Finding a position in ‘the hidden jobs market’

It’s not like it used to be. You can’t just open the Appointment pages of your broadsheet newspaper of record and find the job of your dreams. In many instances now, the first time you hear about a job is after it has been filled. This has been christened the ‘hidden jobs market’ and it is frustratingly like an iceberg – only a small percentage of the available jobs are above the waterline …

If you are about to embark on a job-hunt, there are many strands you need to consider. Two of the earliest most important foundations in your process are:

1. Route of entry
2. Actively managing your hunt

1. Routes of Entry
Job vacancies arise every day – it’s called “churn.” People retire, resign, die, take career breaks, go on long-term sick leave, decide to work part-time, get promoted, get transferred, get fired or get kidnapped by Martians and disappear off the face of the planet every day. There are jobs out there, you just have to find them. The principal routes of entry:

• Cold-calling
• Newspaper / magazine advertising
• Recruitment agencies
• The internet
• Headhunters
• Networking (the most important – because people don’t like hiring total strangers)
  

Reverse-engineer this. If you have identified 4-6 companies you would like to work for, find out what methods they use to find people – what websites, agencies, newspapers etc. Then build your approach to them on that basis. Ring them, talk to them – don’t ask for a job – just establish how they hire. Even a low-level person in HR should be able to help you with this.

If you are pursuing a more general hunt (“I want to work in the Kilkenny/Tipperary region”), then obviously you need to mix-and-match your approach to optimise your chances.

The most important route of entry is via some level of personal contact. Human beings simply do not like strangers. If I can hire someone who is in some way a known quantity to me, I will generally pick that person ahead of a total stranger. This is not nepotism, this is not the old-school-tie, this is just human nature.

So it is imperative that you resurrect your network and get it humming if you have a job-hunt in your immediate future. Initially, this isn’t about anything more than getting back in touch and starting to share information. Share. You can’t be a parasite in this activity, the relationship must be symbiotic. Let’s say you meet an old boss for a quick lunch:

Hello.
Nice to see you.
How’s things with you?
I’m thinking about making a move.
I’ve noticed X and Y and Z happening in the market.
What do you think? (Carefully note what he/she says).
Thanks a million, lots to think about.
Talk to you soon.

Send an email the next day – "great to see you, thank you for your time and your ideas." And then follow up! You’ll be doing lots of reading and research while you are job-hunting. If you see a titbit that might be useful or interesting to that person, send it along! If you catch a lucky break, let them know – and thank them again. Don’t plague them, badger them or stalk them, but do keep in touch.

Here’s the key thing, unless you have a very close relationship with that old boss, he/she is unlikely to ever say, “Give my brother-in-law a call, he’ll have a job for you.” Modern networking doesn’t work like that – it’s all about having the inside track and winning by better intel. That boss is much more likely to say, “You should have a close look at Widgets Incorporated. I heard from a pal in Enterprise Ireland that they’re expanding their operation and that they’re going to be looking for people.”

Your old boss can’t do that unless he/she (1) remembers you (2) knows you’re on the look-out for a new job and (3) currently thinks well of you. If you are not actively seeking out these old contacts, your alternative is to sit passively by the phone hoping that someone has somehow telepathically gleaned that you would like a new job …

The idea of networking makes most people’s skin crawl. In 2008, I have to gently say to you – Get. Over. It. [Remember – job-hunting is not about you!] Make it about information and ideas rather than big favours, and most people won’t have a problem with it. Reassure them. You’re just trying to find out what’s going on, to get the lie of the land; you’re not going to whip out your CV ten minutes into the conversation and beg them for a job …

2. Managing your Hunt
In a tight market, you are probably going to have to cast your net quite a bit before you land a fish. In simple terms, you can either go wide or go deep. Going wide means firing off dozens (or even hundreds) of cold-call letters and CVs to companies and hoping that your envelope arrives on the right desk, saying the right things, at the right time. It can work, but that’s an awful lot of stamps to lick …

Going deep means building a short list of companies you would really like to work for and compiling a CIA-style dossier on each one of them. This is hard work and time-consuming, but it greatly increases your chances of getting the right CV on the right desk at the right time. Think about it – we’ve all been disturbed at dinner time by some complete stranger wanting to sell us phone services or broadband. You can picture them, sitting in front of their computer with a headset on, reading off the script. And it rarely, rarely works. We all feel the same way about junk mail in our letterboxes. Well, that’s precisely how most job-hunters are perceived by employers.

Stop applying for just any job and start thinking about applying for the handful of jobs you would really like to be doing. Focus the bulk of your efforts on those. You can always have another strand running simultaneously – registering with a bunch of placement agencies for example.

The other things you need to do in managing your job hunt are (a) stay on top of it and (b) keep the ball in your court wherever possible.

(a) Staying on top of your hunt
The most common frustration I hear from job-hunters is lack of control. If you put a simple mechanism in place to stay on top of all your job-hunting activity, you will feel much more in charge. At the most basic level, this means a diary. Not just to keep track of your appointments, but also to keep track of your activity. If you called Agency X today and they said they’d get back to you, note the conversation and put a reminder to yourself to contact them again in 4 days’ time.

If you are conducting a wide or a deep-but-long hunt, a paper-based system is going to be quite cumbersome. If you are using a computer for word-processing and email, you can also start tracking a lot of your activity on there too. Outlook and the other email packages all have diary systems with tasks, notes and reminders built in. Very handy.

There are also specialist online career management tools. The best I’ve seen is Jibber-Jobber and it allows you to track everything – for free. You can also upgrade to a paid service, with premium features, for just a few dollars a month. Well worth checking out. The advantage of being online like this is that you can share experiences and hear how other job-hunters are faring – what tricks they have discovered, little nuggets of information, etc.

(b) Keep the ball in your court
Another problem with this ‘lack of control’ issue is that most job-hunters are essentially passive in their approach to the market. Keep the ball in your court. Don’t send off a CV with “I look forward to hearing from you” at the bottom of your cover letter. Put “I will call your office early next week” instead and then make sure you follow up. We’ve all waited by the phone after a “don’t call us, we’ll call you” situation – whether in job-hunting, dating, dealing with an insurance company … Keep the ball in your court!

Job-hunting is not rocket science, it's much more about perspiration. An organised, persistent, plugged-in job-hunter is far more likely to succeed than his passive, hope-for-the-best counterpart. "Don't keep all your eggs in one basket," we were told as children, but for most adults we have no choice - our career is our sole revenue stream and all the eggs are in there. So treat the basket with the respect it deserves and stay in charge where you can - because no-one else cares about those eggs the way you do.

Part 2 is here