Can You Outsource Your Job Search?

Searching for jobs takes a lot of time and effort, which, let’s be honest, a lot of of us lack the bandwidth for! Whether you’re employed and trying to land somewhere else, balancing a search for full-time work with freelancing or fractional work, or emotionally exhausted from too many months of unemployment -- can you just outsource the whole thing? 

While we wish we could tell you yes, the answer is more complicated. There are some elements you can easily outsource, like resume writing. Writing an effective resume takes a lot of time and a deep understanding of how hiring managers evaluate candidates, and you may want to invest your time more productively into building connections that will help you land your next role. Plus, when you outsource this step, you get the benefit of an outside perspective (or if you work with us, two outside perspectives) to help you refine your story, increase your confidence, and improve your positioning.

But if you want to outsource the applications themselves, it gets a lot more complicated. There are definitely some things you can do to automate or streamline this part of the process, but there are some traps you can easily fall into and must avoid.

First, be wary of so-called “reverse recruiters” who offer to apply for jobs for you. A lot of these services are scammy, and there are state laws (especially in California) that restrict what a “reverse recruiter” can do for you in exchange for money – for example, they are not allowed to accept payment to submit your application for roles you could find yourself. We don’t practice reverse recruiting, and we highly recommend you avoid it, not only because there are too many scams out there, but because your applications will always be stronger if you submit them yourself. Plus, in a town as small and social as Hollywood, you're not going to build a great reputation hiring someone to message people on LinkedIn for you. As career coaches, we can help you pinpoint the right kinds of jobs to focus on, refine your messaging, and gut check your outreach, but we can't -- and no one legally or appropriately can -- do the work for you.

So what about hiring a regular recruiter? Well, recruiters or headhunters are contracted with (or employed by) companies who are hiring, and they submit resumes from applicants they have for specific roles that come across their desk. They usually get paid by the company when a candidate they submitted is hired and do not get paid by the job seeker — so you can’t actually “hire” a recruiter! It also means they aren’t out there looking at job boards to figure out what the best fit is for you! Instead, they are keeping your resume on file and may reach out if an opportunity seems like it might align. It’s helpful to build relationships with recruiters so you can be added to this pile, but it’s not a fast track to success by any means. It's the corporate equivalent of getting a production's number from Production Bulletin and asking to keep your resume on file for a PA job -- it could turn out great, or nothing can come of it, and you still need to apply the regular way.

If you can’t hire a human to curate postings for you, how about AI? While there are AI agents who claim to do this for you, they often end up spamming openings and can get your applications blocked on the hiring company's side (not to mention applying for jobs you don't actually want, which wastes everyone's time). There are some AI tools that will aggregate postings, but if you use one of these, make sure it does not submit your resume for you! There are also some prompt templates floating around the web to help you use Perplexity, Claude, and ChatGPT to aggregate job postings for you based on specific criteria, but when we've tested them for entertainment roles, we've found that they don't work as well as promised, likely because the industry is so specific and comparatively small -- so you may try this if you're transitioning outside of the industry to a non-niche field (like insurance sales or project management). Unless you're a quick coder or prompt wizard, this route is more trouble than it's worth.

But you can definitely use tech tools to help, and there are ways to automate the process! You can save postings and searches on LinkedIn so you'll get notified when something of interest pops up. Not every posting that's recommended will be a fit, but it's a good starting point, and as with all social media platforms, the more you engage with a particular type of role, the more you'll be fed similar postings by the algorithm. Similarly, you can set up alerts for specific keywords for roles of interest on Google. 

We wish we could advise that you outsource the whole darn thing, as we know how frustrating and draining it can be to look for jobs! We are always here to help where we can to support your search – preparing your materials, helping you focus your direction, guiding you through networking conversations, honing your interview skills, and giving you tools to make everything more manageable, but unfortunately, there are no true shortcuts. But hopefully, when you do land somewhere, it will have been worth the effort and wait -- and you'll remember how tough things were for you and pay it forward to the next person in your network. The best way to outsource, after all, is by acting generously and knowing in time, it'll come back to you.