For my writers, designers, and other frantic job seekers: I wanted to give you my best creative job search tips for 2025. This is not just best practices, it’s about survival.
About an hour ago I came across a guy on LinkedIn openly sharing about his mental health due to the inability for creatives like himself/ us to find jobs, and the fact that our money is just draining out of our bank accounts like an open faucet and it’s terrifying.
I want to give you my personal advice.
First, no one will be able to help you in your job search except for you.
Family and friends will text you saying what they think you should do. They have no idea. Those of us who don’t live in Metropolis type cities are getting hit the hardest right now.
I’m in rural New Jersey and there are no jobs here that apply to what I went to school for, and what I’ve been doing professionally for 20 years. My marketing and web design experience is a mismatch for grocery store jobs, apparently.
And at this point, a lot of the marketing jobs I’m seeing on job search websites actually match the salary/ hourly wages they’re paying at some of the grocery stores right now. Yeah. It’s that bad.
Start to boss people around.
If your friends start giving you off-track solutions and you’re just trying to get people to hire you, then hit them back with a work proposal. Share your brochure or the link to your website and a brief and to-the-point explanation of what you do. You can also offer a referral fee as an incentive.
I mean, think about it. It’d be nice if a $500 design job landed in your inbox right now, and if you paid $100 out to have that job you’d still have $400 which is more than you have at the moment.
Just keep on doing that. They will either go away or get the idea.
Sustain your momentum.
Figure out how to sustain your own momentum.
To do this, give yourself a small reward each time you accomplish something. Let’s say you’ve been meaning to launch a Facebook group. Or you wanted to learn how to make a properly sized banner in Canva for one of your social media pages. Or you wanted to start an email list for your website.
Each time you check off a task of that type, give yourself a pat on the back and a break. Have a treat. Put on your favorite album and go walk in the warm sunshine. Call a friend. Take a nap. Get in the habit of doing this, and you’ll soon be what’s known as your own boss.
Don’t overshare about your anxiety, depression, etc.
If you tell everyone about your suffering mental health, you’re going to get ostracized… even if you’ve been told that it’s cool to be open about mental health problems. That whole thing is a double-edged sword that you don’t want to be up against.
Fight fake jobs.
Be vigilant in figuring out who is an actual job recruiter and who is a fake, and which jobs are ghost jobs versus real jobs.
Here’s what you need to look out for:
- Job descriptions that appear to be copied and pasted from elsewhere
- The same job listings that always seem to be circulating, from the same companies
- Job recruiters that show up on your profile and say vague things
Example, “ooh I’ve noticed that your skills are a match for some of the opportunities we have available.”
What skills? What are you talking about?
If someone cannot be specific and actually engage with you humanly in a conversation, pass right over them. Your time is scarce right now and you’re stretched too thin, and you don’t have time for bot profiles to waste.
Don’t spend too much time on LinkedIn.
You’re not getting paid to be on the platform. Also, if you hang out here for too long watching everyone in your field flocking to the comments in hopes that they’re going to get picked for a job like a flock of seagulls fighting for a crumb, that’s bad for your morale.
A lot of the other platforms are paying. If you start a group and it’s a hit and you get lots of followers, you can get paid on Facebook. If you start a YouTube channel and you get lots of followers and watch hours, you can get paid there too.
But not on LinkedIn. So quit hanging out responding to negative commenters, it isn’t doing any good for you in the least.
Consolidate financially.
When you don’t have money coming in and you don’t know when it’s coming in, you have to keep consolidating your budget. Find things to cut out of your spending. It’s like tightening a belt and you just keep putting it on the next notch. Not fun, but it’s survival. Maybe it’s time to downgrade that phone plan.
This is extreme, but if you get to the point where you’re really fearful for your future, you may have to look into a change in housing or other support.
Start with the Department of Consumer Affairs website in your home state. Also talk with social services in your county. A lot of income adjusted housing is not advertised because if it was, everyone would jump on it.
Good luck and Godspeed.
Keep in touch with Dina.
Maybe you freelance and maybe you don’t. With so many layoffs, freelance could be the wave of the future. Do you feel lost at sea? Let me be your anchor.
Sign up for my list. I have a super great gift that’s going to land in your inbox and then you probably won’t hear from me for some time.
But you can email me anytime with your thoughts about the current state of affairs for creatives like us.