Advice for young graduates looking for a job
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To add to this, I'm a recent graduate looking for a job and I can't seem to find these "smaller companies" you're talking about. I'm in the field of computer vision and machine learning but I can't seem to search the right criteria or reach anyone but the bigger companies like IBM and Facebook. Where are you looking for these companies and what do you search to find them?
That's a good question and something I would have elaborated on if it wasn't for the 2'000 characters limit. I find these companies either by visiting websites I've been a happy client of (and who are in a niche I'm probably interested in) or by searching for technological keywords (HTML5, PHP, web agency, etc.) on Google with results limited to my country. In my case the companies I click with tend to use the (mainstream) technologies I want to work with. I wouldn't know how to do if I were in a more abstract field such as the ones you mention, sorry.
Method A is of course replying to job ads. I think the people who post such ads experience the kind of tsunami you see when you post a job on Elance. Which means that even if you as a candidate carefully select ads where you truly believe you're in a position to add value despite your inexperience, you probably won't get a reply. And when you do get a reply, it's usually pretty generic. Don't ask for more specific reasons, you'll get on your contact's nerves.
And then there's method B. It gets you answers such as "we're sorry it took us so long to get back to you, our team would like to meet you", or the company cofounder trying to call you multiple times after reading your email. If those were girls' reactions to your texts, you'd get some positive adrenaline flowing and feel much better than with method A, right? And you'd be right to. Method B is finding smaller companies by yourself and browsing their website for "Jobs" pages. Those are the true hidden gems you're looking for, as they're often not published elsewhere and you're in competition with nobody. 25% of my applications have used method B and have resulted in: a PHP test where they found my code wasn't commented enough (a great error to learn from); a Java test for which I haven't had feedback yet but which I feel I rocked; an interview and a tough sys admin test where most of the questions were too advanced for me (still led to a position opportunity); an email asking for an interview; an email saying they already found somebody.
Even though the last one is the less positive of the bunch, it did feel good because they provided me an honest reason to not interview me. This is in contrast to my results with 60% of my time spent replying to job ads and which resulted in: anger, frustration, wasted time, pure opacity & meaninglessness.