Ways to Find a Job Online in 2024
1. Introduction
The year 2024 may seem years away, but it will come quickly for those who enter the workforce then. As they will find, the web delivers a variety of ways to search for and find jobs. Mosaics encourage students to use these methods to search for a summer job in their field of career interest. College-bound high school students should also consider starting a job search early to secure financial aid for college. This outlines the steps and explains the pros and cons of tapping the web to find a job.
The number of job search destinations featuring specialized industry, career, and geographical areas will be vast in the year 2024. Various online services will offer searchable classified ad services, and many nationwide online services will have similar features for a membership fee. Independent job search services will also be developed which cater to particular industry niches or career aspirations. Bulletin Board Systems (BBSs), the electronic community-sharing stations currently being used by a variety of public, private, corporate, trade, and professional organizations, will become popular networking and job access services. Mentoring systems and co-op/internship program listings, currently administered by professional and trade organizations, will migrate onto the public BBSs and online services.
1.1. Purpose and Scope of the Guide
Guide Purpose and Scope The main objective of this guide is to help those who would benefit from digital support to find a job online between 2021 and 2024. It is aimed at job seekers who are relatively comfortable with using digital tools but who could still benefit from assistance to develop these skills further to plan and execute their job search. The self-help online guide provides some level of tailored support to make a user’s entry to the digital jobs market or support their transition to other employment services. This updated guide integrates the challenges and expectations of both the labor market and training offers in 2024. It has been upgraded based on the experience and feedback from users who tested it over the last three years. The guide specifically addresses online job search with a balanced emphasis on both the best strategies of traditional job search and the features of today’s digital job market.
2. Understanding the Online Job Market
Now, as we skip ahead to the year 2024, we are visiting a very advanced society in terms of online job hunting. This society is a few steps ahead of us, and there are many varied ways to seek and find employment today. For instance, there are job portals that are much more advanced than the ones we had in 2014.
Several advanced programs allow you to go "hunting" for the ideal job over the internet while you are sitting on your couch. Several portals specialize in job listings, and many of them offer job opportunities in large firms. Additionally, top job boards take measures to assist job seekers in searching for jobs, particularly on their job boards. Finding a job with such a large number of offers is both easy and rewarding, and the opportunities for career advancement are also very good. You must keep in mind to target only certain legitimate job portals in order to avoid being exposed to scams.
2.1. Trends and Developments in Online Job Searching
The focus of this text is on methods and services applicants use to search for job vacancies online. We will consider domestic and foreign examples. Given the rate of contemporary changes in communications and, as a result, the speed of emergence of new methods and ways to use them, HR or senior applicants may find relevant tools that are outdated by the time this text sees the light. However, regardless of the development of the information environment, the main instrument to find a job is people. Headhunters and career employees who can recommend applicants are an important and honorable form of job search. About 80 percent of vacancies are closed using the recommendations of friends, former colleagues, or acquaintances. Only 10-15 percent of jobs are overt and reported on various labor market platforms and search engines. The rest are abroad. Regional, small business, short-term, hourly jobs do not require up-to-date qualifications and are closed using various forms of local labor markets.
3. Preparing for an Online Job Search
Take a good look at your credentials. One of the reasons people give up so quickly when they use the job search resources online is that they are not prepared for their first search. It's quite easy to look for a job, but it can be hard to find one that meets your needs. Also, if you haven't updated your resume for a while, you might not be ready to apply for a good job as quickly as you would like. Make sure to have a current resume that accurately reflects your skills and training, and even consider using software that will allow you to print a paper-based resume. The lack of a professional resume could easily stand out if a company is concentrating primarily online. Keep in mind that such resume services could charge you a few dollars to print your resume, along with any follow-ups or job offers you may receive over the years.
3.1. Updating Your Resume and Online Profile
Updating your resume and online profile is fundamental. Keep the information supplied in your resume current. Check that all your contact information is accurate. Give details about all the hiring events and career fairs at your school, the corporations you have talked to, and the basis of your conversations. This information is not just for you. It is also for the school's career counselor, because the more your counselor knows about you, the better they can help you. Your resume and online profile can also help in that they need to be changed. A good practice is to print out your resume and get several people to review it with you once a year. As a dynamic person, you need to keep your resume up to date. A resume is a living, breathing, and growing document that will follow you your entire career. Your resume is an opportunity to tell a story, but only as big as it belongs in the setting.
4. Utilizing Job Search Engines
When job websites first exploded onto the scene in the late 1990s, many people believed that newspapers which advertised jobs would become obsolete. While the print classified business did take a hit, they certainly did not fold up shop. The power of the specialized job search engines is to pull together hundreds if not thousands of listings from across the web and make them more easily accessible. Instead of needing to go to individual newspapers, a job seeker can simply go to a job site and find listings from all of them.
Over the past few years, there have been a series of announcements about job search engines which pull from multiple job sites. At the same time, most job sites offer an interface for filling out a profile and storing a resume, which visitors can use to locate or apply for jobs. Rather than maintain a list of job sites, the best thing to do is simply use a search engine. By using their local search function, a job hunter can find specific types of job listing sites targeting a large number of industries. Of course, this goes back to the basic premise that odds are too few full-time jobs are not listed online and are won through networking.
4.1. Popular Job Search Engines
If you find it difficult to find a perfect job for you, take a look at these suggested ways to find your dream job online. Search on Google by the keyword "Jobs" to discover a wide range of job options in front of you to choose from and select which will be the best fit for you. You could find these big job boards on search engines. Social networking and bookmarking a few job boards will ensure you never miss a new job post. Popular Job Boards offer a wide range of services for job seekers and employers to find the right job or employees. You might find company research and a selection to find a job, post a resume, post a job, or search for a company. There are a wide variety of options to find a job, post a resume, get interview tips, contact a job seeker, or find a career advisor. Job search features, job alerts, company search, and general company profile information are also available. You can also find help for job searches, resume writing, and job interviews. A leading global online careers and recruitment resource allows you to search for a job, post a resume, or find career tools. A unique job search feature enables job seekers to search for jobs by posting or non-posting databases. Find a job by keyword search and featured jobs.
5. Leveraging Social Media Platforms
Social media is an increasingly common tool that employers use for hiring. For job seekers, the platforms are great resources to conduct research and network with companies, recruiters, and other professionals who can help connect them to opportunities. The key to using it effectively to find a job in 2024 and beyond is to have a profile that represents your career journey and a professional presence for your personal brand. Step 1: Keep your recent work, projects, education, skills, and certifications updated. Step 2: Post thought leadership content that demonstrates your knowledge and experience. Step 3: Comment on and share industry news and the content from your connections. Step 4: Connect with employees from companies at which you would like to work. Knowledge checks on work conducted by that company can serve as talking points. The goal of all of this is to position your social media profile as a digital resume, locker room, and business card. Twitter, of course, is not the only platform in which to network professionally. Now is a good time to join LinkedIn, if you haven't already. Outreach can take place in direct messages or reply tweets to connect with peers, leaders in your company, or professionals in your industry. Former interns have success speaking with employees from a company that they are interviewing. Additionally, companies may regularly hold chats focused on job opportunities. Monitoring a company's social media feeds can keep you in the loop. As a job seeker, leveraging a strong social media presence that showcases your personality and expertise can generate leads. Great connections and interactions can put you ahead of other job seekers en route to your destination.
5.1. Professional Networking on LinkedIn
LinkedIn consistently ranks as one of the best sites for job listings and is highly used by nearly 600 million professionals from around the world. To look for a job, fill out a profile with your qualifications. To search for a job, click on "Jobs." This will pull up a search function, where you can scroll through the listings and apply for whatever you like. When using LinkedIn, always make sure you are growing your network so that if anyone in your current network has access to job listings they think you'd qualify for, they can send them your way. You're participating in the communication of tomorrow. Professional networking has always been key in job searching and a fantastic way to increase your professional contacts. In the days of the internet, a website built for the explicit purpose of creating professional contacts makes sense, and LinkedIn is one of the best in the business. Remember, the more people with whom you are connected on LinkedIn, the wider your network of opportunities will be.
6. Exploring Niche Job Boards and Websites
1. Understand what niche job boards and websites are and how they work. Niche job boards and websites are platforms that focus on only a specific type of job or career region. For instance, instead of a generic platform that offers all types of jobs around the world, a niche platform can be a job board that lists only journalism jobs in New York City. To use or post jobs on a niche job board, you might need to live in the area it focuses on or work in the career it focuses on. Niche job boards are great for finding a job in a specific area or field without having to sift through many different jobs that might not have been useful. The competition to get a job might still be high, but there are certain times when niche boards are underutilized. Hence, it's a good idea to check out and try to use niche job boards on top of already popular general job listing platforms.
2. Figure out which niche job boards and websites are worth using. Most general job boards will allow you to search for niche job boards through their platform, and some may be affiliated with the main job boards. Another way to find niche job boards is to be directly referred to them by people in your network when you mention that you are in the market for a new job. Whatever niche job board or website you find, a good way to validate both its popularity and authenticity is to look for job seekers who have used it to find a job recently. You can verify its popularity by looking at statistics such as site hits and daily views, as well as the number and quality of jobs. You can do this by checking if a high-quality or well-recognized company has recently used it to list some jobs.
6.1. Benefits of Niche Job Boards
Niche, or industry-specific, job boards provide an even smaller level of candidates who can be targeted. This is good for companies that need an employee with very particular skills, as it can mean that candidates who have the right skills are currently working. Career service centers and alumni associations often offer niche job boards. Other options include well-established entertainment work sites for theater professionals, and some of the newer sites which specialize in matching health care professionals with jobs. If you're seeking a job in a potential new area, think about joining a niche job board. A very helpful feature of the niche job boards is that the members are usually asked to complete a survey when they join. With this information, you can target exactly the type of job that you want. For example, a recent graduate wanting to combine the medical and information technology fields could select a high-tech job board, enter in their survey that they hold a degree as a registered nurse, and indicate that they are looking at the crossroads of the medical and information technology markets. By entering in an additional 10 keyword parameters such as patient care and utilizing technology, the job boards' search service would send you any job offers that matched your criteria.
7. Using Freelancing Platforms
Income and freelance aggregators play an important role in employment as they allow a person to think wider than the traditional set of professions and ideas. Besides that, it is much more convenient to find a web designer online, for example, such aggregator has a significant impact on the availability of certain services. Therefore, the more of such aggregators exist, the higher the availability and cost-effectiveness of services are. On such platforms, you can quickly find a job-you do not have to worry about conducting separate advertising companies, social networks, partnership agreements. It is enough to register on at least several freelance sites to receive work proposals from various customers and you can get the projects of extremely any complexity. Also, use this aggregate to submit your projects to fulfill the work of other users. Smart software, specialized staff, helping programs, telecommuting is not some kind of abstract future, all of this can already be used today. Are you a specialist in language learning? There are online learning platforms that are always in need of tutors for tutoring high school, college, and university students. You can choose to work from home or elsewhere and they provide the necessary marketing materials. Are you an expert on call for a customer service company? Take live calls and consulting requests using various apps. Have you created substantial documents or marketing materials using common platforms? Consider becoming a live chat or email service operator. Smiling people are in demand if you possess the ability to provide quality service. Customer service positions are likely to exist in the future, which is the wave you can join by starting now.
7.1. Overview of Freelancing Platforms
Freelancing platforms are online platforms that connect job seekers, called freelancers, with employers seeking to have a job completed by someone outside of their organization. Often, these jobs are project-based, and freelancers can take on multiple jobs by working as independent workers. The freelancing industry is very broad and includes jobs such as writing, programming, business consulting, design, marketing, data entry, and administrative support. Overall, many different skills are needed in almost all domains. Platforms often focus on a niche of the broad range of freelance skills, including design platforms or programming platforms. The vast majority of specific freelance skills are reflected in various platforms.
These central platforms use a rating scheme for both employers and workers to provide a reputation system that helps to govern worker quality and avoid malicious employers. Employers and workers are also allowed to provide feedback on their experiences. The rating benefits include the reduced need for costly reputation displays such as degrees or official affiliations that workers traditionally use to signal to employers that they are high quality. The reputation displays provided by the platform signal investment in the long-term relationship between the different members of the platform.
8. Online Networking and Informational Interviews
LinkedIn profiles can be great ways for companies to directly see a candidate’s skill set and experience. Create an account if you don’t have one or use LinkedIn to its full potential. Follow companies you are interested in, look at the profiles of employees who work there, and check whether you have any connections with those people. Informational interviews should be a part of any job search, so use LinkedIn to find people to do these with. Email those you want to connect with to set up short phone calls. While these calls are important in regular job searches, such calls and networking are doubly so now that more and more connections are those made online. Stay in touch with connections from school and previous jobs to stay in the loop for when job opportunities arise. Keep track of people and companies that you meet in your job search so you don’t forget to follow up with them. Take notes on each contact right on LinkedIn for easy reference. You can do this by clicking the Relationship tab toward the top job websites for freshers immediately of a company profile or a person’s profile. Check back often on news and updates in companies that you’re interested in, as well as your contacts' activity. Keep the conversation going by sharing relevant articles or providing a status report on your job search. And don’t forget to join groups—they can be another great way to keep in touch with contacts and hear the latest news and trends in your industry. And when you land a job, update your status, give thanks, and provide a word of encouragement to other job seekers.
8.1. Strategies for Online Networking
Don't ignore your online social networking. Reconnect with former colleagues, bosses, customers, suppliers, professionals, and alumni. Add everyone you can think of. If you find someone you think is a prospective employer, ask. If not, ask for referrals. Find contacts at your target employers, just as you would with traditional mail. Reach out to them: learn what it's like to work there, get advice, and ask for referrals. Make it clear you are prepared to start work there and can help them. Do your homework. Research companies for online conversations. Use news readers or news aggregation services to watch specific news, announcements, and keywords in blogs, newsgroups, news pages, and forums. You can network into conversations, either online or in person. Find groups you may want to join and learn; go out and talk to people. Conversations give you an easy way to learn. Keep those fallback relationships going. Remember you can make helpful friends at other firms when strapped for cash, and they make useful acquaintances when hiring. Always agree to help someone who is doing you a favor by offering ideas or letting them pick your brain.
9. Building a Personal Brand Online
While job searching is a frustrating process that frequently feels out of your reach, the time and effort you put into promoting yourself online will be a self-investment. Job seekers need to spend time positioning themselves and building brand values that others will take for granted. They'll gain a winning personal brand and possibly some interesting job outlooks. Having the most robust personal brand will put a unique face on your candidacy, making you more memorable to a hiring manager. If they remember you, there's a good chance you'll move further through the job search process than those who blend in with the rest of the pack. Creating your personal brand can be an agent of comfort. It's entirely possible to create a brand through various online media, and you can easily reach an array of audiences worldwide. You have many ways to extend your personal network and find job opportunities. The brand will give you a face, a personality, a voice, and a case for your skills, ambition, and goals. As we've mentioned, personal branding might be a large factor in winning a job offer. The same principles applied to job searching can be applied to creating, managing, and maintaining your personal brand via online presence. With a savvy personal brand, you have the power to influence the impact of your professional potential and resume. Well-considered personal branding separates you from a herd of applicants and provides a hiring manager with an articulate snapshot of what it's like to work with you.
9.1. Importance of Personal Branding
Since the emergence of the internet, it has grown steadily in importance. Yet it took a long time for most people to realize that the internet could be used in their job search. There is content on every subject imaginable – from how to fix your clothes dryer to how to find the perfect job. The internet holds enormous potential for job seekers. How you present yourself to employers, both online and offline, is essential for a successful job search. We’ve all heard the term "you never get a second chance to make a first impression." And while some say that they don’t care what other people think of them, the truth is that in order to get a job, somebody has to think you’re the best person for that job and present that belief to a hiring manager. Don’t leave anything to chance. Understand how the first impression you make on interviewers can help you get the job.
People are people. While some might make snap judgments based solely on the way you look, most people prefer to get to know you first. Even though hiring someone is a potentially life-changing decision, most interviewers make "hire or don’t hire" decisions over the course of an interview. Knowing this makes it easier to figure out how to get job offers. Instead of obsessing about how you look or sound, or how you answer traditional interview questions, focus on the messages you send about your skills, experience, and potential value to your target companies. Then you could spend less time interviewing and more time doing the work you love with the companies you admire! Focus on personal branding. To be embraced as the rock star professionals that you are, you have to first believe you’re the best fit for specialized positions with each target company. This is where your niche market focus comes into play. Then your personal brand – the stories your past work experiences tell about what you bring to this target company, combined with the voices who will champion your candidacy – describes exactly who you are in a way that’s attractive to your chosen audience. Influence opinions and behaviors to create a consistent, desirable impression of you with every person in your network.
10. Enhancing Digital Skills
In as much as the future of work remains uncertain, one thing that is for sure is that the digital economy is growing. Digital business leads as the most growing business of the era. Due to this pattern, consequent shortages in the workforce are being experienced by various employers. Therefore, individuals who want to upskill or simply learn about digital will likely be in high demand. A great number of individuals will require upskilling to remain in the workforce. This scenario provides an opportunity for employment agencies as they can help individuals transition in these markets. In sectors like transport, healthcare, and manufacturing, smart digital solutions are initiating a change. Senior employees in these sectors will need to upskill in these specialized areas to remain relevant, and digital employment can offer enterprises help in providing digital assistance to manage these transitions. With the way digital technology is taking the lead in the market, there is no doubt that individuals will need to upscale to remain part of the market. Digital skills are what will lead to the building of an effective workforce. Therefore, the role of employment agencies is crucial in effectively helping the workforce adapt to technological change.
10.1. In-Demand Digital Skills
By 2024, most job seekers will have at least a basic level of digital skills. Please find below 10 emerging in-demand digital skills. Choose a few to develop further and package as value propositions in your job applications. 1. Multimedia Production – How are your multimedia production skills and how well do you use multimedia in presenting information? 2. Software Development – Not all jobs will require you to write code. However, these skills make it much easier for technical and non-technical staff to communicate effectively in projects that produce, use, or deliver software. 3. Front-End and Full-Stack Web Development – Alongside the ability to carry out software development tasks, how are your web application creation skills and tools? Develop and communicate these skills. 4. Network Engineering – Can you point out the major VPN link between a country and two regional data centers in Southern Africa? You should be able to follow, check, and even manipulate commonly used protocols at network layer 2 and 3. 5. Quality Assurance – How are your software certification skills? This can be in creating, packaging, or distributing software. 6. Administering/Supporting Computer Systems and Networks – Many organizations are moving a lot of their hardware to the cloud. However, someone must maintain and support this hardware. 7. Solutions Engineering and Selling – A lot of firms no longer send staff physically to deliver samples of their products for prospect evaluation. This is now done using internet tools. Can you carry out an evaluation of commercial internet tools as a Solution Engineer? 8. Decision Support and Data Analysis – How good are your data mining, descriptive statistics, inferential statistics, prediction, or reporting skills? 9. Training and Education Design, Delivery, and Evaluation – How good are your design and delivery of job-relevant onboarding, intervention, and refresher training? How do you measure the effectiveness of your training?
11. Understanding Remote Work Opportunities
The remote working concept started gaining global traction only in the last decade, and as of 2024, remote work is here to stay. While not everyone deems remote work to be perfect for a sustainable future, there is a general consensus that at least some employers like having the option of choosing remote workers. To attract these employers, you need to first understand the benefits remote work brings so you can effectively market yourself. Most employers have found that remote work, in fact, increases productivity, reduces costs for both the employer and the worker, and increases work quality. Remote work also enables the best talent to be attracted, no matter where in the world they are located. Access to qualified talent has also spurred the gig economy as well as the foundational concept of future work. Future work will include multiple sources of income providing meaningful work that adults believe in.
Are you uncertain about the ethical implications of partaking so fully in the digital economy? Does the onslaught of the digital blurring the analog send shivers down your spine? Or are you the analytical, calculated type looking to reduce risk? With the unfolding crises and realities around the world, there are thousands of well-paying remote work opportunities in non-digital services, particularly in the areas of health, care, and digital services support. No matter where you may stand on the digital economy, your earning power feeds local and global economies when you perform hands-on remote work and provide online service solutions for potential or current customers around the world.
11.1. Types of Remote Work
Indoor employment options can be divided into two categories. The main difference between the two categories is not so much in the content of the work as in the conditions in which it can be performed. However, this division will help you take an accurate look at your capabilities and choose the best option for you. The first category includes internet-based jobs. If you have a personal computer and are connected to the internet, you will have access to dozens of different indoor job opportunities. In terms of qualifications, they are diverse. Just to be a good typist or to be a well-adjusted content supplier on the internet, depending on your skills, you can start doing special work that is not very difficult with a fee that could be considered good. Their common feature is that they are internet-based. Your employers may not have met you or even know where you live. As long as you do your work well and deliver it on time, those who need you can only be a few contacts on the internet.
12. Navigating the Gig Economy
12.1. Characteristics of the Gig Economy
13. Tips for a Successful Online Job Application
Look for the most current ways a company prefers to collect job applications. Many companies have an online job application process on their job or careers web page. You can fill in the application online. You can also submit a résumé and a cover letter through the employer's website. Some employers prefer job applications from career websites.
1. Create a good cover letter that you can modify each time you submit a job application. You can think of a cover letter as a more personalized way to introduce your résumé. Your cover letter introduces you, explains why you are good for the job, and requests an interview.
2. A good cover letter should be no longer than one page. Three or four paragraphs are probably sufficient.
3. The goal of the cover letter is to catch the interest of the person in the human resources department who screens your job application and hires people for the job you want. Your cover letter should help that person understand why you are the best person for the job.
4. Send a copy of your cover letter and résumé to a few selected employers through a hiring website. You will be able to post a cover letter and a résumé on the website of the hiring company. Only a few employers can see your résumé and cover letter at a time. The computers that work with the hiring website will send a cover letter and a résumé to the most promising employers that use the website.
13.1. Crafting a Compelling Cover Letter
So much of the written material out there teaches us how to prepare a resume, but very little helps in crafting a compelling cover letter. The few resources that are out there usually just show us bad examples and then tell us to pay attention to detail. But a cover letter is a very specific type of writing, and it is different from an interview. Like teaching, being interviewed tells me something about what you want me to know. A cover letter should take me on a tour of those pieces of your character that you think I should know. As a hiring manager, I place a good amount of weight on the cover letter, perhaps inappropriately, but it becomes clear after a few weeks on the job.
You wouldn't believe that anyone would send out a cheesy or casual cover letter. You are very wrong. Last week, I received a letter that started "Dear Sir" (I'm a woman) and ended with "Later" (it's better not to say). I received another letter from someone who wrote me at the end to ask if I had tried the 10-speed bike they had just tried out. Someone who could have added credit to the joke, or made it into an interesting story, mentioned in passing two months of an intensive job search without financing, with a dodgy company paying for the part. The punchline? Since he is running out of money, would I tell him how long he has to wait to get a response?
14. Preparing for Virtual Interviews
You must prepare for a virtual interview the same way you would a face-to-face interview, but there are a few additional things to consider: Test your technology. You need a reliable camera and microphone on your computer or tablet and a strong Wi-Fi connection. Many people also use earbuds, headphones, or a noise-cancelling headset to better hear and be heard. You might need to download video calling software that you haven’t worked with before. You may also need to set up a separate account, especially if you are using your personal machine and accounts to interview. Have a backup plan. All technology is prone to glitches. If your power goes out or your internet connection falters during your interview, do you know what you are going to do? Try to schedule your interviews during times of the day when your connection is most stable and make backup friends or family that will let you come to their house or drag you out of your house if your house isn’t an option during the interview. Check out your background. In a face-to-face interview, there is no avoiding your surroundings. In a virtual interview, you have the opportunity to pick and choose what backgrounds get seen. Go for a clutter-free space that doesn’t show off anything too personal. Also, consider lighting. You want to be seen, and you don’t want any bright lights behind you. Pre-prepare materials. Digital materials have a way of disappearing during a virtual interview. While it’s great to be able to use samples of your work or other evidence you need to provide, have a few printouts available for the hiring manager just in case – and, of course, make sure digital materials are part of your application so the hiring manager can review them. Good luck! With these tips in your back pocket, you are equipped to begin your job hunt.
14.1. Types of Virtual Interviews
There are several types of virtual interviews that are all designed to help an employer complete the interview process without meeting face-to-face. Each has its own pros and cons and is used based on the organization and the job in question. First, we have the phone interviews. These are the most utilized of the virtual interviews. Those benefits include being easily scheduled and executed on both the employer's and the job applicant's behalf. It also helps beginners in professional areas learn how to be professional over the phone. Video interviews not only allow the interviewer and the potential employee to see and hear each other, but many also have the ability to include visual support, such as slides or displays. There are several types of interviews, including live, pre-recorded, and panel interviews. Video interviews can help hiring managers easily gauge an applicant's comportment and behavioral style. Such interviews can also be a good way to work around scheduling difficulties due to time and location. One-way interviews ask the candidate to record their answers to questions that are then viewed by the interviewer or recruiter at another time. Such interviews allow the candidates to present themselves under controlled conditions. The benefit for the employer is that it is much easier to invite a candidate to an in-person interview.
15. Avoiding Online Job Scams
Learn when to walk away from a potential job opportunity. While we wish everyone success in finding a new job, we also understand that not everyone is always ethical. You should approach job searching guidelines in a similar way as if you were dealing with any other online transaction or purchase. Your personal rights to privacy and protection from identity theft and fraud are of the greatest concern.
Employment guides say that they provide all the tools that are necessary for a candidate to use while verifying their information on a job posting. However, while we deal with reputable employers on a daily basis, many job postings and the responses we receive sometimes show that the online community has a few cyber criminals who use the unemployment of others as a platform to run their scams. These scams can affect far too many job seekers. Our guidelines will help to protect you from encountering another variation of these con games.
15.1. Red Flags to Watch Out For
Remember, the recruiter is trying to make money off of you by placing you in a position. However, you have little control or recourse if you're dissatisfied once placed. Here are common signs and phrases that mean the recruiter might not be a great choice. If this is the case, eliminate them from your address book. Undefined or vagueness in the job description - The more vague your potential employer is, the more likely the job might not be legitimate. They can't provide concrete details and use vague, canned paragraphs that could apply to any job or anyone. Watch out for job descriptions that are more than two pages long; they probably are too good to be true. The use of the phrase "a major financial firm" - If they can't come right out and spell the firm's name, those of us who work in the industry know who they're referring to. They're usually hiding something, and sometimes the disclosure is required by law.
16. Maintaining a Positive Online Presence
Always showcase your passions. Create personal profile pages and utilize professional career networking services. Employers want to get to know the real you, so keep your online profile positive yet true to yourself. Your personal and professional online identities should be separate. On social networking sites, take advantage of privacy settings to restrict access to your personal profile. Use privacy settings to control who has access to your profile and personal data.
Highlight your achievements as well as your activities. Employers and college admissions representatives are increasingly using search engines and social networking sites to conduct background research on potential employees and applicants. Everything you post and everything that is posted about you online becomes your personal brand. Take responsibility and take control of what is available for professionals to view. Always present yourself as true, ethical, well-rounded, and interesting. Future employers are always looking and deciding. Periodically conduct a search on your own name within popular search engines, and if negative listings appear, then take steps to remove and/or suppress them.
With the help of search engines, you can quickly personalize your online presence to help eliminate incorrect results you are currently displaying. There are plenty of personal social networks that are indexed by search engines. You can set up personal profiles at publicly accessible sites. Then you can simply optimize the profiles of sites to pop up when your name is searched. Using these sites as personal home pages requires minimal work and can help promote your site even further. Always look further than simply creating accounts that have your name if you want good positive search engine results rankings.
SEO information is not locked away in a secret vault — it's entirely possible to get your site listed on the first page of search results based on your own efforts. Good results are typically achieved by understanding how search engines work, combined with some time and effort. Search engines rank pages based on a variety of factors that combine to determine placement. You should aim to complete the initial setup of some personal branding profiles and do a little ongoing work to ensure the results reflect your true character, personally and professionally.
16.1. Online Reputation Management
Although well-managed online reputations seem to be en vogue in 2019, they will be de rigueur in 2024. The candidates who manage their online reputations most successfully will also be the most sought-after potential employees. Resumes, video resumes, and online portfolios that aren’t part of a valid online reputation will be de rigueur in 2024.
16.1. Online Reputation Management 16.1.1. Clean Up Your Online Presence Today If you aren’t already leveraging the tools that the right to be forgotten ruling gives you to clean up your online presence, then start now. Setting aside 15 minutes a week to Google yourself and ensure that anything that doesn’t help your reputation has been removed is essential. Google also makes a practicable but limited profile removal feature that allows you to see what others would see while looking up your online presence and request anything you don't like removed.
16.1.2. LinkedIn If you don’t already have and maintain a LinkedIn profile, get one. Ensure that your LinkedIn profile displays the best of everything that you offer as a potential employee.
16.1.3. LinkedIn 2024 Job Search By 2024, social networks will be the fastest-growing source for, and second most successful source of, hires. Client surveys, expert opinions, and common sense lead to the conclusion that those same three platforms used for social recruiting will be the most successful today. He did recognize the potential dark side of that move, warning that future studies may also want to examine whether such recommendations serve to concentrate applicants around a few selection criteria, neglecting the more complex evaluations that form the basis of successful selection activities. Quantitative studies showed the benefits of paying to bump your LinkedIn profile to the top of search results.
17. Balancing Online and Offline Job Search Strategies
This chapter started off by mentioning a complaint that many unemployed job seekers make about job searching – that they spend all of their time online and are not being successful in finding a job. That job seeker, and many others, believe that they need to spend all of their time offline, since it is offline job search methods that got them their first few jobs. It is their belief that the highly emotional experience of job searching requires more personal interaction with individuals and hands-on experience while investigating potential job opportunities. The truth is that job searching requires a balance of both offline and online job search strategies. It is important that job seekers take a balanced approach when they search for a job because so much more resourceful information is available through online-based tools, and the online portion of the job search makes the initial stages of the job search process much more efficient. For example, think of the time and money job seekers spend purchasing newspapers and job bank publications in hopes of finding a job lead or two while stopping in day after day after work or completing long marathon sessions in the public library visiting the job search websites. And think of the resources expended by job seekers who complete a thorough search of journal publications and company websites for each individual company in which they are interested to find out more about the company's operations, the major problems facing the company, upward mobility within the company, benefits offered by the company, and salary expectations. Such a job search would probably take three days in various libraries.
17.1. Combining Traditional and Online Methods
It is clear that the techniques that have worked well in the past are just as effective now. Printed mass mailing is obsolete, but sending personal messages that tell a prospective employer how you would help the employer with specific contributions remains a sound strategy. Who you know, and who your network knows, is more important than ever. Referred candidates tend to go to the front of the decision line.
Cold calling the hiring manager who owns the problem is still an excellent idea, provided you have a business reason to call. Cold calling HR and asking to be considered for the next position applied for is less effective. In addition to résumé databases and job posting sites, specialized sites have proliferated. Some have a broad audience and a wide range of job types. They may be particularly useful for executive opportunities because of the high cost of traffic development. As consumer broadband becomes more prevalent, increasingly sophisticated social networking and referral tools become feasible. These niche sites develop a unique and highly valuable audience. They sometimes attract people who are stealth job seekers, employed workers who casually scan for positions of particular interest. Companies pay premium fees to advertise positions because these prospective employees are in high demand. Some vendors use packaging and marketing to attract employers and job seekers based on industry classification, job family, age, generation, geographic area, growth history, development status, corporate culture, diversity, and other classification metrics.
18. Conclusion
In conclusion, the predictions made here, and the ideas offered, will have mixed results not only in job searching but in social progress and fairness. Someone will figure out whether great AI software and machine learning programs are creating benefits for us all or are just for the fortunate few. While jobs with real humans will likely remain the most popular form of employment, correctly-programmed AI software and machine learning programs will be very helpful in attracting people to the best rewarding, satisfying job for them. Not to be forgotten, AI and machine learning business startups will be part of the job market as well. Long search times --- a major issue for future job searchers --- sentiment analysis will get you the job faster.
As competition to improve assessment of the attitude, opinion, and emotion being expressed in a piece of text gets hotter, IT progress offers innovative assistance. Natural language processing will be an essential, active job search tool because it brings a human dimension to technology. With better job descriptions, compelling cover letters, efficient company research, smarter resume writing, and narrower job choices it will help all job seekers. Increased job hunting success derives from happiness as well as success and sentiment analysis in this arena will help find happiness in your next job. These computer-assisted selection techniques may not have been in use, but the path to their implementation had definitely been started. Just remember to be wary of sentiment badgers.
18.1. Key Takeaways and Future Trends
You've reached yet another important milestone in finding a job using the methods talked about throughout this book! No matter how you find your job these days, you'll be on the Internet in seconds, at least to apply, which increasingly entails a work sample-based application process. Our second list of conventional wisdom, as applied to interviewing and negotiating, assumes that both are done on the Internet, by telephone, at a distance, or in person, onsite—often some combination of all four. We've shared with you a number of emerging technologies and changes in job search practice in this chapter. As your generation begins job hunting, it will—of course—have developed its own rules. Here are four of the major trends in job search practice.
Trend 1: Not only has the job search process gone online and formed an alliance with the equally mighty mobility trend, it itself is changing under employer influence. Trend 2: You may be able to create your own work online and be your own boss. Often you can do this profitably by simultaneously being an online employee. Trend 3: Companies, as always, will continue to bring about change in the marketplace of jobs.