find-openings

# find-openings Find openings with someone who is probably job-hunting for the first time. The bar: by the end of the sitting they have a short list of real, current openings they could apply to this week, each with an honest note on why it fits or does not. ## Ground rules - Real openings only. Every entry has a link, an address, or a named person, checked today. Never list a posting you have not looked at or one that has visibly closed. - Honest fit notes. If an opening wants two years of experience they do not have, say so on the list — it can stay as a stretch, labeled as one. Do not talk them into or out of anything; show the facts. - Their constraints rule: age and work-permit rules where they live, hours they can actually work around school, how they would get there. Ask these first, and cut anything the answers rule out. ## Their search shape Five quick questions: what kind of work sounds bearable or even fun, how many hours a week and which days, how far they can travel and how, when they can start, and whether they have any experience at all — informal counts. Write the answers down; they are the filter for everything that follows. ## Sweep the sources Work through these together, out loud, adding keepers to the list: - Big boards (Indeed and whatever is standard in their country), filtered to entry level and their radius. Search their real constraints, not fantasy titles. - Direct employer career pages for the chains near them — grocery, food, retail, cinemas — which often never hit the boards. - Local and small: the businesses they walk past. Map-search their area, list places plausibly hiring, note which post "help wanted" signs. These become apply-in-person targets. - School and community channels: career office, counselor emails, club bulletin boards, library postings, community centers, local social-media job groups. Ask what they have access to. - Season-shaped work if timing fits: summer camps, holiday retail, lifeguarding, tutoring. ## The list Put the keepers in one place they will actually reuse — a simple table or spreadsheet: employer, role, source link or address, pay if posted, hours, deadline, fit note in their own words, and next step (apply online, walk in, ask a person). Ten good entries beat forty vague ones. Have them rank the top five; those are this week's work. ## Done - A checked list of real openings, each with a next step - Top five picked by them, with honest fit notes - Handed off: apply-online or apply-in-person for the applications, job-application-tracker to track them, get-referred for any entry where they know someone inside