Four Tips to Level Up Your Next Job Search
People have all sorts of coping mechanisms when it comes to job searches. Some like hikes. Some prefer scribbling short poems. Some prefer tacos off-the-beaten-path. I, like many others, relied on social media as my prison of procrastinative doom.
Name the rabbit hole and I would have little hesitation embracing it. Quora threads on hypothetical space scenarios. Presidential biographies on Wikipedia. There was no frustration a conspiracy theory argument on Twitter or a r/nosleep thread on Reddit couldn’t temporarily fix.
But there was also another reason why my social media usage became heavier during times of job search. It wasn’t just a escape during the busier days of the search. It was the biggest asset in its successes.
While many job search tip articles focus on outcomes or number of applications (happy to share mine privately), I wanted to focus this one more on process — something that could help regardless of whether you wanted to apply to one job or apply to thousands . My process was built around the philosophy of symbiotic connection in the job search with two key qualifiers — finding people exactly where they’re 1) actively looking for and 2) finding people where have a high probability of getting notified.
A couple caveats before moving forward:
- Finding companies that you have little interest in (especially if you’re applying to hundreds of jobs because you need one asap, which can be understandable) may be off-putting to people filling roles. I’ve admittedly done this and it shows in interviews. Not fun for anyone.
- Knowing the exact title of the role you want saves everyone time. When people reach out with “Here’s my resume, what do you think I should apply for”, it depends entirely on the amount of time someone has to cross-reference a resume with open job postings. The tips below are basically predicated on knowing this.
So let’s say you were looking for a Product Design role in San Francisco. You could easily go to Monster.com, Google Jobs, Angel List, or one of the many job boards that serve the area.
Alternatively, you could think about it in the lens of building virtual connections.
- Twitter Keyword Search
When looking at Twitter, you want to ideally find the right group of keywords that would match a tweet while filtering through the 500 million tweets sent a day through the platform. The keywords I tend to use when looking for open opportunities:
- Hiring (Looking for, Bringing on etc.)
- Name of Role
- DM
While the first two will tend to get you results from people hiring, the DM is an interesting qualifier — it will separate the people who are genuinely looking to hear from people who want to learn more and are open to getting messages from you if you have a justified reason for reaching out. Simply searching “Hiring product designer” might yield similar results but you would also get job boards and twitter bot accounts that put you back at square one — limited to no human connection. What does this get you?
Tweets like this — tweets from real humans who want to hear from you and are actively looking. While I imagine this tactic may work less if you’re trying to DM someone like a Patrick Collison or Paul Graham, a short message via a Twitter DM is more likely to be atleast seen by someone requesting DMs vs. an avalanche of emails.
For a search in your location, you can simply turn on the Twitter function to look at location or type in “SF” in the search bar. Both will help you filter in your area.
Think of Twitter how you would think of searching on Google. What would you type if you were posting a job for your own company? Work backwards from intent to find new and creative ways people are sharing these same jobs.
2. Facebook Groups
While you may use Facebook groups to coordinate group projects or share nonsensical content (what’s up Nihilist Memes!), some of the best connections I’ve made in my job search have come from Facebook Groups. While groups can be distinguished by function, some of the best generalist communities include Hireclub (29k members with career coaching offered for tiered prices) and Albert’s List (39k members with a related subscription group) — why these groups? Great group moderators.
Group moderators are the make and break factor of job groups — an active oversight over the types of jobs and members available in the group can really build group quality.
A Product Design role is as easy to search for in a Facebook group like Hireclub as it is on any other social media. One quick search with a sort by “Most Recent” gives immediate results with a prompt to message the person for interest. Once again, a real human actively looking and expecting to get notifications.
3. A Slack Jobs Channel
When I was initially interviewing for roles in Product Management last year and subsequently for growth this year, I can’t count how many first glances I got for moonshot opportunities through Slack. The first step with Slack is to find the community that most resonates with the type of work you would want to do — googling “Slack Groups for Designers” will give you lots of awesome resources (i.e. Slack Groups for UX Designers) and find you groups where you can connect with other practitioners. Many of these groups will have a jobs channel — with Slack, messaging and notifying a person is friction free. I’ve had experiences on both sides — a random message from Slack allowed me to connect someone at my last company to our VP of Product and I found out weeks later she was hired. Similarly, I’ve been able to connect with practitioners at companies like Stubhub, Okta, Uber, Nerdwallet, and more entirely through kind souls on Slack. It’s a resource that is almost never mentioned in a job search article and probably one of the most underrated.
4. Linkedin Content Search
I can hear the groans now — your last brilliant suggestion for hacking the job search is… Linkedin?! Where everyone and their second cousin twice removed are hanging out also trying to get jobs? Why don’t I just go to Times Square and hand out resumes there?
Here’s the catch — I almost never touched the “Jobs” tab on Linkedin. For some companies, it’s probably about as effective as applying entirely online.
The philosophy here is the same as every other network — instead of companies, find the people actively looking and increase the probability that they’ll get notified.
When you search, you want to look at the Content tab on Linkedin. When you search by Content, you’re no longer pulling structural job entities and are now focused entirely on posts from human beings recruiting for their companies.
There, you have it — four more ways to get you closer to the next dream opportunity.
If you’ve read this far, don’t hate shameless plugs, and enjoy work at the frontier of digital health, consider joining me at Livongo - We’re hiring for roles in Marketing, Product, Sales, Engineering and more!
Kushaan is a growth associate at Livongo based out of the Bay Area and enjoys sharing insights around Growth, careers, and personal anecdotes. He also likes meaningless controversies (check out ranking of the best fast food fries) and spending his days finding the best Super burrito in San Francisco. All opinions are his own. Get in touch here or via @kushaanshah on Twitter.
