People have told me the best thing to do is to find companies you want to work for and apply directly to them. Now let's say you have a bit of criteria for what you'd like: How do you go about finding companies that match that criteria?
The biggest tool I use for cold starting lists is 2 identify any company who sends a speaker to a conference, that presents on a topic you enjoy. the name of that company should be tracked on a site like LinkedIn. the value in tracking the company through a site is that small companies change their names over time, medium sized companies get purchased, those tracking systems will update for you.
For every company you find, it will become easier to find more once you get past a threshold.
next is to add companies through your network, this can mean any company that has an employee from an educational institution that you came through.
I found that regional job listings, and surprisingly Craigslist, have much higher response rates and real listings then major listing sites.
Finally specialty listings are valuable as well. RemoteML and angel.co are examples of specialty sites leveraging a smaller community.
Aggregate all of this list of companies 2 a site like LinkedIn. Do this throughout your entire career without brakes.
Job posts indicate what the company values. Some might be minimalist. Some overdo the requirements, this might suggest that they look at weaknesses not strengths. Some emphasize money a lot. Some get excited about technology, culture, product. Fund something that fits what you want.
As discussed on HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15178283
Also LinkedIn and Glassdoor are pretty decent in my experience.
Can you articulate that criteria?
The more specific the better.
That might determine where and how to execute your search.
- Don't see tech as a cost center or at least dont mind investing in it. i.e. they arent using years old enterprise software or at least look at modernizing long term. Working on newer/ bleeding edge tech would be cool though.
- Work on interesting problems and arent just writing copy / paste CRUD apps or maintaining legacy apps.
- Invest in their employees and encourage them to keep on top of their skillset, etc.
- Is relatively stable, not an early stage startup.
This is just off the top of my head, I might edit if I think of anything else in the meantime.
Here's an idea -- you'll find you THIS company by going to meet-ups, conferences, & trade shows.
And it might sound cheesy, but actually meeting live human beings in these settings fosters connection and cool conversations.
Try to be strategic about which events you attend. Often we're comfortable in our little bubbles.
I attended a ridiculously overpriced conference in Vegas years ago. It's still paying dividends. Get out there!