What is the "Hidden" Executive Job Market? - Executive Resume Branding™

You’ve probably heard about the hidden executive job market, but do you really know what it is, why it exists, and how to take advantage of it?

No one knows for sure how many jobs are unlisted, but it’s estimated to be around 80 – 90%.

Why aren’t more jobs posted online?

One reason could be that the company has a merger or acquisition pending, keeping them from announcing openings.

The main reason is that sourcing and screening candidates online through social networks (especially LinkedIn) is more cost effective and less time-consuming than posting openings online and reviewing thousands of resumes, many of which are submitted by unqualified candidates.

Executive recruiters and employers find good-fit candidates by searching LinkedIn, for the most part, and other social networks, using relevant keywords.

That means you need to build your personal brand and online presence over multiple channels, using the right keywords, in the right places, so they’ll find plenty of information about you to support your candidacy.

So, what is this mystical world of the hidden job market?

Jobs created to accommodate specific candidates, once they connected with and had dialog with companies’ hiring decision makers.
Existing positions in which an incumbent is replaced when someone better comes along.
An open slot, waiting to be filled, that isn’t advertised outside the company. Only internal people know about it.
Jobs that, for whatever reason, are not advertised or visible, and can only be uncovered and accessed through networking.

The perfect job for you may never be posted anywhere! It may only exist in the hidden job market.

Many of my c-suite and senior-level executive clients tell me that they haven’t been in a job search for at least 5 years. In the past, they were in demand by executive recruiters and easily slid from one job to the next, or reached out to connections and networked their way into their next job.

But they seem to forget how well networking worked for them. They’ve now come to believe that, in order to embrace the new online job search strategies, they have to spend most of their job search time responding to postings on job boards. They don’t realize that perhaps only 5% of them will land jobs there.

They’re kidding themselves into thinking they’re hard at work looking for a job, when the majority of their efforts consist of perusing job board postings and hitting the resume “send” button.

How do you find out about hidden jobs?

Probably no surprise . . . through focused networking.

That means starting first with a good list of companies, say 15-20, that are a mutual good-fit, positioning yourself as a good fit for them in your career collaterals (resume, bio, LinkedIn profile, etc.), and then networking your way towards hiring decision makers at each one, so that you can circumvent the gatekeepers (Human Resources) and, hopefully, Applicant Tracking Systems (ATS).

Here’s a key piece of information many job seekers don’t know . . .

Being connected to employees, or even one employee, at pretty much any professional level, gets you an “in” at that company.

Employees usually know about openings at their companies that may never be advertised.
Employers like to hire people they know. Getting an introduction from an employee makes you a known, recommended commodity . . . and more highly valued as a candidate.
Many companies offer employees monetary incentives to bring in candidates to fill openings.

Look to connect with people at your target companies, nurture those relationships through “give to get” networking and, in time, you should be able to ask for introductions to hiring decision makers at those companies.

How do you find employees at your target companies?

LinkedIn is a great place to start.

Look for a LinkedIn Company page for each one. Many companies will have one.

On those pages, you’ll find employees who have LinkedIn profiles, along with lots of other company information for your due diligence and market intelligence research.

If you already know some of these employees, reach out to them to connect on LinkedIn.

If you don’t know them, here are some tips on how to connect with them.

Of course, you’ll also need to connect with executive recruiters in your niche. You can also find them on LinkedIn, through keyword searches.

And here is a whole host of ways and places to network your way into the hidden job market.