Most job searchers today spend hours sifting through job listings trying to cook up ways to fit themselves into an existing job opening. This rarely works and is akin to finding a needle in a haystack.
What if you were to turn this model on its head? Instead of looking for specific job openings at various companies, use job listing sites to reverse engineer the job market and find specific companies where you want to work.
The goal is to identify the types of places where you believe you’d be a good fit. Most people coming out of college think more about skills they possess rather than the “fields” or “industries” they want to work in. Use sites like Monster.com, CareerBuilder.com, and Idealist.org, which provide robust company profiles, as a place where you can research the kinds of organizations that appeal to you. Learn what products or services they provide.
Think about who you are, and seek out places that are doing the things you want to be doing. Do NOT look to see if there are any current job openings. That’s not your objective right now. Your goal is to find out what companies you should be approaching as part of your job search – and the best companies for you are those where you feel like you’d be a great fit.
