How To Automate Your Job Search
This is my super easy guide to automate your search for sound engineer jobs (and sound designer, AV tech, etc.). What’s the trick? Craigslist. Local contract labor isn’t often listed on the national job search sites like ArtSearch and SimplyHired (which I plan to review in the next post), and even when work is posted on one of the bigger sites, it is often double posted on Craigslist. All you have to do is create an RSS feed from your Craigslist search, like so:
Step 1 : Search For Sound Engineer Jobs
If you live in in the Bay Area like I do, you can search 9 counties (with 400 theatre companies!) all at once from http://sfbay.craigslist.org. But what if you want to search for sound engineer, audio engineer, audio technician, AV tech, and sound designer posts in every city within 50 miles? Time to setup that RSS feed. It’s easy, just make a list of all search terms and locations you would like to use, then input them one at a time, each in a new browser tab.
It takes a little while, and there are some sites like Search Tempest and TinkOMatic that automate this task, but I’ve seen sites like this go under and get boxed out by Craigslist, so I think the most reliable solution is to do the searches one-by-one directly from Craigslist. Don’t worry. You’ll only have to do this once.
If you are getting too many results with every query, try restricting the search. These will go directly into your RSS reader, so you don’t want 100 of them every day. Try searching job titles only and restricting it to contract and part-time work.
Step 2: Add To Your RSS Reader
Google Reader is dead, long live Google Reader. I use Feedly. It has a nice interface and is easy to use. Create a category called Job Listings. Go back to your job search tabs and at the bottom-right of the page you will see an RSS link; save that link. In Feedly, click on Add Content, paste the link, and add it to your Job Listings category.
That’s it! Every day you’ll get fresh results without running all over the interwebs.
Bonus: Add Indeed and Simply Hired
I’ve noticed that Indeed and SimplyHired sometimes have pro audio jobs, so it might be worthwhile to add those to your feed reader but you will likely get some duplicates. Neither have a nice RSS link like Craigslist, but guess what, you can submit a search on Indeed then copy the URL and paste it into Feedly. Easy.
Have any good tips to add for automating your sound engineer job search? Comment below!
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