How to Leverage Various Resources for Job Hunting: Glassdoor, Linked, Angellist...
Job - an important component for most of us normal human-beings. Whether you like it or not, job hunting will be part of your life, whether you are in school looking for an internship, or as a fresh graduate who is ready for your first job, or someone who want to change jobs for the better. In this article, I am going to share about some of the resources I used or friends recommended for this purpose.
Resources
Glassdoor
Glassdoor is one of the most helpful tools I used in job hunting. It provides various of valuable resource about a job and a company as well as a list of similar jobs under your pre-set filter.
One of the questions that the hire managers will ask you is your compensation expectation. A lot people have no idea how to answer this question. Glassdoor provide you with the compensation range so that you can answer with confidently because you know the ballpark already. In addition, in your job research you can set the salary range so that you can filter out jobs that are not live up to your expectation - money wise.
Glassdoor is also a great resource to check out the past interview questions from the company or event the position you are applying for. You can see people’s feedback on pros and cons of the interview as well as their experience working there. Anyone could have their own views on the interview or company (sometime it depends on the interview results). Be mindful and subjective in taking them as references. However the interview questions people shared are really useful sometime.
When you save your filter on the jobs you like. Glassdoor will send you notifications if jobs you like become available. Related jobs they send are in good quality.
Response rate from Glassdoor is relatively high compared to other job hunting website I experienced.
LinkedIn is the first professional social network I used and it probably have the largest resources among all those job hunting website I used. In a world, where an internal referrals could largely increase your opportunity of being noticed by the hiring manager, Linkedin provided a great resource for people to leverage their professional or personal network to get a job.
Under the job you like, you could see who else works in this company. You can schedule an informal call to collect more information about the company/position. You can also ask their referral, which will greatly increase your chance of the passing the process of resume review and get a call from the hiring manager.
You can also search among your professional circle that who have the similar job title you are looking for to pick their brain on this position - requirement, skills needed and what it is like to do that job. Try to ask them the good and the bad since it is an informal interview to get a full picture. You may change your mind on whether that is still your dream job after acquiring those information.
LinkedIn is a great resource for you to nurture your professional network even before you want to change jobs. Try to reach out to people you admire, just ask for a coffee to connect with them and be genuine interested in them, agenda free.
Angellist
Angellist is a great resource for people looking for startup jobs.
Great filter function to help you narrow down to the industry and job functions you want. For instance, you want to do real estate in operations, you can easily find a lot of startup positions in those areas.
Within the same startup, it shows you all the other openings as well, from which, you could learn about the company’s strategic planning. You can see their needs from what kind of roles are they hiring.
You can see the startup compensation package directly - how much base salary, sticks and bonus. They are more straightforward.
Recruiting companies
Initially my impression for recruiting companies are polarized. I think they are either for high-level executives (head hunters) or for people who are low-level contractors. However I learnt in my job hunting progress and from friend’s experience. They spread all over the job levels and could be really useful of leveraged properly
You can leverage their resources and connect yourself into a professional network you don’t even know. This is what they do all day so imagine they normally have more connections than you and can connect you with the right people and right company. Your chance of getting a job is magnified. In addition, they could help you with your interviews as well.
If you are good at what your do (technically) but hate networking or job hunting in general. Recruiting companies could be your savior. You can focus on what you can do the best, which is delivering a good quality work and they can focus on the sale (of you)
You can get industrial knowledge from them. Even you are not actively looking for jobs. Connecting with a job hunting agent could help you learn (1) whether you get paid property and is there any other job out there that enables you do the same thing but with a better compensation? (2) what kind of skills and knowledge you need to acquire to get to paid say $50k more (3) is there any job out there that enable you to work remote and have better flexibilty
Other Resources
Upwork - For short-term, part-time and contract jobs. You need to have a relatively strong profile and plenty of project experience to bid and compete with other contractors. Make sure to make your stories stand out since a lot of people have similar skillset as yours. (ps: it is a website for you to learn to be humble definitely since you can see so many people have your skillset and you can feel that you are not that special - it is a good thing to feel grounded)
Remote.com - If you prefer to work remote or from anywhere. Remote.come provided a lot of jobs for people who prefer job flexibility. As a citizen of the world myself, it is a great resource for me to get some side hustles.
