Job Search Method #1: The Creative Company Search

Most people search for jobs by looking at public job boards and seeing which companies are hiring in roles of interest. This is a pretty straightforward approach, but wouldn't you prefer to go for a job you want rather than settling for what’s available? There are many more creative (and fulfilling, motivating, etc.) ways to go about the jobhunting process that are alternatives to applying to an existing job post.

Search for what you want, not just what’s available

Look around your home. What companies, products, apps, etc. do you love? What do you use the most often? What do you spend most of your money on? How do you spend most of your leisure time? What ideas, products, or topics do you spend your time thinking about? What companies or brands would you be excited and/or proud to work for? Look around at your life and create a list of 10-20 companies and/or organizations. What themes can you derive from this list?

Examples:
S’well (can’t live without my water bottle)
Athletic Greens (I go crazy for that green powder in my smoothies)
Nuts.com (I eat a lot of nuts and order them from here!)
Rouge (I love CrossFit-style training)
Reformation (my favorite clothes are from there—they use recycled fabrics!)
Glossier (I love makeup)
The Economist (my favorite news source)
REI (I love hiking)
Gt’s Enlightened Kombucha (I can’t stop drinking it)
Dosist (wellness, woo!)

Look at your internet search history for themes—are you constantly looking at wellness, fashion, etc.? What do you Google search about? What do you read? What podcasts do you listen to most often? What do you text your friends about? Think about this as if you were being investigated by a private eye, who has been studying your behavior. What would an investigator find? If they were looking for you, where might they go?

People tend to feel happier and more satisfied with their lives when they have a connection between their life and work. The more aligned those things are, the more fulfilled people generally are.

Job Search Method #2: Review job postings in other industries to discover new companies that might excite you.

AngelList is a great resource to discover startups of which you may have never heard. You can also use LinkedIn or other public job boards. The point is to spend time in “discovery mode” and to have fun discovering new companies and organizations, without the pressure of focusing only on postings that apply to you. For example, on LinkedIn, click Jobs and scroll to see what LinkedIn thinks might interest you based on your profile. By just scrolling around, we can identify some more company names that excite us.

The goal here is to bring some joy into an otherwise energy-draining process, and make it a bit more fun! We need to shift our mindsets around the job search—this is a new and exciting chapter of your life. The joy is in the search. We need to try to reframe stress and desperation to the joy of exploration and discovery.

Here’s an example of some companies I discovered that interested me when searching through my LinkedIn page—some I’ve never heard of, so I looked them up:
Policy Genius, Inc. - an insurance company, not government social policy, no thanks
Synergy Interactive - his looks like a recruiting firm, no thanks
Tula Skincare - Probiotic skincare products—cool!

Job Search Method #3: Specialized & Private Job Boards

A quick Google search can help you to identify specialty job boards for your industry of interest. Here are a few examples:

Built in LA : jobs at startups in LA
AngelList : tech / remote jobs
HigherEdJobs : college/university jobs
MedZilla: medical sales jobs
Playbill.com: jobs in theatre/Bradway
New York Foundation for the Arts: jobs in the arts
Hollywood Reporter: entertainment jobs

These job boards may have less competition than the oversaturated job boards of LinkedIn, Monster, Indeed, etc.

Another less competitive place is the private job board of your (or your friends’, siblings’, etc.) college/university. Most colleges/universities offer free access to their private job board for alumni. If your friend went to a well-connected university like, NYU, ask them if you can use their login ID and password to peruse jobs. Most job postings will provide contact information or a company website (and not force you to apply directly through the site). Don’t forget—you will want to avoid applying directly through the site because it will be connected to your firend’s information!

Job Search Method #4: Gentle Stalking

Now that you’ve identified some companies/organizations you would be excited to work for, go to their individual websites and check out their internal careers page. Let’s use Glossier as an example and let’s say I’m in HR/Diversity & Inclusion and I want to do this at Glossier.

Use the Company Website:
-At the bottom of most websites, you will find a link that says Careers. Glossier’s website has a “Careers” link and a description of departments. If there’s nothing posted of interest, move to step 2.
Use LinkedIn:
-Begin by typing the name of the company into the search bar to see what comes up. We start with a wide search like this because companies call positions/departments by lots of different names (e.g., “human resources”, “people operations”, and “people management” are all essentially the same thing). You also want to see who you know and what connections you might have at the company of interest.
-When I do this, there are a lot of interesting people that come up in People Operations at Glossier! But I don’t know them and I don’t know anyone who does: Michelle Arnold and Katie Puma, for example.
-Who to contact? Ms. Arnold is the Director of People & Culture. Ms. Puma is a Senior Manager of People Operations. Either is probably a good bet, I might try Ms. Arnold first as she seems higher up. It looks like we can contact them on LinkedIn messenger, but what would be better? An email address, right to their inboxes!
Use the Company Website:
-Some smaller companies have the names and contact information of their employees right on the website.
-If this is not the case, most companies have a contact page at the bottom where you can see the formula for e-mail addresses—in this case, the email addresses end with @glossier.com.
Use Google:
-You can search for people by their names and see if they have their email addresses anywhere that is publicly available online. Some people have personal/professional websites with this information readily available.
-If not, you can try to figure out their work email address by using Rocket Reach, which helps identify email address patterns. When I search for Glossier, it looks like Rocket Reach identifies the formula for this company as first.last@glossier.com 67% of the time. So we can try that! Or if you have a friend or a friend (or a friend that works at the company), you can just ask them to get the email address for you. Another option is calling the HQ directly and asking reception to provide the email address.

Job Search Method #5: The Unsolicited Resume / Cover Letter

Why are we doing all of this? Job opportunities are seized, not offered on a silver platter. Some statistics out there boast that 80% of job openings are never posted. That means the majority of jobs out there can’t be seen on a job board, and it’s up to you to be savvy to uncover them, or even create them! An unsolicited resume/cover letter could catch the right person at the right time and leave you with 0 competition for a role. So, how do you do it? Reach out to department heads in companies (with a resume and cover letter) expressing your interest in working with them.

We have had clients tell us that they got responses the same day (e.g., “So funny you reached out— our operations manager just quit yesterday. We would love to interview you”, “Actually our content creator just announced her maternity leave—would you be interested in a temp to permanent position?”). These are the types of opportunities you seize with an unsolicited resume/cover letter. Sometimes you don't hear back right away, but 3 weeks later, when there is an opening, you’ll get an email. Unsolicited resumes/cover letters show you are ambitious, creative, and that you really want to be working with this specific company/organization.

See our blog post on How to Write an Unsolicited Cover Letter.

Contact us to find out more about our services!

If you found this post to be helpful, please like and/or share with your community or anyone else you think may benefit!