Hidden Job Market: Work Your "Warm Contacts" to Find a Great Job - Fast!Here's how to access the hidden job market quickly and effectively to greatly ease and accelerate your job search. Make a list of everyone you know, anyone you have met at least once in the past and that you can get the contact information for – absolutely everyone! This could take a while. :-) Include a variety of people on your list. You may even want to include people who you don’t know the name of, but who you nevertheless talk to regularly such as your bus driver, grocery clerk, convenience store cashier, barber or hairstylist and bank teller. Hidden Job Market: Contact Former Employers Be sure to include former employers on this list as well - people often forget this. Call former employers that you are on good terms with and let them know that you are looking for work. If they need someone, they may re-hire you on the spot! Why? Because they know you already. They know the quality of your work and it is a low-risk decision to re-hire you. Hidden Job Market: Call Everyone and Introduce Yourself Again Call everyone up to share your introductory statement with them. Even your best friend may think differently about you and your job search when you share your introductory statement and talk about how skilled you are and show how focused you are about finding a job in a particular occupation or niche. Perhaps you haven't really shared this much before with the people around you. Now's the time to let them know! Also, you’ll be talking in a very professional yet natural manner about what skills and services you offer to employers rather than just saying, “Hey you, I need a job!” :-) Hidden Job Market: What Questions to Ask Your Warm Contacts Ask people if you can meet with them in person to talk about it. In-person meetings are much more effective than phone or internet communication, even with people you’ve known for years. Ask them if they know of any unadvertised jobs or postings, or opportunities through the hidden job market. Ask them about advertised postings as well that you may not have come across yet. Ask them about volunteer opportunities, especially ones that are applicable to your field. Why volunteering? Because volunteer work, whether in your field or outside of it, is another great way to expand your network of warm contacts. Find out about upcoming open houses, special events and other group activities through which they could introduce you, in person, to important new networking contacts. Ask them what else they suggest for you, and really seriously consider all of the ideas you get from them. Ask them about other people you could meet from their contact list, and ask them to set up the in-person meetings with those people for you. If your primary warm contacts say they are too busy to meet with you or take much time to help you right now, ask if they can give you the names, work phone numbers and email addresses of three relevant new contacts. Hidden Job Market: Calling Your Secondary Contacts When you call these secondary contacts, you can simply mention that your friend or acquaintance referred you to them, and you're off to the races. For these secondary contacts, if you're still fairly new to your career and are meeting with someone who works in the same field, one option is to set up the meeting as an informational interview. Otherwise, you want to ask them the same sort of basic networking questions that you asked your primary contacts. Hidden Job Market: Meet In Person Whenever Possible In-person contact is always preferred, but contact by phone or email still counts and can easily result in a hot job lead. You could meet the new contact on your own, or all three of you (you, your primary warm contact and your secondary referred contact) could get together to talk about any unadvertised jobs as well as your shared job search and career interests. So you arrange in-person meetings, first with your networking contact, and then with the new person that they link you with. This new contact might me an employer or someone who works in your occupational field of interest. Once you've met with them, they become a warm contact and you start the whole process over with them, including requesting new contacts that you can meet with and turn into even more warm contacts! Hidden Job Market: Repeat, Repeat and Repeat ... Until You Win! You repeat this very same process over and over again, meeting your new networking contacts in person and in turn asking them for information about unadvertised jobs and for referrals to new networking contacts from their contact list, and so on ... until you find a job. Keep meeting with people, even if they’re not directly connected to your dream job. Keep connecting with people. Remember the “6 degrees of separation” rule: which may not be exactly true but is at least true in essence or spirit: each of us is connected to everyone else on this planet by 6 degrees of separation or less – in other words, 6 warm contact networking referrals. Hidden Job Market: Make Your Life Easier Through Focusing on Your Warm Contacts! Creating in-person meetings through your warm contacts and getting linked up from one person to another through relationships of trust is one of many great approaches you can use in your job search, especially if your online job search is simply not working. Warm contact networking is an important part of everyone’s overall job search strategy. Take advantage of these relationships of trust to get direct referrals – powerful recommendations from your networking contacts to eager employers who can offer you the job you want now!
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