8 Tips for Finding a Job During a Pandemic
I start a new job on Monday. My search this time around was much different than any other I’ve had to do.
I won’t waste your time with stats about joblessness and unemployment claims during the pandemic; we all know those numbers at this point. And we all have either been directly affected, or know someone who has.
But what I am going to going to share with you are some things I did and some things I learned that may prove useful to you (or your friend or loved one) in your search, too.
A Quick Background on My Search
I think it’s important for me to quickly share the backstory on my quest for a new job. I didn’t lose my job because of Coronavirus. I actually lost my job back in September due to client budget cuts, and since my wife and I had both already been discussing one of us staying home with our daughter for a while, it was perfect timing.
But our financial needs began to change and I began casually looking in January, and really looking toward mid or late February. Just as jobs were drying up and the competition was increasing rapidly as companies looked for ways to save money at the cost of people’s livelihoods.
My career has been focused on the Learning and Development part of the corporate world for the past several years; my previous employer was a consulting firm focused on that within a specific industry. I was recruited for that job on LinkedIn. Prior to that I worked at a large health insurance company, and that job wasn’t difficult for me to get either — I accepted their offer after only applying to a couple other jobs.
Going into this search, my ideal, pie-in-the-sky position was a remote instructional design or talent development position at a reputable company in an industry that pays well.
So that’s the context to my job search. Now, here’s what I learned.
1. Be tenacious.
As mentioned above, I didn’t exactly have to work hard to get my last couple jobs. And it’s not because I’m the greatest instructional designer on the face of the planet. It’s because I know how to write a resume, I have some form of emotional intelligence/soft skills knowledge, and I live in an area chock full of corporate jobs (the Phoenix area).
When I got non-responses and rejections on the first dozen or so of my applications, I began to question myself. Maybe it isn’t the right time to look for a job, I thought. Maybe I’m not good enough for this role, even though I thought I was.
But then I remembered just how many people were out there looking for a job in my field, in comparison to the norm. And I remembered how many jobs have been eliminated due to Covid-related cuts and closures. And I remembered how my previous job paid me really well and never once had a problem with my work, which means I was good enough for the jobs to which I was applying and had no reason to doubt myself.
After considering these things, I amped up my search rather than giving it up. Instead of looking on just LinkedIn, I began looking on Indeed. Google. Glassdoor. Indeed. Corporate websites. I applied for dozens of jobs, knowing it might take a hundred applications before something stuck in the current job landscape.
2. Have grace for recruiters.
I’m not sure why, but during this search I had what felt like more than my fair share of poor experiences with recruiters. They’d send emails riddled with basic spelling errors. They’d promise a phone call at a certain time instead of scheduling it formally on the calendar, miss the promised time, and not answer the phone. They’d cancel at the last minute, promise to reschedule, and then I’d have to reach out for the rescheduling.
But I kept in mind these things as I dealt with all this from several recruiters:
- In some of the industries I applied in, they are hiring so much they can’t keep up. This could mean they’re hiring new or contracted recruiters with little-to-no onboarding — these recruiters may not have been given the tools they need to succeed, or they could just have way too much on their plates.
- While a recruiter is expected to be “the face of the company” to the applicant, I don’t think it’s fair to judge an entire company on the mistakes of a single human. Do I want that kind of weight attached to my mistakes? Definitely not. We’re all humans, after all.
- The recruiter may still be figuring out how to work at home, and may have their kids with them while they’re normally in the office. I can definitely vouch for this being a hectic time as it’s not always easy to corral my two-year-old while her mom facilitates conference calls.
3. Be willing to sacrifice, but know where to draw the line.
I’m not sure it’s terribly realistic to be unwilling to budge on all my “wants” and “nice-to-haves” as a job seeker. It is definitely an employer’s market (oh, how quickly the tides turn).
I said at the beginning that I wanted a remote instructional design or talent development job in a well-paying industry. For us instructional designers, that’s pretty close to unrealistic unless you have a ton of experience to the point you’re considered a senior developer. So for me, this means I may have had to sacrifice either the well-paying part, or the remote part, or the talent development part. I didn’t need to sacrifice all of them, but I also needed to be willing to flex.
A remote job I was talking to a recruiter about didn’t pay me enough for childcare, so I had to let it go even though it had the luxury of being remote (I depend on childcare even with remote work because instructional design very often requires hours of focused work, client meetings, and/or facilitation of meetings or training).
A few high-paying jobs I applied for were not remote, but had flexibility to work a day or two remotely. Was that a flex I was willing to make? Yes, as it turned out.
4. Make sure your resume is dressed to impress.
This one should go without saying, especially in a world where so many people are vying for the same jobs. But here’s a short list of things to do with your resume:
- Tailor it to the specific job you’re applying for. Don’t lie, but provide the appropriate level of information. For example, I worked at Amazon. I can use Amazon acronyms when applying again to Amazon, but not when I’m applying to another company. I also don’t want to use industry-specific wording to relate my experience in the healthcare and utilities industries if I’m applying to a job in another industry. But if I’m applying to a similar healthcare job to the one I had before, I should provide specifics around the software I’m familiar with, the types of roles I worked with, etc — where I might leave that out in an application to another industry.
- Use numbers, data, and a brief explanation. These tell the recruiter and hiring manager why you’re better than the next person. For example, in the customer service world, most people know that a supervisor fields escalated contacts and looks for ways to be more efficient. Listing those two things as bullet points may not be terribly helpful. But saying you identified X problem, employed Y process, and reduced negative customer feedback by Z% tells the employer a lot about you and the kind of work you do.
- Make sure it’s free of grammar and spelling errors.
- Keep your LinkedIn profile up-to-date with all the same things listed above, and read up on how to build an impressive profile. This one attracts recruiters to you regularly, and it landed me the highest-paying job I’ve ever had.
5. Don’t be afraid to ask for what you’re worth.
The salary question on the application is often a formality, I’ve found. Don’t be afraid to put your target salary as your answer. And if an offer is made, especially if it’s lower than what you listed on your application (or worse, lower than the number you discussed with the recruiter or hiring manager), stand your ground. If they turn you down, you don’t want to be working for that kind of company anyway.
6. Mentally prepare yourself for volatility and disappointment.
I was pretty far into the process a few times, and certain I would receive an offer at least one of those. Only to be contacted by the recruiter, who, apologizing all over herself, had to tell me the requisition had been canceled and the company was now in fact in a hiring freeze.
A handful more, a couple of which seemed to fit the bill of my perfect job, emailed me before talking to a recruiter to relay the same message.
7. Check for jobs daily.
If for no reason other than to mitigate the issue described in the last point, I began checking for jobs each day, setting the filter for “past 24 hours.” This helped me not to see jobs I’d already looked at, but I figured this method would help to avoid applying for jobs that were weeks old and had been posted prior to any kind of hiring freeze.
This isn’t a foolproof method, though — my example above of expecting an offer and instead being told of a hiring freeze occurred with a posting that was new and in late March, after it seemed most companies had already put hiring freezes in place.
8. Don’t reject companies you’ve never heard of, but do your research.
This is actually the one that helped me get and accept the offer for my new job. I hadn’t heard of the company before, but kept seeing them pop up in post after post. So I finally read up on them and decided to give it a shot. It turned out to be one of only a couple jobs I found that paid in the range I was looking for. So, don’t be dismissive of a company just because you haven’t heard of it — just do some research on LinkedIn or Google to ensure it’s not a scam.
Summary
It’s easy to want to give up. It’s easy to feel the need to lower all your standards. It’s easy to dismiss a company you’ve never heard of. It’s easy to get upset at recruiters’ mistakes. And it’s easy to send the same resume with every application. But don’t go with what’s easy. Do everything you can to present your best self to each potential employer instead. Best of luck in your search — feel free to ask questions in the responses and I will do my best to answer.
