Penetrating the Job Market Successfully
Assuming that you now have or soon will have an excellent resume and action letters, how do you use them to your best advantage? Answering help-wanted ads is one way. Additionally, it is important to let everyone you know-friends, relatives, neighbors, and business associates whom you trust-that you are seeking a new employment opportunity. Remember that personnel agencies and executive search firms (15 percent) and job advertisements (15 percent) represent only 30 percent of all job openings at any one time. Unless you are not in a hurry to change jobs, to switch successfully in the least amount of time it is necessary to have a strategy to reach the 70 percent of the job market that never advertises, the "hidden" job market.
Where does this "hidden" job market come from? It comes from constant change. Just as a river is constantly flowing, depositing silt, changing its width and even its course, so do organizations change. The manpower of any organization is always in a state of flux. People leave through resignations, retirements, firings, illness, leaves of absence, or death. Correspondingly, this means that organizations hire all the time. A late 1981 survey reported that in the manufacturing sector of our economy there is a 4 percent employee turnover each month. This means that in a period of only two years and one month the work force of an entire industry completely turns over.
This constant change in the workplace generates jobs in the hidden job market, where your action letters can generate job interviews for you.
Cold-Canvassing: Reaching the Hidden Job Market. Of the different strategies for finding a job, cold-canvassing with an action letter offers the greatest potential for success. There are two reasons for this view: You can go after 70 percent of all existing but unadvertised job openings (this greatly increases your prospects for a successful switch); over the last ten years it has become quite evident that the direct-mail, action-letter approach to changing careers is the single most effective technique available. It is the only method that allows you to separate yourself from the great majority of people, who rely solely on the resume approach.
A word of caution, however, about the cold-canvass technique. In the years ahead, the use of word processors and mailing lists is expected to become more widespread. So states the Wall Street Journal, "Resume Floodtide Posing Problems in Job Market," February 24, 1981. In the unsettled decade of the 1980s, large numbers of job hunters will turn to word processors as a means of canvassing the entire world! To distinguish yourself from this growing herd, avoid this "canned" approach by using the P-A-R format and by remembering the importance of re-canvassing your mailing lists.
Employment Agencies and Executive Search Firms
Employment agencies can be a double-edged sword. They work either for you or against you, depending on how you use or abuse them. The most productive way to take advantage of the services provided by employment agencies is to take an active rather than a passive role. This means: do your homework. Prepare several want-ad analyses to help define your career goals, create your reference resume in P-A-R format as a way of illustrating the breadth of your background and experience, and develop several specialized resumes in P-A-R format. The latter would be adjusted to reflect interviews the employment counselor hopes to send you to. By developing these materials in advance of your initial visits to employment agencies, you will be better able to explain your background and work experience both verbally and on paper. Coming across to employment counselors as a knowledgeable job applicant is the best way of convincing them of your qualifications.
If you are trying to make a radical change from teaching to training or social work to public relations, for example, employment agencies won't do much, if anything, for you. Most agency representatives work on commission or on a draw against their future commissions. If they interview twenty-five people a week, they will rank these twenty-five in order of most placeable to least placeable. If you are not working in the private sector (business), and all their job openings are in the private sector, they will select only those three or four candidates of the twenty-five who have business experience and ignore you, your calls, and your letters. It is difficult to place someone who wants to switch careers. You know that from trying it yourself. Companies all want to hire people with experience similar to the job they have open. And, since they will pay a fee to the employment agency, they expect the agency representatives will not go out on a limb for a stranger (you) if pushing you for an interview could mutilate their meal ticket. The same holds true for executive search firms, only more so. They will never try to help you switch from one career to another or even help you move up if you are staying in the same field. They are on contractual arrangements with their clients and paid before and during a search. They are not at all inclined to help you. They find their own candidates; candidates do not go to them for help. Executive search firms handle mostly jobs that pay in excess of $30,000. At these salaries, where the client organization pays 30 percent (or more) plus expenses to the search firms, they demand very specifically experienced people from very narrowly defined industries. Executive search firms are used to filling difficult and, often, politically sensitive positions.
Questions Frequently Asked about a Job Campaign
1. Should I delegate mundane aspects of the job hunt, such as typing and researching employers, to others?
NO! Maintain complete control over your job campaign; do not delegate any part of it, including typing (unless you cannot type) to others. This applies particularly to those of you who are between jobs. Doing all aspects of the job campaign can be very therapeutic. It will provide you with a sense of purpose at a time when your self-esteem may not be as high as you'd wish.
2. Is there value to reading trade publications in your area of specialty?
YES! Besides usually listing employment opportunities, these publications contain articles on companies that are expanding their product lines and services. Companies love to trumpet their accomplishments in the trade press. This will give you a head start on most of your competition.
3. Why should I send my action letter to the president or chief executive officer; aren't they too busy to read my letter?
NOT TRUE. In most cases, your letter will be read and you will receive a personal response (even if it's done through a subordinate). One of the rights a high-ranking executive retains is the right to read his or her own mail. People who have made it to the executive suite got there by learning to delegate well. Throughout their careers they have usually delegated everything, with two exceptions: the right to hire and fire, and the right to go through their own mail. So, send your action letter to the people who head organizations you wish to work for or to the person who could be your boss (such as the national sales manager, director of human resources, or the controller).
4. Should I send my action letter to the Human Resources Department (Personnel) or the personnel director?
NO! Avoid the Human Resources Department, if possible, unless you're seeking a position in it. Since the final hiring decision is seldom made there for other areas, send your action letter to the president, or chief operating officer, or the person who could hire you. These are the people who approve the creation of new jobs or the filling of existing ones.
