Job Hunt Lab

Job Search Tips: What Has a Source and What Doesn't

The job search tips with the clearest backing are to pick a few target job titles, use more than one way to find openings, contact employers and people directly, tailor your resume, and follow up. Few of them have measured proof. Most are official advice or common practice, and each tip below says which.

This page is a short list, not fifty items. Each tip says what to do, why, and what evidence exists. Where no evidence exists, the page says so, and it names a few popular figures it leaves out.

Tips by stage, step by step

Stage 1: Decide what to look for

Step 1: Pick a few target job titles. The U.S. Department of Labor's CareerOneStop advises identifying more than one career or job title that is in demand, offers the salary range you need and fits your qualifications. The reason is practical: a search needs keywords, a resume angle and a list of employers. Evidence: official advice, with no data behind it on the page. If you have little experience, how to get a job with no experience covers what to do differently.

Step 2: Write a weekly plan. CareerOneStop says a job search plan is a schedule of tasks, and that short-term, realistic tasks with specific deadlines tend to work best (CareerOneStop, "Create a job search plan"). Its own warning is that the impulse to send your resume to every posting is less effective than planning first. Evidence: advice only. For a sense of scale, a New York Fed survey (a labor market supplement to the Survey of Consumer Expectations, adults aged 18 to 64) found unemployed adults reported 8.4 search hours a week. That is a self-reported average from 165 unemployed respondents in three pooled waves, so use it as context, not a target.

Stage 2: Find openings

Step 3: Use more than one method. In the Bureau of Labor Statistics' 2025 annual averages (11-month averages that exclude October, because October 2025 data were not collected), unemployed jobseekers used 1.8 methods on average. Of 6,405 thousand jobseekers, 56.1% sent resumes or filled out applications, 50.8% contacted employers directly, and 23.7% contacted friends or relatives (BLS, Table 33). The table counts which methods people use. It does not say which one produced a job.

Step 4: Tell people you know that you are looking. CareerOneStop lists friends, family, former co-workers and social media contacts as your network, and advises keeping a list of who you contacted and what you discussed (CareerOneStop, "How to network"). It also suggests preparing a short pitch about yourself.

The strongest data point we found is indirect. In the New York Fed survey, employed people who were not looking received about a fourth of all the offers in the sample and more than half of the unsolicited offers. The authors say their findings point to the importance of informal contacts and recruiting. The post does not report what share of people found jobs through referrals, so we state no such share.

Step 5: Contact employers before they post. CareerOneStop suggests building a list of target companies from its Business Finder tool and contacting a few of them every week (CareerOneStop plan page). It also recommends joining a professional association, which it describes as a good way to learn about trends and unadvertised jobs.

An informational interview is a related option. It is a short conversation, and CareerOneStop says its focus is learning information to help you make a career decision, not getting a job offer. Evidence for all three: official advice, no measured effect.

Stage 3: Apply

Step 6: Keep a base resume and adjust it for each opening. CareerOneStop advises a base resume with all your history, then a customized version for each opening that emphasizes your most relevant skills (CareerOneStop plan page). The reason is simple: the reader of a posting wants to see that you match it. We found no measured source on how much tailoring raises replies, so this is common practice. For more on the application itself, see our job application tips.

Step 7: Do not treat volume as progress. A St. Louis Fed post compared two datasets: in 1979-80 most jobless workers sent three or fewer applications a month, and in 2013-19 about 40% sent at least nine. The job-finding rate did not rise. That comparison is across different surveys and different decades, and it describes groups, so it cannot tell you what happens if you personally send more. It is a reason to check your own replies before raising volume, not proof that volume never helps.

Step 8: Check every posting and message for scams. The Federal Trade Commission's advice is short: "Don't pay for the promise of a job", never bank on a "cleared" check, and look up the company or the person hiring you plus words like "scam," "review," or "complaint." In an April 2026 alert the FTC adds that you should "Ignore generic and unexpected texts, WhatsApp, or Telegram messages about jobs". Federal jobs are listed on USAJobs.gov.

Stage 4: Follow up

Step 9: Follow up on applications, unless the posting says not to. CareerOneStop's wording is to call or email to confirm your interest and ask about the hiring process, unless the posting states not to (CareerOneStop plan page). It also says to thank networking contacts when they connect you with someone else and when you get a job (CareerOneStop, "How to network"). Evidence: official advice, with no data on response rates. Timing, wording and examples are in how to follow up on a job application.

Stage 5: Keep going

Step 10: Plan for a search that takes months, not days. In the BLS seasonally adjusted data for October 2026, the median unemployed person had been unemployed 11.9 weeks and the mean was 27.1 weeks, and 27.6% had been unemployed 27 weeks or longer. These are spells so far for people who are currently unemployed, so they are not the length of a finished search. Our page on how long it takes to find a job covers what the numbers do and do not say.

Step 11: Build in some accountability. CareerOneStop recommends joining a job search or networking group, in your community or at a local American Job Center, for motivation and accountability (CareerOneStop plan page). Evidence: advice, with no measured result.

Common mistakes

Should you automate applications?

Automation lets you send more applications per hour, but the St. Louis Fed comparison above found no rise in the job-finding rate as applications per person grew, and a tool can submit answers you have not read. It makes sense when your own log shows that volume, not fit, is what limits you. Our other site covers how it works and what it risks in how to auto-apply to jobs.

Disclosure: We make AIHawk. It appears on this page and we have a financial interest in it.

AIHawk is one such tool. Its README says it searches for jobs, scores each posting from 1 to 5 against your resume, lets you select the jobs you want, and then opens each company's form in Firefox, fills it in and submits it. The README also says that on a Mac it can find and score jobs but cannot send applications yet. We have not tested whether using it, or any tool, leads to more interviews, so we make no such claim.

Figures we left out

Three claims are commonly repeated on advice blogs. One says a given percentage of jobs are filled through networking. Another says recruiters spend a few seconds on a resume. The third says it takes 100 to 200 applications to get a job. We did not find a primary source for any of them, so they are not on this page. CareerOneStop's networking page says associations help you learn about unadvertised jobs, but it gives no share.

Sources

All pages were read on 2026-11-12. The three CareerOneStop pages returned an access error to our automated fetch tool and were read in a browser instead. None of them shows a publication date.

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