The Best Tools and Resources For Job Seekers
How Job Seekers are using tools and resources to find and land their next job
Time and time again, I’m amazed at how resourceful job seekers are as they look to find their next role or career. As it gets more competitive to find top talent, the amount of job search resources and tools that are available continues to grow.
After talking with numerous job seekers, career coaches and HR tech companies, I’ve put together a landscape map of some of the tools and resources that exist for the modern job search.
If you’re looking for a job and aren’t aware of some of these, give them a try. And if you are using any of these, I’d love to hear what you think.
The Categories
For my analysis, I divided these tools and resources into 8 categories
Interview Prep
Career Platforms
Negotiation and Compensation Support
Company Information
Career Communities
Career + Apprenticeship
Niche Job Boards
Job Platforms
Interview Prep
Using software, data, and AI these platforms provide resources, question banks, feedback, etc to help candidates prepare for an interview in ways specific to the industry or role they are applying for.
Examples include: Management Consulted, Rocketblocks Interviewing IO, VMock
Career Platforms
These broad based platforms provide a mix of resources, 1:1 or group career coaching and free resources to support job seekers throughout their journey
Examples: Career Contessa, Placement, IVY Exec, Wonsulting
Negotiations and Comp Support
A lot of us struggle with negotiation or want data on salary, equity, etc. These tools provide coaching + support to help generate a good offer, as well as data/analytics on what a good offer is
Examples include: Payscale, Levels, 81Cents and Candor
Company Info
If you want to know what it’s like to work at a company or what company culture is like, it’s best to ask the people that work there. Glassdoor is the market leader, but don’t sleep on apps like Fishbowl (acquired by Glassdoor) and Blind
Career Communities
Job searchers were never meant to be solo missions, but team ones. These industry, function, or role specific communities help job seekers get feedback, collaborate with peers, and find connections
Examples: Product School, Ladder, Product Marketing Alliance
Career+Apprenticeship
Finding an onramp to your first role or making an early in career transition is not always easy. These mix of startups+organizations provide training, apprenticeship and career resources to help candidates make those moves, especially those who are traditionally underserved
Examples include: Aspireship, SV Academy, Pathrise, Pathstream
Niche job boards
Anyone who has ever applied to jobs knows the feeling of trying to apply to a job on a huge job platform (the black hole analogy gets used often) Furthermore, many recruiters can get deluged on these massive platforms, or just struggle to find the targeted candidates. Instead, niche job boards are specific to an industry, role, or persona, and provide a smaller amount of targeted candidates.
Examples: AngelList, Twitter, Pallet XYZ
Job Platforms
The tried and true massive job platforms which provide lots of opportunities and advanced search capabilities for finding roles
Examples: LinkedIn, Indeed, Ziprecruiter
I’m sure that there are others that are out there, but this should be a good start. If you’re using any of these, or if there are others that I missed, I’d love to hear from you.