---
name: find-openings
category: get-hired
description: Build a list of openings worth the person's time. Job boards, local businesses, and school channels, each with an honest fit note. Use when they say "help me find a job", "what jobs can I get", or "who's hiring near me".
---

# 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