[blindlaw] Wall Street Journal Article of note

[Daniel McBride]

Ross:

Thanks for the article.  I would like to add that private firms are not
alone in this practice.  I know of situations at city, county and state
levels of government wherein positions are newly created by the government,
and the eventual hire was determined prior to the particular government
bodyeven voting to create same.


-----Original Message-----
From: blindlaw [mailto:blindlaw-bounces at nfbnet.org] On Behalf Of Ross Doerr
Sent: Sunday, January 13, 2013 12:53 PM
To: NFBnet Blind Law Mailing List
Subject: [blindlaw] Wall Street Journal Article of note

In view of past discussions on the list regarding job seekers and
frustrations, I thought this Wall Street Journal Article might be of intrest
to the list as a whole.
***
Beware the Phantom Job Listing 

Jobs Go Unadvertised as Managers Rely on Their Own Contacts.

By LAUREN WEBER and LESLIE KWOH

Note: A version of this article appeared January 9, 2013, on page B1 in the
U.S. edition of The Wall Street Journal, with the headline: Beware the
Phantom Job Listing.

 

Why do companies post open jobs only after a hire has been identified, or
skip posting altogether? The practice is legal and ubiquitous, but
frustrating for job-seekers, who don't realize they're applying for phantom
positions.

John Nottingham says he was planning to hire a new design manager
eventually. But when he heard a talented fellow alumnus of his design school
was looking for a job, he wasted no time: He created an opening and hired
the man right away.

Under normal circumstances, Mr. Nottingham, co-president of product design
and engineering firm Nottingham Spirk, might have posted the opening on the
Cleveland-based company's website or LinkedIn page. But in this case, he
says, he couldn't afford to wait. "Someone good was available, and we just
grabbed him," Mr. Nottingham says.

"Even when you're happy in your job, you should always be making new
connections," says executive-career consultant Debra Feldman.

It may be tough for outsiders to crack the hidden job market, but job
seekers can find ways to get on the inside track. Some strategies:

Make coffee and lunch dates. Reach out regularly to managers from other
departments for lunch or coffee, even if you're not in the market for a new
position, advises executive-career consultant Debra Feldman. When it's time
to make a move-or if your department unexpectedly downsizes-you'll already
be on their radar. "Even when you're happy in your job, you should always be
making new connections," Ms. Feldman says.

Put your goals in writing. Duncan Mathison, co-author of "Unlock the Hidden
Job Market," recommends creating a list of the jobs that might best utilize
your skills, the kinds of companies you'd excel at, and the type of manager
you prefer. This "targeted opportunity profile" will help identify the
organizations and people that are key to getting a desired job, he says.

Get candid with the boss. In line for a promotion? The only sure way to find
out is by checking in with your manager, Ms. Feldman says. You could be
waiting for the position above you to open up - only to discover that
management is eyeing someone else for that spot.

Seek out hiring managers. Attend events likely to attract key contacts in
your field, such as panel discussions about topical issues and popular happy
hours. "A lot of people make the mistake of just showing up at a networking
event and meeting with other unemployed people," says Mr. Mathison.

With the labor market remaining weak, such back-channel methods are becoming
the rule, not the exception, when companies hire. Many open jobs are never
advertised at all, or are posted only after a leading candidate-an internal
applicant or someone else with an inside track-has been identified.
Sometimes, as in Mr. Nottingham's case, a hiring manager creates a new
position ahead of schedule to accommodate a favored prospect.

While this "hidden" job market frustrates applicants, companies point out
that it is perfectly legal to hire without advertising a job or to advertise
one almost certain to be filled by an insider. They say internal hires
generally perform better than external ones, at least initially, as research
has shown. 

Duncan Mathison, an outplacement executive and co-author of the 2009 book
"Unlock the Hidden Job Market," concedes that anything hidden is difficult
to measure but, by parsing labor statistics and recruiting surveys, he
calculates that around 50% of positions are currently filled on an informal
basis.

Even though federal labor rules don't require employers to post openings,
human-resources departments at many companies require them to be listed on a
job board or career site for some period, says Debra Feldman, an executive
career consultant based in Greenwich, Conn. Such postings are meant to make
hiring fair and transparent, and may help to protect employers from
discrimination lawsuits or audits by the Equal Employment Opportunity
Commission.

But hiring managers frequently sidestep personnel requirements, forcing HR
representatives to step in and "re-educate managers about the reasons for
the policies," says Lynn Hutson, director of talent acquisition at Brookdale
Senior Living Inc. BKD +2.16%in Brentwood, Tenn. "We tell them we have
resources to help them, and we can find them a bigger pool to draw from."

Learn More & Interact

Have a question for Duncan Mathison about finding unlisted opportunities?
Tweet it using #hiddenjobs and look for answers at WSJ.com/AtWork. 

.At a previous job, Ms. Hutson says she sometimes warned hiring managers
that the organization could lose federal grant money if they didn't recruit
widely, and added that the established recruitment process occasionally
turned up better prospects, especially when a manager's preferred candidate
proved to be a bad fit.

Not all HR departments are willing to fight that fight, and not all managers
want to sift through a pile of strangers' résumés. Nottingham Spirk's Mr.
Nottingham says his 40-year-old firm has built up a reliable workforce
mainly through word-of-mouth hiring. The company often recruits on the
campus of Case Western Reserve University, where its offices are located.
"We can go to a professor and say, 'Who's your best student?' " he says.

Some HR officers don't mind being bypassed. Tim Sackett, a former staffing
director at Applebee's International Inc. who often had hundreds of openings
to fill, says he was relieved when hiring managers chose not to involve him
in recruiting. 

The size of the so-called hidden job market fluctuates with the broader
economy, according to Mr. Mathison. When the talent market is tight,
companies must advertise to fill key positions, making more open jobs
public. In a soft economy, however, companies do more "opportunity hiring,"
creating jobs specifically to lure or keep promising individuals, he says.

 

Using data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, Mr. Mathison calculated the
difference between the number of jobs that employers said they hoped to fill
in the following month and the number of employees they actually hired. When
a company hired more employees than it officially estimated, he surmised
that they were filling unadvertised positions. To that he added another 30%
of all jobs filled to account for the number of advertised positions that
ended up going to inside candidates.

"Managers are still looking for people and keeping track of the best
talent," even when hiring is frozen; when jobs do open, companies already
have a handy pool of candidates, Mr. Mathison says.

Fair or not, the practice irritates many job seekers, who feel shut out of
companies and often don't know they are applying for phantom positions.

"You never get a fair opportunity to show what you have to offer," says Jo
Ann Bullard, an HR specialist who was laid off in April by Orc Software. She
says she has since applied for more than 500 jobs and has interviewed for
several of them, only to later learn from HR contacts that those companies
preferred to promote insiders. 

It can be nearly impossible to know whether a posted job is real, Ms.
Feldman says. She recommends staying current with people who work in a given
company: they will be among the first to know when someone is being
transferred to another division, or when a firm is building a new team for a
product launch.

Sometimes, it is obvious when a listing refers to an all-but-filled
position. Take, for instance, a recent posting for a head football coach at
the University of Wisconsin-Madison, a Division I Big Ten school.

"There are probably four or five people in the country who would be
considered for that job, and I doubt any one of them will hear about the job
from the ad," says Mr. Sackett, now president of HRU Technical Resources, an
information-technology staffing agency in Lansing, Mich. 

 

The university, which has a policy of posting ads for all openings, admits
the ad was "a formality." The eventual hire, former Utah State University
head coach Gary Andersen, was recruited by the school's athletic director,
says spokeswoman Amy Toburen.
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