How To Get A Job In 2025 (Even In A Tough Market)

Erin McGoff shares the best “Advice with Erin” guidance on how to get a job in 2025, from the best resume to nailing the interview.

We are almost at the end of 2024, and many of us are looking to the New Year as a chance for a much-needed fresh start. Now is a great time to reflect on the past 12 months and set some big goals — financial and otherwise! — for the year to come. And if you’re looking for advice on how to get a new job, you aren’t alone.

According to a recent survey from Bankrate, nearly half of Americans say they’re likely to search for a new job in the next year. They also say they’re going to ask for higher pay and more work flexibility, among other things.

But saying you want a new job and actually going through the process of updating your resume, writing a cover letter, and then submitting to many (if not hundreds) of jobs are two entirely different things. Plus, even if you do all of that, there’s a chance your resume will continually get passed over, or you may make it through a few rounds of interviews only to get ghosted. In other words, landing a new job can be fraught with complications, not to mention stress. 

Erin McGoff, better known as “Advice with Erin” on TikTok shares her playbook on how to get a job in 2025.

Rethink Your Resume

The tried and true chronological resume (where we list out the last few jobs we’ve had and the tasks we’ve done at each) is old news. McGoff says there’s a new resume in town — the functional resume.

“A functional resume leads with your skills and not with your experience,” McGoff says. “First, list the hard skill things you can do (graphic design or customer service, for example). Then talk about how you can do them and what you’ve done in the past. And then finally, list out the companies that you’ve worked for and your education and skills.”

McGoff encourages job seekers to consider using a functional resume as a better option to tell their career story (particularly if they’ve had jobs in different fields or a gap in employment). 

Spend Most of Your Time Networking

McGoff says you shouldn’t be spending too much time tweaking your resume and cover letter before every job interview. Instead, she says your time would be better spent networking.

“At the end of the day a computer isn’t going to hire you,” McGoff says. “A human being is going to hire you. You can go through all that work [of painstakingly updating your resume] or you can just network with somebody from your college and they can give you an in. That internal referral or recommendation is a thousand times more powerful than anything you can do on your resume.”

McGoff recommends creating a simple resume template system (she likes the free templates in Google Docs) where you can easily customize and tailor your resume for each role, and then spend the rest of your time reaching out to people for a coffee or a virtual chat about the job you’re interested in.

Negotiate, Negotiate, Negotiate 

You made it to the last round of interviews (yay!) for a job you really want, but the salary offer is just not where you’re hoping it would be. That doesn’t mean you need to move on right away. Instead, ask what else they can offer in the compensation package as a whole and then make a decision. McGoff says to simply ask: Can you be flexible on any nonsalary elements of the compensation package?

“Different companies have different policies,” McGoff says. “Some companies might require that every single employee has the exact same 401k match. Other companies might lift that match to incentivize hiring good people. So just open the door to them and say, ‘Can you be flexible on PTO hours, hybrid work, or healthcare plans?”

Bottom Line

The best advice on how to get a job in the New Year starts with crafting a functional resume that highlights your skills (rather than your job title) and honing your negotiating skills. You got this! 

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