Hidden Job Market Tips
Tips for job hunters, according to David Perry, a longtime headhunter:
He says you’re wasting your time if you’re looking for job postings online. And he should know: he’s often the guy on the other side helping companies lure new talent. Perry, who’s based in Ottawa, says that in the last 22 years he has accomplished 996 searches totaling $172 million in salary. And the bottom line in today’s economy, he says, is you have to tap the “hidden job market.” Perry’s also the co-author of “Guerrilla Marketing for Job Hunters” and he recently spoke with Fortune.
What’s the “hidden job market”?
When companies say, ‘We have a hiring freeze,’ that doesn’t mean they’re not hiring. It just means they’re not adding headcount. Every year there’s 20-25% turn over. So in a 1,000-person company, 200 or 250 people are going to turn over, either through attrition, or someone moves. Those companies are still hiring but they don’t want to tell you.
So how do you find these jobs?
What you have to do in a recession is map your skills to employers to where you know they have a problem you can solve. My advice to job hunters is pick 10 to 20 companies, no more, and pick companies you’re interested in, and that you think you can add value to. That requires researching companies, and so that list may take you two weeks. If you’re trying to crack the hidden job market and you know the job position you want reports to vice president, find that vice president on LinkedIn and look at his profile to see who else he’s connected to and go ask them, ‘What’s this guy like to work for?’ Do the research before you even pick up the phone.
How can you get someone’s attention?
We can go into billboards, sandwiches – that stuff only works once. It’s only for one person who figures it out once, once in a city. If you’re looking for fun stuff, we have this thing called the coffee cup caper, 30% of the time it will result in an interview. You send an employer a coffee cup with a little $5 swipe card with a little note that says, I’d like to get together and talk with you over coffee. I’ll be calling soon. And you send it by U.S. post two day delivery, and that gets registered. So when they’ve signed for it, you wait about 20 minutes and then you call them. And then you go, Hi, I know you just got my package.’ You’re proving you’re imaginative and creative.
What is something people should avoid during a job interview?
This drives me insane: I’ve seen people mentally deciding in the interview whether they want the job. That’s the last place to decide. You go into an interview, and you sell like your life depends on it. You’ve got to get the job first. I’ve seen it thousands of times. There’s this point in the interview, where people go ‘Hmm, do I really want this? You can see their body change. The employer picks it up and it’s gone. If the employer is telling you, ‘I love you,’ and you’re not saying ‘I love you too,’ it’s over with.
How about following up afterwards?
If you really like the opportunity, don’t go home and write thank you very much. Go back and write a letter that says, upon further reflection of what we were talking about, here’s what I bring to the table, here’s how I see myself fitting into the organization, including a 30-60-90 day plan.
How can someone attract a recruiter’s attention?
You have to go to ZoomInfo and LinkedIn and create a profile. All corporate recruiters and probably 20% of the headhunters in America have ZoomInfo accounts. When we start a search, companies aren’t going to advertise. The headhunter goes to ZoomInfo, types in requirements that we need, like skillset, degree, city, functional title, and up will come anywhere from a hundred to several thousand people who fit that criteria. Then we go to LinkedIn and run the same search. If you’re in ZoomInfo with a picture, we’re going to call you first. Just reverse engineer what recruiters are doing so you get found.
How can you really impress a potential employer?
It hasn’t worked in years just to bring in your resume, except only in the most junior positions. I concentrate on directors to CEOs, and the last interview for us regardless is always a Power Point presentation of what you’ve learned, pain points, and how you intend to fix that. Everyone talks about being a great leader and great communicator, so prove it. Don’t go into an interview and treat it like it’s just another business meeting. Your career is your biggest asset now – because it’s certainly not your house.
As reported by Jia Lynn Yang in a recentl CNN Money article entitled How to Get a Job When No One’s Hiring Copyrighted, Fortune. All rights reserved.
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How to Tap into the Hidden Job Market Using Social Media
What is the “hidden job market”?
The hidden job market is a term coined in the 1970s by Richard Bolles, author of “What color is your parachute?” The hidden job market refers to the large number of the jobs filled through unadvertised sources.
Example 1: Two executives Bill and Don play a round of golf on a Saturday afternoon. Bill asks Don if he knows any good people for his marketing department. A name and phone number is exchanged and within a day or two, an offer is made and accepted. There is no advertised position.
Example 2: John works in an IT department. He is encountering a particularly frustrating technical problem he cannot solve. He makes a few phone calls and locates Steve who is a specialist in this area. After a quick meeting, an offer is made to Steve. He is hired either as an employee or independent contractor. There is no advertised opening and, aside from the key players, no one knows this has occurred.
Current estimates are that over 50% of all jobs filled each year fall into this category. The media and placement agencies are usually kept in the dark about this for “political reasons”. The key for the job seeker is to learn and apply a new set of skills for the new economy.
How exactly do you find or create opportunities in this hidden job market?
The first thing to understand is that a job is a need or a problem that has been formalized. This creates a gap between the people in the company grappling with the problems every day and those in HR who do the interviewing. They live in different universes.
To tap into the hidden job market, you need to speak to the people struggling with the problems and show them that you can eliminate their pain and solve their problem. Trouble is, most job seekers have no clue what problems they can solve because they are task focused, not result focused. Just like consumers, companies don’t buy tasks or skills, they buy results and solutions. This is especially true in the current economic conditions.
To succeed today, you must determine the problems you’re good at solving. Then you need to determine both the individuals and companies who have these problems. In order to do this, you need a combination of social media skills and relationship skills. One without the other won’t cut it.
By using social media tools you can locate the key people in your niche. You will then need to create relationships with them and become their solution. This requires a change in mindset from the Employee Mentality to the Entrepreneurial Attitude. Once this happens the resume, interviews and HR departments become mostly irrelevant.
How can the average job seeker adapt this new mindset, learn these skills, become proactive, successful?
It is a matter of training and coaching. People need to change how they see themselves, personal identity, and the role they play. With proper coaching and support, they can make this critical shift and learn to become proactive in their marketing efforts. Within a supportive environment, they can gain greater mastery in their ability to combine internet savvy with relationship, communication skills.
Instead of going back to school to take more classes or get advanced degrees that do not really increase your marketability in today’s economy, job seekers need to invest time and money on how to make themselves marketable in today’s world. They need to think like an entrepreneur, not an employee.
So does it essentially boil down to having good communication skills, the willingness to take risks, get known, respected, and build a network online?
Yes, you need to get out in a big way, get known but most importantly sort for people and companies that are struggling with the problems you know how to solve. Your resume needs to be the document demonstrating your abilities in this area rather than a list of positions you’ve held. Past experience does not readily translate into satisfying the company’s need. Ask questions that allow you to quickly zero in on your target market.
This is a very significant paradigm shift for most people who have worked for a company over many years. The key principle here is: You’re always working for yourself. It takes time and coaching to make the internal and external shifts that are needed to adapt to the new economy and marketplace.
Let’s talk specifics about social media networks and how they fit into this puzzle.
How can LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter be effective tools for the job seeker today?
All the social media networks allow you to build relationships quickly and zero in on the people you need to know and need to know you. Getting to know key people and having them know and respect you is the goal. Job seekers often have difficulty seeing value in this approach because their thinking is still one dimensional, i.e. job, inteview, etc.
Twitter is the easiest and fastest social media tool. You create an account and start following people. You use the search site, http://search.twitter.com to locate individuals who are in your target market or industry. Follow them and most will follow you back.
Next, engage in conversation using replies and Direct Messaging (DMs) to build rapport and familiarity. Learn about people’s challenges and where appropriate, move the conversation to email, phone to discuss how you might work together. Focus on partnership and collaboration, win win, instead of jobs, hiring, salary, interviews and resumes. These terms pigeon-hole you into the job seeker role. Be more interested in learning about others than convincing. Share knowledge and value in your Tweets.
You can suggest in a generic way that you have “resources” or ideas of how to solve their problems. Instead of a resume which is very “job focused” develop and use a letter of introduction which is a powerful document describing your areas of specialization. You can then place this letter on facebook or Linked in profile and link people to it when the time is right.
LinkedIn is very professional and corporate. Twitter is very social, light and carefree. You do not want to speak directly about jobs and business on Twitter but you can do that on LinkedIn. Join discussion groups on LinkedIn that match your interests and abilities and get involved with discussions. Share your views and demonstrate your skills and talents. People will notice and they will email you and conversations will happen. This is the goal…. to generate meaningful conversations with key people. Everything flows from that point.
What happens if you find a company that wants your talents but they are in another part of the country from where you live?
This can happen. This is why I recommend that everyone develop skills and services that can be delivered in a virtual world which are not location dependent.
A good example is a virtual assistant. This is a type of work many people have gotten into in recent years who used to work in an office. Now it can be done anywhere. Sales can be done anywhere. Design and marketing can be done from anyway. Same for coaching, consulting, teaching, writing.
If your existing skill set is physical and demands you to be present, consider creative solutions. For example, you could fly in to a city, handle the physical work over a week or two and then go home and provide follow up support remotely.
Relocating is always an option if the company wants you badly and is willing to cover relocation costs. However, most jobs today are becoming virtual
One of my clients does computer maintenance contracts. I showed him how to…. outsource the physical component of the work and provide the rest remotely so he could work with clients all around the US.
What about Social Media Courses? Are they worthwhile?
Most Social Media courses concentrate on the “how tos” of the technology but do not help you adapt it to your personal needs. It is important to take a course that will teach you how to develop key alliances and connections for your career or business. You need to learn how to establish joint venture and referral relationships and generate prospects for your business.
Additionally, make sure there is some coaching built in that helps you stay focused, result oriented so you can achieve your desired goals in your targeted timeframe.
Source: Howard Sambol, founder and director of Breakthrough Coaching