What to say to employers to get hired into the hidden jobs market

By Neil Patrick

If you are looking for a job, how many times have you called a company to ask if they have any job openings and the response has been something like, ‘Not right now, but please send us your resume and we’ll keep it on file and let you know if something comes up’?

I don’t think I can say it’s never happened, but I have never heard of anyone being called back after their resume has been sent in to a firm and put ‘on file’.

It might as well be filed in the bin. Sometimes, I am sure it is.

To avoid this happening to you, you need totally different tactics.

As I talked about in this post here on the hidden job market, the secret is not to ask people if they have any job vacancies. It’s to become a detective and use research to discover firms that have a problem that you can help them solve.

As with so many aspects of successful job searching, the key to your success is in working smarter, not harder. And thinking of yourself not as a job seeker, but a solution to other people’s problems. Find the problems and you’re half way there.

If you want to know how you can do this, how to find the right organisations to approach and exactly what to say to them, this great clip from sales expert Jill Konrath, spells it all out for you.