Where Are the Best Places to Find Jobs Online - Ep. 19

Ryan: Aloha guys. And welcome back to the Degree Free 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 to the podcast.

Folks, please do and subscribe so you don't miss a single thing. And then if you want to take action on something that you heard in a past episode or this episode, because you're obviously gonna listen to it again, cause it was just that good. Please do check out our website, which is degreefreenetwork.com.

There's a guide on there that'll show you how to go about studying for and getting jobs without a college. We're pretty proud of that. It's pretty cool. Check it out.

Ryan: Yeah, absolutely. And let's get into today's topic today. We are going to be answering another frequently asked question, which is like, where are the best places to find jobs online?

Hannah: And this is this one's a good one because everybody and their mother and their possibly their mother's mother are all on LinkedIn doing easy apply for jobs.

Ryan: So today we wanted to go over the different places and the different avenues that you could look at and go through in order to find jobs.

Hannah: My credentials for this is that I have probably applied to over 2000 jobs on the internet, which is a lot of jobs in case you're wondering, and I found something very interesting. I think that a lot of people I've used a lot of different methods. I have, I have used LinkedIn. I've used the messaging recruiters. I've used the connecting to people on LinkedIn and asking a question I've used the cold emailing companies. I've used calling people and leaving voicemail messages.

I have used walking my resume into places. I have used pretty much every tactic that you can use to get a job short of FedExing my resume in, I haven't done that. I haven't done that yet, which maybe I should and see what happens.

Ryan: See what happens.

Hannah: Yep. Definitely. But, and that's guys, maybe we'll do that and we'll update you in a future episode.

Run an experiment, but I have found that when I get there most responses, when I directly go to a company's website and I apply via their website.

Ryan: Yeah, definitely. That's probably. One of the best ways to do it. I mean, just go straight to the source. Yeah. Just go straight, straight to the company. I mean, that's a little difficult if you're in the job market and you don't know what you want to do and you don't know what company you want to work for.

But going back to what we talked about before, which is when you're looking for a job. Figure out what it is that you're looking for, right? Whether or not it's so work at a specific company or a specific in a specific industry, make a certain amount of money, whatever it is. From there, you can narrow it down and go into a company's website is probably the most effective thing that you could do.

Hannah: For those who are already employed also at a corporate job or in some sort of larger structure. So if you're working, if you're working a lower paying job at a large company, one of the most effective things you could do to get another job is to go online to your own company's website and apply internally because they've already trusted you enough to hire you.

So if you've retooled your skillset and you're applying upwards, go to your own company's website or a sister company's website, if your company owns other companies do that, because that's going to be a really effective also.

Ryan: Yeah, definitely. And just jumping through the hoops. I know a lot of people nowadays, it's not as easy as like the easy apply on LinkedIn and it's sometimes it's not as easy as other companies where they'll like they have the resume scanner that just pulls in the bullet points onto the application. And some companies might not have that, especially if you're doing it, especially if you're applying to a smaller company, but applying to the individual company is the best way to cut through the noise.

Hannah: And I'll give a little tough love here and I get it. I get it. I really do. You've seen me just going, "oh my God, I just can't fill out another line of my address today. It's too many. It's too many times. It's just too many times at the same time." If you need a job, fill out the application, suck it up, dude.

You just got to fill it out because you know what if you can't muster up enough within yourself to just apply for the job, they shouldn't give it to you. And that's true of me too. When I can't bring myself to fill out a couple of lines of information that I know on a job site, they shouldn't give me a job.

And so while I get that, a lot of people it's probably too, because of the mass applying that's going on. The people are just, when they're applying, they're applying, like I am, which is applying just so many jobs. And so when you do that, the problem with doing that is that you do get burnt out from just repetitive information filling and truthfully, the industry needs to find some solution to this, but the earliest solution to it is the LinkedIn easy apply, which I think it's really well intentioned, but I also think that recruiters don't look at it because they just get too many applications.

Ryan: It's too easy.

Hannah: It's too easy. There's no,

Ryan: there's not enough of a barrier.

Hannah: Correct.

Ryan: And it's all noise. I mean, there could be a diamond in the rough, but it's difficult to say.

Hannah: How would you find it if you're looking at, I don't know, 500 other rocks?

Ryan: Exactly. And I think one of the other that would be good. If you're thinking about working in a specific field or a specific industry, like if you want to work in semiconductors or something like that just apply straight to the Intel website. Just apply straight to the AMD website and whatever TSM, Taiwan, semiconductor manufacturer, something like that. Apply directly to the website, if they have listings available. And then another thing that you could do is if you're thinking about doing, working in a specific company or within a specific industry, I would think about listening to if they have a company podcast or if they have a company videos or if they have just any type of forward facing media.

And trying to contact the people that do that. And so if you're trying to get into a specific like energy sector type of job listening to an energy sector podcast where they have guests on, where they go over their ideas and the ideas for the future. And there's going to be a CFO that comes on or something like that.

Just look that person up on Twitter. Look that person up on LinkedIn and then just send an email.

Hannah: Or try and find their email. Try to find their actual email if you can.

Ryan: Send an email, send a DM, send a message on LinkedIn and just try to get in touch and try to provide some value and say, Hey look, I'm thinking about working in this industry.

I have these skills.

Hannah: I find a really effective thing to ask that has gotten me the best result is "I can do this, but what do you need?". Because you're asking a question that they, while they could obviously not answer you, but they have the answer because if you're asking them and saying, "Hey, like I see that you guys are doing this, this and this, what do you need?"

The person that asked that question is company focused, is business focused, is focused on their mission and not on a I need. And while it's dumb, really, because obviously you're an employee, you're applying for a job. So obviously it's because you need a job or you want a job. It doesn't really matter. But at the same time, if you flip that and you show that you genuinely you've done some reading, you're looking at this company, you think you can be of use and you communicate that in a simple way to somebody who's in a position to possibly give you the chance to have that.

It doesn't hurt.

Ryan: Yeah. That's an interesting thing that you said about that, that question. What do you need? Because I forget where I heard it, I don't know, years ago, but they say that that is a better question when you're asking somebody what they need done, or for an example this is just a basic example that that happens in my everyday life. And so I'm a fireman on, at the fire station. If somebody's cooking dinner, instead of me asking, how can I help, I'll ask, what do you need? Because asking how can I help him puts the burden on them to think about my skills and what I can do in order to help them.

So if they're cutting vegetables or something like that I don't know, does he know how to cut this certain cut or whatever? This analogy is breaking out really quickly but I do use this all the time. And instead I just asked them like, instead of putting that burden on them to figure out whether or not I know how to cook a certain thing, I'd just be like, oh yeah, can you brown the meat?

Oh, perfect. Oh no, I don't know how to do that. And they're like, but that's what they need. And at least he told me, and now, instead of having them walk, putting a chore on them.

Hannah: Yeah. To decide what you have the ability to do instead, they can just say, I need this. Yeah. And ideally, if this person is a recruiter or hiring manager, they communicate to you their most immediate need.

And now that that's a priority.

Ryan: And then if you don't fit that need but you still want it, but you, but you still want to work for that company and you can say, let me know. Or if that job sounds cool and you need X, Y, Z certifications, or you need X, Y, Z experience you know now what you can tool, skillset too.

Hannah: If you want to be really bold to just say, I don't have that, I'm going to go get it. And I'll contact you when I'm done. That person honestly, too I think if I was in a position of hiring and someone said that to me, I would be extremely impressed.

Ryan: Yeah.

Hannah: Yeah. Because that shows a lot of initiative.

Ryan: Yeah. And I think so after you applied. Obviously the following up emails.

Hannah: Yeah. So I was going to say too, another thing that I want to say here in, in talking about applying on the company website what you were saying too about commenting on their company videos and stuff like that.

Sometimes you can find the email address for a company or whoever's in charge of the YouTube channel on YouTube. You go to the YouTube channel and you go to the about section and you can find the email for possibly sometimes whoever's in charge of it. It's not always the company email. Cause if they started the YouTube channel early, it might still be directly to a person which is really good.

Also companies have gotten a much better about Twitter. They use Twitter a lot, actually Twitter and Tiktok. People are posting job openings, describing what a day in the life of the job is. And then they're also giving direct phone numbers to hiring managers. If you look on TikTok, The actual recruiters phone numbers, you will get their email addresses.

Depending on the company, the person might be the one who's in charge of their TikTok too. Especially if you're like someone who's applying for a lower entry level job, and you're young, that's a fantastic place for you to find entry level work.

I think that it's actually getting more useful because the video aspect of it and the fast aspect of it is becoming like really useful for a lot of hiring managers. I will say that Twitter, you can just search, hiring, and then look at the tweets and see what companies are hiring. And sometimes they'll even tell you hiring for X by X time. It's really wild how specific they've gotten with the tweets. I really do think that LinkedIn is just attracting because everybody's home. A lot of people are still working from home and then everybody just resigned from their jobs. And now everybody's looking for new jobs and I think LinkedIn is like the standard for networking.

So I think that it was more useful for jobs and for networking when there was less people on it. But now. I think there's a lot more people on it for quicker reasons. And because of that, it's diluted the impact and the reachability of the people on it.

Ryan: Yeah. That's not to say that you can't use LinkedIn too.

We're going to use all. Definitely, still use LinkedIn. We're just giving other options. Yeah. More tools and the toolkit to use really. The interesting thing with the Twitter and the TikTok is companies are having trouble attracting talent and they have to go where their candidates are.

This is all they're going to go. They're going to hit you on Twitter. They're going to hit you on TikTok and that's good. I mean, use that and apply. I think the next thing is going to be super rudimentary, and people are going to be like, really again with this guys.

Hannah: Oh, no, I think I know what he's going to say.

And I think it's a six letter word.

Ryan: Yeah. And I had to count. It is six letters. And so

Hannah: wait 1, 2, 3. I was going to say it at the same time as you. Okay. No, you're going to say, oh,

Ryan: Google,

Hannah: Google, Google it.

Google scholars, folks. It is the most effective tool that you can use for this. So basically if you're, if you want to find a job online, look up the job by Googling it. It's amazing. How many times a day I say this to people and they still, how do I? Look it up. Oh my gosh. Put whatever job you might want to do in Google and then see what comes up.

You will get hundreds of results. And what this is going to do is it's going to give you a baseline because you can see the total. Which is really, really helpful. And again here we go again, make an Excel spreadsheet, make a spreadsheet, dammit, but the titles on the spreadsheet and then rank them and see how often they appear.

If you're looking for a specific job put in if you see four different ways that it's phrased, like a a business analyst is a good one. If it's a business analyst consultant, if it's a business analyst, if it's a certified business analyst, if it's a specific type, if it's like Salesforce business analyst or Oracle business analyst. Put those in and then see which ones are repeating most often because that's going to help you with demand.

And then also you can look at, you can go to the companies from here. So then you can go back to the company route and go directly to their website. What I have noticed about the Google job listings is that a lot of the time they will have all of these odd like recruiting website. So there's a bunch of weird, like a weirdly like LinkedIn job apply, like there's a bunch of weird links to a bunch of odd job sites.

But if you just Google the name of the company, go back to their website. Do not apply on those. Do not apply on those websites. They're just ridiculous. Why not? Because you have to sign up and make a different account for each one of them. You're going to get a thousand emails and the process is going to be the same.

If you just go to the company website and apply on the company website.

Ryan: It's the job that's listed on those. Like what are those, what are they called? Like

Hannah: delete job marketing? Job boards?

Ryan: Job boards.

Hannah: Yeah.

Ryan: Are they the same as the ones that are jobs that are posted on the company website?

Hannah: Yeah. Sometimes depending on how old the listing is, if it's like a month old, that job has probably gone.

So you're still gonna want to go to the company website. If the benefits interest you, then go and look at the company and see if they have any other openings. That's a good way to do it too.

Ryan: And it seems super rudimentary and it is, it's just Googling, but you would be surprised of how basic the questions that we get are, and there's nothing wrong with that.

It just that's how these are how basic dancers have to be, because really this is that's where to start go to websites of the companies that you're interested in. And then Google. Google the industry, Google the amount of money, Google, the company, Google the job title. And exactly, as you said spreadsheet. Spreadsheets really help and not just get the data in some sort of thing where you can keep a log of what you're doing.

Hannah: So you can make an assessment.

Ryan: Yeah. And what you're doing and what you applied to and where you are in the process of this oh second interview here, or whatever, whatever.

Hannah: I will say. So when I got the job that I have now. I found it on Google, but then I applied for it on LinkedIn actually.

But now what I've noticed is that Indeed as much, I think gets much more traffic than LinkedIn, or I think it's higher quality because there's less people. So there's less noise from Indeed than there is from LinkedIn.

Ryan: Yeah. Interesting. And this is just anecdotal. I've been seeing a lot more ads for Indeed over the past few months in comparison to, and this is of one, like this is a small sample.

Yeah. I've been seeing a lot more indeed ads. And then, so I'm wondering too with LinkedIn, because they bought linda.com because they have the LinkedIn learning arm where they're making revenue, where they're making a repeatable revenue $30 a month or whatever it is to take the courses.

Hannah: They also charge you to message recruiters.

They charge you to message people on that platform now as well.

Ryan: All I'm saying is that maybe because they have that arm, they're not as focused on the jobs aspect of it because their revenue smoothed out.

Hannah: I wonder if indeed is advertising because they don't have so many people in there as they used to.

Ryan: That's I'm not sure. What I'm saying is that I've seen more ads for indeed.

Hannah: That's very interesting.

Ryan: And it seems from what we've seen Indeed is there's less people on there. And so the visibility of the jobs are less and therefore you might have a easier time to be considered for a job.

That's all I'm saying.

Hannah: Indeed. Thanks. Nice.

Ryan: So I think the next place is going to be very 10 years ago.

Hannah: Yeah.

Ryan: Maybe, maybe longer than that.

Hannah: Retro.

Ryan: And that's going to Craigslist.

Hannah: Craigslist.

Ryan: Finding a job, the quote unquote old fashioned way, not the actual fashion away.

Hannah: Dude, surprising fact Craigslist is, has a tiny team of people.

And that, that site people don't realize how much money that business brings. It is unreal, profitable.

Ryan: It was an interesting bit of business model that, that guy Craig is an interesting business model that I thought he went with, which is. To make it pretty much open, it was an interesting.

Hannah: Do whatever you want.

I'm just going to charge you for these listings.

Ryan: But at first I didn't even charge.

Hannah: Right, to get people on there

Ryan: At first they didn't even charge. At all.

Hannah: So my, my thought process about Craigslist is there I have several re reasons. I think Craigslist is really high-impact one one, it is cheap.

So you're going to get businesses with smaller hiring budget. And they are going to post on Craigslist because it's 5 bucks, 10 bucks for them to post on Craigslist and for, to post on larger hiring platforms, it's different.

Ryan: Is it 5 or 10 bucks? I thought it was like 75.

Hannah: No, I don't think so.

I think it depends on how long you're going to have it up. Oh, I'm not sure we should look into it. We should look up. Either way that's minuscule compared,

Ryan: It's so tiny.

Hannah: And usually at that point too, at the point where you have a budget of 75 to 5 to $10 to hire somebody for your recruiter, your HR person, your hiring manager, or your just your regular manager to hire people. At that point, I think you've got a manager and they also have to hire people.

You don't have a separate hiring department usually. If you're that small, if you have that small of a budget, and so I think the companies that do that, I think the companies that hire in that way, they're smaller, their need is greater. And they get a lot less applicants. And because of that, that's a really good place for you if you are trying to get a job, maybe that's a little bit outside of your reach, but it's worth it. Another thing that I've noticed is a lot of law firms post on there for jobs. I have no idea why maybe because they don't have a dedicated HR team that might be.

Ryan: Yeah, it could be. I'm not sure.

Hannah: But I know there's a lot of, a lot of smaller law firms, post jobs on there.

Ryan: Yep. If anybody knows, let us know in the comments. Yeah. You know what email [email protected].

Hannah: Yes.

Ryan: Let us know. But if you run a law office.

Hannah: It's law offices and dentists that's who's on there.

Ryan: Yeah. Professionals. I imagine it's because what you said. There's not really a dedicated HR, at least what we know from our personal experience from doctors that we know that run their own private practices.

A lot of times it's just them and then like their spouse running the office and then a receptionist nurse person.

Hannah: Floater person.

Ryan: And then if it's multiple people there's an office manager, but there's not really HR people until you get to the factories.

Hannah: But even when they're scaling a little bit of like, when they might be bringing on somebody that has some tech experience to do their email marketing or something like that.

There's opportunity there. There absolutely is. And especially if it's a practice with several physicians, because then there's a decent pool of money to invest in growing their practice. And so that, and same thing with the lawyers actually. And because they're on there that tells you the type of business, like a little bit entrepreneurial, somewhat higher earning and smaller, smaller candidate pool, like that's a really good, that's a really good stack if you're looking for somewhere to get work.

Ryan: A lot of trades that are on Craigslist too, because of all of the reasons that we just said if you're a small handyman doing a few thousand dollars jobs or tens of thousands of dollar jobs, you don't have the team to do your HR and your management and stuff like that.

If you're doing it for a one person shop.

There's construction

Hannah: companies on there too.

Ryan: There's a lot of people that are hiring for trades cause cause it's cheap friendly industry. Craigslist is a good, is a good place to go.

Hannah: It's underrated.

Ryan: Now. At one point it was the standard at one point, I mean, shoot.

Hannah: It was before its time with the job posting.

Ryan: Yeah. I mean maybe the 10 years ago when I was looking for work. I use Craigslist. I use Craigslist all the time.

Hannah: I got a ton of jobs out there. Yeah.

Ryan: And then I think the last thing that we want to talk about is just kind of like shooting your shot. I mean,

Hannah: As the kids say.

Ryan: Similar to that podcast thing, where go to a company, go to a person, that person is known for being the hiring manager at XYZ company. If this person is the operating manager or COO of Acme Corp, and you want to work there firing it off an email or DM me and the tweets, right? I mean, just shooting up.

Hannah: Yeah. Yeah. Just ask we say this a lot, but they're not going to just, they're not gonna, they're not going to email you.

They're not going to call you. So if you want it, you have to ask for it. Nobody's going to give you something you have not asked for. That's not how opportunities work. That is not how that's not how you get a job that you want. You have to ask for it. You have to do that because if you don't, you will not get it.

Ryan: So I think the last thing I want to talk about is just keeping a good attitude and just keeping at it. And I don't think we say it enough, but going degree free is very difficult in a lot of ways it's a lot harder than going to college and don't get discouraged just because you applied to a hundred jobs and you haven't gotten an interview. Don't let that get you down.

Hannah: Also, the college graduates keep in mind college graduates in the same boat. It takes a hundred applications to get one interview on average. And that's not when the job market is behaving as weirdly as it is right now.

Ryan: Yup. And so it's just important to just keep your spirits up because you're going to think that you haven't gotten any interviews or you have had a bunch of interviews.

And you're going to think that you're worthless and that all the dark thoughts are gonna start creeping in and it gets very dark and, it's lonely. Finding a job is a lonely endeavor, because even if you have a partner, they can't, they can only help you so much. I mean, they can support you.

They can help you write a resume, they can help you do your LinkedIn, they can even apply to certain jobs for you. I'm not saying that you should do this, but I'm just saying that this is all the things that they could help support you doing, which they probably will. But they could do this, but at the end of the day, you're the one that's gonna have to interview.

You're the one that's going to have to do. So it's, it's a very lonely endeavor.

Hannah: It feels a lot like romantic. Job rejection feels a lot like romantic rejection. It gets to you after a little while that said, though, you, you really have to actively fight against that. And you're in your own head,

you have to go that this work, this work is not who I am as a person. You have got to separate those two things, especially if you're going to do this because it's very difficult and just emotionally like it, this is hard for everybody like me, you, everyone. But because a company has decided that they can't afford to hire you for whatever reason or that you're not a good fit for their company culture.

It doesn't really say that much about you. It's funny with people you say, oh, like right person, wrong time, still the wrong person. So right company, wrong time, still the wrong company and, or still the wrong job in this case. And I think that that's a really good way to look at it. Just, just know that it wasn't a good fit at that time.

It might be again later. And just, you just gotta keep applying. Someone's going to hire you.

Ryan: Yeah. And I think that that pretty much covered everything. I think that last part at the end there that's probably it's own episode in the future, because I mean, we've both dealt with that. And I imagine that we'll probably have to deal with that again in the future.

And we've come up with some, some things to help with that. So we can talk about that at a different time. But for where to find jobs online, look at company websites, listen to the company podcasts, or if a notable person from a company that you want to work, for or an industry that you want to work in.

If they're doing guests like speakers, if they're doing the guest rounds on different podcasts, listen to them, learn about their company and then maybe shoot off a DM or shoot an email and try to find them. applying to the company, and you're saying you listened to the podcast and you found it very interesting.

Anything you can help in this way because the company is heading in this direction and you agree with that and you want to help. The next thing is going to be Googling.

Hannah: Google it, just look it up.

Ryan: Yep. It sounds super simple. But that's it.

Hannah: It's got to get done.

Ryan: Yep.

Hannah: Yeah. So just make sure you look up Google jobs, and then make a spreadsheet and put the titles in the spreadsheet and then look and see which ones are repeating most often.

Make sure that if you find a job in Google jobs to take it offline. So, I mean, open a separate tab, Google the company do not apply on one of those spammy job boards that are under there, unless Indeed if you want. But even then and this is also true of LinkedIn too. If you're on LinkedIn and you see a job that you want go to their actual website and apply on their, do not apply on LinkedIn, especially with easy apply.

I do not think that that's effective.

Ryan: Yeah, what about both?

Hannah: Yeah, you can do both. Why not do both? That's there you go. There you go. Do it twice. Twice is nice.

So

Ryan: Indeed, LinkedIn, Craigslist. These are all places that are not new to you, but definitely. What we've been hearing and what we've found for ourselves too, is that there's just so much noise on LinkedIn right now with, with the easy apply.

It has created a very low barrier to applying to all the jobs. And so if you look at the jobs, there's like dozens of applicants.

Hannah: Hundreds.

Ryan: Hundreds, where there used to be maybe three applicants, maybe four applicants, but now it's just a passive button and it's very difficult to cut through all that noise.

I'm not saying that you shouldn't use all the tools at your disposal, you definitely should. 100% you should. Just saying that this is the environment that we're looking for jobs in now. And we're in such a weird environment, too, with what is happening in the macro economy. You're going to have to be creative.

You're going to have to get out there and you're going to have to go and get it, go get it. There, as Hannah was saying, they're not going to call you, especially if you're listening to this podcast at the point that where they are, calling you, you're probably not listening to this podcast.

Hannah: Which is great. Good for you.

We're very happy for you. That's where we hope, that's where we want everybody to get. That is where we want. I want everybody to be there.

Ryan: Headhunters calling your cell phone all the time, so much so that you need a burner now.

Hannah: Oh man. I got to toss this cell phone out. It rings too much.

Ryan: Yeah. But yeah, that was it guys. And then, like I said, Just hang in there.

Hannah: It's going to be okay. Chin up.

Ryan: Just hang in there. It's rough. I know applying to all those jobs is a headache. It's tough, but just keep your head up and keep plugging away. Keep a good attitude. Like I said, we'll probably make a different episode at a different time about that.

And what we've done in the past and what we do at currently.

Hannah: Alrighty guys, that's all for today. Thank you so much for listening to us today. Make sure and and subscribe so you do not miss a single episode. And then if you found that you are wanting to know where to go from here or how to go about doing the things before you're applying for jobs, like trying to figure out what skills, please check out our website. We have a guide it's called how to get a job without a college degree. It'll walk you through what I've done in the past to get one. And then how you can also figure out what skills you have to offer an employer, and there's just a bunch of stuff. And that was really useful.

Yeah.

Ryan: And if you guys wanted to support the podcast, one of the best ways you guys can do that is by leaving us a review wherever you get your podcasts, Apple podcast, wherever. It really helps to get our message out there and have other people find it. We hope that we deserve five stars. If you guys want to get in touch with us, you can always email us.

Our email is [email protected]. We'll try to get back to you. Maybe if you ask us a question, we can make it into a podcast episode. All right guys, until next time. Aloha.