Secrets Of The Hidden Job Market

February 3, 2011

Interview with Donald Asher, author of the book Cracking The Hidden Job Market: How to Find Opportunity in Any Economy

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Mike Carruthers:
In this job market you need every advantage and you first need to know where the jobs are.

Donald Asher:
I checked all of the research; I went back almost 30 years and somewhere between 55% and 80% of jobs go to someone who did not respond to a posted opening. And that’s the hidden job market it’s invisible to your typical job seeker.
 

Donald Asher, author of the book Cracking The Hidden Job Market, says here’s how it works…

Let’s say you want to be a copywriter in advertising - you will never see an advertisement for a copywriter in advertising. And so you need to make a list of places that hire copywriters to do advertising copy and then you approach all of them sequentially. And there’s kind of 2 models to this; 1 is to go through the front door and say, “When do you hire copywriters and how do you hire them and how can I make sure that I’m on that list and I’m in the game?”

The second way is to use your connections to get introduced to people at companies you’d like to work at.

The social science research on this is very fascinating. You’re closes friends don’t get you a job, it’s your friends of friends and even strangers that you’re introduced to. They’re the ones that feed you the tips that lead to the jobs – that’s research driven it’s not an opinion.

And when you’re talking to people at companies that you’d like to work for, don’t start off taking about job openings.

You just look for advice, ideas, information – so if you look for advice, ideas, leads and information you’re going to get a lot closer to an opening then if you ask about openings. Who’s growing, who’s not what have you heard, what are the rumors?

To hear the complete unedited interview, click here