How To Work The Hidden Job Market as the CEO of ME, Inc.

The Hidden Job Market is the name given to all the opportunities out there that are unadvertised, either because a company wants to find candidates through its employees' networks or because no such position currently exists. In the last case, you must depend on your own ingenuity to identify potential opportunities at an intriguing company, do your homework to determine what that company truly needs, then figure out how to create an attractive, value-added position. Finally, you need to “sell the concept.”
How Do You Access It?
Due to the sheer volume of applicants competing for a fixed number of positions, many employers don’t even bother registering their openings on big-name job boards like Monster, Dice, and CareerBuilder.
Instead, they turn to their existing employee network to help recruit qualified candidates. This means there may be great opportunities at a company of interest, but you’ll never find out about them via the traditional approach of querying Internet job boards.
Why would an employer do this?
There are two immediate advantages. First, hiring managers can avoid the torrent of paperwork from job seekers who aren’t even remotely qualified for a position. Second, they can bypass the registration process with the job boards and confine interview time to a bare minimum.
There's something else you need to know about The Hidden Job Market. Step 2 of the 7-Step Job Search Methodology is based on the spot market. In other words, it uses today's market conditions to determine what positions are currently available. By contrast, The Hidden Job Market is based on the futures market, that is, the potential for positions that might exist or that could be created in the future — your future.
The Role of Networking in The Hidden Job Market
You’ve built a network of trusted relationships. But why bother to network if you never plan to leverage it? It’s now time to do some asking because you’ve earned the right to do so. You’ve followed the rules and observed the connection protocols. It’s time to tap your network’s connection horsepower to help you find a position.
In order to set you up with the proper mind-set for exploring the Hidden Job Market, I’d like you to consider the following somewhat offbeat illustrative scenario:
Let’s say you’re a surgeon who has been assigned the task of finding and removing a dangerous tumor somewhere in the lower abdomen of a 52-year-old man. Theoretically, you could start performing exploratory surgery right away, reaching in through various incisions to feel for any lumps or masses that don’t belong there.
But is that really a medically sound practice? Before performing surgery, wouldn’t it be better to gather as much information about the soft tissue in the patient with a CT-Scan or an MRI? Wouldn’t these diagnostic procedures give you far greater intelligence about the size, shape, and precise location of the tumor? And wouldn’t it make much more sense to have all of the diagnostic work completed before the first incision is ever made?
The point is this: While investigating the Hidden Job Market, your primary function will be networking, not selling, and your aim is to gather intelligence from those individuals you’ve identified as being reliable but only in the specific area in which your skills are a precise match. Your job is to connect with individuals who can truly help you because they’re in the same industry, not going on some fishing expedition inside industries that have no relevance to yours.
To put it in slightly different terms, it’s not going to do you any good to tap into a pipeline of business intelligence for the pharmaceutical industry if you’re seeking a position as a tax accountant. You need to refine and refine again the “filtering” of your contacts to make sure you’re picking up intelligence for the industry — and, if possible, even the precise niche — in which you want to work.
Your ultimate goal is to answer two very specific questions:
1. Who does what you do?
2. Who hires people who do what you do?
Once you’ve mastered this “precision targeting” technique, the flow of your conversation will be along these lines:
“Where do you see the industry heading? What’s going on? What’s hot? What’s not? What groups should I belong to? This is what I’m hearing; what are you hearing?”
Finally, when you judge it to be the correct time to do some asking, you must do it as an assertive CEO, not a spineless wimp. It must be a direct request for a specific action to achieve a targeted goal. Don’t worry, you’ve earned the right to ask because of your golden reciprocity track record. Furthermore, most business owners appreciate direct, straightforward requests.

Make it happen … I know you can!

• I will see you on the radio this Sunday, January 22th at 8am (EST) with “Managing the Financial Side of ME, INC.” with CPA and Business Owner, Surekha Vaidya on Your Career Is Calling on 107.7 FM and online on www.1077TheBronc.com. I look forward to taking your calls at 877.900.1077.

• HPNG is having their monthly meeting on January 26 at 6pm in New York City. See you there!

• I am giving my next speech “The Brand Called U” on Tuesday January 24 at 7:30pm in Lakewood, NJ. For details visit Lakewood Piners.

• Go Giants!

Best wishes and keep networking alive,

Coach Rod