Penetrating the Hidden Job Market

In the current job market, it’s not unusual for people to be looking for jobs over many months. It’s a very competitive market, and job openings are few. This situation is amplified by the herd mentality whereby people deploy the job search strategies commonly used in the past. For example, asking people about their target companies elicits, in most cases, the names of large and very well-known companies. This means that all of those people are competing for the same few openings. Yet there are lots of jobs in the untapped arena called the hidden job market.

The hidden job market is at the other end of the spectrum—mostly hidden from the public because the jobs in it don’t get published. Such jobs get filled by word of mouth or through recommendations. Most jobs are not advertised anyway, and people who get hired never responded to advertisements. Research has shown that 25 percent of people lie on their résumés. Hiring managers have a basic mistrust about résumés, preferring candidates who are recommended.

Some news articles profess that only one-third of job openings are advertised. That means that two-thirds of job openings are invisible to most job applicants. Here are some more facts:

• Big companies are eliminating jobs as a result of their mergers-and-acquisitions activities, while small and medium-size companies are creating jobs.
• Small companies have problems attracting talent and are thus often settling for less-than-perfect candidates.
• The job market is localized. Plumbers in New Orleans could be doing well, while those in other cities could be doing poorly.
• At the same time that companies are laying off people, they could be hiring in areas where other employees are needed.
• Ten percent of the current job market is contingent (part-time, temporary, or contract).
• Two-thirds of all new jobs are on a contingent basis. The chances of a contingent job’s becoming permanent are very good because the employees in them are known quantities.

So, what should job seekers do to increase their chances of getting employed? Here are a few suggestions.

• It takes a minimum of 40 job-search work hours a week to get a job. Research has shown that many unemployed people spend less than 10 hours a week.
• One has to make several contacts in the same company to get hired. It is a multistep and protracted effort. Nothing happens fast when one is looking for a job.
• People get jobs by talking to people. Improve your verbal and written communication skills.
• You should be working on at least 50 leads at all times. Don’t be discouraged by the voices in your head saying you cannot do it.

By following these suggestions, people in transition will not only speed up the process but also increase their chances exponentially.

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Interview Questions Reveal Employer's Concerns

You can address an employer’s concerns via your interview answers only if you understand where the concerns are coming from and what the employer wants to explore. Interview questions can be grouped by the interviewer’s needs. So, what are such needs? Similar to a personal investment, employers need to do their due diligence in order to explore and then understand what they are buying, as well as to ensure that their purchase will both grow and produce satisfactory results and that there won’t be any hidden surprises.

• First, the employer will want to validate that you’ll be productive on the job and that your skills will deliver as anticipated. If you’ve done this job elsewhere, were you successful? And if you ran into problems, how did you resolve them, and what did you learn from the process?
• Second, the interviewer will want to gain a clear understanding of how much you want this job. Are you strongly motivated and interested enough to perform well and make significant contributions? The interviewer will want to verify certain soft-skill issues such as your determination, desire to succeed, work ethic, and willingness to give 100 percent. Pertinent questions will prompt you for evidence and not just anecdotal stories.
• Third, the big question is whether the company can afford you. The interview would end promptly if the interviewer realizes there’s a significant gap between the candidate’s compensation expectations and the company’s ability to pay for this job.
• And fourth, the interviewer will ask a significant number of questions that assess whether you’d fit into the company’s culture. Of all of the other concerns, this is probably the most critical one, because it is psychologically based and left to the interviewer’s interpretation. For example, you might be asked whether you’re a team player and can bring evidence. Or whether you get along with people or would cause friction. Or whether your personality, values, attitude, and personal style would align with the corporate culture. Or whether you’re manageable and could align yourself with organizational policies? Or whether you’re flexible enough to live with constant change and adapt to it quickly.

The interviewer’s questions can be the well-known, standard, typical interview questions or can be what is called behavior or situational questions. The latter types of questions pigeonhole you into a situation, and you’re asked to give examples from your past that show how you solved a problem or dealt with a specific circumstance.

There’s no question that interviews can be challenging, and—even with live practice with a friend, a family member, or, better yet, a qualified career coach—not result in the desired outcome.

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The Secret of an Excellent Interview

Be brief. Now that the secret is revealed, I will support my tenet with a few facts. Actually, you can do what I did: I watched some television with a stopwatch to see how long an answer people provide for a question. As samples, I used, among others, Presidents Obama and Clinton because I consider them excellent communicators with media people in a question-and-answer setup. Typically, one of their answers would be 30 to 90 seconds long, with very few deviations. In order to get to such a level of excellence, one needs two ingredients: innate talent and lots of practice. Not all of us are born with this type of talent, but all of us can achieve it through practice and in fact should if we want to excel at interviews.

As a career coach, I help people become better at answering difficult interview questions. I’ve found it interesting that regardless of people’s professions, backgrounds, or titles most are not good when facing a job interviewer—despite the fact that some think they are, because after all, they’ve gotten jobs in the past, right? Universally, though, people are long-winded, and their answers tend to be paragraphs instead of several bulleted items supported by examples. Some provide protracted answers that go way beyond the listener’s attention span. The danger here is that the job candidate is not made aware of losing the listener’s attention, since regrettably, interviewers don’t have digital readouts on their foreheads showing their listening level at that moment.

The best way to overcome that obstacle is to prepare for interview answers by first writing out the answers longhand in SARB format. (SARB is the acronym for situation, action, result, and benefit.) Next, review each answer with an eye toward shortening them. If an answer can be delivered in about 60 seconds, you’ll achieve your objective. Now, it’s practice time. Best if you work with a career coach who can give you not only honest feedback but also the correct answers. Otherwise, ask a friend, family member, or someone else who also might benefit from such practice.

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Video Interviewing for the Unemployed

Today’s fast-developing video technology does not skip over the unemployed. In fact, it just adds another challenge for them. More and more companies are trying to save on the expenses of recruiting by using video interviews for screening and selection purposes. Clearly, this represents another burden for candidates because it’s one more step to master in addition to the already challenging telephone interview.

Video interviewing, which some call Skype interviewing, is one more tool that enables employers to differentiate between candidates. For higher-level positions, some employers and recruiters arrange for a professional setting such as a conference room with professional-quality equipment; yet others expect candidates to use their own Skype video cameras. The latter represents several challenges. The first one is on the technical level because not everyone at this point has installed Skype, or a video camera, or a microphone on their computer. In addition, older and slower computers cannot process the information fast enough, and therefore, the picture may be jerky and of low quality. It’s also not unheard-of to even see the picture freeze for a while or disconnect completely. Imagine that this happens during your interview!

Candidates also need to remember that in addition to dressing presentably, they need to avoid certain colors and patterns. For example, a diagonally striped tie will appear distorted at the viewing end. Also remember that the camera picks up everything within its range, so it’s best if your background is either neutral or contains a bookcase or a nice flower arrangement. Lighting is also a very important element in the production of high-quality video. Too bright, with reflections in eyeglasses, is not good. Neither is a dim-looking environment.

Candidates have enough trouble preparing for those challenging and hard-to-predict interview questions, and now they need to quickly learn how to be good actors on camera. While an actor can move about freely, it’s advisable not to move around excessively when on camera. In addition, when one needs to convert a spot in one’s living quarters to produce a studiolike background and environment, it’s important to consider that the microphone might pick up various noises such as paper shuffling, a dog barking, children in the background, or an ambulance on the street.

And while all of these technical issues can hopefully be resolved, the most critical and difficult part is during the interview itself: it is highly recommended that one look all the time straight into the camera and without deviation. Can you imagine an anchorperson on a major TV news channel not looking at the audience? The difference is that anchorpeople have been trained for this, and if they’re not very good at it, you won’t even know them. On the other hand, the candidate is forced onto that same firing line with only innate talent and perhaps little training. The solution is in the cliché “practice makes perfect.”

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Perceived as Overqualified-What Now?

Some job seekers, especially those who’ve been in transition for an extended time, start undervaluing their worth, and as a result, they might begin applying for positions below the levels they had in past. The hiring authorities then ask the obvious: why would an applicant take a lesser job than previously held, and why should the employer risk the employee’s leaving once a better-paying job turns up? Furthermore, they’re asking whether they could meet the candidate’s salary requirements or other job expectations.

         

There are no fast rules about being labeled overqualified. So-called over-qualification is just the perception or interpretation of the hiring manager who questions one’s fit for the position. The remaining question is, how can a labeled candidate overcome a hiring manager’s concerns? If this issue comes up during an interview, here are some tactics.

·         Preempt the issue by addressing it if you’re changing fields or you’ve decided to reduce your workload.

·         Indicate up front that you’re flexible about compensation, and emphasize your unique value to the organization.

·         State that your focus is long-term, emphasizing that you’re stable and not planning on changing jobs soon.

Like many obstacles you’ll face in your job search, being overqualified is a problem only if you don’t take the opportunity to turn it around to your advantage! By carefully highlighting your skills and thinking strategically about ways to minimize the potential for problems, you’ll be able to turn this perceived liability into strength.

Here are four simple steps you can take in an interview once it’s been hinted that you’re overqualified.

1.    Don’t take the statement emotionally. Recognize that the other party wants to discuss it. The worst that could happen is that the interviewer simply ignores it and automatically takes you out of the running. So you can say something like: “I can appreciate your concern, and I would like to address it for you.”

2.    Instead of your focusing on the negative, approach the subject from the positive side. Ask yourself what the interviewer’s intention was when saying you’re overqualified. Was it to indicate that you might want more money or perhaps that you’d quit once you find a better-paying job? For the sake of this example, let’s take the latter—namely, that you’d move on for a better-paying position. So in this case you can ask the following: “I suspect you think that money is my main motivator and that I’d move on once a better offer comes along. Is that it?”

3.    Since the answer will likely be yes, you can now make your qualifying statement, such as: “If I could illustrate to you that in fact there are many other motivators that guide me and that money is not the most important one, might that influence your opinion?” When you get a positive response, you can proceed to the last step.

4.    At this stage, you should have a prepared story from your past that proves you’re motivated by other things such as teamwork, camaraderie, appreciation by the boss, or something else and should emphasize that in your world, money isn’t everything.

The fact that you’re able to address such a difficult issue without becoming flustered but instead and turn the issue into a friendly exchange and build rapport will certainly be received in a positive way by the decision maker.

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Perceived as Overqualified-What Now?

Some job seekers, especially those who’ve been in transition for an extended time, start undervaluing their worth, and as a result, they might begin applying for positions below the levels they had in past. The hiring authorities then ask the obvious: why would an applicant take a lesser job than previously held, and why should the employer risk the employee’s leaving once a better-paying job turns up? Furthermore, they’re asking whether they could meet the candidate’s salary requirements or other job expectations.

         

There are no fast rules about being labeled overqualified. So-called overqualification is just the perception or interpretation of the hiring manager who questions one’s fit for the position. The remaining question is, how can a labeled candidate overcome a hiring manager’s concerns? If this issue comes up during an interview, here are some tactics.

·         Preempt the issue by addressing it if you’re changing fields or you’ve decided to reduce your workload.

·         Indicate up front that you’re flexible about compensation, and emphasize your unique value to the organization.

·         State that your focus is long-term, emphasizing that you’re stable and not planning on changing jobs soon.

Like many obstacles you’ll face in your job search, being overqualified is a problem only if you don’t take the opportunity to turn it around to your advantage! By carefully highlighting your skills and thinking strategically about ways to minimize the potential for problems, you’ll be able to turn this perceived liability into strength.

Here are four simple steps you can take in an interview once it’s been hinted that you’re overqualified.

1.    Don’t take the statement emotionally. Recognize that the other party wants to discuss it. The worst that could happen is that the interviewer simply ignores it and automatically takes you out of the running. So you can say something like: “I can appreciate your concern, and I would like to address it for you.”

2.    Instead of your focusing on the negative, approach the subject from the positive side. Ask yourself what the interviewer’s intention was when saying you’re overqualified. Was it to indicate that you might want more money or perhaps that you’d quit once you find a better-paying job? For the sake of this example, let’s take the latter—namely, that you’d move on for a better-paying position. So in this case you can ask the following: “I suspect you think that money is my main motivator and that I’d move on once a better offer comes along. Is that it?”

3.    Since the answer will likely be yes, you can now make your qualifying statement, such as: “If I could illustrate to you that in fact there are many other motivators that guide me and that money is not the most important one, might that influence your opinion?” When you get a positive response, you can proceed to the last step.

4.    At this stage, you should have a prepared story from your past that proves you’re motivated by other things such as teamwork, camaraderie, appreciation by the boss, or something else and should emphasize that in your world, money isn’t everything.

The fact that you’re able to address such a difficult issue without becoming flustered but instead and turn the issue into a friendly exchange and build rapport will certainly be received in a positive way by the decision maker.

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LinkedIn Is the Key to Your Next Job

If you’re in transition and looking for a job or you contemplate changing jobs, there’s nothing more powerful than learning how to be efficient at using the power of LinkedIn. Being listed on LinkedIn is a must. A study by Microsoft revealed that 70 percent of employers have rejected job candidates because of information they found on those candidates online. Yet the same study suggests that 85 percent of employers say a positive online reputation influences their decision. Those are pretty convincing numbers.

Here are some facts:

• Recruiters and employers prefer dealing with applicants they can check out and trust.
• People spend more time on social media than on e-mail. LinkedIn is in the social media for business.
• The Internet can make or break your image.

The power of LinkedIn lies in the fact that you can connect with people who influence decision making regarding whom to hire. In turn, you, too, can research the company you’re targeting, the hiring manager there, and also the culture of the company. Sixty percent of the hiring decision is based on the candidate’s fit into the company’s culture.

By joining professional and alumni groups on LinkedIn, you can participate in online discussions as well as answer questions, thus becoming prominent—and even, possibly, viewed as an expert. Companies love hiring experts! Additionally, recruiters scour professional groups in search of experts. You should join active groups to become visible online.

When you’re in transition, it’s important to know the right people but also important that they know you and that they get reminded of what you’re looking for. Therefore, it’s advisable to invite people to connect with you on LinkedIn. When you send an invitation, personalize your message; don’t just use the default LinkedIn invitation. Address the person by name, include a reminder about the commonality between you or mention how you came across the person’s name, state your intent, and then ask whether the person would be willing to connect with you.

When looking for opportunities, go to the home page, and on the upper right-hand corner, click on the Advanced option. Then type in a keyword and customize the screen to your circumstances. From that list, select and invite the people you want to connect with.

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