How to Find Jobs Not Posted on Job Boards - Ep. 61

Ryan: Aloha folks. And welcome back to Degree Free. We are your hosts, Ryan and Hannah Maruyama.

On this podcast, we share fundamentals we've discovered and the mistakes we've made. while self-educating getting work, building businesses and making money. We'll tell you how to make it happen. No degree needed.

Hannah: Welcome back.

Welcome back folks. We are always happy to have you on the podcast. And if you wanna get a weekly newsletter from Ryan and I, which why would you not?

That has degree free new sources, jobs, and cool stuff that we find that we think you'll like, you are gonna wanna run over don't walk to degreefree.co/newsletter and sign up for that. So you get delivered to your inbox once a week.

Ryan: Yep, absolutely. And, let's get into today's episode. Today we are gonna be talking about how to find jobs that are not posted on job boards.

A lot of the job market is filled informally. It's anywhere between like 40% to 80%

Hannah: People get real whooped up about this too, they'll tell you this isn't true, but

Ryan: depending on whatever surveys are out there. And so a lot of these jobs are getting filled before they even hit a job board.

Before they even hit a job listing

And so we'll refind those jobs that aren't listed on job sites. That's what we're gonna be talking about today. So kind of just to jump right into it. The first thing is ..Everyone is looking for jobs in the same place. Everyone's looking on indeed. LinkedIn, Monster, name another job board. I mean, there, and it's easy.

That's why. I mean it's crowded, but it's crowded because it's easy. If you're looking in those places, so is everybody else

Hannah: they're easy to get to. They're easy to save jobs. They're easy to apply.

Ryan: Right.

And it's not to say that you shouldn't be looking in those places like you should but that's not the only place that you can look.

That's not to say that if you see on LinkedIn that there's 129 applicants, that's not to say that you can't get the job. You still can, but it might be a little easier if you were able to find something that's not on the job board.

Hannah: Yep. Go where there's less people.

Ryan: And there's only one applicant

And that's you

Hannah: The way I think about it is, think about, hikes or lookout spots on vacations or whatever that, have nice views, right? If you, if there's one, that's a hundred feet from the edge of the trees and you can see this beautiful view, a lot of people are gonna go to it. Right. But if there's one that takes about an hour hike into, there's gonna be a lot less people there.

Awesome view though, you know, and that's kind of how I think about it. If you let everybody else go look at the a hundred foot view and you just go past them. It's possible that you're the only one looking at that view.

Ryan: And so I did want to just mention that.

We all know, or maybe don't know, but it takes a lot of applications in order to get an interview or even to get hired. Right. It's a hundred applications to one interview.

Hannah: Yes. We know it sucks guys, but that's just how it is.

Ryan: So yes, you should be still on these places. Indeed. LinkedIn, Monster, whatever you should still be on these places, but alongside those efforts, what if you could find these hidden vacation spots that you're talking about or find these hidden jobs another way. And so it's not to say that we're gonna be doing this in lieu of kind of hitting that spamming that apply button

Hannah: to get your numbers up,

Ryan: but you're gonna be doing it in conjunction in tandem with those efforts.

Hannah: And when we say hidden too, it's not hidden so much as just not obvious, even too. Right. They're just on the, they just live on a website and they're not necessarily living on a job board and you have to find them.

Ryan: Not, not all of them. That's not necessarily all of them what we're talking about.

Hannah: Yeah. Yeah.

But some of them.

Ryan: So let's kind of just jump into the first one. The first one is gonna be asking or alerting your network, and this is probably the most powerful, because you're actually asking a known entity, you are a known entity and they are a known entity as well. And it can be as simple as sending out a text.

It can be simple as sending out a LinkedIn message or making a post on social media. A lot of people don't want. Especially, if you have a job already, you don't want your current employer knowing that you're fishing for a job. So you might not wanna put a social media post out there, but a simple call or text message saying, Hey, I'm looking for work in our field, if they're in your field or I'm looking for work in this field,

Hannah: Because of the tech layoffs, the last few weeks, I have seen a flood of this on LinkedIn. A ton of people immediately after they get laid off, they just turn around to LinkedIn and they, or, or Twitter.

And they say, Hey, I lost my job. I'm open for work. And they don't even, they don't even submit their full resume. They just say they're bullet pointing themselves is, which is pretty amazing. And they're just saying, this is, I can start work this day and there are recruiters there, there are people getting jobs in the comment.

They're getting jobs in the comments. It's pretty wild, actually. It's pretty interesting to see.

Ryan: So the good thing about asking your network is that we're assuming that this person knows you or knows your ability and they can vouch for it. And if they don't fully vouch for it, at least they can make an introduction.

Hey John, this is James. James, this is John. John does this James you're hiring for that. Here you go. Thank you very much. And that in and of itself is huge because now James doesn't have to go and look anymore. You've just arrived from a known source of his, and he's like, okay, well, He put his stamp on him.

So, all right. I guess I'll give him the time of day.

Hannah: And you know what, I actually just got asked this.

I had completely forgotten about this, but, there's a role that there's been trouble filling at my job, and someone asked me today, they were like, do you know anybody that could?

And I was like, you know what? I actually do know. I actually do know somebody that could fill this, that could fill this role. And I'll let 'em know if you know, I'll reach out to them and see if they're available, but this is a job that it's posted. It's available, but they've had trouble filling it.

And so now it's gonna get, if they end up liking this person, that job is going to be filled informally. It's not going to be filled through the formal application process, which is interesting.

Ryan: Yeah, definitely. And so one of the biggest things that we get about this is that not everyone has a network.

We get it. All right.

Well, if you don't have a network start building one.

Hannah: I think people think of network too formally, too. Network is just people you know folks. It's just people you know. It's not necessarily these like formal networking connection. It's not all that, it's just people that know it

Ryan: can be though

Hannah: it can be, but sometimes it's just people that know you.

And so I think in a lot of ways people think of network too formally and it's actually just it's anyone that you know.

Ryan: Yeah, definitely.

Hannah: Yeah.

Ryan: And just getting other people out there with their ear to the ground.

They'll think

Hannah: of you. Most people wanna help.

Ryan: Yeah, exactly. And so, that's a good point.

But if you don't have a network, okay, that's fine. There's there. You can do any one of these other things as well. Or if, like I said, you don't want to say your network, all your professional contacts, you also don't want them to know that you're leaving your job for whatever reason, cuz it's gonna get back to your boss or anything like that.

That's fine.

We can do any one of the other ones. So the next one is gonna be online communities and being active in an online community in your industry can be super helpful. Not only can you learn a lot about the industry, but then you make a lot of connections there and sure, for a lot of the communities, you might be under a pseudonym,

Hannah: But those connections are still strong.

Ryan: If you are in this pseudonymous environment like Reddit or some other online community, a discord or something. You can take it into direct messages and

Hannah: introduce yourself,

Ryan: introduce yourself and trade your actual information and it happens all the time.

Hannah: And remember that people wanna, most people wanna help if they can.

It's it's just how people are.

Ryan: And in certain online communities, they allow employers to post job listings.

Hannah: Yes. And a lot of times they do this because the employer does not have the budget to post on larger job boards or they're a part of the community and they know that there's people in there that could fill those roles.

I'm a part of a few different slack/discord groups where this happens a lot. A lot of people don't know, but it's expensive. It's it can be very costly for an employer to post a job on job board, like posting on LinkedIn is very expensive. And, a lot of people just don't, they don't know that.

I think a lot of people think that posting on LinkedIn job listings is free and it's definitely not.

Ryan: Yeah. And well, not only that though, is more than that is that these online communities, if, say you're in a marketing community, why am I gonna post it on LinkedIn? Okay, nevermind, the money. Money aside.

And just hope that the right people see it.

Hannah: When you get posted in a marketing group or you get marketers.

Ryan: Exactly. If you're in this marketing community, Why not just post my job listing in that community. And now I'm gonna get probably more qualified, more targeted.

Hannah: People who are on the same page as you cause they're in the same community as you. Exactly.

Yeah.

Ryan: And so if you're not a part of any of these online communities already, of the places that you could look is Reddit, Facebook groups. Those are really common. A good place to start. Just by Googling and you literally just type into Google your industry online community.

Hannah: And I know a lot of us don't really go on Facebook anymore, but this is actually one of my secret underground superpowers is Facebook groups like Facebook neighborhood groups. You will not believe what people will do in those groups.

They'll post all kinds of stuff and they'll help and they'll bend over backwards to help. And that's a huge, that's a huge thing. Definitely go in. Add yourself to your local groups, add yourself to your neighborhood groups, wherever you are. This is also a good way to meet people in your community if you're new somewhere, or if you don't feel like you have connections to anyone.

This is a great way to sort of get involved and see what's going on and just see like the pulse of things. See when people post work or jobs or what have you is an awesome way to do it.

Ryan: Yeah, definitely. And another thing you could do.

You could create your own professional community. So that takes a lot of time and energy, but,

Hannah: but you could,

Ryan: it can be helpful to further your own career and others who join the community is definitely an idea, but there's a lot more into running a community than there is to just being a member of it.

Will you talk a little bit about online community building in episode 47? You guys wanna go back and listen to that and we'll put show links to everything in the show notes and degree free.co/podcast.

Hannah: And if you wanna join our community, then, you're gonna wanna.

Do you wanna pitch our community right here?

Ryan: You can, if you want to.

Hannah: What's the signup address we're gonna give them.

Ryan: Can just put, you can just do, slash community.

Hannah: Okay.

And, part of the reason that we know that it takes a lot of time and energy to run a community is because we run a paid community called the Degree Free Community, and you can actually join us if you want.

It's pretty fun on there, and we help people get the work they want. You can join by going to degreefree.co/community, if you would like to be in a community with us. It's pretty cool.

Ryan: Yeah, absolutely. And moving on to the next thing that we could do is we could look at job fairs and so this is like super old school.

But you could just bring copies of your resume. Look up a job fair first. I mean, don't just go down to your local convention center on a Saturday

Hannah: and hope that it's job fair,

Ryan: Right.

Hannah: It would be Comic-Con.

Ryan: Yeah,

Hannah: it's always Comic-Con.

Ryan: Right, exactly.

And so, look up when your next local job fair is. And I think that they do virtual job fairs now too.

Hannah: Yes. That's very common, and actually one of those paid communities is a good place to find one of those. They're the type of places that run virtual job fairs cuz they're targeted.

Ryan: So depending on the role company, job industry, Some companies do on the spot interviews at job fairs, some companies even do on the spot hiring.

Hannah: They do. That's still done for those of you who, who don't believe it, that still does happen.

Ryan: What job fairs are really good at? Getting in front of people. It's just getting in front of a person. I mean, virtual of a job fairs too, but I'm more talking physical.

Hannah: Yeah. Shake their hand, look them in the eye so they know what your face looks like.

Ryan: Right.

You can actually see a person, they can see you. You can see if you wanna work there. They can see if they wanna work with you.

Hannah: I can hear people now just going, oh, boomers, but I'm serious. There is something to this.

Ryan: So job fairs are a great place, pretty straightforward, but a lot of people nowadays don't wanna leave your house, which I understand.

But if you don't wanna leave your house, Other people don't wanna leave their house too. So you should probably go and do what other people aren't doing. Which brings us to the next thing, which is using the company's website.

Hannah: Yeah. This is a big one. So this is a really good, this we've talked and we've talked about this before, too, but especially if you have a company in mind that you'd like to work for, or you're doing research.

You're doing job research and you see a listing and it's a company website. This is really good for local companies too, or smaller regional companies go to their actual website and apply via their actual and apply via their actual website, because that is the most direct line to them hiring you, other than physically going in possibly and taking your resume.

If it's a, like I said, a regional or a local company but they do keep these up to date because it's a smaller, it's usually a smaller, it's a smaller company. Go to their actual website, look at their native job listings on their actual website, even if it's an old website.

You know what I mean?

A good example of this would be like a law office. Go to their website and go to careers on this small law office website and see what's there and then apply there.

Ryan: What a lot of people don't know is that same thing, what we said about indeed or rather LinkedIn, but both of those places you have to pay to list your job listing on for companies to list their job opening on their own website. That's free. And so a lot of the smaller companies, small businesses are going to have a career section on their own website and, why?

Because it's free and they don't have to pay anybody. And so those listings are gonna be the freshest they're not gonna be, I think we've all clicked on a apply now on some, some job board and it takes you and the listing isn't even there anymore.

Hannah: This job is expired, blah, blah, blah, blah.

Ryan: Right.

And so if we know if it's on the company's website, it could still be expired to maybe the HR person didn't take it off. Or the web dev didn't take it off. Whatever. But it's got the best chance at being accurate. And there are some websites that are scraped by job boards.

And so maybe they're scraped like once a day and then they're put into the job board. If you go to the website, you might be able to be one of the first applicants. Because it has it, hasn't gotten aggregated to a job board yet. Also, if you go to company websites. Some companies, this is usually bigger companies, but they'll even allow you to create email notifications and email alerts.

When new job postings are posted.

Hannah: And that's a really good way to be the first one on the first one in line. You're the first application that they get, because you saw the email at five, you know, at, at 7:05. And you had your application in at 7:08, like, congratulations. Good job.

You're the first one in there.

Ryan: Yeah, exactly. And the next one that we're gonna be talking about is volunteering.

Hannah: Yeah, you can, you can volunteer if you want to. We're not big on this because we feel like you should get paid for your work, but if you have exhausted other options, this is a good way to build a network.

Ryan: Yeah. I hear what you're saying and I agree with you. I'm not huge on volunteering either, but who am I to tell you what to do with your time?

Hannah: Very true.

Ryan: Like who am I to tell you? What do with your time, if you wanna volunteer, go volunteer care.

Hannah: Yeah. But I mean, for work, if you need work

Ryan: This is just a way of finding jobs that aren't posted on job listings-

Hannah: that's true.

That's true

Ryan: that aren't posted on job boards. And so by volunteering and it doesn't necessarily have to be at the company of which you're trying to work for, but volunteering in a company in a nonprofit

Hannah: adjacent.

Ryan: Yeah, exactly. That does something similar and by meeting those connections, you're like, oh yeah, well, I'm kind of looking for work in X and I'm kind of looking for work in Y

Hannah: and now you're top of mind.

Ryan: Exactly. And so while I hear what you're saying, yeah. We wanna pay people for work and everything like that. Who are we to tell you what to do? Volunteer, go, go for it. And we're just talking about being able to find jobs that are not on job boards. And a lot of times, if you are volunteering, depending on what you're volunteering for, you might be with people that you wouldn't normally have access to.

Hannah: That is true.

Ryan: And so say let's use something completely unrelated. So say you're at a beach cleanup or church, whatever church fundraiser and there's this big wig at this marketing firm, vice president somewhere. And you and him are

Hannah: picking up bottles,

Ryan: picking up trash together. And you're trying to get into a marketing role at a company. Nevermind his company.

I mean, his company would be great. Any company would be great. I'm just looking for a job. but now you're on the same level and you can talk while you pick up trash. You can talk while you sell lemonade

Hannah: Right

Now that's a good point. You make a good point.

You make a good point.

Ryan: Depending on how you're volunteering, you could also learn new skills, right? So the thing here is that meeting new people and learning new skills, I think that's, I think, depending on where you do it, depending on how you do it, It can definitely be worth it.

Hannah: That's a good one. So next would be temp agencies or recruiters.

This is I think, an underrated way to find a job. I I've actually known people that have gotten good work through temping and it just turned into a permanent position but this is a good way to just, if you want work and you wanna get in somewhere, go to a temp agency and let them send you somewhere.

Ryan: Yeah, or a recruiter. Yeah. And it's just, what we're doing here is we're just outsourcing our search to

Hannah: someone else.

Ryan: Someone else.

Hannah: Yeah. Let the agency do it for you, let the recruiter do it for you and you just do work.

Ryan: Yeah. And so this one's gonna require a bit of Googling. We won't spend a ton of time on it here, but just

Hannah: highly dependent on where you are too.

Ryan: Right? Exactly. And so, and it's highly dependent on where you are,

Hannah: what you're doing,

Ryan: what you're doing, what industry you're in, what job roles, and so it gets very targeted or very nuanced very quickly.

Hannah: So. The best advice is to go do some Googling.

Ryan: Right. You're just gonna, you're just gonna have to Google here.

The last one that we wanted to talk about is targeting small businesses, and this is huge, especially for people that are trying to get into a certain industry, like trying to transition their career and get into a new job in a certain industry.

Hannah: They wanna learn a specific, yeah. Like what comes to mind here is, like bike shops and bakeries and locksmith, locksmith stores, people that fix clocks.

It doesn't matter, but go in. Ask if ask what they need. Cause most small business owners need something. usually they need labor. They do need help. They don't always have a lot of money, which is the constant rub, but depending on what you know about the business, especially if this is a small business where you are and you see that they're busy and you see that they're growing, and you're like, Hey, I can help you do this.

Or do you need this done? Or I see that you need this done, and I wanna do it for you. This is a great way for you to create your own job or get them to make a job for you, basically.

Ryan: Yeah. These places around the corner or whatever. You could literally just walk in there, just walk in there and ask, are you hiring?

Maybe don't even say that, but say, I'm trying to get into this industry or I'm this type of professional. I do this type of work. I think that you could use it. Here are some ideas that I have and you just give them a list of ideas that you have and with a lot of these businesses, a lot of them don't post job openings,

Hannah: or if they do, they do it on Craigslist too late.

Ryan: One, because it's expensive to post job listings.

And then two, they might not even know that they need help or they might know that they need help, but they don't have time to create a formal job listing because they're so busy with their own work.

Hannah: That is the most small business owner thing I've ever heard, I think.

Ryan: Right.

And so if somebody shows up and says, Hey, I can do this, this, and this.

And that's exactly what they need.

Perfect.

Hannah: Now they don't even have to think about it.

Ryan: Exactly. And now all you have to do is worry about money. Right. And now you have to negotiate.

Hannah: Yeah. It's a great way to get your foot in the door, though. If you wanna learn something or you wanna work for a specific type of business.

And yeah, it's a great way to just cut right around other people who are trying to get into the same industry, but you can do it in an alternative way.

Ryan: What is important to note here with a lot of small business owners, they struggle with finding good workers like that is their number one trouble.

Hannah: Yeah.

Ryan: Right.

And so a lot of small business owners they're willing to train.

Hannah: Yeah. They very much so if they can find somebody they're willing to trust yeah.

Ryan: They're willing to train as long as you just aren't shitty.

Hannah: This is probably one of the best ways to learn too, because if, depending on what you're able to do and what you're able to learn, if you can help a business grow, you're gonna have a lot of times a lot of leeway.

If you can build trust with whoever's running or whoever owns the business, and if you can help them, there's gonna be, there's gonna be trust. There's gonna be autonomy. You're gonna be able to do stuff and learn stuff. It's gonna be very cool.

Ryan: Yeah, definitely. And, that's pretty much it for today's episode.

Hannah: Yeah. If you wanna get our newsletter, then, run on over to degreefree.co/newsletter to sign up, to get a weekly email from Ryan and I about degree free jobs, degree, free resources and stuff that we think is cool.

Ryan: Yeah. And if you guys wanted to join our community degreefree.co/community.

Hannah: We're in there.

Ryan: Yep. You can join us there. If you're struggling to find a job, we can, help you out. We'd love to. But other than that, if you wanted to support the podcast, please consider leaving us a review, wherever it is that you get your podcast. And please reach out guys, if you guys ever, have any questions or anything like that, contact at degreefree.co we'd love to hear from you.

Yep. Send us an email, let us know what you're thinking. Let us know how we can help. Let us, know if you have any ideas for the podcast or anything. Just say hi.

All right, until next time guys. Aloha.