Job Searching

How to Automate Your Job Search

Lauren Hamer

Professional Resume Writer, Career Writer, and Career Coach


The internet is ripe with career professionals urging you to be aggressive in your networking and application strategies to land a job. But at what expense? Your sanity? Peace of mind? Energy? Free time? When the job search gets overwhelming—as it inevitably will—leverage automation to take the most tedious tasks off your plate. Here are seven ways to do it. 

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7 Ways to Automate Your Job Search

Set Up Job Alerts

Long gone are days when you manually sift through listings on multiple browser tabs. Instead, set up email alerts and send the listings directly to your inbox daily or weekly.

While most job boards allow for alerts, here are a few that allow you to create custom alerts:

First, we will start with Job\Searcher. J\S Analyzes your views, search history, and application clicks to send you jobs related to your queries.

Other sites for email alerts include:

  • Google for Jobs: Pulls listings from multiple job boards and allows you to set up email alerts for specific job titles. 
  • Indeed: It’s one of the largest job boards in the world. However, its listings don’t show up on Google.
  • The Muse: A newsletter that’ll send you a weekly list of companies that are hiring. Filter by company perks, industry, experience level, and more.
  • KimbleGroup: After creating a career profile detailing what you’re looking for, KimbleGroup matches you with open job positions from across the internet.

Get “Open” on LinkedIn

Let recruiters and your network on LinkedIn know you’re open to new opportunities. Just specify your interests, and the LinkedIn techies will help your profile show up in search results when recruiters look for suitable job candidates. (LinkedIn takes measures to keep your desire to job hunt private from your current company, though they can’t guarantee it.)

In addition, you can choose to make your availability public on your profile using the #opentowork hashtag, or set it to notify recruiters only. When you do this, it is helpful if you include an updated version of your resume on your LinkedIn profile.

Opt for “Easy Apply”

LinkedIn also has an “Easy Apply” feature available on their job postings that allow you to apply in mere clicks. Glassdoor has a similar feature, too. For those looking to apply to many positions quickly, this feature can chop hours off your job search.

Drawbacks

While this is a great option to apply to many jobs at once, you should decide whether this is a good strategy or not. While some use the method of casting their nets wide and far to apply to many jobs, it can ultimately be a waste of time if there is not a focused strategy involved. Often a more focused job search will be more beneficial because you take the time to analyze the job posting and create a more purposeful application. So when thinking of ways to automate your job search, be sure you are getting the most out of your automation and not merely using it to cut time.

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Create Follow Up Reminders

One of the most time-consuming aspects of a job search is remembering to stay in touch with the hiring manager. Automate the part of “following up” that requires you to track who you need to respond to and when. A feature like Boomerang will incorporate an algorithm to check for a reply from your prospective boss. If you don’t receive one within a week, Boomerang will remind you to follow up. 

Send Custom Messages to Recruiters Through Linkedin

Automate your job search by engaging recruiters through LinkedIn using a program called Phantom Buster. A quick, no-code integration will help you proactively send a high volume of automated direct messages to recruiters. Reach more people and target your search in less time. If you want a detailed tutorial for setting up this automation in minutes, here is how to do it.

Schedule Social Media Posts

Career experts often recommend engaging in online discussions and social posts as a way to grow your network and build relationships. But that often requires lingering on social channels and staring at your computer screens for endless amounts of time. By scheduling your social posts, you can bring the conversation to you. Social media tools, like HootSuite or Buffer, allow you to schedule posts in advance and for free. That way, you don’t have to log in and post manually every time you have something to say.

Stay Organized with a Project Management Tool

The sole purpose of a project management app is to organize your life and help you meet your goals, so why not leverage it as an organizational job search tool? For example, create a different project or card for each job you apply to. From there, you can create individual tasks that house all the information you’d need to reference during a search and set reminders to help you stay on track.

Examples of helpful project management applications include:

  • Asana
  • Trello
  • Monday

Finally,

Keep your most important job application files in a place you can access them wherever you are. When a recruiter calls, you don’t have to panic to remember resume details from the file stuck on your home desktop. Whether in Google Drive or a project management app from above, save your customized resume, cover letter, and a screen capture of the job posting, including the full job description and details you can reference at a moment’s notice. 


How to Automate Your Job Search with Job\Searcher

Job\Searcher logo - automate job search with job\searcher

Job\Searcher not only helps you keep track of your job search, but it analyzes your queries to customize emails and suggestions just for you. But to get the most out of it, there are some things you’ll need to do first.

Step 1: Create an Account

First and foremost, you’ll need to create an account. While you can search for jobs freely without one, you won’t be able to get custom suggestions until you sign up. Luckily, all you need is your email and a password to get started.

How to Create an Account

Step 2: Sign Up for Email Alerts

As mentioned above, you have the option to receive emails from Job\Searcher. These emails will include jobs related to your search queries as well as viewed and saved jobs. Additionally, you’ll get notifications of new blog posts.

How to Receive Email Alerts on Job\Searcher

Step 3: Stay Active

In addition to email alerts, J\S also presents Recommended Jobs on your homepage. The more active you are on Job\Searcher, the more concise and tailored your recommended jobs will be.

See how Recommended Jobs works and where you can access them.

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