
How To Find Unadvertised Jobs - Ashuu
http://www.glassdoor.com/blog/find-unadvertised-jobs/
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mooreds
Uh, so the answer to 'how to find the unadvertised job' is 'look at company
websites' or 'do google searches'?

I haven't been in the job market for years, so I don't have a great answer,
but these seem pretty weak ways to find jobs that aren't advertised, because,
if they are on company websites or available via Taleo, they _are_ advertised.

How about:

    
    
      * research a company, find out their biggest problem (competitive research), find the manager who should be tackling the problem (linked in), and email him an outline of a solution.  I don't manage a ton of folks, but if someone did this, we'd definitely have a conversation.
      * go to tech meetups and meeting interesting people
      * comment on a corporate blog regularly
      * offer to work for free (if you can afford it)
      * ABL (always be looking)
      * never eat lunch along
      * blog about the industry you want to get into
      * work on an open source project
      * instagram (or whatever the kids are doing these days)
    

This is an oldie instance that one of my friends did to get hired back before
the dotcom bubble:
[http://donwrege.com/XOR/home.html](http://donwrege.com/XOR/home.html)

~~~
wtvanhest
"* offer to work for free (if you can afford it)"

I know there are stories where working for free is a good strategy, but they
are vastly outnumbered by stories where not working for free was the best
option.

I'd argue against it unless you have a really, really, really good reason to
work for a specific organization for free.

~~~
mooreds
I think you are correct. One reason I worked for free for an organization was
that it was in an entirely different space than my previous experience, and I
wanted to know more about it. Other good reasons to work for free: * gain
skills * meet people

But you definitely want to be careful and limit it, otherwise you'll get taken
advantage of. It's very similar to offering a free software service--often you
don't know if what you have is valuable until people start paying for it.

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praptak
_" When you see a job posted on (insert leading job board name here) somebody
paid to have it advertised there. You know where it’s free for a company to
post all of their jobs? Come on, guess… If you suspected a company’s own
careers website, you would be correct!"_

If somebody paid for it recently, it is a strong signal they really have an
opening. Jobs on companies' own sites might only be there to:

a) show to customers and investors the company is in good shape.

b) keep their recruitment buffers filled just in case.

I've been through jobs in companies with "no recruitment" enforced due to
budget cuts and guess what, the job ads on their sites were still there.

~~~
GFK_of_xmaspast
My last job we were advertising and interviewing for a position that did not
exist on the belief that somebody wanting job X could be talked into job Y
instead.

I don't work there anymore.

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funky_lambda
Well this is unfortunate:
[http://i.imgur.com/41Yn4ye.png](http://i.imgur.com/41Yn4ye.png)

~~~
CGamesPlay
You might have more luck getting the developer to fix it by providing some
information about your browser. It works fine in the latest stable Chrome on
Mac OS X, for example.

~~~
nawitus
Broken on Firefox for me too.

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motters
At least within the area of the UK which I lived in until recently the idea
that there are lots of unadvertised jobs is a myth. When I was unemployed I
did the experiment of applying both via "the usual channels" and also
speculatively based upon fairly elaborate analysis to try to identify suitable
organisations. The number of "conversions" \- which means inquiries turning
into job interviews - was vastly higher for the usual channels, with very few
companies responding to speculative inquiries.

~~~
ig1
What makes you think your methodology was a good one for finding the
unadvertised jobs ?

Plenty of unadvertised jobs will go through networks, word-of-mouth and
personal recommendation - obviously cold-calling wouldn't give you good
results in such cases.

Generally it's estimated that roughly 40% [for 2009-2010] of jobs are
unadvertised, and that's calculated using US BLS data
([http://www.bls.gov/news.release/jolts.htm](http://www.bls.gov/news.release/jolts.htm))
comparing number of job openings companies state they have versus actual
hiring numbers.

While there might be variation between countries, I doubt that there's
significant difference between the UK and the US.

~~~
motters
I think my methods were good. They were based on data mining company
information for all companies registered with Companies House, such as changes
in numbers of employees, net worth, main products and the like. I tried to
apply scientific method to the task of finding employment.

If the unadvertised jobs cannot be detected by any empirical evidence then I
would suggest that they be treated like other mythological phenomenon.

~~~
ig1
Did you miss my link to the BLS data showing the difference between hiring
number and job openings ?

There's plenty of empirical ways to show that unadvertised hiring occurs.
Another alternative way would be simply to survey companies and employees and
ask them.

The fact that unadvertised recruitment happens doesn't mean that the jobs will
be available to anyone who attempts to apply via cold-calling.

A company that receives a strong recommendation for a candidate via someone
they trust may well create a new role especially for that person, but
obviously such a role wouldn't exist if someone unknown tried to apply
speculatively.

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Theodores
Isn't it better to let a recruitment company do the hard work for you?

In a technical job market there are recruitment consultants that know all of
the companies, what might work for you and where there might be a need. In my
experience they do provide a very good service. However, we tend to dislike
them when they are not needed so we might overlook them as our first point of
call.

~~~
auctiontheory
_Isn 't it better to let a recruitment company do the hard work for you?_

If you want to entrust your professional future to someone who doesn't
understand the work you do and whose interests aren't necessarily aligned with
yours, sure.

Recruiters aren't all bad - they can be one prong of your job-search strategy.
(I just found a great startup job through a recruiter.) But don't put them in
charge.

And read _Ask The Headhunter_.

~~~
moron4hire
"Recruiters aren't all bad"

I keep hearing it, but I haven't really ever seen it.

~~~
auctiontheory
Recruiting is a huge industry. They are obviously not all bad or useless.

Most small companies simply cannot afford to employ a full-time in-house
recruiter. If you were running a startup, with a thousand things to do daily,
you too would outsource the basic search and screening function.

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kika
It could be a waste of your resources, because many such listings are actually
not designed to lure good qualified prospects, they have a completely opposite
intent - lure idiots and unqualified people. Even if you apply, they'll talk
to you, then talk again, then disqualify you on some ridiculous grounds.

I'm talking about Green Card PERM process in these companies. The law mandates
them to advertise, but their intent is to prove to the DOL that there's no
adequate candidates around. They _already have_ someone for this position,
moreover, this person (most likely) already occupies this position, they just
started his/her GC process.

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joshz
Taleo makes a great job making it as painful as possible to search and apply
for jobs. I find it pretty funny a "hack" of how to look through taleo
listings is in an article about unadvertised jobs.

~~~
auctiontheory
Yup. On the one hand, recruiting is hardly the rocket science of software
engineering, and on the other hand, it's hard to imagine a more user-
unfriendly system than Taleo, yet somehow they seem to dominate the market.

~~~
nowarninglabel
Silk Road and SuccessFactors are just as terrible in my opinion but seem to
also have a healthy percentage of the market. I believe all these HR software
systems follow a similar pattern of starting out solving a fairly simple
problem, then as Sales brings in more and more disparate customers, the
developers keep tacking on stuff until it is a hodgepodge mess.

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vezzy-fnord
I was expecting a post that told you to "get off your lazy ass and look for
some in your area". Instead, I got a primer on Google search operators.

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ExpiredLink
In my experience 'Option one' is not so bad. You need different industry
directories (not just "yellow pages") to find most relevant companies and then
contact them. Laborious but better than being one in a hundred applicants.

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slykat
Can't you just used Indeed.com? I thought every major ATS allows you to submit
your job listings to Indeed.com and similar sites.

