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Get Hired · Directory
Tools worth your time.
Every entry is free or has a real free tier, and the price is stated when it is not free. Where a tool has a catch, the catch is written next to it.
Evidence reviewed October 2, 2026.
If you just lost your job
Money, health insurance, food, and bills. Do these before you touch your resume.
COBRA — what it actually costs
Keeps your existing employer plan, but you pay the whole premium including the part your employer used to cover. Department of Labor: "Your premium cannot exceed 102 percent of the plan's total cost of providing you with coverage."
Keep in mind: You have at least 60 days to decide. Compare against a Marketplace plan first — same window, and the cost can be much lower.
Health coverage after job loss (ACA Marketplace)
Losing job-based coverage opens a 60-day window to buy a Marketplace plan, and the subsidy is based on your income now — which just dropped. This can be far cheaper than COBRA and most people never compare the two.
Keep in mind: healthcare.gov: "you need to apply for Marketplace coverage within 60 days of losing your job-based coverage." Don't let it lapse while you're only thinking about COBRA.
How to spot a job scam
The FTC's rundown of fake job ads, pay-for-training schemes, and fake-check overpayment scams. The one rule worth memorizing: "Honest employers, including the federal government, will never ask you to pay to get a job."
Unemployment Benefits Finder
Pick your state, get the direct link and phone number to file for unemployment. Run by the US Department of Labor.
Keep in mind: Eligibility, weekly amount, and how many weeks you get are all set state by state. Your state's page is the only place with your real numbers.
American Job Centers
Roughly 2,300 federally funded centers offering in-person job search help, and sometimes free training. Already paid for by your taxes.
Keep in mind: What's on offer varies a lot by location. Some training programs have eligibility rules — call and ask.
Find a food bank
Search by ZIP for food banks, pantries, and meal programs near you. No application, no waiting period.
LIHEAP (help with heating and cooling bills)
Federal help paying energy bills, including emergency help if you're facing shutoff. Delivered through your state's office.
Lower your student loan payment
If your income drops, you don't have to wait for your annual recertification date. Send updated income to your servicer and ask for a recalculation now. A zero-income month can mean a zero-dollar payment.
SNAP (food assistance)
Food benefits. You apply through your own state — this is the federal directory of every state's application portal and phone number.
Keep in mind: Income limits depend on household size and state, and change every October. Get your number from your state, not from a chart on someone's blog.
Someone filed for unemployment in your name
If you get a 1099-G for benefits you never received, this is how to report it. Also check your credit report while you're at it.
Where the jobs actually are
Boards and open data that don't charge you and aren't full of dead listings.
open-jobs
Searches millions of postings pulled straight from companies' own career pages rather than a job board. Public-domain data, updated daily.
Keep in mind: The underlying dataset is at github.com/elliottdehn/open-jobs if you're technical. Coverage and freshness claims are the project's own — nobody has independently audited them.
OpenRoles
About 1.5 million open roles pulled nightly from 52 hiring platforms. The site states: "No tracking. No ads. No accounts." Your filters and saved jobs stay on your own computer.
Keep in mind: Open source (MIT). Small project — one maintainer — so worth re-checking that it's still running before you lean on it.
USAJOBS
Every federal government job opening. Pay bands are published, so you always know the range before you apply.
Awesome Remote Job
The largest community-maintained list of remote work resources — job boards, aggregators, interviewing, newsletters, communities, and companies built remote-first. Public domain (CC0), 48,000+ stars.
Keep in mind: It's a long list on GitHub, not a search tool, and lists this size always carry some dead links — roughly 90 open issues at last check. Treat it as a place to go digging, not a vetted set.
HNHIRING
Searchable index of Hacker News's monthly "Who is Hiring" threads. Postings are written by the actual hiring team, not a recruiter.
Keep in mind: Almost entirely tech roles.
Idealist
Nonprofit and social-impact jobs, internships, and volunteering.
We Work Remotely
Remote-only listings across engineering, design, support, sales, and marketing.
O*NET OnLine
Government database of what occupations actually involve — tasks, skills, typical pay. Useful when you're changing fields and need the words the new field uses.
RemoteOK
Large remote job board, free for job seekers.
The Muse job search
A job board with more than 10,000 listings you can filter by category, experience level, remote work and employer benefits. Each listing links to the employer's own application page.
Keep in mind: The Muse also sells paid coaching. You do not need it to search.
Resume and applications
Free tools that build a resume employers' software can actually read.
"75% of resumes are rejected by a robot" is not true
This statistic is everywhere and it traces back to a 2012 sales pitch from a company that no longer exists. No study was ever published. Applicant tracking systems mostly sort and search; a person is still doing the rejecting.
Keep in mind: Worth knowing because a lot of paid "beat the ATS" products are sold on the back of this number.
Reactive Resume
Free, open-source resume builder. No ads, no paywall, no upsell. You can run it on your own computer if you'd rather not store your resume on someone's server.
Open ResumeAging
Free resume builder with a built-in checker that shows you how hiring software reads your file. No sign up.
Keep in mind: The code hasn't been updated since late 2024. It still works, but nobody's actively maintaining it.
Jobscan
Compares your resume against a specific job posting and scores the keyword overlap.
Keep in mind: Listed because the free tier is genuinely usable. Don't pay for it, and don't let a low score panic you — see the entry above.
RenderCV
Builds a clean resume from a plain text file. Free and open source.
Keep in mind: Comfortable with a text editor? Great. Otherwise start with Reactive Resume.
Using AI without getting burned
What the free AI tools can genuinely do for a job search, and where they'll hurt you.
The free AI tools, compared
Claude, ChatGPT, Gemini, and Microsoft Copilot all have free tiers that need no credit card. Any of them can tailor a resume to a posting or turn a job description into practice questions.
Keep in mind: Turn off training on your conversations BEFORE you paste in a resume. It's in settings, and it's off by default in some tools and not others.
What AI can't do for you
Harvard's career office and others land on the same rule: AI edits, you author, and you verify every line. These tools invent job history, dates, and accomplishments that sound plausible. Sending one out unchecked means lying on an application without meaning to.
Tools that listen to your live interview. A category of paid product promises real-time answers while you're actually interviewing. We don't link any of them. Recording without consent is illegal in some states, getting caught ends the process, and the price is aimed at people with no money.
Interviews
Practice tools, question frameworks, and your rights in the room.
Google Interview Warmup
Practice answering out loud, get a transcript back with the words you leaned on. Completely free with no paid tier and no login.
Your library card is the best deal here
Many US public libraries give free access to paid interview-prep products — Brainfuse JobNow for live coaching, LinkedIn Learning, Big Interview, Gale's testing database. Hundreds of dollars of tools, free, and almost nobody uses them.
Keep in mind: Which ones you get depends on your library system. Search your library's site for "job" or just ask at the desk.
Asking for an interview accommodation
What you're entitled to ask for as a disabled applicant, and what an employer is allowed to ask you. Straight from the EEOC.
Coming back after a gap
Free nonprofit programs for people re-entering work after incarceration (The Fortune Society, STRIVE) or after caregiving (Path Forward).
The STAR method
Situation, Task, Action, Result. The structure behind "tell me about a time when..." questions. Duke's career center explains it in one page.
Help Scout: 10 tips for a virtual interview
A plain walkthrough of the video-call side of an interview: where to put the camera, how to light your face, joining on time, and testing your setup before the day. Dated July 2025.
Keep in mind: It is a software company's blog, so there is a Help Scout ad box near the top. The advice itself is general and does not ask you to buy anything.
Pramp
Free peer mock interviews — you interview someone, they interview you.
Keep in mind: Mostly technical roles. Now runs through Exponent, which has paid tiers you can ignore.
Check out the employer
Research who you're applying to, and know what they're not allowed to ask.
It's not just you
Greenhouse — a company that makes hiring software — surveyed 2,500 job seekers and found 61% were ghosted after an interview. The silence you're experiencing is standard practice, not a verdict on you.
What employers can't ask you
The EEOC's own list of illegal questions and practices in hiring. Useful before an interview, and useful afterward if something felt wrong.
Does your state require pay ranges in job ads?
Colorado, California, Washington, New York and Illinois require covered employers to post a pay range. If a posting from a covered employer leaves it out, your state labor department is where to ask. The Department of Labor lists every state's office.
Keep in mind: Coverage depends on employer size and job type, and more states may have these laws. We only list states we have checked against the state's own site. Check your state labor department for yours.
NLRB case search
Look up labor-law cases filed against an employer — union busting, unfair labor practices, retaliation.
OSHA violation search
Search an employer's workplace safety inspection and violation history. Free, federal, and it doesn't care what the company's careers page says.
Levels.fyi
Crowdsourced compensation data by company and level. Useful for knowing whether an offer is low before you accept it.
Keep in mind: Skews heavily tech and large companies.
Report a fraudulent employer
FTC's reporting front door for job scams and fraudulent postings.
How tools get listed. Nothing here is paid placement. A tool is listed when it is free or priced honestly, someone still maintains it, and it says what it does with your data. For benefits and deadlines, see benefits by state and the coverage deadlines calculator.
We add new vetted resources and re-check old ones. Get them by email.
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