008: The one big assumption that is holding you back in your job search

Hey, how are you doing, Leading Women in Tech? Welcome back. It’s me, Toni from tonicollis.com, the place to go to up-level your tech career and leadership. But how are you doing? How was your week? How was your Tuesday, if you’re listening to this the day that we drop? What’s been going on around here, before we crack on today’s episode? Well, I’m so excited to say that for the last week, I’ve been beavering away on my newest offering, a LinkedIn course, which is turning what I have been doing with my clients one on one, and turning that in to be replicable system that each and every one of you can use to get ahead, to get noticed on LinkedIn, because LinkedIn is huge, which is fabulous. But also it means that sometimes you don’t stand out. So I’m turning that into a course, I’ve been talking about it with people for a few weeks.

I’m just finishing it off. I’ve basically done everything. I just want to give it all the final sanity check and then it will be going to some amazing women who get free access upfront, because by the way, did you know that if you’re a Leading Women in Tech insider, you get access to all sorts of amazing things. And in particular, occasionally, like with this, you get exclusive free early access to new programs. We don’t do that very often, but it does happen. So if you want to improve your career in leadership and get your hands on some free stuff, you need to be a Leading Women in Tech insider. Head over to tonicollis.com/get-visible and we’ll pop that link in the show notes and sign up. You’ll get my Get Visible freebie, which is, how to improve your presence. And you’ll get onto the Leading Women in Tech insider, mailing list.

Okay. So that was my week last week. But I will say just, I had a lovely weekend making memories. I was in the garden, we’re still in self-imposed locked down. Scotland, where I live, is not actually in full-on lockdown, we’re just social distancing now. But the husband and I, we don’t need to be anywhere and so we’re very much like, “The best way to knock out this virus, which is just devastating on planet earth is, do not go out.” We’re lucky that we don’t have to. So we’re doing our bit by not going out. So, we were just home, enjoying the weather, which was glorious. I know for some people in some parts of the UK, it was a little bit too hot. But up here in the Scottish borders where I live, it was simply a beautiful weekend. So pretty perfect as far I’m concerned. I hope wherever you are, that you make some great memories this weekend too.

But let’s crack on with today’s topic. How do you go about a job hunt? When there are just so many people on the market right now, you’re all vying for the same opportunities. How do you stand out from the noise, when there are so many people, and apparently not that many jobs? I say apparently for a good reason, which I’m going to come to in a moment. Now, I’m not saying that there aren’t exactly the number of jobs out there for every single person. I know unemployment is rising and it can be really scary. But what I’m about to talk about is this thing called the hidden job market, what it is and how you can access it. Because here’s the thing. That hidden job market is not actually as hidden as you think it is, but between 60 and 95% of jobs aren’t advertised.

So if you were only applying for jobs or advertised, I am sorry to tell you that you are not reaching the majority of them. Now, I say between 60 and 95%, the research varies, because the nature of this is you can’t easily get a handle on this data. And it clearly fluctuates with the economy. And so for example, right now, as unemployment is rising in many sectors worldwide sadly, it’s unclear how many jobs are hidden. But I’m going to talk to you anyway about what to do about this hidden job market. Because the other thing is, if you’re here as a Leading Women in Tech, who wants to make the most of her talents, get ahead, become a leader or excel in the leadership you’re already doing. It’s even more likely that you need to be tapping into this hidden job market. You might already know about some of it, but I doubt you know about all of it, because most people don’t.

And this means that you’re no longer competing with all of the other people, applying for the few jobs that are advertised. Because here’s the thing. If only between five and 40% of jobs are advertised, that means those ones that are advertised are getting deluged with competition. And you want to stand out from the crowd. That’s harder when you’re starting a huge long pile. I knew somebody once, their approach to managing an influx of resumes was just to take the top of the stack, they didn’t even look at the rest of the stack. Now that is not good, it’s not inclusive. I totally suggest to anybody I work with, if they were doing recruiting, that is not the right way to do it. And it’s not fair and you’re not going to get the best talent, but it happens. So the best way, tap into this hidden job market.

Okay, so let’s talk about what it is and why does it exist? Because hidden makes it sound far more devious than it really is. It’s really pretty obvious. And once we start talking about it, why does it exist and how to tap into it? So here goes, there are a couple of things that might be getting on here. First of all, a search firm or recruiter has been hired. This is the one you’ve probably been … Come across before. Most of us have come across recruiters. Some of you will have come across search firms. I certainly used to get regular requests to apply for jobs, and therefore I changed my profile on LinkedIn to make it obvious that I run my business and I wasn’t interested in a job. So many of you will have come across this, right? By the way, I’m going to talk about why you shouldn’t be relying on recruiters to get you a job at the end. Please don’t.

Just because that is your one and only source that you know about so far into this hidden market doesn’t mean that you need to give control over to recruiters. So I’m going to be talking about that towards the end of the Podcast, please stick with me because it’s a really important point. Okay, the next reason why there’s these hidden jobs is. An employer wants referrals and particularly now this is so true. As I’ve already said, the few jobs simply because they are few in number that are advertised, they attract so many resumes. So they don’t want to sort through all of these resumes. And particularly right now, it’s a high risk market. They don’t have to work hard to get jobs, job applicants even. You have to work hard to get a job actually more than they have to work hard in order to get the right candidate.

So they want to find referrals because they also want to hire someone they know they can trust. All except my very first job have come through from some form of networking referrals. Quite a lot of time what has happened is that there has been some sort of informal referral. Now, quite often, we talk about referrals from people that already work at the company saying, “Hey, I know this great person. They can do this job, et cetera.” But referrals work in multiple ways, particularly as you go higher up. Referrals, also in this context, refer to you have somebody in your network who advocates for you. So I’ve had people say, “Hey, I have this friend of mine. I think she’d be a good fit for your business.” They didn’t work in that business. They have a conversation with me and something great happens. That is by the way one of the ways I got to the C-suite, so do not dismiss kind of indirect referrals.

Okay, so that’s a really, really big one, but here’s some you’ve probably not thought of. The first one is confidentiality. What do I mean by this? Well, for example, a company isn’t going to advertise a job if they’re going to replace an underperforming member of staff. I have seen companies advertise a position and the person who’s currently in that role is very upset because they’re like, “I didn’t know that they were going to hire somebody else,” turns out they were going to be fired. So a lot of the time hidden jobs exist because they’re going to replace somebody. Or for example, when you don’t want to spook the stock market, competitors, you don’t want to give in a way an advantage, investors. So if you’re going to hire a significant number of people that may impact the stock price, particularly big companies, growing companies, they will probably not advertise, they will use some other means.

Especially if it’s important because you know what, their name is so big that they don’t need to work very hard to get recruits. The other one is not revealing plans to competitors. So if you’re going to shift market, you don’t want to be making it clear to competitors that you’re doing this pivot by hiring people, putting an advert out there. You may have seen some job boards where it’s quite clear that the job is anonymous and they just say a rough location. Sometimes they don’t even say that. There are huge number of jobs that don’t even make as far as the job board that are not, they are all about not revealing the plans to competitors. So that’s a big one. Okay, other reasons why beyond confidentiality. Other reasons for the hidden job market. Some people, some CEOs, particularly startups in my experience, I’m laughing here, because it just sometimes throws everybody in the business, the CEO or somebody like that will just post something on social media.

And then, the social media posts will be like, “There is a job, come work with us.” You go to the website and the website says, no jobs. I’ve seen this happen. The CEO is just out of touch with the rest of the team. Sometimes I’m like, “You need to come and talk to me about how to run a business,” but however this happens. And this happens more often then it probably should, because it quite often to upset the web team if there is one. The other thing is that small employers choose not to advertise. They may rely on recruiters. That’s sometimes cheaper than advertising, actually more often than not it is. Referrals.

Industry networking is a big one. I’ve certainly worked for businesses who’ve never paid a cent for advertising or recruitment. It’s all referrals and industry networking. Small businesses often also won’t have a in-house IT department to manage websites and run a job board. In tech we’re more likely to work for a company that does, because they tend to be a bit more tech savvy, but hey, not always. So just because there’s a either no job board on their website or a job board has not been updated, does not mean there aren’t opportunities there, especially if they’re a small employer. The other one is hiring from local contacts and associations. This one is kind of less relevant for tech because tech tends to be a very international one. So associations are less likely. But you know, there are for example, ACM the Association for Computing Machinery. There are local versions of that.

So in the UK, we have BCS the British Computer Society. There’s also things like that. People may well hire from those, from events, from contacts that they know, especially if they want to keep local talent. Another one you need to remember about the hidden job market as well, human error. They forgot to advertise or they forgot to put it on their website. They forgot to design the website or it is on the website, but the website is so impenetrable you can’t find it. I’ve seen job boards hidden under the contact us page. And I’m like, “That does not help me find a job with you.” That’s one to bear in mind, just because you can’t find it doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. And again, they may well post on the website, but not anywhere else because they don’t need to.

Next one is openings exist, but there’s a hiring freeze.So you might be thinking right now, “Oh my gosh, there’s a hiring freeze. Well, that’s not going to help me because the job isn’t there.” Here’s the thing, you still want to be the first person they think of when the hiring freeze lifts. The other thing I’ve seen happen, and I’ve actually been working with a client on this. She’s made the case why they need to make an exception for her. Making a case strong enough to the person you’re talking to you so that they go and make a case why the hiring freeze needs to be lifted. Now, that can be impossible in some organizations, it all depends on the policies. But a lot of the time, if you were the person that has made them realize how important this role would be, you’re helping them see a better way of doing things, and it’s your talent that will get them there.

When that hiring freeze lifts, you’ll be the first number they call. So hiring freezes mean they don’t advertise, but it doesn’t mean you can’t be building that connection. And the hiring freeze might lift tomorrow or next week. Just because it’s not open right now doesn’t mean it’s not a value to you. And the final one, the job is still in the pipeline. Now, what am I mean by this? Well, maybe the hiring manager has an idea of a job or a position that’s needed. They have some kind of understanding that they need an additional person in the team, but you know what? They haven’t had the time and the decision making ability to turn that into a job. What do I mean by that? They need to identify what skills are going to be required or something else that’s going to be required. You should turn up at this point and help them figure that out.

Especially as leading women in tech, part of your job is to solve problems if you’re a leader, so turn up and help them. This hiring manager, whoever they are is swamped. That’s why they haven’t fitted this altogether already. They haven’t put that job on top of their to do list yet, because it’s like, it’s a drain on them is too much effort. So what do they do? They put it on the back burner until it becomes so urgent that they actually then mess up. What if you came along and network with them and helped them clarify simply by being who you are, what was needed.

The number of times where actually what appears to be a job created for you, which does happen by the way, is actually that person already had an inkling that they needed something that was there, they just haven’t put two and two together made four. They’d be making two and a half, not even three. What you do by talking to them about what you would bring to the table, helps them clarify what they need. And when you do that, you’re the one that gets off with the job.

Okay, so I’ve talked there about the hidden job market, what causes it. And I’ve also talked a little bit about what to do, but let’s dig in a little bit deeper about how to access these jobs. The number one thing you need to do, as I hope you realize from what I’ve just said is network. Buying this, I’ll be talking about this a lot during the rest of August, both on Facebook and in this Podcast I’m going to do a dedicated episode on networking, during lockdown, during social distancing, during no real person to person conferences and how to do that. But the best way to get hired is to reach out to hiring managers before they make an opening available.

Because as I said at the top of this show, once the position is publicly available for application, you’re going to be in a huge queue. You’re going to be potentially halfway down the resume list. You might even be in the stack that gets just discarded without review. I want you to skip that. I want you to be the first number they call. So you need to get in touch with people that might be hiring. You don’t know if they are going to hire. When I say might be hiring. I’m not asking you to get, “Well, I think this person might be hiring and that person might be hiring.” No, I just want you to network. I want you to skip that queue by getting to know people and building real relationships. I want you to get access to those confidential hires because somebody knows you who says, “Hey, I think this person would be great.” That’s why you have to build real relationships, not just ask all the time. Because the people that say, “Have you thought of Toni,” do that because they value you, not because you keep asking them for stuff.

You want the jobs that are based on referrals, because even referrals without bonus scheme to staff, and obviously you probably know that many of the big tech companies will give staff a bonus if they, somebody they referred is hired, but that’s still typically a lot cheaper and a more consistent method of applying really good talent than using adverts or a recruiter. Because recruiters save them time, but they don’t always bring in the best talent. The best people to bring in talent are the people who are already working there who have their own networks.

The other thing is, if you access this hidden job market, you can craft a role or job description that suits your skills. So one of the things I worked with clients on, and this is actually going to be in the LinkedIn course that I was mentioning, which just going to come see for you. I wasn’t going to talk about that very much, but hey-ho, it fits really well. But the best thing is when you are really clear on your skills, your experience and what you love, and you then help create a job that fulfills that, because I want you to be in a role that you love. I want you to be doing more of what you love and less of what you don’t.

I don’t want you fitting yourself into a role just because it pays the bills. I want you in a role that doesn’t just pay the bills, but makes you feel amazing, and hopefully brings you in a fair more amount than just paying the bills. So I want you to get used to networking in such a way that people will ask you to come and work with them and create the job description that suits you, your skills, your passions, your zone of genius. I want you to get comfortable talking about those skills. Something I will be talking about in the Facebook Lives this week. So please do head on to Leading Women in Tech. I’m going to be doing a mini series by the way, I haven’t said this before. I’m going to be doing a mini series of 10 minute popup Facebook lives in the Leading Women in Tech Facebook group, just popping in there, giving you career advice, boom, boom, boom, every day this week. So do you head over there.

This is something that you need to be listened to if you aren’t in the job market right now. Or you’re thinking about being in the job market at all, even if you have a secure job during the COVID crisis, because the way we’re doing this is subtly changing and you need to know. Okay, well that’s it. And the other thing I wanted to say about accessing these jobs is helping the company realize that the vacancies they have, and that you are the one to fill them. So sometimes this networking helps somebody realize, “Oh my goodness me, it would be so much better if I had this person in this role. My life would be easier if I didn’t do this.” A lot of solopreneurs, women who own their own businesses and provide services. For example, virtual assistants will do this, right?

I’m not just saying women, I just, those are the people I tend to work with. They will help you understand how much better your life can be if you hire them. And by the way, in general that is true. You have to then make the sanity check as the person doing the hiring. And this can apply for you too, right? It doesn’t belong to just the world of hiring assistants and hiring and consultants and services. It applied to the job market. You can help a potential hirer realize how much better their business would be, how much better their team would be if you brought your skills to the table, right? The job pipeline is a real thing. And part of that comes from helping people realize that the pipeline needs filling and that you will save them money by paying out a salary for you.

You’ve always got to help them understand the value of return, the return on investment of hiring you, because yes, it is not zero cost to them of course. But when you help them reach that conclusion, you’re in the door, they suddenly trust you because you help them get there. Now, there are skills to do that. You have to have a real relationship. This is the kind of thing that historically you’d had done over dinner at a conference, you try to get a chat about the challenges they face. You got to change all that. We are now in a different way of networking. You can’t have face to face to dinner with people hopping around the world any more. Well, if you do, you’re the exception, not the norm. So what can you do? I will be talking more about this in Facebook and over the next few weeks on the podcast, but here’s what we can do.

The first one is networking. And I don’t just mean the traditional networking of people in your sector. I mean friends, family, colleagues from the past and present, business acquaintances, people that aren’t in your zone of genius. You know, you don’t have to only network with people that have the exact same skillset as you. Talk to people who work in other companies, even if they’re in a completely different part of it than what you would work in. There’s still somebody who knows about that company. There’s still somebody that can advocate for you in a coffee cooler chat with their colleague of them who does work in the area that you want to be in. It’s like, “Oh, I’m so frustrated by this staff member or I’m so frustrated I didn’t have the support I need or I’m,” your name will come up in this coffee cooler chat.

So network, network, network, and don’t limit yourself to people you think, “Well, this person might be able to hire me.” No, networking is all about the breadth, not just depth. Okay, you really want to be on social media as well. I don’t just want you posting on social media, that’s a whole skill set. If you are actively job searching, then yes, you should be on social media. If you’re in a job, that’s a lot of time. And I do want you to focus on doing well. Social media can be such a drain on our time. But what I do want you to do on social media is a couple of things. I want you to follow your potential employers, not the companies. I want you to follow their staff, and I want you to follow their CEO. Those are the three big ones. You might include following a few other C-level executives if they’re very active.

I don’t want you to worry if the staff member is in your area, as I already said before. But I want you following them, seeing what they’re posting about. Because what you can then do if you’re using social media is, as you start seeing that content come through anything you were like, “Oh yeah, I get that. I love that. I think that’s a great thing,” you can start commenting. That’s how you start networking online without feeling icky, without reaching out to them and saying, “Hey, I want a call with you, but I’ve never met you before.” The best way is to start commenting on what’s already going on. And if you’ve got a particular company that you’re really passionate about joining, you need to be following everybody in that company, even down to the cleaners. Yes, if they’re on social media, follow them, because by the way, the world would not work without cleaners, just saying.

Okay, the next one is create a recruiter friendly and search friendly LinkedIn profile. So, as I said. I wasn’t going to tell you about the LinkedIn course, but there was something else I haven’t told you about, which I wasn’t going to tell you about this week, but I did, so I’m so useless at keeping secrets. If you want to know more about me keeping secrets, you should talk to my husband and Christmas presents. I am terrible at not telling him what he’s getting. But, the secret that I’m not suppose to be telling you is. At the end of August, I think at the end of August, this is why I wasn’t going to tell you, because I haven’t actually properly scheduled this yet. But I’m going to do a master class on how to create a good LinkedIn profile, how to leverage LinkedIn. So watch or rather listen, this space, this podcast to hear when you can sign up. I’m hopefully going to have the details tied down next week. See, I’m useless at keeping secrets.

Okay, the next thing you can do is join some professional groups. So if your industry has a professional association, consider joining that. It can be a bit pricey, so think carefully. Some of them, they claim to be amazing at offering you opportunities and they kind of fall a bit flat. The best place to start if you don’t want to spend money on joining professional groups is LinkedIn. There may will be other free things and certainly Elpha is great. That’s E-L-P-H-A. Again, I’ll put the link to that in the show notes actually, for those of you who don’t know who Elpha is. That is a Women in Tech organization that’s free to join, entirely online networking. It comes out of California. It’s quite small, but it’s useful.

But LinkedIn groups are an amazing place to network. You can join, I’m not sure how many it is. Somebody said to me it was 200, I don’t think it’s quite that many. But you can join a lot of LinkedIn groups. So go into their groups and engage, not just your profile. Make sure that you’re on Twitter as well, because a lot of job announcements are made on Twitter. CEOs tend to do only Twitter and LinkedIn, I don’t know why Twitter, because I would have thought that Twitter is as much of a time suck as things like Facebook. So definitely get yourself on Twitter if you aren’t already. This is why I have Twitter account. I don’t really use my Twitter account on my own, but I do have one because of when I was job hunting in the past and Google alerts as well, are a useful thing to try, you can get regular email notifications of events for networking and career opportunities.

So this one is a bit different right now because you’re looking for virtual events. But for example, if you put in the string, product design jobs at Boston, you would get Google alerts for product design related job events in Boston. You do not want to worry about the job level. So don’t put the job level in there. You don’t want to say, product manager and really specific stuff. You wanted the general area, because what you want to be meeting is people in that area up and down, spectrum below you and above you, okay? And then the other one, the big one I want you to do, but you need to do all the other stuff first, because you need to have that online presence. The big one is contact employers directly. Note that you should be doing this as part of your networking activities.

And if you are looking for a job, it is a full-time job, right? If you’re doing that while working, it’s a really hard to squeeze it in, If you’re out of a job right now, treat job hunting as a full-time job, that’s really important. And networking should take about 80% of your time. Yes, really, 20% applying jobs, maximum 80% networking. I’m not kidding, because networking is what’s really going to get you the job.

So as promised, I want to finish off by talking about why recruiters shouldn’t be relied on as your main source of job hunting. Let me just give you a little bit of a truth here that you probably know. And let me tell you anyway, because I know so many people who just say, “Hey, I’m in touch with these recruiters. I don’t need to do any work.” Okay, here’s the thing. Recruiters aren’t there to support you. They are there to support the people paying them, which is not you. Their success is dependent on filling spots, not getting all of their contacts on their list a job. In fact, many of them actually aim to keep a very long list of people that they’re in contact with so that they can tell potential hirers, the companies that need recruitment, how many people they have in their list. That doesn’t mean they’re interested in you at all.

I know that was a bit tough, but please, if you’re one of these people who just sits there waiting for the recruiter to call because they’ve called every now and then, you’re not going to get a job quickly. Smart, creative job seekers win every time, so make sure you are one of them. You need to tap into that hidden job market, okay?

So we’ve covered lots of stuff on the job hunt stuff today. It’s time to finish up with today’s leadership mindset moment. What is a leadership mindset moment? Well, it’s a natural tip to help adjust how you act or think, to make it easier to up level so you can take more positive action on the topic of today’s podcast. And today’s leadership mindset moment is again, very similar to a few we’ve had before about challenging your misconceptions. I feel like I’ve really got you to do this a lot because it’s one of the things that hold us back so much. It’s when our brain immediately jumps into one gear and actually you need to be in another. We need to challenge that mindset. So mindset is really the number one way you’re going to level up. I quite often say to people, “It’s not what you’re doing that’s in your way, it’s your mindset.” So, if you want a strategy, that’s great, but make sure you’re doing the mindset way to back that strategy up.

Most people fail because of mindset, not strategy. They think it’s a strategy. They’re saying to me, “Hey, my strategy is just not working.” But actually when you dig deep, it’s their mindset. That mindset means they’re not executing that strategy in the way it’s best. So I love for you to get yourself 10 minutes of quiet me-time. I’m sure you’ll find 10 minutes. You might need to lock yourself in a bathroom if you’ve got kids at home, but I want 10 minutes of quiet time. Then you’ve got to go grab a pen because yes, I’m a big fan of working through a problem with journaling. And I want you to examine how you feel about the job market. How do you feel about the hidden job market? Does it scare you? Does it make you think, “Not for me, don’t want to do the hidden stuff.” Does it seem really daunting?

What is stopping you taking action and starting to network right now to find that job market, that hidden job market? Do you feel the urge to just apply for 20 jobs because it’s what you know, irrespective of what I’ve just said in the rest of this podcast episode? Examine how you feel and start unpicking those layers, those mindset blocks, those objections that are making you feel like this isn’t what you should be doing. Because when you get to the bottom of the why, face that anxiety that’s saying, “No, don’t do that, do the thing I know, do the applying, that’s the thing I know.” When you face that anxiety and accept that you feel this way, you will then let it go. When we push back on our anxiety, when we push back and say, “I can’t face it, I’m just going to do whatever,” we won’t let it go.

So I want you to face it, except it, get to the bottom of why that is there, then let it go, okay? A lot of the time I want you to realize that we procrastinate when we have anxiety, because we’re simply not facing something head on. So I’m asking you to face it head on. If you’re feeling uncomfortable about those hidden job market, feeling uncomfortable about networking and asking for jobs through networking, then it’s time to face the anxiety. And by facing it, you process the issue much faster and move it into a place of clarity and action. So get comfortable facing those artificial barriers and facing them head on. But it’s actually kind of a just a good thing to do all at the time. Whenever I realize I have anxiety about something, I now grab my journal and face it. And you know what? I let go of stuff so much quicker than I used to.

For those of you who know, I am indeed a recovering worrier, I used to worry about everything. That side of me is still there, but you know what I have now? I have a toolkit to manage it better to face it and to let things go. Okay, that’s all for today’s podcast. If you love this, then don’t forget that I’m live this week on Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday in the Leading Women in Tech Facebook group for 10 minute career top tips. I don’t normally do this. If some of the times aren’t confirmed because I’ll be posting around my client calls, but I will be in there, replays will be available. And of course, something else I haven’t told you about. There is a career Q&A one hour special in the Facebook group on Friday at 4:00 PM UK, 11:00 AM Eastern time, which is something crazy like 7:00 AM Pacific time. Join me, no actually 8:00 AM Pacific time if I remember correctly.

I would love for you to join me in the career Q&A. I would love for you to join me in the group for the live and submit your questions. I’ll pop the link to a thread in the show notes, or you can send me an email to [email protected], But I would love your questions and I would love for you to join me for the Q&A live on Friday. If you are in the job hunt, this is the place you need to be my love.

Finally, don’t forget. You can catch the show notes for today’s episode, including all those links I’ve been mentioning in your favorite podcast player or head over to tonicollis.com/episode8. Until next time as always, remember to stay on your tech leadership game, follow your dreams, because the world really does need that uniqueness that you bring.