PRODUCED BY JULIE BOROWSKY; PHOTOGRAPHED BY TAYLER SMITH.
From Refinery29, 1/2019
Despite whatever else is going on in the world, there has never been a better time to look for a job. We’re not talking about the economy here, but rather, the wealth of job search boards available online. Can you even imagine what it was like back in the day when people were restricted to the classified sections of their local (print!) newspaper, word of mouth, and physical “help wanted” signs?
Now, we have the opposite problem. Whether you’re feverishly hunting for work or just casually wondering what’s out there, you can spend hours a day looking at job search sites. We imagine that’s not the way you want to spend all of your time (even if you’re unemployed), so we’ve narrowed down a list of some of the best job boards to use.
Before you begin, it’s important to note that your search shouldn’t begin and end online.
“The biggest issue with applying for a job on a job board is that there are hundreds of other people also applying for those same jobs,” career coach Elana Konstant tells Refinery29. “If you live in competitive environments, like a major city, or if you’re in an industry where there’s already a lot of competition, you’re already at a disadvantage by the time you apply for these jobs online, because they’ve already been posted internally for months or weeks. What you really want is to find out about jobs that people don’t know about, and the way to do that is to network.”
It may sound hard, but it isn’t: Even those who are just starting out in their careers can do this, by reaching out to alumni of their schools, finding friends of relatives, and joining career-oriented groups that meet online or in person. Do this even as you continue to search online, because you can also use those connections after you apply through a site.
“When you’re applying to jobs, you always want to see if you have any connections that so that they can push your information through [to the hiring manager] and refer you,” Konstant says. Don’t be shy about this — sometimes, that’s the only way to get your resume to the top of the pile, and people are usually happy to help out, even when they don’t know you that well. Now, let’s get hunting.
