Dear Seeking and Sanguine,

Excellent question! It’s one I’ve been receiving a ton of inquiries about. I don’t have a crystal ball, so I can’t tell you when it will end, but I can promise you that now is as good a time as any to be on the job hunt. 

Here’s what you need to know about job searching during COVID-19:

Companies are still actively hiring, and they’re hiring FULL TIME employees. Businesses are adapting, and that means more opportunities are becoming available. As a bonus, many of these positions are now remote, when they would have been location based before. This means you can search globally, and discover new companies that wouldn’t have been on the table only 6 months ago.

How nice would it be to wake up to a list of great jobs for you to apply to while you sip your morning coffee? You don’t need a fairy job-mother to make it a reality. Indeed, Zip Recuiter, and LinkedIn all have custom job alerts to make job searching less of a search and more of a delivery. You can customize the job title, salary, location and even set how frequently you want the emails sent. So sit back, and have the job sites do the search for you.

Connections, connections, connections. There is no better way to get a leg up in an interview process than to be recommended by someone on the inside. Leverage your network. Reach out to friends to let them know you’re on the lookout for a new opportunity. You’ll never know if they have something perfect for you if you don’t ask. 

And here’s one you may have overlooked – we all know LinkedIn is a great place to connect with professionals and do virtual networking, but did you know it has industry specific groups and communities? Joining these insider groups is a free and fast way to grow your network. Plus, most of these groups allow and encourage job posting/seeking. Facebook is another place to explore for professional groups, just make sure that your profile is private and your picture is something that makes a good first impression.

I highly encourage using LinkedIn to get introduced to hiring managers. Like I said before, if you don’t put yourself out there, you will definitely miss out on opportunities. But, before you announce to your networks that you’re ready to be hired, make sure your profile actually says, “Hire me!” Does your profile picture look like an 80’s glamour shot or is it cropped so small that your face is blurry? Is your profile summary an uninspiring, generic sentence? Remember, your LinkedIn is your first impression if you’re using it to get introduced to hiring managers. Make sure it’s in tip-top shape before calling the cows home. 

If we take a cue from companies like Amazon and Facebook, who are ramping up with hiring right now, we can rest assured knowing that the jobs are out there. It will just take some creativity, some outreach, and some polishing up of the ol’ social media accounts to land the perfect job. 

Sincerely,
Jenny