When you are looking for work as a designer there are a lot of options. You can be the self-promoter, the collaborator, the online resume builder and the strictly word-of-mouth breather. All are courageous avenues to trek down in the hunt for the next gig, but some outshine others in terms of surface area distribution.
The Self-Promoter:
Has all of their ducks in a row. Business cards, letter head, website devoted to self-promotion and portfolio work. Mingles at meetup groups and business events around town, pushing the good name of "them". This is not to be confused with the Word-of-Mouth artist, we'll get to them later.
The Collaborator:
Spends all of their time talking to other artist friends in the business and tries to create a freelance group to help drum up business for themselves as well as the team. Seems like a great person to have around and instills a sense of integrity within the group, but really falls short of design skills as most of their talent is exhausted in getting the others to agree that it's a good idea for them to become a team instead of going out and getting their own business to bring in to that same team. They see themselves the figurehead of a future business adventure where they are the CEO and sitting on the top of "Mount Look What I Did!" They get work sure, but they don't pull their weight fully.
The Online Resume Builder:
They use all available resources at their disposal to craft the perfect email, the perfectly designed resume and are excellent communicators, but they fail to see the need to incorporate some of the other designer types methods in order to really be successful. They sit behind the screen pumping out resume after resume hoping someone would just call already! They lack people skills in a social setting so that makes them anxious about putting themselves out there in crowds or talking about themselves.
The Word-Of-Mouth Breather:
Like the self-promoter they rely on others to bring them business. Unfortunately though, they don't see the need for marketing materials or to join groups. They want to be the ghost everyone talks about with no real evidence they exist other than the merits of others praise. They get business but it is slow and not always steady. We can't all be Huy Fong Foods brand Sriracha now can we?
What these individuals fail to realize is that your best bet for finding work is to employ all of these methods in a combined effort. You NEED to be a self-promotion guru so you can speak about your talents in a way that is not pretentious or simply ego-driven. You need to collaborate with others so that you can build relationships with other artists and industry leaders so that the word-of-mouth spreads like wild fire and when someone comes across your resume on a site like careerbuilder.com or monster.com, your reputation precedes you.
Okay maybe you won't be "famous", to that extent, but it's a goal. When you set goals, you have something to measure your success on. Completion of goals. This will set you apart in the work force as it is a testament to your work ethic and that, my friends, is worth more than any degree or position you've held. Why? Because it's not what's underneath, but what you do, that defines you. Yes, I just quoted Batman Begins. Because it's awesome that's why.
Now there's something very important to note about the Online Resume Builders skills-sets that you should pay especially close attention to. If you've done a job search using online resources sites like careerbuilder.com in the past year or so, you'll notice the landscape has changed drastically, from even three years ago. There are a seemingly infinite stream of job sites taking you to the jobs you seek these days.
There are typically one or two locally created job hunting sites that are meant for local talent only. For me, that's Jobbing.com. Well, it used to be just local anyway. Then there's obviously the big two that started it all, Monster, and CareerBuilder. Everyone knows how to use them, probably HAS used them and every other site is a watered down version of them. They usually come with some stupid gimmick that's only mildly interesting enough to make you want to use them. What I've seen a lot of lately are the sites Indeed.com, ZipRecruiter.com and Beyond.com. These were new players to me as the last time I used online searches for jobs was about eight years ago when I was hired at my most recent employer.
What I'm seeing though (mostly from Beyond.com), is this broker-style set up where they email you a list of potential jobs you might want to apply for according to whatever search terms you put in originally when you signed up for the site and uploaded your resume. What you don't realize until AFTER you click on one of these jobs is that it sends you out to another site that they got that job offer from that is ANOTHER third party system that wants to charge you for sending your resume or quote for the job offer. I've been duped by this many a time and no longer use Beyond.com or jobs2careers.com because of it. It's a scam because these same jobs are posted on other sites that don't charge you to apply.
ZipRecruiter has been relatively helpful, but their search parameters for what they "think" you'll be interested in can have an extremely wide range of results based off of one word. When you put in "graphic designer", they will definitely send you info on those types of jobs but also anything relating to either of those words. Hello? I'm not an electrical designer. I'm not a Radiologist that looks at "x-ray graphics". I'm not a software designer or developer. Yet I get this garbage in my email daily.
I'm not saying you won't get this from the likes of careerbuilder, I just think I get it way more infrequently. The problem is, you need to market yourself to the new pool of employers out there who might be looking for talent for the first time. This means they are trying to use the newest and coolest sites that they heard about from a third party trying to sell them a service. Lowest bidder wins, right?
So what do you do? You bite that bullet and put your resume on all of the sites you can, limit your search terms as best you can, and understand the difference between a quality job link and a dud that will take you to a time-wasteland the likes of which haven't been seen since your last click-hole expedition.
I do my searches on careerbuilder.com, monster.com, jobbing.com and indeed.com. I place my info on ziprecruiter.com and beyond but know to only skim their links for quality and recognize how the wording will alert me to if it's going to take me to a third party site or not. If it doesn't take you to the company site itself to apply, you're just passing your info around to more people wanting to create subscriber lists so they can sell you more crap you don't want. It's brilliant marketing in a way, but I HATE marketing that profits from the miss-use of trust in a client. Hopefully you do to.
Hopefully I've sparked some thought here with regards to self reflection of what type of job hunter you are and given some helpful advice on what job hunting sites to use regularly and which ones to use simply as a means to an end. Good luck!
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