Stop Chasing Jobs – Have Opportunities Find You and 10x Your Efforts by Growing Your Team.

Read time: 6 minutes

(This is a special series of my newsletter – the seventh in a series of posts sharing insights, tips, and actions that you can implement when you are searching for a job either to leave your current one, or due to a recent layoff. The principles in the following series can be largely applied to both situations and adapted to your specific scenario. Best of luck in your journey!)

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If you aren’t having job opportunities coming to you – you are doing it wrong.

Too often when we start the job search, we are too focused on our own individual efforts to finding a job.

Instead of you doing all of the work yourself – you should 10x those efforts and have others searching on your behalf.

Remember: I was writing this playbook back when I was laid off.

So it’s optimized to generate the largest amount of opportunities.

Sure, I did have a preference for a solid W-2 full-time role with benefits but if push came to shove…

…I would take anything.

I rather put myself in a position to select from multiple options – and maybe still continue to search – instead of only looking for the “right” one while continuing to drain my emergency funds.

So let’s dive into three actions you can do to find more job opportunities by leveraging your networks!

3 Tips for How to Find Job Opportunities Faster

Setting Your LinkedIn Profile to “Open for Work”

One of the fastest ways to find new opportunities is to let people searching for candidates know:

You are Open to Finding a New Job!

LinkedIn is the largest professional social network with over 1 billion users across 200 countries.

And for many “white-collar” industries, LinkedIn is one of the primary networks they are sourcing for prospective talent.

Fortunately for you…

…you just made an all-star LinkedIn profile that recruiters would want to see.

Now it’s time to make it seen and start receiving messages!

You can follow a few easy steps:

1. Go to your LinkedIn Profile
2. Under “Open to” select “Finding a New Job”
3. You’ll then fill out a few fields such as desired job titles and job location.

Visibility: Should I use the Green “Open to Work” Banner?

This is one of the most controversial decisions for those searching for a job.

On one hand – having the banner publicly displayed on your profile is a clear indicator that you are searching.

It’ll be shown anywhere your profile picture will be displayed from posts and comments to a Recruiter using LinkedIn’s search tools.

One the other hand – there are those that think it’s a “cry for help” and can come across as desperate.

If you are a believer in the saying “people want, what they can’t have”…

…then having the green banner on your profile is probably not what you want to do.

But to be fair – the jury is still out.

I haven’t found any trend data that has indicated that displaying or not displaying the banner will have better results.

Reconnecting with Your Network

This is one of my favorite tactics because it usually also comes with some of the most interesting opportunities.

Setting your LinkedIn setting “Open to Work” is a passive way to indicate you are looking for work…

…now it’s time to be active about it.

If you remember the routine of activities that I did to find job opportunities – reconnecting with my network was on the top of my list.

This was one of the top activities that I pursued because it’s led to almost every job opportunity that I’ve had after graduating from San Jose State University.

But why does it work?

There are a few reasons.

Reconnecting with people that you have some past relationship will enable them to vouch for you – especially a past colleague – within their own network.

This can be at their own employer…

…or with a second degree contact that they know.

A referral is truly the difference when meeting someone new.

Another benefit is that for each person that you reconnect with, you are also passively recruiting another person to help find opportunities for you.

Because they know you are looking – and during your chat your express what you are looking for – if they see a match they may share it with you.

Boom! An opportunity coming to you!

I had had even met up with others who were also recently laid off.

I was then able to share opportunities that I came across during my search that might be a good fit for them!

It was a win-win for both of us!

Here’s a list of different people you can reach out and reconnect with:

• Previous colleagues
• Past managers
• School or university alumni
• Friends
• Family

I am pretty transparent with people in my network…

…so when I reached out to them I let them know “I was recently laid off and would love to reconnect.”

Then on the call we would catch up – and strategize.

Recruiting Agencies

While I am starting to reach out to my network to reconnect…

…I am also reaching out to a number of recruiting agencies.

A recruiting agency is a business that is paid to find suitable workers for other companies and organizations

The types of jobs that they are looking to fill include all types of roles from full-time employee (FTE) to short-term contracts to hourly.

This is great because one agency might be working with 10s or 100s of employers which means there might be a role perfect for you!

Because the recruiting agency is doing the search on behalf of the employer, there is no cost to job seekers.

There are a number of ways to find the recruiting agencies to work with since they often specialize on specific industries or job roles.

For example one firm might only fill accounting roles companies while another only works with software engineers.

Fortunate for us…

…we have Google to help us create a shortlist.

I usually start with searching for the “largest recruiting agencies in…” and insert either the city or industry.

If you were looking for a way into a specific company, you can even search by “what recruiting agencies work with Employer.”

After you have a list of recruiting agencies and have taken some time to make sure they are a fit…

…you can make a profile for each of them.

The profiles are sometimes as easy as uploading your recently revised resume or can be more in depth asking additional questions.

I still receive job opportunities with these agencies even years after I had first signed up.

In addition to the large recruiting agencies that are constantly searching to fill 1,000s of roles…

…there are also boutique firms that help with specific roles.

During my past layoff – I was working specifically with recruiting agencies that focus on BizOps or Chief of Staff roles.

What I also liked with some of the smaller boutique firms was how they were open to connect directly with me on LinkedIn…

…providing a new relationship to grow over time in case anything comes up in the future.

💡 Action Steps

👀 Set Your LinkedIn to “Open to Work” (3 minutes). With a recently revised LInkedIn profile, you need to enable LinkedIn to share your profile with prospective recruiters:

1. Go to your LinkedIn Profile
2. Under “Open to” select “Finding a New Job”
3. You’ll then fill out a few fields such as desired job titles and job location.

💬 Reach out to 5 People In Your Network (20 minutes). Start to reconnect with people in your network. Try to schedule these within the next 3 days to keep momentum. My personal goal would be to reach out to a total of 15 people in case some are not available. People who you can reach out to include:

• Previous colleagues
• Past managers
• School or university alumni
• Friends
• Family

🤝 Find 3 Recruiting Agencies that Source Your Role (15 minutes). Leverage a search engine to quickly find a shortlist of recruiting agencies you can reach out to. Even though you are starting with three agencies, if you come across more – add them to your list to contact as well!

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📚 Other Notable Resources

• Last Week’s Post: How to Answer Interview Questions – Create Amazing Stories
• Read the Full Guide: The ultimate 5-step guide how to get job interviews and job offers after being laid off
• Free Resource: Resume Templates