Overwhelmed by your job search? Target the right job titles to apply for 🎯

Sarah has just graduated college with a business degree, so now it's time to step into the brand-new world of job-searching. When Sarah opens the computer and gets ready to type, her hands freeze and her mind feels totally blank. She can't stop thinking to herself:

That dream job could have a lot of different names. If you're on the job hunt like Sarah, here are some tips to figure out what to search for.

Different places might use different names for the same job, so it's important to try to search based on the department instead of by the name of the position.

For example, if Sarah wants to be a sales representative, she should not search "sales representative" on every single company's career page. Instead, she should look up the department (such as "sales", "sales operations", or "account management") and see what jobs are available on the company's career page.

• Keep track of what the keywords and common phrases are that companies use over and over. They tend to describe the same jobs in the same ways!

• The job description might tell you the names or departments that you'd expect your job to work with, and it could give you more ideas for search terms.
  
  In Sarah's case, she might be looking for words or phrases like "sales", "account management", or "customer success".

• Search job boards (like LinkedIn, Indeed, or Glassdoor) using your key words and note which titles keep showing up.

• Find people with similar roles on LinkedIn and see what titles they actually use.

• Save job posts that feel right, even if you're not applying yet, to spot patterns in the language.

Photo by Kaitlyn Baker on Unsplash

Try asking AI for ideas on starting your search. It can be a great brainstorming tool for figuring out good job titles and job descriptions to guide your search. Here are a few prompts to get you started:

• I want to be a _________________. What jobs should I look for?

• What are alternative job titles for someone with experience in [skill]?

• I have a background in [field]. What job titles should I be searching for?

• Here is my resume: [paste your resume]. What job titles best match my experience?

Here's how Sarah used AI to help her figure out where to start:

To hear an audio description of the AI summary above, click play on the audio player below:

Just remember to take things with a grain of salt! 🧂

Double-check what you're told using real job boards. Sometimes AI can make up job titles that don't exist to try to make the user happy.

Time to start that job hunt! Both you and Sarah are now ready to use these steps to get that job.

Just remember:

Photo by Sincerely Media on Unsplash