In these times of high unemployment, the job-search gurus have been spouting off many (to my mind unverified) trueisms:
-“80% of jobs are filled BEFORE the job is advertised”
-90% of jobless people find jobs through networking"
“send ing a resume in response to a newspaper ad is a waste of time”
-“job seakers should spend 40+hours/week on the phone, talking to contacts”
Now, I have been looking for several monthas, and I am beginning to seriously doubt these statements. I am also finding that:
-people are getting annoyed with the hundreds of networking calls they are getting
-contacts are NOT in a position to help you-most times, they just say"go to our website"
Has this been YOUR experience?
When is this blasted rcession going to end?:smack:
It sounds like all of those statements would come from companies trying to sell you guaranteed ways to get around them.
In my experience you do have to put effort in, but a scattergun approach isn’t always a good idea. It’s better to put in a reasonable number of high-quality, well-targeted applications than one hundred mass-produced ones. I found this out when I was last unemployed; spending a week on five thorough applications produced four interviews, where previously seventy-odd responses to newspaper adverts had gone unanswered.
I’ve also found that the “personal touch” works both ways. At a lot of large companies people don’t have the time to respond personally to telephone calls, especially at the initial stage, so you can actually annoy them considerably. They often employ standard “marking” schemes or third parties to filter out initial applications, so there’s no point speaking to them unless you get past that point.
I’m pretty sure I got most of my jobs via answering newspaper ads. Let’s see:
1991: Tech Support Job, found in the newspaper
1993: Programming gig, found in the newspaper
1994: Programming gig, found via the a friend
1996: Programming gig, found in the newspaper
1997: Programming gig, found through a headhunter’s ad in a newspaper
1998: Programming gig, found via an old manager who needed someone
2002: Tech writing job, working for friends.
So in 11 years, that’s 4 from the newspaper, 3 from friends. I guess you could call the friends thing “networking” but in none of those cases did I actively “network.” It was mostly someone knew I was unhappy at a job and they called me up when their company was hiring.
From experience at the two large US companies I have worked for there is no real hidden job market. Ads are generally run in the paper and all responses reviewed on a fair and equitable basis. Of the one or two ‘inside jobs’ I have seen they were due to the persons sort of pre-arranging a job then waiting for the exact position to come open (in one case this took over two years, the other case somewhere around nine months). I’d say the claims that the “huge” market is a sales ploy.
Nearly all my jobs over the years (and I’ve had a lot of them) have come from help wanted ads. Once I was referred by a friend, and another (back in high school) was through my parents, but everything else since them has been by sending out resumes to the paper.
HR departments like to advertise jobs simply because it justifies their existance if they can bring in 100 resumes. People like to have a lot of names to choose from so it looks like their doing a conscientious job. So while the hidden job market does exist, and can be a source, I wouldn’t expect it to be any better than answering want ads.
Over the past 15 years, I’ve found several jobs through networking/personal contacts, a couple through headhunters, and one (my current position) through an ad. However, personal networking was a factor even in my current job; my resume was in the “call for an interview” pile, and it turns out that an old colleague of mine is friends with the hiring manager, was flipping through the resumes, and ultimately moved me to the top the of pile. It’s impossible to say if they would have hired me with the personal referral, but I know for a fact it greased the wheels.
I’m curious about whether these contacts are people you know, people you’ve been referred to by friends/colleagues, or cold calls to HR. I have had people suggest this to me (and I’ve suggested it to people) but then my resume has been walked to the hiring manager (or I’ve done the walking).
All of the most interesting, best-paying jobs I’ve had came directly from personal references. The jobs I had that I got “cold” were absolutely horrendous–all of them. What paid off about those horrendous jobs was the contacts I made within them, which led to the good jobs.
I scrambled my way into the professional world by kicking ass at my previous job and making good friends along the way. When you get that next job, ralph124c, and you will get a job eventually, do the best you can, try to make everyone else’s day easier, and don’t step on any toes–that’s the sort of experience that’s guaranteed to pay off sooner or later.
I’ve never had a job that I found in the paper. Way back when I did stuff like drive delivery trucks, I found those jobs via friends or just going to shops and asking for work.
Later jobs have come by personal referral, or via friends notifying me of a position.
Right now we anticipate getting approval to add another position at my place of employment, and chances are it will be filled by somebody one or more of us already know. I’d be surprised if it doesn’t turn out that way, as when we get the go ahead, we will be asked for names.
I’ve never gotten a job from an ad or company web site.
Mine have been either from recruiters, job websites (headhunter.com, monster.com), or personal contacts.
At the companies I’ve been at who were hiring (and it has been over 18 months since there’s been one of those - things may have changed since then.) job announcements were always listed internally first - with nice incentives for the employee who recommended the hire.
Of the personal contacts jobs, arguably only one came from “networking,” (if by that you mean the technique where you schedule interviews with people to chat about the current job market in their industry, but don’t actually ask about a job.) and that’s only if you really stretch the definition. The rest were people who knew I was looking, and if they heard about a job somewhere in my field would push me and the other person in each other’s direction.
I have had two newspaper jobs, both found as a result of sending a resume package to a company that had an opening. The first one wasn’t advertising, the second one did in a trade journal.
I didn’t really network to get either, although it helped that, in the first job, the person doing the hiring went to the same journalism school that I did. (We didn’t know each other, however.)
My husband has had 6 jobs since college (1991) and moved dramatically up the pay scale with each job change. He never even bought a newspaper, much less actually looked at the want ads.
Each job led to the contacts for the next job. He is fantastically good at effortlessly making these contacts despite being a geeky (adorable) introvert. His secret is being really really obviously good at what he does (computer stuff). At every company he is pretty much universally acknowledged as their best guy. Not necessarily a duplicatable strategy. Also, his current job was acquired (slightly) before economic downturn. We’re a little afraid they’ll let him go because he’s so expensive, but they probably won’t because he’s so indispensable (we hope).
I have gotten jobs through the newspaper, but my two favorite jobs I applied to cold when I had other dealings with those workplaces, judged them to be appealing and asked if they were hiring.
I have never encountered a hidden job market, though I have recieved a few jobs because a friend put in a word for me. Many jobs are reputed to take recomendations over unknown applicants.
It depends on what type of job you’re looking for, but I can tell you my experience for what it’s worth. I work as a software engineer. My first job out of college I got through a professor. The other four, including my current position, I got through headhunters. I’ve gotten a few interviews by responding directly to ads but I never got hired that way. I’m certain that you can get a job by responding to an ad, the companies that place the ads obviously hire someone. But your odds may be better in an interview arranged by a headhunter. You probably have less competition for the job and the employer knows that you’ve already gotten past the headhunter’s interview and are more likely to be qualified than someone off of the street. And headhunters do know of jobs that aren’t otherwise advertised so I suppose that you could say that this is a “hidden job market”.
I have never heard of Headhunters davidm. What are they? They similar to temp services? Are they listed in the phone book or is headhunter a slang term for something I might be familiar with. (I cannot place the reference at the moment though) They sound pretty helpful.
I suspect the number of hidden jobs depends greatly on the job, area and industry. When my husband quit his job a few years ago, he was offered four jobs within a week, and not only didn’t he answer any ads, he didn’t even call any contacts- they called him. The offers were all from companies he had bought merchandise from in his former job. Some of them had been approaching him before he quit, and some of the vendors he now buys from are asking if he’s happy where he is. Apparently, in his business, that’s the preferred way to hire for certain jobs.