Accessing the Hidden Job Market

At the executive level, ~ 70% of the jobs do not make it to the common channels like LinkedIn or Indeed.

The strategy for hiring executives is very different from the strategy for hiring mid-career managers and individual contributors.

Why?

Simply because as you move up in the career, things get exceedingly strategic. It's not about some cookie-cutter responsibilities or the standard skill set you have.

The stakes are significantly higher. The game is about longer time horizons, fat investments, making big bets on the future, and handling more complex environments.

It also requires someone with the right personality traits because that ultimately will drive the entire organization's culture.

One wrong decision at that level and it can seriously hurt the business, as you would expect.

Hiring at an executive level is thus a risky business. Companies need to be careful about it.

That explains why they are super selective and don't advertise their exec roles as much. They don't want unqualified candidates.

Besides, it's not always in the best interest of the company and its public image to actively announce that they are looking for executives.

Enter the hidden job market. Companies secretly look for their executives.

Add to that there are two additional problems that compound this issue.

1. There are fewer executive roles because the pyramid converges at the top.
2. More candidates apply for these fewer roles, which seriously drives up the competition.

And that, my friend, is a recruiting nightmare. Companies are overwhelmed by the number of candidates they can choose from and underwhelmed by the number of quality candidates.

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Now from a jobseekers standpoint, often the challenge is twofold:

1. How do I stand out in this competitive market? aka how do I get attention?
2. Once I have their attention, how do I convert that attention into interest, and eventually, how to convert that interest into commitment?

As most tech leaders would agree, 80% of problem-solving is just defining the problem correctly.

Now that we understand what challenges exist for both company and the job seeker, let's define the specifics so we can solve these problems as a job seeker.

Sidenote: Why should the jobseeker's responsibility be to solve these problems?Simple. Because you're the seller in this dynamic. Companies have more options than job-seekers. Besides, we're interested in solving the problem of your career growth. Whose responsibility do you think it should be?

So a couple of definitions to start with. There are 3 stages to the job search:

Attention --> Interest --> Commitment

• Attention --> Companies(Hiring Managers or recruiters) know that you "exist" and are available. You can get more attention through direct applications, ranking high on recruiter searches, and networking.
• Interest --> They not only know that you exist, but they see you as a potential solution. So now they want to find out more about how great of a fit you are. This involves anywhere from them learning just enough about you through your resume, LinkedIn profile, and outreach message to deciding to give you a call. And from there, further that interest by finding out more about you during interviews.
• Commitment --> They now see you as a fit for the role. It's mostly about the legal specifics now. Technically, the offer. This is when you negotiate.

Typically, the challenge in the job search lies in the Attention and Interest stages.

But if the market is hidden, how do I get more attention? How do I even know whose attention I should get?

If you're thinking that too, let me tell you that's a damn good question to ask.

Think of yourself as a marketer for your business of one. In this game of job search, you're selling yourself.

Now think about it: Why does any business exist? What is the fundamental purpose of any business?

Businesses exist to solve problems for their customers. That's it.

Got a back that hurts? You go to a chiropractor.

Do not want to grow your own food? You pay someone to grow, ship, refrigerate, and neatly arrange in an aisle, only to be collected after a gentle swipe of a card. You don't wanna even walk to the store? Get somebody to deliver it for you.

Every exchange of money happens when a problem gets solved.

We make so many transactions each day, only to solve all the problems we have each day. Sometimes, these problems are immediate, other times they are just a plan for the future.

But we only think of making a transaction when we have a problem to solve.

So if you are looking for a transaction, aka, finding your next job, then

Start looking for PROBLEMS that YOU can solve.

In the previous issue of this newsletter, we talk in-depth about how to define what problems you can solve.

As an example: "I can help midsize fintech companies scale and bring products to market by building high-performing software engineering teams."

Once you have identified what specific problems you can solve, you want to plug it into every stage of your marketing.

Why? Because people only think of transactions when problems are solved.

You want to:

• Find places where these problems exist and showcase to them that you understand their problem. Eg: Find by industries, company size, product they deliver, journey they are in(digital transformation, cloud migrations etc.), and challenges they are facing. This topic is vast, and there are so many ways to go about it that it is a module of it's own in our course.
• Define the problem in the words of your target audience, so they can find you.

Now covering every possible scenario on how you can market yourself will be out of the scope of this article. But here are a few pointers to help you get started.

• Start with finding out the job descriptions for the kind of roles that you'd like to land. Make sure these roles fall into your niche. Otherwise, it'll mess up your research.
• From those job descriptions, you want to pull out what specific skills and experience they demand. You'll start seeing a pattern once you lay out some 10-15 job descriptions and carefully read through them. A pattern of what these roles demand from a leader. Eg: these demands may include experience with scaling platforms globally, API management, disaster recovery, enterprise architecture rationalization, and managing teams of 100+
• Collect these "demands" as hints for yourself to look back into your career. For each role, see what problems you solved along each of these lines, how did you solve them, and, more importantly, what business outcome was achieved.
• Now that you've collected these ideas, you want to plug this into your marketing. You highlight only the relevant areas and your niche on your LinkedIn profile so recruiters can find you for the right roles and put you in the right bucket. If you do this right, you'll be surprised how well this strategy attracts the right recruiters. By doing this, you're both attracting attention and converting that attention into interest.
• Write your resume along the lines of your niche, catering to those demands. There's an art to only highlighting the important things and decluttering your resume. The goal should be to convey that you meet the demands in a quick 5-6 second glance. If the reader finds the right things in a quick glance, they're motivated to read more. And the more they read, the more invested they become in you.
• Include this message in your networking outreach when contacting hiring managers and recruiters. Show them that you understand their problem, and how you can solve it. People get curious when you talk about their problems. That's the core of great marketing.

Hope that helps.

-Varun

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I only talk about the strategies that work for our clients. Each of these things are well tested and proven to get outsized returns for your time investment.

If you are active in the job market and tired of getting no interviews despite making tons of applications, then our course Executive Job Search BluePrint will be of great help.

Here, I take you step-by-step on everything you need to land multiple job interviews every week. We cover tons of examples in there. Feel free to check it out.