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You Must Be on ZipRecruiter
Yes, I know. The cofounder and CEO of ZipRecruiter is telling me I have to use ZipRecruiter. What a corporate shill. Well if I haven't made it abundantly clear already, ZipRecruiter is at the forefront of technological innovation to assist you in your job search.
But hey, don't listen to me. Listen to the wisdom of the crowd. ZipRecruiter is the number-one ranked job search app in the United States for four years running.1 If you're actively searching for work, and you like the idea of all the jobs in one place, applying to those jobs with one click, seeing status updates when the employer reads your resume, and heck, even getting recruited, then ZipRecruiter is the job search tool for you.
You Must Be on LinkedIn
LinkedIn is the professional social network. The number-one way to get a job you want is to know someone who will vouch for you at the company you're applying to. It's also how people in skilled positions or with multiple years of experience are most likely to be discovered by recruiters. Everyone looking for a career versus just finding a job should be on LinkedIn.
LinkedIn gives your network—and the 87% of recruiters who use it to find hires—a lot more than your resume can.2 Used the right way, it can reflect who you are as a professional and as a person. The most important way to do that is by keeping your profile page updated. That means including a profile picture (which increases profile views 21 times and connection requests nine times), listing all of your relevant skills (adding just five skills increases messages 33-fold3), your most current experience, and a headline that gives a succinct overview of what you do or aspire to do. If you're looking for work, let recruiters know that you're open to opportunities in your settings. This can be done confidentially so your current employer won't know!
Other information you can use to stand out on your profile includes samples of your work and presentations; listing awards, certifications, volunteer work; and the community and industry organizations you're involved with.
Once you've got your profile in order, it's time to use that search bar!
· Find the pages of companies you are interested in or that fall within your industry and follow them so that their updates and open roles come straight to your newsfeed.
· Look up people you know—current and previous colleagues, friends, and people you'd label “just acquaintances”—and invite them to connect.
· Find people you may not know but have a connection to, such as school alumni, title equivalent peers at partner companies, and even the connections of your connections.
Every person you add to your network extends your circle and gets the messages you share out there. You can expand even further by joining active professional groups on the site. Engaging with other people's content there—and sharing your own—will invite new connections and position you as a domain expert.
You Might Want to Use Industry-Specific Job Boards
The job search industry is replete with niche job boards focused on specific industries. In the majority of cases, the job content on these sites can be found and searched within the aggregators. There are a few exceptions where I'd strongly encourage you to review the niche sites including Hcareers if you're interested in the hospitality industry, HigherEdJobs if you're a teacher or professional in the Higher Education space, and Rigzone if you're interested in the Oil and Gas industry. If your background and experience are tightly specialized, it never hurts to review industry-specific job sites because they'll often have content beyond just jobs that can either help you network or get more training. I would view these sites as supplements to whichever modern job site you make your primary search tool.
Use a Human Recruiter (If You Can)
The best thing about a recruiter: They're humans who talk to other humans. They can skip the robots and put you directly in front of a real person. Recruiters have connections at many different companies within many different industries, and they know exactly who to talk with to get an interview on the calendar. Sometimes they even know about job openings before they are posted. With a recruiter, you never need to worry about the resume black hole.
Recruiters can also help you fine-tune your resume, coach you on what to say to an interviewer, and are out there on the street job searching for you. The best part is that they make their money from the company who hires you. So all the help they provide comes at no charge.
“The biggest value I add as a recruiter to my candidates is that companies trust me to pick the right people for the job, so when I send a candidate over, it's a fast track to an interview. Of course, you first have to convince me that you're right for the job, but if you can do that, you're in really good shape.”
—Recruiter who can help you
Monster and Indeed Are Both Good Supplemental Job-Search Tools
The two titans of the old-school job industry are still alive and kicking today. Both of them still do offline advertising, which keeps their brand awareness high, both of them are aggregators that let you search all the jobs in one place, and both of them have enough data to build powerful modern search algorithms.
Monster was bought by Randstad, one of the largest staffing firms in the world. Indeed was bought by Recruit Holdings, a Japanese HR conglomerate also heavily focused on the staffing industry. It remains to be seen how the parent companies of these two sites will use them over time.
One thing we know for sure is that no two sites have exactly the same jobs. It makes sense if you have the time to set up email alerts from one of these two sites as a supplement to ZipRecruiter and LinkedIn.
Summary
· ZipRecruiter is a must if you're actively looking for work.
· LinkedIn is a must, but it's a social network more than a job site.
· Industry-specific job boards work in a narrow number of industries. Using them doesn't hurt, but you should still be on at least one modern general job board as well.
· Recruiters can give you direct access to opportunities and insight on how to secure them.
Notes
1. 1. iOS App Store data/Google Play Store data, December 2019.
2. 2. Jobvite. “2020 Recruiter Nation Survey,” October 2020, www.jobvite.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/Jobvite-RecruiterNation-Report-Final.pdf.
3. 3. Catherine Fisher, “5 Steps to Improve Your LinkedIn Profile in Minutes,” LinkedIn official blog, August 3, 2016, https://blog.linkedin.com/2016/08/03/5-steps-to-improve-your-linkedin-profile-in-minutes-.