I’m a bit curious as to how people in this forum approach looking for a job knowing they would have to sacrifice some of their privacy in order to do so.
It seems that every employer blocks some or all of the recommended email providers on this site, not to mention giving them your phone number and creating a LinkedIn account are somewhat mandatory in most if not all scenarios.
I’ve formulated some sort of plan to approach this without giving away the information I don’t want to but I wanna know if there are some improvements I can make to this.
It goes:
Create a work email from one of the usual anti-privacy ones (Gmail, Outlook, etc.), although I heard you can get lucky with a Proton email. Ideally you would use a privacy respecting email provider with a custom domain but that is out of reach for me.
Buy a separate mobile number for work. For countries that require registering your number with an ID, this step should be skipped.
Use that email to make an Indeed account or whatever’s the most popular job hunting site in your country. Ideally give them as little info as possible.
Use that email to create an account on the preferred messaging platform of your potential employer. This could be something like Viber, WhatsApp, or shudder Facebook Messenger. Ideally I would want to avoid the last one.
Prefer face to face interviews over online calls, but that can be difficult for remote jobs.
Any constructive criticism over these steps are welcome.
There is a far simpler less technical approach which is to to “just” network well with those you know.
I receive a few job offers a year from people I know without having to do anything this way.
Zero need for outreach or socials or burners or whatever.
This is wholly dependent however on your skill, as better skill (both for the job at hand and to a slightly lesser extent socializing skill) will make this much more easier.
Then once you’re in the onboarding stage learn to respectfully say no to the more egregious aspects.
But the most important part is having realistic and valid alternatives, you must compromise (as in a middle point, not in a bad way) here, you can’t just be a toddler screaming no.
Overall kindness and confidence is key, do NOT be arrogant or an asshole. Although that just applies to life in general.
I haven’t run into any issues with a Tuta address in several years of use. A LinkedIn account is never necessary in my experience unless you’re in tech. If required, I provide my phone number which is also used for my bank and other official services.
Not sure about remote work, but I always like to see if a company also has the listing on their own website.
If you can apply directly through their site, great! Use your dedicated work gmail or whatever. If not, you can call the company and ask for an email to submit your resume to. Granted, this is typically for more old school type industries and local businesses, not sure this approach makes sense for a tech company that’s using all sorta of digital services for handling their HR needs. Also it shows initiative or whatever.
You can use indeed to find leads without signing in, although many larger companies will obfuscate their identity in the listing or go through a 3rd party.
Another way of finding leads is through business registries and osint.
IMO, services like indeed are gamified in the hiring party’s favor, so I always try to find alternative avenues for getting my resume in front of a hiring managers eyes, but again, typically makes more sense for small/medium companies that are local to you…
In my experience this part always requires you to have a social media account, something I have signed off on a long time ago due to it being Facebook. I’m confident that if I still had my Facebook account my friends who had job offers for someone of my skillset would have reached out to me a long time ago but honestly my mental health (and privacy) has been a lot better without it so I’m not exactly eager to jump back into the frying pan.
I’m eyeing an entry level job as I’ve had no prior work experience before so I’m not exactly sure how this factors in.
I wholeheartedly agree with the compromise point. I’ve gone years without connecting to a GAFAM domain barring some curious public page viewing via TOR/VPN but now that I’m in the situation I’m in now I might have to break that streak.
I’m hoping to achieve something similar to this extent. I definitely do not want my emails in the hands of Google/Microsoft but I’ve heard a lot of discussions regarding lesser known email providers being blocked by employers (I believe I read an article regarding Tuta being blocked in a scenario like this).
I believe I do not need a LinkedIn account for my case, but I do believe this discussion should tackle any and all issues that need addressing. Many people I know have advised me to create a LinkedIn account early to help establish some sort of background but I have ignored that due to LinkedIn being LinkedIn.
Phone numbers have become mandatory where I’m from as it’s harder to ignore a call than to miss an email. Most employers will ask for both an email and a phone number as a way of ensuring they have the most number of methods to reach the potential hire.
are you at least doing some work on personal projects or similar?
being able to show/talk about such can help a lot with networking and interviews
and is just healthy to keep the mind active
also if you’re young you might try attending meetups at your local university, can help with meeting like minded people, most campuses don’t care about outsiders visiting
also volunteering at local organizations too for networking helps
I’ve only managed to convince my direct family to switch to Signal in order to contact me (even then they barely use it). Most friends I manage to convince to switch to Signal end up uninstalling it somewhere along the way. Granted, Signal can take up a lot of space if you don’t set up a lower chat history limit.