As Layoffs Mount, Sites Aim to Help People Find Tech Jobs

Poojitha Kale has been job hunting since earning a master's degree in electrical engineering from Penn State University last May, and LinkedIn has been her go-to site for tracking openings for data-science jobs. "I use LinkedIn because you don't have to go to multiple sites to reach out to recruiters," Kale said.

Alison Rebecca Martin and Brent Martin are both looking for work, too-she for a product design job, and he for a product manager role. The couple, who're based in Austin but live in an RV so are "mobile and looking in all major tech cities" regularly scan a handful of industry job sites, including some that have materialized since COVID-19 set off a layoff tsunami. One is WFH but Hiring, a listing of companies that are hiring even though they're temporarily operating remotely. Another is Candor's Who's freezing hiring from coronavirus, a crowdsourced listing of close to 7,000 companies that are either still hiring, or which have had layoffs or implemented hiring freezes.

As tech industry layoffs mount, more job seekers like Kale and the Martins are flocking to old and new resources to find work.

Depending on the position, industry, and location, that work is getting tougher to find. Larger companies have increased tech recruiting but smaller ones "have been hit a bit harder," said Michelle Marian, chief marketing officer of DHI Group, Inc., parent company of the Dice tech job board. Cities such as Boston, Columbus, Atlanta, and New York have been more affected by the virus than others, which has hampered their ability to do business, according to Dice's Q1 jobs report, released today. By contrast, from February to March, tech postings increased in industry hubs such as Raleigh, San Diego, Arlington, Virginia, Saint Louis, Irving, Texas, and Philadelphia, according to the report.

By another measure, overall tech job openings appear to be drying up even faster than the average across all industries. According to Glassdoor's 14 April jobs report, tech industry openings were off 11.2 percent on a week-over-week basis compared to a 7.5 percent overall drop in job listings during the same period.

New openings might be contracting, but resources for tech job hunters are not. Here's a sampling of sites with tech-job listings or job-hunting resources:

Dice - The job board today launched a COVID-19 jobs resource center that lists recent tech job postings by location and city, and features remote jobs, a career toolkit, virtual career events, advice on working remotely and getting hired, and insights from company experts. "It's important for those seeking tech jobs to know that employers are still hiring," Marian said. "In fact, there are a number of employers growing their workforce to keep up with demand."

Fairygodboss - The career site for women will hold a virtual career fair for women in tech on 30 April from 7 AM-12 PM PDT with participating employers including HP, Intuit, SAP, and Verizon. Eight hundred people attended a similar Fairygodboss event two weeks ago; as of Tuesday afternoon, 366 had signed up for next week's meetup.

Glassdoor - The crowdsourced company and salary review site in January launched two jobseeker tools: Collections, a mobile app for organizing job application data and notes; and Company Compare, a tool for comparing prospective employers by Glassdoor ratings as well as by such factors as job openings, benefits, and work-life balance.

Huntr - The website and companion mobile app offers job seekers use of a Kanban-style productivity tool to organize and track job applications, and currently lists more than 28,000 tech job openings.

Layoff List - This weekly email newsletter that lists companies that have had layoffs, according to internal and external reports, is part of a larger Layoff Network created by Drafted, a Cambridge, Mass., startup network recruiting platform.

Talent Tracker - Lerer Hippeau, a New York-based early stage venture capital firm, launched this job-matching site to pair tech professionals with open roles at the more than 200 startups in its investment portfolio.

LinkedIn - The business networking giant digs into its job-listings data to post regular updates on companies that are hiring, though not all jobs at tech companies on its lists are tech jobs. Other tips: LinkedIn encourages companies to tag posts about job openings with the hashtag #NowHiring so jobseekers can do a keyword search on the term to find them. Jobseekers also can look on the LinkedIn jobs page for openings that can be sorted by title, skill, company, location, and keyword.

Who's freezing hiring from coronavirus list - The real-time listing created by Candor, a San Francisco startup salary negotiations advisor, categorizes layoffs, freezes, and openings by industry. As of Tuesday, the portion of companies on the list in IT, business, productivity, and education software and consumer tech categories that were hiring was greater than the portion with hiring freezes or layoffs.