How to sprint your job-search
By: Nedko Nedkov
Tags: Job Hunting, Job Search, Lever, Workable, LinkedIn

Has your job search dragged on for too long? I feel you. I was swimming in the same waters for some months — up until a couple of weeks ago. Prior to writing this, I crunched the numbers and I categorized the rejections I had to endure before getting the offer I accepted. It was a bit over 100.

╔═══════════════╦════════════════════╦════════════════════╗

║ Rejections ║ Rejections ║ Ghosted ║

║ w/o interview ║ after interview(s) ║ after interview(s) ║

╠═══════════════╬════════════════════╬════════════════════╣

║ 89 ║ 12 ║ 2 ║

╚═══════════════╩════════════════════╩════════════════════╝

There are a few reasons the process took longer than I expected.

One of them was the timing. Starting the job-search at the end of the summer — not the best idea. Especially during a pandemic. The months of October or November seemed to be much more fruitful in regards to number of job openings.

Secondly, I had set some high bars on what I was expecting of the role, the team, the company culture, the benefits etc. Those factors were non-negotiable for me.

And then, there were points which made the whole experience much more cumbersome than necessary. The job search itself. Having to find those few openings that match my skill-set. That was a seriously time-consuming activity. It’s crazy — I know. In year 2020 when there is a plethora of platforms to browse jobs on (e.g. LinkedIn, Glassdoor, AngelList, StackOverflow) I could not find the jobs that matched my profile with the ease of a click. Why? I can give you 3 good reasons:

Non-transparent search engines. Try typing 3 or 4 keywords in the LinkedIn search bar in the jobs page. Good luck figuring out how the search algorithm chose the job ads based on your keywords. A keyword might but also might not be included in the job description. To make sure, you actually have to manually search for it with Ctrl+F. Looking for a remote role in a EU-based company? Good luck expressing that in the search bar! Job-Ad prioritization. Some platforms have started monetizing on their search engine. Companies or recruitment agencies are willing to pay fees so that their job ads are prioritized in your search result list. Needless to say that the prioritized content is often not highly relevant to your search parameters. Low response rates. Platforms like LinkedIn, Glassdoor, StackOverflow etc are used massively by the majority of job hunters. This often leads to a high number of candidates applying to the same appealing roles which reduces your possibility of being considered for those roles.

Towards the last sprint of my job-search I actually figured out some efficiency tricks. I am here to share the ethical ones…

Mwahahaha

Specifically how to efficiently do the search part. When I say efficiently, I mean spending a fraction of time finding openings that match your profile better. I hope that someone will find them useful. So here it goes…

Firstly, keep sporadically using the search engines of the big platforms. You may have already noticed that sometimes when you try to apply to a job through them you are frequently redirected to a different webpage — the company’s system for applicant tracking and recruiting. This is a SaaS (Software as a service) platform where companies can handle anything that has to do with their recruiting processes. It is the first place where a job opening will be posted. Then via integrations with LinkedIn etc the job ad gets re-posted for better visibility.

Personally, I noticed 3 main players in the latter SaaS ballgame: lever.co, workable.com and greenhouse.io. My main tip is find job openings through these platforms. There is a caveat however. They don’t offer a search engine (yet, hopefully). Workable kind of does, but not much superior from the one of LinkedIn. Check it out here. So how do we search for job openings in the domain of the SaaS platforms without having a custom search engine? Let’s not reinvent the wheel. This problem has been solved since 1996. Google! With some of its advanced search features.

A common point for all of these SaaS platforms is that they host each company’s webpages (including job openings) under a single subdomain.

For workable that is https://apply.workable.com/{company_name}/, for lever https://jobs.lever.co/{company_name}/ and lastly for greenhouse that is https://boards.greenhouse.io/{company_name}/.

There is a Google search feature that allows us to search for terms only within a specified website/(sub)domain. Simply add the site:{website_name} modifier (e.g. site:somesite.com) before your search terms. Google will show only results that come from the specified domain/sudomain(s).

To be more explicit you can search for job openings posted in workable by prepending site:{apply.workable.com} followed by your search terms in Google. To give you some query examples:

site:apply.workable.com poland python backend

Translates to find job openings posted on the domain of workable that include all keywords: poland, python and backend

site:jobs.lever.co remote OR “working from home”

Translates to find job openings posted on the domain of lever that include the keyword remote or the explicit phrase working from home.

site:boards.greenhouse.io backend -“on-call rotation” -java

Translates to find job openings posted on the domain of greenhouse that include the keyword backend and do not include the keyword java and also do not include the explicit phrase on-call rotation.

Remember, the search is case insensitive. For more advanced Google search features check out this website.

It is your responsibility to determine the appropriate keywords to include/exclude in the search bar given your personal job preferences. I can promise you that the search results will be much more relative to your keywords than with any other search engine (LinkedIn, Glassdoor, you-name-it). It’s Google after all.

In addition, you will be able to find openings that sometimes have low visibility in LinkedIn giving you an edge in your candidacy. On the negative side, you will have to repeat the query for all three SaaS platform domains.

Now if you need to sort the Google results chronologically, with the most recently posted openings on top, I will close with an expression that my professors liked to use when students with tough questions came along. I will leave that as an exercise for the reader ;)