Where to Find Local Hidden Job Openings in Your Career Specialty

There is a way to find local, hidden job openings, where only a few to a dozen or so applicants have applied, and where your chances for a job offer increase exponentially. This fact is supported by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, who reports that over seventy-percent of all the jobs here in the U.S. are not currently posted to any outside venue – not to job banks, newspapers, or even industry specific trade magazines.

Job seekers are learning the hard way that when they apply for jobs found on popular job bank websites – whatever the name or workplace specialty – that hundreds of other job seekers are there too, having followed the same job post links. Such job competition rises to levels rarely seen by modern individuals, so consequently, much time, energy, and effort are squandered on job possibilities that have long, negative odds associated with them.

Job seekers in that circumstance often experience disappointment and frustration. Save yourself the hassles. Take heed to the advice below to find local and regional jobs that are not widely advertised, thus increasing your odds of getting hired into your preferred career position.

Since such unadvertised jobs are not generally known to the public-at-large, you have to search for them by a means different than the typical internet job search. There are three ways to uncover such jobs:

1) Personal Networking;
2) by Telephone or other direct contact;
3) and by Mail, be it postal service or email.

All three of these methods have proven very successful for both individual job seekers, and also for active recruit specialists, who often need to uncover such hidden jobs, in order to assist their job candidates to find employment.

‘Personal Networking’ relies on your ability to reach out to people you know in the industry or industries that you serve, and to discover through conversation who is hiring now, or who will be hiring soon, of if there may be a change of employment (i.e. transfer, promotion, termination, etc.) that may create a job vacancy. All of those scenarios give you the opportunity to put your credentials on the top of the applicant pile.

‘Telephone’ isn’t a repeat of the statement just above; this is a professional outreach effort where you create a list of local or regional firms that fit your type of preferred employment – whether those companies currently admit to having job opening, or not – then calling them, one by one, so you can identify the personalities who authorize hiring. In this case, your ‘Networking’ is not ‘Personal’, in the sense that you do not know the people whom you are trying to reach. But you’ll soon know them, if you follow this approach.

The ‘Mail’ strategy is just as easy as it sounds. You accomplish the same tasks as those above, in the ‘Telephone’ strategy, except you use email or postal mail to accomplish the individual contact. This will be a slower method of contact – mostly – except, when using email; as sometimes busy hiring agents prefer the less direct approach, as there is less interruption to their daily schedules.

Use the strategies above to break the cycle of mass applicant turmoil that often follows when job seekers pursue job postings that are viewed by thousands of interested eyes on popular job bank websites.

By Mark Baber