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It seems recruiters are getting a bit of a plague. I just looked over some of the job listing websites, but just about everything I found was "Hi, we're a recruiter, and we have the real job opening, so just let us help you."

I would like to avoid all of the recruiters, and all the "white noise" on internet searches for jobs.

So I'd like to know what are the best ways to try to find job openings at companies you don't know about yet without going through a recruiter?

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  • Like it says at the start of the post: "I just went through google and looked over some of the job listing websites, but just about everything I found was "Hi, we're a recruiter, and we have the real job opening, so just let us help you.""
    – Erik
    Aug 23, 2016 at 12:20
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    Do you have a network of professional colleagues? I get my best jobs that way. Aug 23, 2016 at 12:38
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    So you googled "IT jobs" for five minutes and were surprised that all you found were heavily marketed recruiting bureaus? You're operating from a faulty premise. VTC as too broad.
    – Lilienthal
    Aug 23, 2016 at 12:43
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    @Erik I suspect many have not yet imbibed the most holy caffeine. I edited your question to make it more in line with what this site wants to see. Aug 23, 2016 at 14:05
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    I guess I don't really understand the problem. When I look at a jobs site, it's pretty easy to tell which postings came from the company itself and which didn't. Maybe the sites you use are too confusing? Aug 23, 2016 at 16:11

4 Answers 4

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I would like to avoid all the recruiters

You shouldn't necessarily avoid recruiters. But you should avoid the wrong kind of recruiters.

There are two reasons that I say this. First, not all recruiters will take part of your paycheck forever. Some recruiters get paid by the company when they place someone - others get a fee just for locating candidates. These can be great opportunities for you, and you would be missing them out if you filter out everything that comes from a recruiter.

Second, not all companies will direct-hire people to IT positions. Recently I've worked for two different Fortune Five Hundred companies. These environments were hugely beneficial to my personal growth as an employee and contributed quite a bit to my personal development. Both companies only hired IT staff by working with recruiting companies, and provided very long very stable career opportunities.

While I share your frustration with the recruiting process and the recruiter spam (Just today I got a phone call for a position I posted to hire someone for, from a recruiter) they can still provide you with some opportunities you wouldn't get otherwise.

So what are the wrong kinds of Recruiters?

The wrong kind of recruiters are pretty obvious, pretty quickly. They do things you have heard about a lot. Like, Bait-and-Switch: they call about a specific job offer and say no, I have this other one I think you would be better for. Or they contact you about a position that doesn't have anything to do with your actual skill, but is based on a keyword search (IE: You have Javascript, so they send you a Java job offering).

These kinds of recruiters will always be coy about what the job is exactly, and will be reluctant to provide you with any information about the company you could, potentially, be interviewing with. This is bad for them (because the more educated you are heading into an interview, the better your options are for getting a good job).

Good recruiters are the opposite of this. They will send you specific jobs that they think you are interested in, they will provide you with lots of information about the company you will be interviewing with, and the jobs they send you will reasonably match your skills (though no job will be a 100% match).

I looked over job listing websites and everything I found was Hi, we're a recruiter

You're looking in the wrong places. I went through a four week job search, and the best resource I found for actually getting interviews was through Craigslist. The interesting thing about these postings was that 95% of them said "Do not contact us if you are a recruiter." These are usually small business that don't want to partner with a larger company like that, or have had (similar) bad experiences with recruiting companies.

Ultimately, I found my job by working with a recruiter who was being paid by the company to locate someone. Out of pocket cost to me was $0 a year. Forever. But I had three job offers from interviews I had done just through Craigslist.

I also had two interviews convert into Job Offers that I got through LinkedIn. It's a very useful resource if you are looking to target specific companies, but it does require some time to build a useful network.

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Build your social profile and attract employer. There are few sites which will help you in this.

  1. https://www.hackerrank.com/ : Solve challenges in hackerrank and build your profile, you will gain badges and points as you solve more challenges. Employer often check these profile.

  2. https://github.com/ : Share your projects and code on this and attract employer by the quality of your code.

  3. https://stackoverflow.com/ : build your reputation and help employer to see that you are real problem solver.

if you have already done above 3 then its time for LinkedIn profile.

https://www.linkedin.com/ : most of the employer directly contact individual from linkedin, you can refer your coding and social profile in LinkedIn and ask for the recommendation from your manager or co worker.

Hopefully this will help you for sure.

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All businesses operating in a state are registered with the state (they have to pay taxes, so they're listed). Your state may have a listing of employers in the state, and some states promote the businesses within the state on their own websites. So you may want to start with your state's website.

Alternatively, A Bing search (I don't use google) of a list of employers within the state like "List of New York employers" might yield results.

Contacting your local and state chambers of commerce may also be highly productive. That way you may approach companies directly.

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Unfortunately there's no way to avoid them. I notice they post fake jobs on popular online sites and get you through that. You won't know it until you apply but one thing I notice consistently is that these recruiters "bump" their posts so you'll eventually figure out the pattern for your area.

It's kind of like that scene in that movie Castaway with Tom Hanks when he's trying to get his boat out. You see a desperate guy trying to make it but these giant waves constantly push him back to the island. It isn't until he breaks the wave that he makes it to the ocean where his only hope is being seen by anyone. That's basically what it's like breaking past these recruiters. Once you figure out the pattern of their postings you can easily apply to actual positions.

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