5 Ways To Hack Your Job Search

By Barry Chignell

Share on: 

5 Ways To Hack Your Job Search

There’s the traditional way to check for jobs and then there’s the clever ways that’ll get you ahead of the crowd. Here’s 5 Ways To Hack Your Job Search

 

Get instant updates of the best jobs from anywhere on the web

Google alerts is possibly one of Google’s most useful but under utilised tools. Using the very simple and quick interface you can tell the world’s largest search engine to send you alerts when certain content becomes available.

What makes these alerts great is that you can specify not only the actual search term but also other criteria such as:

  • How often you receive the alerts – as it happens, once a day or once per week
  • Sources for the search – News, blogs, web, video, books or even discussions
  • Language
  • How many – all or only the best results

google alerts

Once you’ve created your alerts, which can be as many as you want depending upon your search requirements, you can choose to receive each alert as an individual email or have all results sent as one digest email either daily or weekly.

Some useful tips from Google regarding the search syntax include:

  • Try to be as precise as possible. The more precise your search terms are, the more relevant your alerts will be
  • Use quotes around a group of words if you are looking for them together. For example, “Social media manager”
  • Use a minus sign (-) in front of words that you want to leave out. For example, job -temporary
  • Use the site: operator to limit your search to specific sites. For example, vacancy site:ciphr.com

 

Get your lights to flash when a dream job is posted!

iftttIFTTT can be used to connect different services and sites using the ‘If This Then That’ trigger.

By monitoring certain networks for keywords or updates form specific brands you can create custom searches for vacancies that will then trigger an action.
The action can be anything from an email alert to changing the colour of or flashing your lights (if you have the required bulbs installed!).

Some useful ‘recipe’s’ include:

  • Save tweets relating to a brand or keyword to Evernote
  • If a job is posted on Reddit then send yourself an email alert
  • Automatically keep a log of job offer emails in Google Drive

 

Use Twitter lists to scan for that perfect role

Organising different searches or brands into Twitter lists is a great way to keep track of categorised content and ensuring that you’re aware of any job openings that become available.

Using tools such as Tweetdeck you’re able to create a dashboard of career opportunities and brands you’re hoping to work for.

 

LinkedIn will send you job alerts based on your criteria

LinkedIn job alertsOne obvious resource for potential career opportunities is LinkedIn, but did you know that you can create alerts based on your advanced job search query? 

You can get email alerts for new jobs posted on LinkedIn that match your advanced search criteria or that are recommended to you from the 'Jobs You May Be Interested In' feature.

To set up email alerts for a saved job search:

  1. Click Jobs at the top of your homepage
  2. Click Advanced search below theSearch button at the top
  3. On the advanced search screen, enter keywords, location, postal code, etc
  4. Click Search
  5. Click the Save search link in the top right of the search results
  6. Enter a title for your search Search Name and select how often you get email alerts (Alerts can be sent daily, weekly, or monthly)
  7. Click the Check mark icon to save (you can save up to 10 job searches)

To adjust the frequency of email alerts for Jobs You May Be Interested In:

  1. Move your cursor over your photo in the top right of your homepage and select Privacy & Settings (you may be prompted to sign in)
  2. Click the Communications tab next to the envelope icon on the left.
  3. Click Set the frequency of emails.
  4. Click Messages from LinkedIn and choose the frequency.
  5. Click Save changes.

Source: LinkedIn help

 

Don’t forget your friends and contacts

professional networkingOne often overlooked resource (now that we have all these amazing tools to do our searching for us) is referrals from friends, family and network connections.

Your network should be utilised just as much as the alerts and searches above when looking for a new career.
Whether you proactively ask others to let you know of any opportunities or step up your listening within the network for those opportunities, make sure not to ignore the power of word of mouth.

Roles recommended by friends or connections are sometimes a more viable option as they’ll either have first hand knowledge of the role or be able to point you in the direction of someone that does.

Many businesses offer referral fees to employees and so they’ll likely be promoting these openings within your professional network without any coaxing from you, this enables you to avoid drawing attention to your job search from your current employer of colleagues.

If you’re a bit skeptical abut the power of networking then take a look at the below chart by Business blog Inc.
It illustrates how important networking is when searching for a job.

This Chart Shows How Important Networking Is to Finding a Job

What does our team do?

The team at Social Hire never just do social media marketing.

What the Social Hire gang loves is making a difference for our clients, and we don't want to waste your, or our resources on marketing for marketing's sake, if it doesn't get your organisation the impression you need - we take a different approach.

Our team are a company that helps our customers further their social media presence by providing digital marketing on a monthly basis.

You might like these blog posts 17 Social #Recruiting Statistics For 2018 via @lauriewooduk #socialmedia #socialrecruiting, 7 HR Tools and Resources for Small Business Owners, How to Create a Successful Marketing Team, and Five New Guerilla PR Techniques for Small Businesses.

  Back to Candidate blogs