Job Searching
In this guide, we will review how to search for jobs in tech effectively.
To make the most of this guide you should already have a clear understanding of the job(s) you want to apply for and the skills you excel at and want to use in your job. See how to choose a job role if you aren’t sure yet.
Where to find jobs?
There are several places you can find job opportunities:
Job Boards
There are many job boards advertising tech jobs online. Becoming efficient at searching for opportunities online will save you time as you work on your applications. Sometimes you are able to apply directly through the job board and sometimes they link you to the companies website. They may also have a messaging function so you are able to speak to the recruitment team through the job board directly.
Job boards come in various formats the main two being:
General Job Boards
These advertise across industries and are often good for junior-level positions. For example LinkedIn, GlassDoor, Workable, Indeed and Monster.
Industry Specific Boards
These sites focus on specific skills or interests and can often advertise tech roles not found on larger sites. For example Otta/WelcomeToTheJungle, Dev It Jobs and Cord.
Finding the right boards for you can make your job search easier, however there are a lot out there. Our recommendation is to spend some time identifying which sites advertise jobs that are closest to what you are interested in and then focusing on those sites.
Networking
For general networking advice please see our networking guide. When you are searching for a job a good first port of call is asking your existing network whether anyone they know is hiring. This can be messaging people individually or posting a public message on LinkedIn. You can also set your LinkedIn status to looking for work which helps people know you are job searching.
There are also tech meetups and gatherings where companies that are hiring often mention their open roles. The MeetUp website is a good place to find tech meetups for learning, socialising and finding jobs.
Code Your Future
The Code Your Future community is full of tech professionals keen to help. Connect with our community through Slack and LinkedIn. If you find connections through CYF who are related to a job opening then reach out! Here is a guide to how you can help Code Your Future create more hiring partnerships.
There is also a weekly meeting to collectively search for jobs, please see the CodeYourFuture Global Calendarfor timings and joining details. You can check the slack channels #cyf-employment and #cyf-job-opportunities for tips and a current spreadsheet of known opportunities.
Search Terms
Use search terms to focus your search and make the best use of your time. Different job sites will have different search algorithms so you should experiment and see what gets best results on each site.
Search by job title
One way to search is to search for the specific job title that you are looking for e.g. Cloud Engineer. However different companies often use different terminology to describe the same role, so you may need to search for both Cloud Developer and Cloud Engineer, if that’s the role you’re looking for.
You should also bear in mind that some jobs will have the level explicitly in the title, i.e. junior or associate, and others may not have any level mentioned, but within the job specification itself say something like “hiring at all levels of experience”.
Search by skill
To avoid the problem of different companies calling the same job different things, and a recent profileration of fancy job titles you can search by skills or technologies instead. Using the above example of Cloud engineer, you could instead search for AWS, which should pick up “Cloud engineer”, “Cloud developer” and any other roles which involve working with AWS.
This approach is helpful if you want to work with a particular language or technology, or if you are unsure of exactly what job you want, but you know which skills you really excel at and want to use.
Filters
As well as entering search terms you can usually use filters to save you time and focus on the roles that you’re aiming for, you can usually filter based on the following:
- Locations
- Remote/Hybrid/In Person
- Type of contract (Full-time, Part-time, Permanent, Contract)
- Job Title/Role
- Experience
- Skills
If you are not seeing many matches for your criteria it can be helpful to remove the filters and see what comes up so you can see what is available on the market even if it may not be your first choice.
Alerts
Alerts allow you to save your search terms and filters and get notifications when new jobs appear on a site that matches your criteria. This means you don’t need to fill out your search criteria every time and allows you to apply quickly to new roles.
It is often also advantageous to be an early applicant to a role and having alerts set up helps you to know as soon as a role goes online.
Each site has different ways of setting up alerts for example see LinkedIn’s) but they normally link to your profile or email.
You may want to experiment tweaking the alerts getting set up so your inbox doesn’t get overwhelmed.
Creating a profile
Some job boards allow you to create a profile, which is typically similar to your CV but just formatted in a way to suit that particular job board. This can help match you to job opportunities and make sure that the jobs being advertised to you are a close match. Often there are hiring managers using the platform to search through the profiles on the site, so it can be a more effective way of being found on the site than just uploading a CV document that may not be parsed well during the search.
Sometimes you can import from your CV but always double check whether it has imported things into the right sections as their import tools can be a bit flakey. You can use the advice in the CV section to help you fill out your profile.
Hint: Remember to keep these profiles up to date as you work on projects, gain expertise and learn new skills. Keep a spreadsheet or document in which you know which websites you have signed up for and update them all when something changes.