:60 read - take the LinkedIn poll here
Recruiting Myth Busters: Hidden Job Market Edition. Is this thing actually real? And how big is it exactly?
So here’s the deal. The “Hidden Job Market” is what we refer to when we talk about jobs that aren’t posted anywhere. (The Royal We - recruiters, career coaches, LinkedIn pundits, etc.)
The underlying narrative is that job seekers can’t rely on job postings. They need to take more proactive means. There’s like a million networking strategies for this.
Here’s where the myths come in. You’ll see stats posted on this occasionally. “80% of jobs are never posted” was quoted to me recently.
And they’re garbage stats. Totally made up.
What’s more is that there’s also disagreement on how real the hidden job market is. Some recruiters will tell you every damn job they work on is posted and the whole thing is ludicrous. While I’ve been very much in the don't-rely-on-the-job-boards camp. (e.g. my video on using Slack for job searching, here)
For every job seeker who networked their way to a job, there’s another who did just fine applying online.
So what’s the deal? Whelp, the Hidden Job Market is like Schrödinger's cat. It exists and doesn’t exist at the same time:
1. Large organizations probably post every single job they ever hire for. They’ve got all sorts of rules around compliance and equity. Not to mention rules in place to give internal employees the ability to apply. I promise you everything Amazon or Google hires for is posted, somewhere.
2. Small orgs are completely different. Who exactly is posting jobs in companies that don’t even have HR yet? I work in this space and see all kinds of real jobs and never make it to a corporate site.
The large vs small org (and everything in between) accounts for much of the disparity.
3. Just because it’s posted on a corporate web site doesn’t mean anyone is going to see it! The world goes to Indeed and LinkedIn. If it’s not there, does it even exist?
Most corporate job sites get little traffic. If no one’s ever heard of you, how would they arrive on your site?
But what drives me crazy is clearly fake stats. I don’t know how effective a LinkedIn poll will be for this, but let’s give it a shot...
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