As the previous section explained, you can be considered for a job opening long before a formal opening exists and long before it is advertised. Most jobs are never advertised because someone like you gets there before the job needs to be advertised. Employers don't like to hire strangers. They prefer to hire people they already know or who are referred to them by someone they know. Many are willing to talk to you even before they have a job opening if you approach them in the right way. Once you know each other, of course, you are no longer strangers.
About 25 percent of the people who get hired become known to the employer before a job opening exists. Another 25 percent or so of those who get hired find out about the opening during the second stage of a job opening. Jobs that are filled during the first and second stages of a job opening are simply not available to someone using traditional job search methods. Half of all jobs are filled by the time traditional search methods come into play.
The Most Important Job Search Rule of All
The four stages of a job opening make it clear that most jobs are filled before they are advertised. This pattern illustrates the most important job search rule of all:
Don't wait until the job is open before asking for an interview! The best time to search for a job is before anyone else knows about it. Most jobs are filled by someone the employer meets before a job is formally open. So the key is to meet people who can hire you before a job is available. For this reason, these jobs are sometimes referred to as the hidden job market or the networked job market. Instead of saying "Do you have any jobs open?" say "I realize you may not have any openings now, but I would still like to talk to you about the possibility of future openings." By using this simple approach, you will hear many employers say "Yes" instead of "No." Not all, but many.
The Most Effective Job Search Method : Warm Contacts
Salespeople who call on potential customers via phone or by dropping in without an appointment call this technique making cold contacts. In the job search context, cold contacts are job leads obtained from contacting people you don't know, employers in particular. In contrast, I use the term warm contacts to describe leads for job openings that come from people you already know. These warm contacts include friends, relatives, and acquaintances, and they are usually much more effective at getting you job leads and interviews than cold contacts are.
Making Warm Contacts
Job leads obtained from friends and relatives account for about one-third of all job leads. More recent studies that asked job seekers for lead sources other than friends or relatives found other groups such as "business associates" and "acquaintances" provided leads as well. All personal referrals together probably account for about 40 percent of the ways that people find jobs. That makes using personal contacts the most important job search technique of all.
Leads developed from direct contacts with employers are also very important. About 30 percent of all job seekers find their jobs using this method. Together, these two techniques-leads from people you know and direct contacts with employers-account for about 75 percent of all job leads. If you practice a little, getting leads from your warm contacts may be the only job search technique you need.
Identifying Hundreds of Warm Contacts with Three Steps
The people who know you are the same ones who are most likely to help you-if only they knew what to do. Yet few job seekers seem willing to ask for meaningful help from the people they know in developing job leads. If job seekers ask their friends, relatives, and acquaintances for help at all it is of the vague, "Tell me if you hear of anything" variety. Although this crude approach does work often enough, people you know-your warm contacts- can and will be much more helpful if you learn to ask them to help you in more specific ways.