[Updated: 10/05/2021]
When was the last time you found yourself overwhelmed with hundreds of jobs to check, applied for them, and waited months for an interview? This is one of the common reality talents face. With the uncertainty COVID-19 brought, job searching is increasingly a stressful professional activity. It can be a matter of quality vs quantity — where to exactly look. A niche job board can be the answer to that.
It can be confusing to talk about terminologies and their differences. We’re here to break them down for you, the current trends in the job market, and uncover the potential you can tap into when using a niche job board to land a job during these times.
Job search engines
Job search engines are aggregators of jobs. They collect millions of listings from companies and job boards and put them on their site. Indeed, for example, is both a job search engine and a generic job board.
Because of this, talents who want a wider variety of job opportunities would opt to use job search engines. The downside of this is that talents will not be well placed to navigate specific career domains given the diverse industries they typically cover. Also, because these postings are from multiple sources, there is a huge chance of duplicate listings. Ensuring that the job posting is still vacant might be another burden to overcome on top of searching for a job.
Job boards and what you should pay attention to
Job boards are like online bulletin boards for opportunities. Organizations list open positions, qualifications & requirements for talents to make note of and apply. Oftentimes, job board sites provide talents the ability to apply directly through the board.
There are generic job boards like Monster, Indeed, and Glassdoor to name a few. They are the top 3 largest and best-known job boards today. They have thousands of job listings across a broad range of industries.
Other organizations focus on a particular industry thus a niche job board being suitable for this need. Career Bank, eFinancialCareers are one of the examples of specialized job boards that focus on finance and banking. Variety Careers that posts jobs for television, radio, and media production. AngelList for job listings in the start-up and tech industries. And our Impact Career, jobs that are focused on the social impact sector.
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Finding your next job
Devex reports that the job board is still the most go-to source for talents who are looking for a job in the social impact spaces. Followed by an individual employer’s website and social media as other options to search and apply for jobs.
Using a niche job board can help you fight the odds of landing a job. It’s a smaller in scale yet mighty tool you can use at your disposal. If you’re looking for a job in a specific sector or profession, a niche job board saves you the time and energy it takes to filter irrelevant information.
Recruiters use niche job boards for one good reason and that is quality. They know what they’re looking for in a candidate and they know they can find that in a niche job board since it’s a more targeted approach. This gives recruiters more chances of receiving the right candidate profiles. As a talent, this works best in your favor giving you better odds of finding the right job.
Recently, we launched Impact Career, a job board for talents in the social impact sector. Using it can help you discover the latest opportunities in the industry. One thing you should know is that recruiters are always on the lookout for the best talent. And if you are reinventing yourself and rethinking your career, you need to have a good quality list of organizations that are hiring today.
Making use of the features
As mentioned above, Impact Career is designed to help talents look for jobs in the social impact sector. It’s like any other job board in terms of search tools but parameters you can set are more specific to the industry.
Here are a few things to take note of when looking for a job:
- Read beyond the job title – So say you’ve finally found the job opportunity you think it’s right for you. You feel giddy and happy that you’ve overlooked reading the qualifications, job description, special instructions. Read the entire job posting so that you can take note of details and assess whether it is the right fit for you or not. More often than not, people don’t make the cut because of this. It is easy to skip this critical step.
- Don’t apply for all jobs you see – This is truly tempting – especially for job boards that have “direct apply” features – but very counterintuitive. Cherry-pick the roles that best suit your interests, qualifications, and organizations that you think would align with your values. In this way, you can craft an enthusiastic application to submit.
- Make sure your profile is updated – Your LinkedIn profile, Devcurate profile, or wherever else you have created a digital CV must all be in sync and up-to-date. When you apply for jobs through a niche job board, employers might ascertain your assets online.
- Mirror the language – Communicate the language and tone of the job posting. If the organization’s tone is casual, no need to be formal in your CV and cover letter. However, remain professional at all times despite the language.
- Use job listings – A smart way to narrow down your search is to have jobs curated to you. Sign up with the niche job board’s newsletter to make browsing jobs less stressful. By doing this, you are perusing all the opportunities available not just from one organization but across all partners the job board has.
Niche job boards are the epitome of quality over quantity. It’s increasingly favored by recruiters in niche sectors due to its effectiveness in sourcing the right talent. Job hunting, especially during a crisis, is not easy. But you can use this information to your advantage in overcoming common challenges many are facing today.
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