5 Unconventional Places To Look For Jobs Now The Market Is Recovering

The US Economy added 303,000 jobs in March, marking the 39^th month in a row of job growth. Concurrently unemployment has held below 4% for 26 months straight – the longest stretch of continuous low unemployment in 50 years. In contrast LinkedIn’s data reveals unusually low attrition (folks changing jobs) over the last 24 months, with the assumption being that economic uncertainty tied to high-profile corporate layoffs artificially dampened the talent market.

All of which to say it is likely we’re about to see a lot more liquidity in the talent market as the pent-up demand catalyzes a chain-reaction of job changes. If you are considering reentering the job market for the first time in a few years, it can be helpful to have a strategy to help navigate the post-pandemic new-normal:

Crafting A Post-Pandemic Job Search Strategy

Internal recruiting teams have three main channels to fill open jobs, so to maximize your chances of getting hired you want to show up in each channel in the most optimal way. It can be helpful to think about LinkedIn as your job search hub, where your career content (your resume and any thought leadership) lives. I recommend revisiting this earlier piece which gives detailed advice on how to maximize your presence on LinkedIn. Wherever possible you should try to get referrals from existing employees at the companies you are applying to, as this maximizes the chances of your application getting seen.

Additionally, even though it is the job search task with the lowest return, you are still going to have to apply for jobs. The significant strides forward in consumer-facing technology have resulted in a substantial increase in the overall number of job applications submitted, creating a signal-to-noise issue for recruiting teams to solve. Because inbound job applications are the most over-subscribed of the three channels, it is helpful to take a two-pronged approach. Setting alerts on LinkedIn and Indeed (the two highest trafficked job boards) to serve you all new jobs posted in the last 24 hours helps you be amongst the earliest applicants, but it is also helpful to look further afield. Although you will find the majority of jobs posted across LinkedIn and Indeed, you won’t find all jobs – here are some great alternatives:

1. Venture Capital / Private Equity Talent Networks

If your industry sees a lot of venture capital or private equity activity, then it is almost certainly a good investment of time to research the two or three firms with the most activity, and to register with their in-house talent networks. Some firms run invite-only job boards, some have in-house talent teams that act as intermediary search firms for their portfolio companies. Some actively publish lists of open jobs to their mailing lists.

2. State Government Websites

It can be easy to forget that local governments operate like giant corporations, and as such hire into an incredibly broad range of disciplines, from human resources to finance to legal. Because local governments are often resource constrained, they typically don’t have large budgets for external media, which often means the only place you will see those jobs is on their own websites.

3. Alumni Networks

Historically the preserve of colleges and institutions, increasingly corporations are also investing in curating their alumni networks, because former employees can be a rich source of new business, and easy “boomerang” hires. Wherever you have graduated from it can be a worthwhile investment of time to seek out the alumni network and register with it. The alumni networks of colleges often incorporate a jobs portal, and even if you feel ambivalent about returning to a former employer you might still find opportunities posted by other alums at their new places of work. Either way they tend to be rich seams of opportunity that are often overlooked.

4. Industry Publication Job Boards

Although industry or trade publications can feel a bit anachronistic, many of these legacy media titles have been able to survive in (albeit significantly reduced) digital formats. Whichever industry you’re in, there’s almost certainly a surviving title or two, and many of them have an associated jobs portal. Even if you let your subscription lapse long ago, it can be worth revisiting the jobs portal as many niche businesses still choose to advertise their open roles there before paying the (usually higher) price for national mainstream media properties.

5. Direct Boolean Searches

Whether it’s a major national job board like Indeed, or a niche industry-specific job portal, there is always a cost associated with publishing job vacancies. For smaller organizations that means they often have to make a choice on which roles get pushed externally versus those that are only published on the corporate-owned career site. Becoming familiar with Boolean search terms can help you quickly uncover these less-publicized jobs, rather than having to individually visit the career sites of companies that you are targeting.

There is no question that the post-pandemic talent market is tricky to navigate. Understanding both how recruiters work, and the resource constraints that employers face, can help you refine your strategy and optimize your job search.