Ok! We're ready.
We’ve narrowed it down to a career path or two. Maybe three. These paths may have emerged as a result of our non-negotiables list, talking with friends and family, informational interviews with folks in career fields we thought might be interesting, doing research, whatever. Either way, we’ve got our short list – and now we’re ready to jump into doing some applying within this field/these fields.
Let’s do it (dramatic pause) but not quite yet.
First, let’s talk about filters.
What are Filters?
Not the kind you’re supposed to replace every six months but then you forget and it looks like you’ve adopted another cat.
(Oh, just me…?)
Not the kind that you can use to make delicious beverages though – yum.
Not even the kind that makes this doggo family look like they belong on the cover of Time Magazine.
Yup. These filters.
The kind that exclude or include information from a database through specific inquiries.
In our case, we’re excluding or including job openings from the incredibly, unfathomably large LinkedIn jobs database by letting LinkedIn’s database know which criteria (recency of posting, location, company, etc.) we’re interested in or not interested in.
We can both filter in and filter out jobs using the same method which allows us to expand or reduce the number of jobs we can see respectively.
You might be thinking, “Um, Claire, why would I ever want to reduce the number of jobs I want to see? I want a job. I want all the jobs.”
You don’t. Just wait.
Calculating
the ridiculous number of jobs on LinkedIn. Brace yourself.
I pulled this number at midnight on 1.11.2023. I don’t have a job title in the search bar – just ANY job. This is not the lowest number I’ve seen nor the highest. And it won’t be the same if you run the same search right now. Also – notice this is only jobs listed as in the U.S.
For those of you who gasped. Yes.
For those of you who swore. Also yes.
Now – several things to mention. 99% of these jobs don’t apply to you (remember, I hadn’t searched a particular job title). And frankly, thank goodness. That’s a great thing. You don’t have the time, energy, effort, finger strength, etc. to apply for that many jobs.
But without the ability to filter through these results, you wouldn’t stand a chance of finding even one job in this list and instead you’d be back to looking by company or through connections (both viable methods but arguably, not the fastest nor most efficient).
The Right Job Filters to Find the Right Job
Let’s start by tackling just a couple of filters that are, in my opinion, the most effective and the most immediately impactful – Date Posted, Job Type, On-site/remote.
Helpful hint: remember those non-negotiables we worked through last Friday? Those should help drive these filters. There’s a method to the madness here!
Date Posted
It’s no secret that the older a post is, the more applicants it will have. There are exceptions to that rule but more often than not that’s the case. We want jobs that are fresh for that reason and also because they’re more likely to still be open. I tend to encourage applicants to stick to jobs that are no more than 1 week old unless it is an absolute dream position.
Job Type
This filter is a quick and easy way to pick out the kind of employment opportunities that you’re looking for – narrow it down by full-time, part-time, contract, temp, etc. in the blink of an eye. Most of the time jobs are classified pretty accurately – maybe 2% of the time have I run across a position that has said it’s full-time and it’s actually contract or vice-versa. I chalk that up to job-poster-error.
On-site/remote
This filter has the same benefits going for it that the other two do – simple filter with the potential to clear lots of not-right-for positions quickly. My only caution here is that it’s easy to confuse WANTING to be remote with NEEDING to be remote. Think back to our discussion of non-negotiables – if you have young children and unreliable or odd-hour childcare, or medical needs, or an aging parent that needs your support, or something like that, then yes, remote work is a non-negotiable for you potentially. If you don’t like getting dressed and going into work, I’d challenge you to really consider if it’s a need or a want.
But why didn't we use those others filters?
Without getting into the nitty-gritty (read: rants) about the other filters – Experience level, company, and Easy Apply – I’ll say this, they each have their own purpose and benefits if you know what you’re doing when you use them but they also each have their own major draw backs. The filters that are immediately and massively beneficial (that ones that we just covered) are instantly helpful with a single click and don’t require a lot more thought beyond enabling or disabling them. For some really quick insight, consider the following (<3 you Bill Nye)
Experience Level
If you’ve been on LinkedIn for fifteen minutes, you’ve read a post complaining about the subjectiveness of experience level in job descriptions. The absolute same is true for job postings on LinkedIn. But with the Jobs Experience Level feature there’s an added twist – LinkedIn will automatically set the level of the posting based on what it (and the behind the scenes algorithm, I assume) believes the experience level of the position should be. I’m guessing it’s looking for years of experience and keys words, etc.
But here’s the catch – this is a default setting according to LinkedIn’s help article Post a job in Recruiter. So if someone posts a job that should be an mid-senior or director level position but the algorithm misidentifies the position through key words and labels is as an entry level or associate level, the poster has to manually change the level. We all know how that goes. The most told lie in the history of humanity is “I have read and understand the terms” and the second most told lie might sound something like “yeah, Teach, I definitely proof-read that page before I submitted it.” (Don’t lie. I do it, too. We’re all friends here.)
So I have a sneaking suspicion that quite a few jobs make it through at the incorrect level. I would say that at least a third of the jobs that I look at are incorrectly classified in terms of their experience level either on accident or the job poster truly hasn’t a clue of how to gage the level of the position. Either way – not accurate = waste of your time.
*ends rant*
Company
This filter is wildly helpful but also incredibly time consuming. We will talk about this one in a later post (a.k.a. Friday) just not right now.
“Why,” you ask?
Because in order to use this filter to its fullest potential you have to do some solid research before hand. Which is great, but also time consuming and draining. We want to start getting a couple of applications out now so that we can start getting a couple of those tasks checked off our daily focuses – therefore, let’s leave this more complicated filter for future-us. No need to eat the whole elephant when we can start a bite at a time. 🐘
Easy Apply
Oh Easy Apply. I have so many big feelings about this option. None good. So I guess – let’s just roll right into it.
1. From the perspective of someone who has used LinkedIn to fill contract positions, the Easy Apply feature is a mess. It takes a candidate’s LinkedIn profile and turns it into the most ramshackle “resume” of all time if the candidate opts not to upload a resume. Needless to say, it’s horrendous and most of the time so unreadable that I can’t get the information I need and rely on the qualify questions features (thank god for those).
2. It gives an inaccurate count of the number of people who apply and therefore falsely discourages people from applying for a position who might otherwise be a perfect candidate. Anyone who clicks the Easy Apply button, even if they don’t complete the process, will count as an applicant. Don’t believe me? Try it on a job with no applicants. Hit “Easy Apply”, discard your application, and then refresh the page. See that 1 applicant. That’s you.
3. It discourages people from doing research on the company or position their applying for. It’s so tempting to read a title, see that button, and just go for it. I’ve been guilty of that and those 3 – 5 minutes that I’ve spent working through those Easy Apply jobs are 3 – 5 minutes I should have spent looking at that job and that company to decide if I should have even been applying. Half of the time, I shouldn’t have been.
Filter Best Practices
My rule of thumb is to enable enough filters so that we (you and the ghost of me that is rooting you on) have enough jobs to get through in a sitting or two. Much more than that, and it’s too many jobs – you run the risk of getting overwhelmed or you won’t get back to them in time and they’ll get ‘cold’ or be inactive/filled. Too little jobs to review during a session and you won’t feel like you’ve accomplished much – or worse, you’ll feel like you don’t have any options which can start to induce panic and anxiety.
There’s an easy fix, either way.
If you have too many jobs in front of you, enable another filter. I.e. if you’re seeing over 100 jobs after enabling a couple of filters, change the date posted from “1 week” to “past 24 hours” or go from a couple of job types to just one or two.
And vice-versa if you have two few jobs in front of you. Turn off some filters.
Remember that the job title that you search for will affect the number you get as well. The more specific a job title, the fewer results it’ll return. For example the job title psychometrician return 167 results with no filters while the title customer success manager returned 93,638 results with no filters. Bear this in mind while you’re selecting one or two focus roles as well as when you’re filtering out and in jobs to apply for.
Q&A
I ran out of time during my allotted maximum for the day and I still have 3 applications I really want to get out. What should I do?
Something that worked really well for me – bookmark bar folder. I had a folder in my bookmark bar that was “Applications I didn’t get to” and I started my next Application Focus Day with those jobs before I got into new applications. Somedays I’d have 1 or 2. Somedays I’d have upwards of a dozen. I just had to make sure that I wasn’t tossing just anything I found in there – it had to be something I was really interested in knowing that by the time I got back to it, the job might be 3 – 5 days old.
What if a role that I'm interested naturally has only a few openings without filtering?
First off – that’s fine. Don’t be discouraged. I would say that you need to probably include a second role that you’re interested in as a backup. If a role is less common in terms of it’s open positions, it’s also probably less common in it’s interested applications (think supply and demand). My psychometrician example is a pretty good illustration. All that to say, psychometricians still struggle to find work and sometimes have to have a second career focus if they find themselves out of a psychometrician…ship…? (you get what I’m saying). Establish a second and/or third focus so that you are consistent and active with getting applications out but not so varied in your focus that you’re fractured and scattered in your approach and resumes/cover letters/upskilling. I.e. I wouldn’t recommend applying for Scada Engineering, Copywriting, and Deckhand positions – difficult to double-dip on upskilling and resume writing I would think.
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