Best Way to Find Engineering Jobs (LAID OFF in 2024)

So I got laid off my $240,000 a year engineering job about a couple weeks ago and you know what, I'm honestly done being sad about it so it's time to actually get to work. This may surprise you but I'm actually not that worried. I've been laid off before, I can handle this. And after working like 15 years in the industry, like I've gotten really good at looking for jobs and job hunting. So getting into it, you may have heard many people say that they've applied to 100, 200, 300, hundreds of jobs before they even get an interview. I think we can all agree that that's absolutely insane for one reason or another. The market's crazy, maybe people are doing it the wrong way, but there shouldn't be a situation where we are applying to that many jobs. But in this video, I want to explain to you how not every engineering job is created equal. There's many different ways to find an engineering job or any job at all. And in this video, I want to rank them from F to S class. So S being the absolute best and F being the absolute worst. So if you're looking for an engineering job, if you're looking for any job at all, this will help you in your job hunting journey. And at the end of this video, I'm going to share with you my job hunting strategy of how I'm looking for my next job. That's enough build up, let's just get into the list right now. First one is the AI automatic job application software. You may have seen this around ever since the rise in AIs that you can automatically have AI apply to a bunch of jobs for you. And this is an absolute worst option. I put this in F tier, the quality is awful, the job leads that they're looking for probably isn't what you're looking for. And you don't have any sort of like visualization, just because there's more numbers that they can automatically do faster doesn't mean the quality is there. It is trash. And I've never heard a single person get a job through this way. Next one, let's talk about LinkedIn. Let's talk about LinkedIn easy apply button. I'm putting this at D tier. This is how people like really ratchet up the numbers of how many jobs they're applying for, because it's so easy to apply. Those jobs get just flooded with a lot of people that don't really fit the job description. And even if you do fit it, you have to really stand out among hundreds or not thousands of different jobs. This is D tier for sure. Next step is like LinkedIn or Indeed or the basic job postings where you actually have to click in and do the proper process of like adding in your info, the resume, the cover letter, all that kind of stuff. I'm going to keep this at D tier, because again, when employers put out jobs for these kind of marketplaces, they are going to get flooded with a lot of people that are just copying pasting a lot of stuff. So again, there's more volume for the people that you're trying to like compete against. It is not the greatest way to apply for jobs. The next one is what I'm calling direct site apply. Now that's when you have a company and they have a career section and they have jobs where you can apply directly to their site. I'm going to put this as a B tier, because this way you can customize more like directly for that position. There's a higher chance that they actually want this job and it's not a ghost job. So if it's a ghost job, there's a good chance that you can find those on LinkedIn, Indeed and those big marketplaces. But if it's on the company website on the career section, there's a better chance that is a real job, that you're going to actually have a chance to connect with someone. Okay, for this next question, I'm going to talk about recruiters, but there's two different kinds of recruiters. So the first one I'm going to talk about is third party. Third party is where there's an employer and then there's a job applicant, right? And the third party recruiters, the one that's in the middle, they're trying to connect companies that they know with employees or with people that are looking for work. So with third party recruiters, the thing is, is that the job is going to be real, but it's more expensive for the employer. And you're just a product when it comes to you being the job hunter. I'm putting it at C tier because you have more people rooting for you. You have the recruiter rooting for you because the recruiter is there to get a percentage of your paycheck as a finder's fee. That's the whole purpose of them driving to find a spot for you. So let's go ahead and move on to the next kind of recruiter. And they're called the in-house recruiter. These people work for the companies and it's more beneficial for the company to actually have their own recruitment staff so that they don't have to pay these outlandish fees. These fees for the third party recruiters can be like 20% of their first year salary sometimes. But if you have it in-house, then they don't have to pay these fees and they're actively looking just for that job and they're more in tune with what that job needs. So those are much better. I put the in-house recruiter as a B tier. So for this, you would want to like reach out to a company that you're interested in and try to find their recruitment staff and reach out and make a connection with them directly because they're going to have your best interest and the company's best interest. And that's where everything aligns a lot better. Okay, this next section is going to be a bunch of different kind of referrals. Now, a lot of people think that a referral is a referral, but there's different like qualities and some of these are more valuable than the other ones. The first one I'm going to call a second degree referral. I'm going to put this as a C tier. This is where it's a friend of a friend. So you say that I know Jake that works at Facebook. He will give you a referral and because they know each other through another person, they'll put in a referral, but they're not going to really push for you as much because they don't really know you. They've never worked with you. They'll say that I vetted them through another person. Still valuable, but I'm going to put it as a C tier. If we want to go one level up to a B tier referral, I want to talk about referrals from friends. Now, these are like character friends that have known you for years and know that you're a good worker and are willing to put their own neck on the line to say like, I know that I've worked with this person and they will do the job to the best of their ability and I've known them for years. So they're not someone that is just an unknown quantity. They will fight for you on your end and that will be a much better referral than the other one. And if you want to go to a referral, that's one step higher to A tier. Now, this is an ex-colleague referral. People that used to work with you. Now, why is this so valuable? Why is this A tier? It's because that when someone has worked with you in the past, that is like 100 interviews worth of information that you can do the job. If the person is willing to refer you, they can argue that you can do the job because they have seen you do the job in the past. And if they know that you show up for work, you get the job done and they're gonna refer you and say, yes, this person, I used to work with them and I want to work with them again. That is like one of the best referrals you can do and that's why I'm putting it at A tier. Now, there's one more referral that makes it to the absolute top, the S tier. Now, S tier, it kind of combines a lot of the previous ones but it is a referral from someone that is either a C level, a management level or just a hiring decision person. So like someone that's a director, CEO or someone that actually runs the company. Basically a decision maker. Not only will these kinds of referrals land to the top of the list for the hiring manager, they will also be the ones to actually help you say, yes, I want this person to work here. These are the most prized referrals that you can try to find. It's someone that is a referral from a decision maker, from a hiring managers that actually has power in the company. Okay, now I'm gonna do a bucket of what I've been calling freelance. I'm gonna say this first one is D tier. This is when you are just getting in to freelancing and you think that, oh, I wanna be independent. I wanna do freelancing for the first time. And you go to TopTow, to Fiverr, to all these different like Upwork to try to get this working. And it's D tier because to get started on these kinds of platforms, you really have to put in a lot of work. And at the end of the day, you're probably gonna take a lower rate than you're used to. And also you have to do a lot of work to maintain that level of income and do it consistently. Eventually you can get there. But at first, if this is the first time you're doing it, that is probably with the lowest level of freelancing value when you're trying to look for new work. So the next one, if you actually have experience and you have done TopTow or Upwork or Fiverr, I'd put that as C tier. It might be hard for you to get like a full like salary out of like doing this kind of work. At least like be a non-zero amount that you can get work quickly. And when you're laid off or where you're trying to find new work, that's pretty valuable to like at least have some money coming in. Okay, so this next freelancing idea is what I'm gonna say it's A tier. And this is subcontracting from a known colleague. So people that you used to work with that may be freelancers themselves and they want to give you some extra work. They know that you can do the job and they know that they can just like farm out the work and have you execute on it. And then you freelance and charge them an invoice for the work you've done. They do all the work of finding the work and managing the client. And you're just there to be the heavy lifter to get this done. I put this as A tier because if you have these people in your network that have work that want to dish it off to you, then that is like such a valuable contact to have in your network. And this leads me to the very last one, which is absolutely my favorite and what I choose to do as often as I can. And it's subcontracting from an agency or a consultancy. If you're experienced with this, this is my favorite way to find work because agencies and consultancies, they always have to play this game of like who they have on staff and how much like sales pipeline they have for work coming in. If they have someone on staff, they have to make sure that they're filled up with work all the time. But there are moments when agencies and consultancies get too much work in for the people they have on staff and they're just not ready to hire someone. So if you subcontract, you can alleviate the pressure from them of having more staff. And you can also like line your own pocketbooks by like you getting work done and they take a cut from the work that's coming in and they maintain the relationship with the client. You're there to be able to have a much more steady stream of work and you're able to have a benefit for the agency, for the client and for yourself. This is my favorite because when you have relationships with multiple consultancies and agencies, then at any given point, one of these people might have work for you. So that's a bunch of different ideas of how you can try to find work. And I want you to keep this tier list in mind because I find that if you want to put your effort into a job hunt, it's much better to be spending your time trying to find some of the higher tier options. If you're wasting your time at the bottom trying to pump out hundreds and hundreds of different applications, then you have the least amount of chances to succeed. And it's kind of like a lottery system at that point. So with that being in mind, how I'm going to approach my job hunt now is I'm going to be focusing on almost all S tier things. So I'm going to be working my network and I also want to expand my network into other agencies and consultancies that I can subcontract under, start building a relationship because if I don't find work now, then hopefully I find work in the future. Now, if there's any other like unemployed engineers out there, I feel for you and I hope that this video helps. And if you want, go ahead and subscribe because I'm going to continue on sharing my journey about this job hunt. So I can help as many people as I can because this is something that I'm very used to, but I know is very scary for a lot of people. So go ahead and check this other video out if you're interested and I'll see you around for the next one.