Welcome to Recruiter Q&A, where we pose employment-related questions to the experts and share their answers! Have a question you’d like to ask? Leave it in the comments, and you might just see it in the next installment of Recruiter Q&A!
Today’s Question: We all know about job boards, LinkedIn, and the like. But what are some of the more unlikely places where savvy job seekers can find new opportunities? Share with us some of the not-so-well-known ways to hunt down open jobs!
1. Use Mention
One smart tactic is to use a free monitoring tool like Mention to create a notification when companies you’re interested in Tweet their jobs. Checking the Twitter streams of dozens of companies can take time. Get a tool to do the work for you.
Google should not be overlooked as a potential tool for the job search. I know of one case study where someone searched for a job via Google (instead of using job boards, etc.) and found a job listing that the employer had only advertised on its own website. The company hadn’t used job boards at all, possibly in an attempt to save on recruiting costs. The person applied for the role and later found out that only three people had applied altogether, instead of the dozens (or even hundreds) that might have done so if the job were placed on a popular job board. Obviously this significantly increased each candidate’s chances of getting an interview and landing the job.
Of course, a lot of job boards will come up when doing a Google search for a job, but it’s worth trying out different keywords and skimming through a few pages beyond the first in order to see if you can find a golden opportunity buried away somewhere.
Our everyday interactions are often overlooked as sources for jobs. Your barista knows a lot of people, for example. Your fitness coach does, too. Using these connections can result in unexpected opportunities that you never would have found otherwise.
Ecumenical career transition groups can be found at area churches, temples, synagogues, or mosques. These community outreach efforts assist the unemployed with job leads from their respective congregations.
Public libraries are excellent resources for finding jobs. In addition to professional staff members who are skilled at assisting patrons with narrowing down their job searches, you can also access valuable online resources. Many libraries subscribe to databases like Reference USA and A to Z Databases that allow you to create customized company lists based on your preferences. Instead of blindly typing job titles into a job search engine, you can tailor your list by industry, company size, location, expenditures, office branches, whether it is public or privately owned, and more.
Normally, we associate Reddit with viral stories, but Reddit has tons of subreddits that can actually be great places to find potential employers. Take for example, the /r/Entrepreneur subreddit: Startup leaders use this place to talk to other like-minded people and get advice and tips. Now, most of these startups are in their early stages. Some may not even have websites yet. That means they need employees to help them get started – and that’s a perfect opportunity for anyone looking for a new and exciting job. You can either send a private message to these entrepreneurs or just reply to their thread/post. Most of them are very friendly and receptive. You never know – you may get yourself a well-paying job in an exciting new company that turns out to be the next big thing!
