How to Find Your Next Entry-Level Job

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You’d be amazed at how many cool jobs are out there. So many new things to learn, new places to go, new challenges to take on. But how do you find them?

That’s what I set out to learn this week. I found ten different potential opportunities using five different forums. Here’s my advice:

Try Different Forums

I used five different websites when looking for my jobs. Indeed, Monster, Simply Hired, AngelList, and LinkedIn. They all had slightly different listing and search formats, but they all had the same baseline for finding jobs. You had to pick a location and a job title or search word. Some of the sites or listings didn’t include a link to the company’s website, though many linked to a company profile on the individual platform. I steered clear of jobs that didn’t appear to have much information on the company.

Be Open-Minded

Your dream job probably isn’t a half mile down the road, especially if you’re me, and live in a small Maine town populated primarily by the elderly. Out of the ten jobs I found, only two were located in the same place, Boston MA (which isn’t even my first choice of places to live). All the others were scattered about the U.S.

Not only do you have to be open to a location change, but you have to be open to a job description either excluding something you want to do, or including something you don’t. You can always adjust your duties once you’re hired.

Look For Opportunities

Not just job opportunities, look for opportunities to grow, to travel, to try something new. Expand your skill set, take on a new role, anything. If you move on from your old job to a new job that’s exactly like your old one, what did you gain?

Use Different Search Terms

I wanted to focus on marketing roles, so “marketing” and “marketer” were the two most-used terms I used. However, sometimes I mixed it up and put “content creator” or “entry level” or “start-up,” based off how narrow, broad, or relevant the results were with and without.

This includes trying different locations, or just leaving some advanced search options blank. Sometimes, if I was having a really hard time finding a job that interested me on a specific forum, I just left the location entirely blank and narrowed down on the terms I mentioned above. This did give me a few listings for the U.K. but overall I got far more opportunities.

Pay Attention to Dates

I made the mistake of forgetting to filter by dates. I got a lot of multi-month old job ads. Old job ads aren’t good for anything more than a little research.

Look For Common Themes

If you’re looking at job ads for a job you’ve never done before, and you notice most ads mention the ability to use photoshop, but you don’t know how to use photoshop, then maybe it’s time to learn photoshop.

Have a Master Document

It’s probably a good idea to apply to more than one job, so it makes sense to have a list of all the job ads you find interesting. How you format your master document is entirely up to you. For me, I pasted the link (often a shortened version using bitly.com) and next to it I put the location and anything that’d caught my eye about either ad, job, or company.

Finding a new job can be daunting. There are so many opportunities, yet so much competition. It’s important to both find jobs you would be a good fit for, and keeping your horizons open to ones you might not have tried before.