Day 13 – Transition – Search, Search, Searching

Continue to search and search each day.  Still trying to learn how to do this well.  The tools that we have are amazing, when compared with how I looked for work two decades ago.  No more going out and pounding the pavement, thought maybe I should be.

Since I started searching, I have liked to Simply Hired aggregator site mainly due to its linkage with LinkedIn; providing people I know at different companies.  I also like it’s lay out.  I tried Indeed, but didn’t find a reason to use it over Simply Hired.  When I was at my WorkSource meeting this week, I was asked if I used Indeed.  This was the second time that it had been recommended over Simply Hired, so today I took a closer look.

Both are linked to a lot of jobs and can easily bring up more jobs than you can look for if you are not careful.   I used the same search criteria in both engines to see what the results would come out like.  Indeed brought up more jobs, but I think the duplication was greater.  There was a different mix of jobs.  Gates Foundation was better represented on Indeed.  Accenture was better represented on Simply Hired.  WorkSource was actually better represented on Simply Hired than on Indeed.

Both have the ability to save job links and to add notes about the job, a handy feature.  Simply Hired also allows you to rate the jobs with stars.  These tools are important because I find that searching is multistep process. 

1. Glance through your searches and locate stuff you want to take a close look at.  This is usually just because of a title or the company.  Save these to your job basket. 
2. Go back through job basket reading through the requisitions very quickly.  For me this means I miss most of the information.  I’m looking for stuff that disqualifies me, especially specific requirements I do not meet; I’m trying to delete as many as possible out of the basket, so I don’t have to deal with so many. 
3. Now I reread what is left trying to really understand the position and whether this is something that I would like to consider. 
4. Step 4 is to go back and apply for the most important one first. 

At every step along the way, I get interrupted; having notes and stars helps in the process when interrupted and also helps in prioritizes the best opportunities.

I was surprised that different jobs came up.  My original assumption was that they both would bring up the same, which they do cover a lot of the same ground, but there are differences, so I think I will have to be more diligent about checking out both, and maybe doing some cross references between the two.

I would love to hear what others are doing for searching, and what you have found to be helpful.