interest with you!
With the massive recent shift towards remote work as a viable employment option for many professions, based on the necessities of the COVID pandemic, make sure you’re not limiting your search efforts strictly to local employers. Use company-finding sites like LinkedIn, as well as the links at the bottom of the Career Horizons website “Client Resources” page, to identify companies throughout the country — or globe — that relate specifically to your background and areas of expertise. Make a list of 20, 30, or more of the most promising ones and then both check their website careers page to see if they might listing any suitable remote roles, as well as consider contacting somebody at the company directly to inquire about possible roles. In doing so, make sure to stress the clear connection between your qualifications and the company’s line of business. You won’t get very far just contacting companies at random, in other words. You need to show them why your expertise would make you a particularly valuable asset to their team, even on a remote basis.
If you’re feeling a bit isolated in your search, consider reaching out to some other job seekers (most of whom are likely feeling the same way) and see if they want to meet/chat on a regular basis to compare notes, share feedback, and create mutual accountability. Most people will likely jump at the chance to collaborate and as psychologists have told us for decades, people are far more likely to reach their goals via a team approach, versus going it alone.
So show a little gumption, ask around, and see if you can find some “fellow travelers” interested in partnering together on this challenge in some formal/informal manner. Perhaps you assemble a group that meets up on Zoom every Monday to share progress, compare notes, and commit to achieving certain job search goals during the week. Or that meets at a certain coffee shop every other week to catch up and commiserate. Or that actively shares leads with one another or checks in with the other party, every day or two, to see how things are going and provide some moral support.
In decades past, there were actually quite a few groups and job search clubs that followed this exact model and met regularly to lend a hand to one another. With the advent of the Internet, however, the number of these organizations has greatly diminished — but that’s not stopping any enterprising individual from replicating the success of these groups in their own customized fashion!
While the average recruiter gets bombarded every day with dozens of resumes and LinkedIn requests from job hunters, desperately asking if they have openings, few professionals show any empathy toward those in the talent acquisition profession or consider what they can do to help the recruiter, in return.
So as a potential strategy for differentiating yourself with recruiters, consider going the extra mile and letting them know you’re interested in building a mutually-beneficial relationship with them, even if they don’t have a search in hard at the moment that would fit your background. Offer to make useful networking referrals that relate to their placement focus, share insights about your industry, and potentially assist them in locating sales opportunities. Kill them with kindness, in other words, and see if you can get past the “shields” that most recruiters have developed simply as a coping mechanism to deal with the onslaught of professionals they often deal with on any given day — many of which have entitled attitudes and/or berate recruiters for not having a job readily available for them.
While you may not win them all, I’ve definitely heard from recruiters that they’re definitely more responsive to candidates who understand the nature of their business model and aren’t just interested in a short-term transaction.
One of the hardest things about job hunting is the unstructured nature of it and the fact that one’s efforts don’t always directly translate directly into immediate feedback and results. Even if you’re doing everything right, weeks can go by without gaining much traction, and it’s easy to get burned out on the monotony of reviewing ads and sending out resumes, day after day.
To get around this, and freshen things up, think about whether you could channel some time and energy into a “research project” of some kind that will focus your activity and give you a compelling, legitimate reason to reach out to executives and industry influencers. Could you research and write an article about an emerging topic in your field? Develop a video of some kind? Send out a LinkedIn posting or article? Start a new LinkedIn group or networking club? Author a white paper? Build a comprehensive list of companies in a given field you’re targeting?
The options are basically endless in terms of what’s possible, but you’ll often find that if can get yourself into a “research” mindset like perhaps you had back in school, when you were tasked with a homework assignment, it will bring some greater focus to your efforts — and possibly allow you to develop some content/collateral that would be highly useful from a networking standpoint. If you need examples of past research projects other clients have undertaken, or help coming up with some ideas for your own project, don’t hesitate to ask your Career Horizons coach!
As we all know, corporate cultures can vary dramatically from company to company — and play a major role in the satisfaction level one experiences on the job.
In light of this, if there are some very specific cultural factors you’d ideally like to find in your next place of employment, consider doing some research on companies that have these cultural elements and see if you can use these as a conversation-starter to get the door open. For example, perhaps you’d like to work for a place that lets you bring pets to work, has a happy hour, strongly embraces diversity principles, or that has a “work hard, play hard” culture. Or maybe you’re looking for a company that welcomes people with a sense of humor, subsidizes bus passes for employees, or believes strongly in encouraging staff growth and development.
Whatever cultural factors strike your fancy, the best way to find companies who share these values is to isolate some appropriate keywords (e.g. pets, sense of humor, happy hour, etc.) and run them through top job websites like Indeed.com and LinkedIn’s “Jobs” page. Don’t put any actual job titles in these searches, just search purely on the cultural language and see what organizations turn up. At that point, you can investigate them a bit further and if they appear to be a target worth pursuing, reach out to somebody at the company cold — or through a networking referral — to explain why their culture appeals to you so much and see what the best way might be to pursue employment opportunities at the firm.
Many people looking for work find themselves spending a significant amount of time networking, meeting people for coffee, and socializing in various personal and professional circles — but complain that they almost never seem to turn up any useful help or referrals.
One big factor that leads to this, in many situations, is a lack of specificity (from the job seeker) about the actual KINDS of referrals they’re seeking and sufficient clarification about the types of organizations they’d be most interested in working for, potentially. Many professionals, for example, will tell their network that they’re looking for companies that “are growing” or “that treat their employees well” or that they’re seeking an “innovative” or “customer-focused” company of some kind. In trust, however, these blanket statements will almost never lead to actual referrals. They’re too vague and don’t give the listener enough clues to jog their memory and surface an appropriate person or organization to pass along.
So if you haven’t done so already, spend some quality time actually building a list of 20-30 companies (or more) that you’ve researched and would be highly interested in exploring based on their size, industry, location, and other factors. The free company list-building feature on LinkedIn here can be tremendously useful for this purpose. Then, once you’ve created such a list, consistently show it to the people you meet and ask them directly whether they’ve “heard anything good or bad” about the organizations in question or if they happen to know anybody who has worked there that might be able to share some useful insights.
Time and time again, when our clients adopt this step and take the guesswork out of the equation for the listener, they report that their networking efforts are far more productive and that they routinely walk away from meetings with one, or two, or more useful referrals in hand!
While almost every active job hunter is aware of Indeed.com and likely using it to find job openings worth pursuing, most people search it in only one way — which involves entering the job title(s) they’re targeting and seeing what matching listings come up.
Given that companies have invented a massive amount of creative new titles in recent decades, however, it can be very easy to miss some appropriate roles by trying to outguess every possible job title that would fit you, up front. Instead, try a search from the bottom up, not worrying about the actual job title and simply searching for specific skill keywords and industry phrases that would likely be present in the ideal job you’re pursuing. To do this most effectively, you’ll need to combine your search phrases with capital AND statements — and if you’re searching for a phrase that’s more than single word, you need to enclose it in quotation marks. It’s a little tricky at first, but once you get the hang of it, it should be no problem at all. Here are some examples of such searches:
accounting AND “public speaking”
writing AND administrative AND communications
“project management” AND scheduling AND technology
influencing AND leadership
“listening skills” AND “empathy” AND helping
If you try a few searches of this type, using your own skills and strengths, it’s almost guaranteed you’ll turn up some interesting roles you haven’t seen before using more conventional search methods. Give it a shot!
One of the challenges of job searching today, due to the information age, is that companies have access to SO many resumes (and LinkedIn profiles) at the drop of a hat that they can easily get overwhelmed — and miss out on identifying some extremely talented candidates for certain roles. On top of this, a great many professionals online tend to exaggerate their credentials to the point that, again, employers can’t always tell who is truly a superstar and who might only have a set of mediocre qualifications for a given assignment.
The best way to combat this? If you’re truly good at your line of work, ask yourself whether there’s any way to actually SHOW the caliber of your skills instead of relying on mere words to convey the message. Obviously people in creative fields (e.g. graphic designers, copywriters, video producers) are used to this reality already and typically have portfolios they’ve assembled to showcase the quality of their work. But this approach isn’t strictly limited to creative types anymore. I’ve seen recruiters who assemble infographic presentations highlighting the types of people they’ve recruited and key metrics they’ve attained in terms of cost per hire, diversity hiring, and the like. I’ve seen administrative assistants who submit PowerPoint presentations or Excel spreadsheets to demonstrate their advanced proficiency using tools such as MS Office. I’ve seen data analysts who ask companies to challenge them with a business problem or case study that they can work on that will underscore the depth of their analytical strengths. And I’ve seen sales professionals who proactively submit 90-day plans to companies, laying out the exact steps they’d take, in the first three months, to approach relevant organizations and help the organization generate some fresh leads.
Heck, I even remember an HR Manager from many years ago who came to a meeting with a great big document carrier under his arm and proceeded to whip out a sequence of the most beautiful “workplace awareness posters” I’ve ever seen, which he’d designed to boost employee recognition around key areas such as safety, compliance, and the like. Trust me when I saw it made a positive impression and really, really set him apart from the crowd.
So granted, perhaps not every single job function can be demonstrated in some sort of tangible or visual way, up front, but it’s definitely a concept worth exploring if you haven’t already. What’s that they say about a picture being worth a thousand words? :)
Want to try an approach that’s really, really bold and unconventional? While the typical job hunter spends an inordinate number of hours looking for suitable “help wanted” ads from employers, very few people these days ever think to try posting a “help offered” advertisement of some kind, just to see if they can catch the eye of an employer seeking somebody with a specialized type of talent.
For those who may not be aware, this tactic actually used to be fairly common in the pre-Internet days, with many trade publications and local newspapers containing dedicated sections where available workers could trumpet their wares. Now the concept has pretty much died out, however, as print publications have been replaced by online sites that don’t allow for this functionality for whatever reason. And yet, there is one website still remaining that embraces the old “help offered” concept to some degree, which is Craigslist.org. If you visit the local Craigslist page in your area, you’ll find there is both a “Services” tab you can use to advertise your talents, as well as a “Resumes” section where people can freely announce their availability for certain types of employment roles.
Of course, there’s also now a wave of “gig economy” sites out there that people can use to promote themselves for consulting engagements — and if you haven’t noticed, LinkedIn profile pages also now have a “Providing Services” option that many users overlook. In fairness, however, these newfangled tools seem primarily geared toward landing short-term contracting jobs, not locating full-time employment. Still, if one is looking to monetize their skills in any possible way, they definitely could be worth checking out!
Another possible creative approach a professional could use to generate leads and command employer attention? Particularly people who are executive-level leaders or highly skilled practitioners of a given profession? You could take some time and assemble your own professional website aimed at showcasing your background, talents, philosophy, and work product. This type of “personal branding” site could be linked to your resume and LinkedIn page, and used as an additional collateral piece, and there’s also a chance that employers might stumble across it in relevant searches on the web.
While this approach isn’t for everybody, and requires a considerable amount of time to get right, there are a growing number of easy-to-use, low-cost resume building sites such as wix.com that one could utilize for this purpose. Such a site could contain all kinds of creative elements including your resume, work samples, a breakdown of your work style and philosophy, a video about your capabilities, references from customers and colleagues, and beyond. And while one shouldn’t expect miracles, simply given the sheer amount of content on the web at large, you just never know when your site will resonate with somebody or an enterprising recruiter will turn it up in some online search efforts.
My only word of caution? If you’re considering such a project, set clear goals/boundaries to guard against it becoming a major time-waster that ends up taking time away from your more conventional job-finding efforts — or a distraction from job hunting activities you’re trying to avoid.
Out of all the potential uses for LinkedIn, which are vast, I’ll confess that I’ve never seen anybody else mention a certain creative approach that could potentially bear fruit for active job seekers. To start with, this idea would require signing up for a 30-day trial (or full subscription) to LinkedIn’s Sales Navigator package if you’re willing and able to do so. Once you’ve gained access to this level of account subscription, however, you’ll have the capability to identify people who have been hired for any specific type of job in the last 90 days – with the idea being that you’d then investigate the company they just left, given the stronger-than-average possibility that the company in question might have a vacancy they haven’t backfilled yet.
To accomplish this, you’d go to the “Sales Navigator” menu on LinkedIn (once you’ve signed for such an account) and then you’d go to the “Lead Filter” menu and set the Geography, Function, and Seniority Level filters to reflect the location and type of role you’d be seeking, specifically. Then you’d click on the “Activities & Shared Experiences” filter and select the “Changed Jobs in the Last 90 Days” option.
Once that’s all done, run the search, and you should see a bunch of people come up who by and large hold roles similar to your own that they’ve landed in the past three months. At that point, simply note the company they LEFT to take the new opportunity — and consider researching that company further, and contacting them, to see if they’re currently experiencing any relevant hiring needs based on the person’s departure.
While not enough people have tried this approach for me to truly determine it’s effectiveness, I think the theory is sound, and it can’t hurt to give it a try if you’re willing to sign up for a trial of the high-powered Sales subscription on the LinkedIn site.
We all hate spam. And even I grit my teeth at the thought of even making this suggestion. But if you are really in urgent need of a job, and willing to try every approach in the kitchen sink to spark a suitable hiring conversation, you could adopt the same approach that millions of companies and sales professionals unabashedly engage in, day in and day out. This approach involves tracking down the e-mail addresses of people who work in your target industry and just hitting them up with a note, cold turkey, to pitch your relevant credentials and ask whether they have any suitable needs.
To uncover the e-mail addresses you’d need to fuel this approach, there are number of sources that you could utilize — although alas, most of them charge a fee. In my experience, the most effective tool is www.evaboot.com, which allows one to export contact names from LinkedIn (alas, you need a “Sales Navigator” subscription on LinkedIn to use the app) and then tracks down e-mail addresses for all of the people you’ve identified. Alternatively, there are sites like ZoomInfo, Hunter.io, and Seamless.ai that also allow users to purchase email address data on professionals throughout the country. Again, one would have to be willing to spend some dollars on this approach, and also evaluate the pros/cons of each of the sites above, but it certainly is an option one could attempt — similar to the methods that millions of sales professionals use, each day, to promote their company’s wares and try to catch the attention of relevant decision-makers.
Although most companies only ask candidates for 3-5 references when they’re evaluating them for potential hire, there’s nothing stopping an enterprising job hunter from asking 10, 20, or 30 individuals to serve as a reference if there are that many folks they’ve worked with in professional fashion. This approach has multiple benefits, including serving as a very safe and respectful way to reach out to people you might not have chatted with in a while — alerting them about your current career situation — in addition to engaging people to a greater degree in your success than a typical note.
So while at the end of the day you might only need a handful of references for formal purposes, consider whether there might be a few dozen coworkers, supervisors, vendors, customers, or friends you could approach to ask them if they’d be willing to share some positive thoughts on your behalf with employers, should the need arise. Unless you’ve really misjudged the relationship, chances are most of these people will say yes, and at that point you’ve “activated” them in a strong way in terms of your networking activities. On top of this, if you’re lucky enough to land multiple job offers, you can rotate the references you share with employers to avoid burning your contacts out or to customize certain sets of references to the specific nature of each individual job.
While many LinkedIn users never notice it, there’s a key feature called “Groups” hiding within the “Work” menu on the top right of the LinkedIn page. If you visit this area of LinkedIn, you’ll discover that there are hundreds of thousands of virtual communities that have been created to connect individuals who share a common interest or career element. For example, there are thousands of alumni groups aimed at connecting people who have attended the same school, tons of groups dedicated to specific professional niches, and countless groups focused on people who have worked in a given industry, support a certain philanthropic goal, or who are interested in business topics such as sustainability, cloud computing, or doing business with China.
To find some groups that relate to your background/interests, simply enter a simple keyword or two into the main search box on LinkedIn and then hit the “Groups” option on the submenu when the results come up. When reviewing your options, you’ll note that the number of members is shown under each group (to help you identify the largest and most active ones) and you can also click on each group to read more about their mission and potentially join them, if interested.
As for the benefits of joining groups and how they can help your job hunting activities? Not only can you post questions on group pages and ask people in the group for advice on career-related issues, but LinkedIn also allows you to email any fellow members of a group for free! So if you review the directory of any groups to which you belong, you might see a bunch of recruiters or hiring managers listed there that you can contact, directly, with a message. It’s a great free workaround to the normal process of messaging people you don’t know on LinkedIn, which requires a more expensive subscription.
This particular creative job hunting suggestion might seem crazy, but in multiple cases over the years, I’ve had job hunters decide to “take a vacation” from their job search if they’re feeling stressed, frustrated, or burned out. Granted, this suggestion might not be viable for somebody in a pressing financial situation, but for those individuals with a decent cushion of resources, it can sometimes pay dividends to put one’s search efforts on hold for a week or two — allowing time to recharge, regroup, and regain some confidence that can get lost when you’re not getting a lot of positive feedback from the marketplace.
Some job hunters who have tried this have reported that a quick break in their efforts gave them the distance they needed to reevaluate their career path and gain a better understanding of their skills, strengths, and professional interests. Others have used the time to engage in some new learning, rekindle relationships with their loved ones, or attend to various other aspects of their lives that they’d been neglecting recently. If you’re considering this possibility, however, the key is to take a COMPLETE break. Set a clear start date and end date for your “job search vacation” so that it doesn’t end up going on indefinitely — and make sure to give yourself full permission to relax during this period, and disconnect from the daily grind, so that the pause in activity is able to accomplish its goals.
Again, while this option may not be viable for everybody, it’s definitely a possibility worth trying for those who have been burning the midnight oil in terms of their job hunting efforts and who — just like with any normal job — might owe it to themselves to take a break in order to avoid burnout.