Some Non-Obvious Job Search Strategies

10-ish Places To Look For Exciting Opportunities

Jul 19, 2021

Happy Monday from Denver, Colorado ⛰

As a part of figuring out what I want to do next in life, I’ve been doing a lot of job searching.

This week I write about all of the places I’ve been looking and the “techniques” I’ve picked up.

Enjoy!

I havent had to apply for a job in years It sucks - Meme Guy

Finding Jobs

I’ve organized this list into three sections.

Curated collections, search engines, and “DIY” methods.

Curated Collections

Startup Specific —> AngelList

If your goal is to work at a startup, AngelList is the place to start your search.

In addition to having one of the largest collections, AngelList offers some unique filters.

You can specify the amount of equity the role is offering, the programming languages (if its a tech job), and the industries such as Healthcare, Education, or Enterprise Software.

You can also filter by number of employees, investment stage, and remote culture.

Finally, one of the best parts of AngelList is the startup network features. When relevant, AngelList will tell you who else has invested in the company you are looking at. Knowing that you have the same investors as Airbnb, Twitter, or Facebook might give you more (or less) confidence in joining the new firm.

Hyperspecific Niche Aggregators

I’m always surprised by how few people know about hyperspecific niche job sites.

No-code (drag-and-drop) websites have become increasingly sophisticated in the past few years. This has lead to a proliferation of independent job board sites.

Here are some examples:

Startup & VC offers one of the best collections of international VC Jobs for all experience levels.

Crypto Jobs, Pomp Crypto , and DeFi.jobs are just a few of the many many sites specifically for cryptocurrency enthusiasts.

Content Writing Jobs has “hand-picked writing opportunities to work from home, remotely, freelance, full-time, part-time, contract and internships.”

Remote OK has a mind-blowingly big list of remote jobs with extremely transparent salary data.

I’m sure whatever other niche you’ve narrowed your search down to has its own site at this point. Use Google to find it. Typically they are buried in the middle of the first page.

If despite my assumptions, you’ve identified a niche without a job board, perhaps you could take it upon yourself to make one?

Pallet.XYZ — Jobs Curated by Communities

On Pallet, pretty much anyone can start their own job board. This has become popular among content creators as they can curate jobs that fit their audience/ readership. The listings are viewable online or sent as a weekly email digest.

Bankless, an Ethereum podcast, curates the best roles for passionate Ethereans.

Sahil Bloom, a prolific business writer, shares the best opportunities he can find in finance and tech.

Lenny Rachitsky writes weekly emails about product, growth, and how to work with people. His board’s tagline is “the best jobs in product, growth, design, engineering, and more.”

Pallet is relatively new and growing very quickly. If you subscribe to a couple of thought-leaders in your area of professional interest, I would expect that a few start making Pallet boards.

Search Engines

Google/ Glassdoor/ Indeed/ ZipRecruiter

I don’t have much to say about these sites. These are catch all search engines with many great opportunities. Don’t overlook them, but I’m assuming you’ve heard of these.

University Career Center Websites

If you are a college graduate, chances are your University Career Center has an online portal with all of the jobs that come their way.

I see two main benefits to using these platforms.

First, the employeers already have a clear willingness to hire from your school. Otherwise, they wouldn’t list on a site that is exclusively people from your school.

Many of the job descriptions I’ve been reading (especially investing, venture, analyst, type roles) have mentioned their preference for graduates of “elite” institutions. If you use your career center’s site, you don’t have to guess if your school makes the arbitrary cut.

Second, you are likely to be qualified for these career center jobs. Again, the people advertising these roles know exactly which eyeballs they are getting. They have a rough idea of what to expect from graduates from your school with your degree and are ready to hire more.

LinkedIn’s killer feature is the ability to save multiple hyperspecific searches and get notifications about new roles that match your preferences.

I’ve set up about six of these and they are extremely helpful.

You can add cities, states, countries, keywords, salary range, and more. With the alert, you are among the very first to know when a new match pops up—giving you the advantage of being an early applicant.

LinkedIn also curates lists of great companies to work for

Here are their Top 50 Startups of 2020.

Here are their Best 50 Places To Work in 2021.

Using these lists, click the name of any company that jumps out to you, then on the profile, use the “Jobs” tab to see if they are hiring.

Last, DIY — Find It Yourself

Twitter Search

Twitter is a less organized place to find jobs, but there are some very unique opportunites that are discussed there before anywhere else.

Instead of spending all day scrolling your feed hoping to notice a job posting, you can use Twitter search for keywords like “hiring.”

This will bring up profiles that have the word hiring in their bio. It will also bring up tweets containing the phrase “hiring.” For bonus points, you can filter this down to only show results from people you follow. This is a great way to find opportunities to work with people or companies that you already know and like.

Growth Companies

Growjo has a list of the 10,000 fastest growing companies in the world.

You can filter this data by city, country, or sector.

This is another place to find “rocketship” companies that interest you. Because high growth companies are… growing quickly (duh) they are almost always hiring.

If a company catches your interest from this list, go to their website and…

Look At The Footer! (Websites & Newsletters)

BlueVine is a high-growth FinTech company I found on Growjo. Like just about every other reasonably sized company, the word “careers” magically appears in their footer.

This mystery button brings you to all of their open roles. Voila 🤗

Likewise, companies also put this same magical button in their footer.

You just need to build the habit of looking!

People/ Network

Once you have a specific “what I’m looking for” it’s time to politely ask for help.

Don’t ask for a job. Instead ask “do you know of any open roles related to [XYZ] that you think I’d be a good applicant for?”

You can make this post on any social platform, or send personalized emails/texts/calls/DMs to people who know people.

Don’t be afraid to ask for help!

Increasing Serendipity — Possibly Attracting Offers

With ~400 followers, I’m a relatively small account on Twitter.

That being said, I still had 2,639 profile vists just in the past month.

That’s a lot of free advertisting going to waste!

With this in mind, I’ve made the first line of my profile a statement about what kinds of opportunities I’m looking for.

As I get more serious in my job hunting, I could get more specific and creative. Perhaps I could change my username to “Louis is Looking To Work In Crypto”, add some skills, put a similar tagline on a simple banner graphic, or tweet out exactly what I’m looking to do.

It goes without saying that you could try this same strategy on any social media account.

In Summary

Get as specific as you can about what you want to do: roles, industries, company type, skills you’ll be using.
Use tools that automatically send you new postings that fit your criteria.
Look for opportunities in non-obvious places.
Broadcast that you are looking for what you are looking for.
Apply.

Thank You For Reading!

Feedback, topic suggestions, and interesting banter are always welcome.

Enjoy the week,

Louis

The Hyperlinks

Two Quick Clicks

(1) 🏠 Investing Ideas 🏠 : Revedy Vacation Homes

Revedy’s free software suggests vacation home/short-term rental investment opportunities with modeled projected earnings. Fun to browse casually or to shop for possible acquisitions. (Of course, this is not financial advice).

(2) 💻 Really Great Writing 💻: Lyn Alden

Lyn retired at 33. Since then, she’s been writing exceptionally detailed investment research and articles about financial independence. Her article on saving money is a great place to start.

Podcast Updates 🎧

LK #76 with Scott Rieckens: Financial Independence, Retire Early Q+A
LK #75 with Joel Runyon: Achieving IMPOSSIBLE Goals.
LK #74 with Rita Lewison Singer: Stories From A Motivational Speaker, Actress & Entrepreneur

LK Content Coming Soon 📅

David Bailey and Brandon Green from Bitcoin Magazine and BTC 2021
Peter McCormack, Host of What Bitcoin Did & Nassim Taleb heckler
Nick Velasquez, Author and Skill Acquisition Expert

Photo of the week — I Found The NFT Bar!

Last week I wrote about the “Beer for Life” NFT issued by Denver Beer Co.

The owner of this token is entitled to as many as four free beers every day at any of the participating locations.

Louis' Learnings

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