5 Ways To Find A Job In 2025 When Submitting Applications Just Isn’t Working, According To A Career Expert
It's time to stop applying to jobs blind and start doing these five things instead.
Kaboompics.com | Pexels You may have noticed that the job market nowadays is an unmitigated mess. If you've been in the job search process at all recently, it sure seems like applying is just a waste of time. The hard truth? It is, according to one expert who says workers need to take a different approach in today's wild market.
The career expert shared five things workers can do to find a job in 2025.
Grace McCarrick is a business founder, public speaker, and expert on careers and the job market, especially for Gen Z workers. In a recent TikTok, she insisted that the times have never been more ripe for a change in approach than 2025.
The difficult truth is that the job market is an even bigger mess than most of us realize. Companies seem to be becoming increasingly emboldened to take advantage of workers with low wages and bait-and-switch practices. Many positions online are fake so-called "ghost jobs" posted to give the illusion of company growth. It's unsurprising, then, that recent reporting has revealed the unemployment rate is likely far higher than we think.
As McCarrick put it, "A corporate job providing safety is a little bit like the Golden Age of America fallacy — it's something people look back on nostalgically." So what the heck are you supposed to do?
Well, it starts by reframing the doom and gloom. "This actually means that you have a lot more freedom and a lot more opportunity if you know how to look for it." That means shifting focus to the following five things.
1. Stop cold applying to jobs online.
Your instincts are right that it's a waste of time, and McCarrick took it even a step further — it's bad for your mental health. Because jobs are so tied to our security and stability, the constant rejection — often by way of utter and complete silence — is rocking our worlds even if we don't realize it.
Here's a hot tip I learned in approximately 400 years of therapy: Your nervous system's primary job is to keep you "safe," but it doesn't understand the difference between job-hunting in 2025 and running from a lion at the dawn of man when your nervous system actually evolved.
So as you send out those apps and hear absolutely nothing, your nervous system immediately senses instability and a lack of safety and goes into fight-or-flight overdrive to "save" you by making you anxious and worried. McCarrick's right — this is absolutely not worth it, especially since it's not getting you anywhere.
2. Find any source of temporary income you can get your hands on.
Brent Gorwin | Unsplash
Speaking of feeling "safe," McCarrick said to take any job or gig you can get in the meantime, just so there's SOME income coming in. She said people often "get stuck" on this element because they tend to think that a part-time job at a coffee shop or making a few bucks in the gig economy is either below their status or financially insufficient or both.
"But it's also incredibly important for your brain that you understand you can bring in money," she said — which goes back to that whole nervous system thing. Having some income, regardless of the source, will help your nervous system feel less threatened and make it easier for you to access the executive functions you need for finding a job — which are the very skills that "fight-or-flight" shuts down so you can flee the proverbial tiger, by the way.
"So bartend, clean, watch kids, organize for someone," McCarrick advised. "Figure out something where you can get out the door. Even if you make $100 a week, you need to know that you can make money."
3. Look for freelance and consulting work.
Yes, yes, you don't want to be a freelancer, but remember — that security and stability of the "Golden Age" of corporate employment is, for now at least, mostly a thing of the past. It's best to add whatever you can to your arsenal.
The good news is, "there is so much money out there," McCarrick said. "There is so much work, there is so much that people need." She said to assess your skills — make a big long list of them — and then figure out the "niche that you add value to and you start offering at no-cost, low-cost, seeing what you pick up."
Once you've nailed down a few skillsets you can monetize, "you will start to narrow to a place where people do want to pay for your services," and you can start charging what you want and should be paid for them.
4. Post about your skills and services online on platforms like LinkedIn.
The next step is to truly market yourself, which is admittedly uncomfortable for many of us. However, in this day and age, we all need to learn how to get over our fear of self-promotion.
McCarrick said one key feature of this is to NOT use the green "open to work" banner on LinkedIn because she likens it to dating — it makes you seem desperate instead of "hard to get."
Instead, she said to use LinkedIn and other platforms as a place to promote your skills and availability in ways that show off your value. "Post a couple of thought pieces and a couple of transactional call-to-action pieces about, 'Hey I'm doing this freelancing, I'm really enjoying it, if you know anyone doing this, let me know.'"
5. Start a professional networking group.
Pretty much all career and HR experts these days agree on one thing — the way to get a job in today's market is through networking and nepotism, period. McCarrick said taking the initiative to start a networking group can go a long way.
"Even if it's just three people, you want this to be in the area you are looking for jobs," she said. "You want to offer something like a monthly or quarterly meetup where people with the same professional interests, the same professional experience, can come together and talk about something."
If you're brand-new to the working world, she said it's better to join networking groups than start them, but either way, it's all about the same goal. "You need to be out in the marketplace as a stable, confident, self-assured person who is adding value to the marketplace," she said. If that's not you, fake it till you make it!
The bottom line is all of these methods are more about getting opportunities to come to YOU, not the other way around. Not only is that once-simple approach rapidly dying on the vine, but more importantly, this gives you more leverage to find work and positions that actually fit you better, instead of just taking whatever you can get. It's hard work, but the kind that gives you much more control and agency over the process — and in today's market that's a huge leg up.
John Sundholm is a writer, editor, and video personality with 20 years of experience in media and entertainment. He covers culture, mental health, and human interest topics.