Fighting spam while you search for a job online
Spam is usually associated with unsolicited emails. Nowadays we have spam in almost all aspects of our lives from SMS, to snail mail, to unsolicited phone calls, and even to job search — regardless of whether you are searching for job, or for talent. Even seasoned recruiters who should be ultimate masters of oline search tactics can find themselves wasting hours on a non-existent candidate, or a candidate can spend a day researching and carefully custumizing their application just to end up being ignored from the the job poster. So what gives?
In one simple sentence: there are no rules to effective job search online. It’s highly unregulated process, there are no agreed upon standards or rules, or instructional that would help you avoid wasting time and being noticed for the exceptional experience that could make you stand out. To conclude: the entire process is based on patterns, observations, and experiences job seekers encounter along this process and pass them on. Just like I am doing it now in this article — sharing various observations and experiences that have been already verified as true for the time being. With trends changing so quickly these observations may as well change by December.
VERIFIED REMOTE JOB SEARCH WEBSITES
As an example, we will search for remote jobs with US level salary that require knowledge of German language.
1. https://remotive.com/
Depending on the salary you want — tick off the appropriate country. If you leave it “Worldwide” then the job posts may apply to low cost countries such as India and the Philippines.
In ‘search’ enter the keywords that are your objective for the job, in this case German language. So, you should use most commonly used keywords in job posts such as ‘German speaker’ or ‘German language’. Observe what keywords produce most results and go with that. I think every website may have it differently: e.g. on some sites if you type only ‘German’ it will show you all the jobs located in Germany, on other sites it will show you posts containing sentences with the word “German”.
If you are only interested in jobs related to translating or speaking in German then you don’t need to choose “Categories” — because German speakers are needed in all industries.
“Sort by relevance” — usually I avoid applying for jobs posted a month ago or longer. However, since German speakers are rare and there is a huge demand for them, I would look into the jobs posted a month ago.
2. https://www.workingnomads.com/jobs
This site is geared mostly towards the low-cost countries such as India or the Philippines so it’s hard to find anything relevant here. But the site has pretty good filtering system where you can filter out many parameters (e.g. each job post shows relevant tags which saves time on reading it #product design, #social media etc.)
3. https://nodesk.co/remote-jobs/
This site is very good. The search process is very much alike to the https://remotive.com/
4. https://weworkremotely.com/remote-jobs/search
This site is excellent. The jobs highlighted in yellow are promoted jobs. The job search results are grouped by categories, so keep scrolling down to see all the search results.
Don’t look at jobs thinking you are not qualified. The hiring managers of today, (especially those within smaller, tech, startup environments) are looking for people with liquid skills, adaptable with many different experiences, because they are looking to add versatility to the team and freshen up the team dynamics and promote new ideas.
5. https://workingnotworking.com
This is a great job but mostly for artists. The skills needed for most of these jobs are related to filming, directing, production, film editing, managing shooting projects, drawing, 3D, audio… I think most are located in California.
6. https://www.snagajob.com/search?q=German+speaking&radius=20
This site is mostly for part time, blue collar positions, but can offer nice hourly rate for something menial. So, I think it’s worth exploring. Also, they list hourly pay in each job post.
7. https://www.glassdoor.com/
This is a great site too. You get more results with ‘German language’ instead of ‘German speaking’ keywords.
This one is good too, somewhat outdated.
I don’t know much about this site but it offers a lot of language related jobs. The catch is in the compensation — make sure the job is not geared towards the talent pool of India, Argentina, and the other low-cost markets. Test it and filter it for locations: https://www.remotehub.com/jobs/search?query=German&location_type_ids=0
AUSTRALIAN and EU JOB SEARCH WEBSITES
1. AU https://www.adzuna.com.au/ Adzuna works directly with the Australian Department of Labour. The Department posts their job posts on their government site, which means they are good.
2. AU https://www.careerone.com.au/ Same deal with Department of Labour like Adzuna
3. AU https://www.artshub.com.au/job/ Haven’t used this one because it’s more for creative job posts but it seems worth a try
4. EU https://justjoin.it For European based jobs. These locations/companies may have greater needs for German language speakers. https://justjoin.it/?q=Remote@city;German@skill
5. AU https://www.careerjet.com.au/ Mostly for retail and blue-collar jobs but they have separate site for each country
6. AU https://www.glassdoor.com.au/ Glassdoor is always good, they have a separate site for each region
7. AU https://au.jora.com/ Jora is the same like Glassdoor. I use us.jora.com
8. AU https://grabjobs.co/australia/ I haven’t used this one but for some reason I have it bookmarked
9. AU https://www.workforceaustralia.gov.au/ Government site
10. EU https://www.remotehub.com/jobs/ Geared towards EU jobs
11. AU & EU https://www.personatalent.com/ Site for virtual assistants
12. AU https://www.velvetjobs.com/job?country=121 Unsure about this one — but I have it bookmarked for Australian jobs
13. EU https://europa.eu/europass/en/find-jobs EU government job search site
14. EU https://ec.europa.eu/eures/portal/jv-se/home European Commission job search site by country
USEFUL NOTES ABOUT OTHER SOURCES:
· LinkedIn jobs
· https://remoteok.com/ (good but a bit confusing to conduct search)
· https://www.glassdoor.com/ (credible)
· https://www.idealist.org/ (jobs in non-profits)
· https://justremote.co/remote-jobs (good but hard to navigate)
· https://angel.co/ (like Linkedin — you create and maintain a profile, and you get nothing in return)
· https://digitalnomads.world/jobs/ (average but hard to sort)
· https://www.themuse.com/ (good site, hard to sort)
· https://themomproject.com/ (good site, registration required)
· https://aquent.com/ (like Linkedin — you create and maintain a profile, and you get nothing in return)
· https://www.skipthedrive.com/ (not great choice of jobs)
· https://workew.com/ (good but not too easy to filter)
· https://remote.co/ (good, similar to remotive.com)
· https://remote4me.com/ (new, and unexplored)
· https://jobspresso.co/remote-work/ (good but, not updated often)
· https://talent.businesstalentgroup.com/projects (project-based site — like Linkedin meets Upwork)
· Google jobs aggregates jobs from various job searching sites. However, this is available only if you are searching from the US (or using VPN)
USEFUL TIPS:
1. VPN — the job search landscape has changed tremendously and competition is not local any more, but global. Many job search engines will not show you US based jobs if you are searching from an IP address located outside of the US. Some will not even show you jobs even if you are searching from another city no matter if it’s remote. Simply put: some employers want to make sure that applicants are actually applying from a specific geographic location (e.g. https://www.builtinnyc.com/ will not allow you to apply if you are searching from outside of NYC). In conclusion: you need a VPN so websites think you (an applicant) are where they want you to be.
2. Avoid applying to anything that requires you to spend a day for the application (e.g. record yourself, write an essay etc.). Instead email them saying that “…in order to save time for both of us it would be appreciated if you could share the salary range for that particular position.”
3. Avoid anything posted by Toptal or Apin — they look for cheap workforce.
4. Avoid jobs that prefer ‘recent graduates’, that describe the job as ‘entry level’, ‘1–3 years of experience’, ‘entrepreneurial’, or ‘great for someone looking to grow’. Those are code words for minimum wage.
5. If they ask you what your salary expectations are — tell them that “We all know that each position has a budgeted salary range which I may or may not fall into. Whether I would match the higher or the lower range depends on clarifying my responsibilities. So, at this point it would be good to know the salary range and then we will or will not proceed further discussion.” So, don’t tell them any numbers because they are just trying to reduce their pool of candidates by kicking out those who propose a number outside of that range.
6. Indeed.com, Monster.com and Careerbuilder.com show your info to the Indian recruiters so you start getting mass emails from these Indian recruiters with specific jobs that may or may not relate to your background. It’s mostly spam, or they simply want to add your profile to their databases and then never call you again. Big recruiters such are Robert Half, Michael Page, and other do that too — but they at least contact you with relevant positions while these Indian guys just mass email everybody. So, if you have profiles on these two — make sure your resume is private or that ‘Ready to work’ is off for “I’m available to start immediately.”
7. Recruiters or HR managers that are really interested in speaking with you will first email you to schedule a call. Ignore calls out of the blue because those are either Indians or unqualified recruiters who simply want to add your details into their database and you’ll never hear from them again (this is based on my personal decade long experience, so trust me on this one).
8. Serious HR managers will have a screening interview with you first, and will outline how many interviews you should expect to have until the final decision is made. Those screening interviews are by phone but most of the times via Zoom call. Make sure you are dressed in a suit, your background is nice, no noise, test your audio/video before the interview — all the things you’d do if you had gone for a face to face interview.
9. When searching for a remote position on those sites keep in mind that it is always best to apply for positions that require US citizens, or candidates living in the US. That way you will filter out all the low paying jobs geared towards employees in low cost countries. So, if you type in ‘remote’ make sure that you pick US only or North America only or both, or include similar countries.
10. German language remote jobs are in demand in Europe not only for customer service but for content writers for websites, research etc. The interesting part is that Swiss German content writers are paid much more than German content writers not only because there are not many of Swiss German speakers but because the Swiss require special attention to detail.
11. Keywords in your resume matching keywords in the job description are important for two reasons:
I. your resume has to be in a specific format because of the ATS software that screens thousands of resumes before suggesting which resumes should be viewed by a human. ATS (applicant tracking system) software strips your resume off of all the formatting, and squeeze all the text left aligned, deletes pics, lines, backgrounds, even text in italics, etc. Here is info on how it works: https://www.indeed.com/career-advice/resumes-cover-letters/automated-screening-resume
OR
https://resources.biginterview.com/resumes/applicant-tracking-system/
This link can help you put your resume in the right format, and use the right keywords https://resumeworded.com/resume-scanner
II. Keywords are important because the ATS software matches keywords from the job description to same keywords in your resume. If you have a certain percentage of matching keywords then it sends it to a human for viewing. I also avoid putting my phone number on my resume because then recruiters (and inexperienced HR people) call you out of the blue and start interviewing you on the spot — without prior warning. No serious recruiter will do that.
SITES TO AVOID:
Try to avoid these sites because they are either not updated regularly and will contain 3-month-old job posts, they will offer crap compensation or they will act as bait and switch (attract you with a great compensation potential but then will ask you to pay for membership, revert to some crap job, or redirect you to a non-existent website). Either way, they use shady practices that are not worth your time. So, take this as a warning.
- https://remoters.net/jobs/ — this one is either scam site or geared towards low cost locations because it shows crazy high salaries for some menial jobs. Job posts like that cannot be serious thus cannot be true.
- https://www.flexjobs.com/ — this site is a valid site but once you find a suitable position you’ll have to subscribe to the site’s membership plan. In other words: you’ll have to pay a monthly fee.
- https://www.welcometothejungle.com/en — looks great, has great jobs but they are all either in French language or located in French speaking areas.
- https://mumbrella.com.au/ — crap site with no realistic jobs for a westerner looking for a western level compensation.
- https://werecruitwell.com/jobs — they don’t update their site.
- https://jobs.vault.com/ — they don’t update their site.
- https://justremote.co/remote-jobs
- https://authenticjobs.com/
- https://www.virtualvocations.com/ — they will eventually ask you to pay for membership
- https://careercloud.pallet.com/jobs
- https://app.joinrise.co/feed
This post was originally published on Appresima.com
