A lot of people have been coming to us and complaining about what a pain it is to apply for jobs online. You spend hours pouring through job postings, getting blurry eyed, reading all of these super boring job descriptions. You think you're a fit, so you apply.
That takes time.
Sometimes the applications can take up to 45 minutes or an hour and one of two things happens: Either you get an immediate rejection that you can tell is automated and it's really frustrating or you don't hear anything at all and now you're really upset because somewhere out there your application is in a black hole, and you don't even know if you qualify.
Well, fortunately, there's a way to go around this.
The Hidden Job Market
Maybe you've heard about this idea of a hidden job market. What it means is that you have to find the employers that you want to work for and then connect with them through back channels.
First, you have to create an interview bucket list. This is a list of companies that you personally qualify. You determine that they are the exact kind of employer you'd want to work for because they meet some criteria.
This interview bucket list should be 10 to 20 companies—and these are your dream employers.
It's All About Content
Now, once you've identified those companies, it gets a lot easier to conduct a job search. But the question always comes up, well, how do I find them? Where do I go? And believe it or not, it's always been really difficult to do.
There's never been a place you could go and just search. But here's the good news.
In the last couple of years, employers have finally had the light bulb go off. They get it. They understand that you want a job shop and in order for them to attract the best talent, they have to put all this content out on social media so that you can find them. Social media sites like LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and even YouTube.
This is called employer branding and lots of companies are doing this. But, how do you find your dream employers when there's so much content out there?
Hashtags, Hashtags, Hashtags
Thank goodness for hashtags. Ever since the concept of using hashtags for content on social media was invented, we've been able to search based on certain criteria and employers are now applying hashtags to their content so that you can find them.
We've actually created an incredible resource at Work It Daily to help you search for your dream companies.
It's a job seeker hashtag cheat sheet and what it does is show you all the hashtags that these employers are using.
You can download this totally free resource and understand how to apply this hashtag concept to your job search. It's a really amazing way for you to dial in and identify those companies to put on your interview bucket list so you really can go after your dream jobs more efficiently and effectively.
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When you realize that 80% of all jobs today are gotten via referral, you know how important it is to take advantage of this hidden job market. Building a proactive job search strategy and networking into these companies is one of the best ways for you to get hired these days.
So, research those hashtags, create your interview bucket list, and finally find your dream job!
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