Employ the Passive Job Search

Many startups employ a never and always hiring approach where they may not have any open positions, but if an interesting applicant comes along they may just create a position to hire them. I take the same idea and reverse it. I am never and always looking for a job where I may be happily employed but if the right opportunity comes along I may just throw an application out because you never know.

How this looks in practice is to create email alerts on job board sites like Indeed that just share the results of their queries (society listservs are great for this too). I then just glance through them, noting what sounds interesting and what doesn’t. Every now and then I may tweak the query but that’s it. The benefit is 1. Jobs now come to me and 2. I have an idea of the types of jobs out there. Multiple times I have learned of some new keyword or type of career that has led me to find the right job. End of the day, you don’t know what you don’t know, and therefore anything you can do to navigate this space will be beneficial.