MOVE UP WITH HELP FROM YOUR FRIENDS

Research shows that most CVs end up in the bin. It's time to be more creative, writes BARBARA McCARTHY

JOB creation in Ireland is on the up but as anybody with experience of the market will confirm, most of the jobs being filled are never advertised. The world of work is not unlike a pyramid, says Richard Nelson Bolles, author of What Colour Is Your Parachute, the bestselling guide to job hunting and career changing.

“It’s a large structure, segmented by different job- hunting techniques,” Bolles said. “Employers start at the bottom of that pyramid. They try to fill vacancies by looking internally and hiring from within. Only after that do they go up the pyramid to other methods, such as contacts, employment agencies, unsolicited résumés and ads.”

Job hunters, he says, often take the opposite course. They start by mailing CVs and looking through advertisements. Only when they have exhausted that route do they move down the pyramid to the strategies that employers prefer. Randomly mailing out CVs to employers tends to be a waste of time. Only one job offer is made for every 1,500-1,700 resumes sent out in America, according to Bolles’s book. Answering ads in professional or trade journals can be just as fruitless. “That method also has only a 7% success rate,” he said.

Rowan Manahan of Fortify Services, a career management and outplacement company, agrees. “Employers generally look within the company first to see who is available,” said Manahan, the author of Where’s my Oasis? “After that they let it be known within their network that they are hiring.”

According to Manahan this network comprises of trusted friends, mentors, school and college friends, co-workers (past and present), previous employers, clients, family members, professional advisers, and lecturers. Further down the line, it can also include customers, suppliers, people you meet at seminars and courses, sporting buddies or mates at the local pub as well as professional and trade organisations related to their given field. Some jobseekers are reluctant to use their contacts fearing that they will be perceived by their new colleagues as incapable of finding a job on their own merits. They need have no fear on this score, according to Manahan.

“No employer is going to take on a sub-literate, incompetent clown just because he happens to be someone’s nephew,” he said. Once one has decided to be more creative, the question is how to go about finding jobs that have not been advertised.

Donald Asher, the author of The Overnight Job Change Strategy, says the only answer is to get out and meet people. “If you hide behind the internet, you may spend your entire life looking for a job,” Asher said. “You have to talk to people to find a job.” That means identifying the industry in which you would like to be involved, getting leads and contacting the company and finding out about possible vacancies.

Remember to use your network of contacts — everyone has one, although some are bigger than others. Anthropologists say we all have 30 people in our lives whom we trust and, if each of these trusted 30 has another 30, then we can have a network of up to 900 people.

So why does the employer look to his network first? According to Gallup International, the association of market research companies in almost 60 countries around the world, getting it wrong at hiring stage can cost the employer as much as 3.2 times the remuneration package. This includes wasted management time, loss of productivity and the hidden costs of low staff morale. That is why employers examine every branch on the grapevine so as to ensure that they are hiring a known quantity. They believe that a trusted company client is unlikely to recommend that they employ a layabout.

“Market forces are squeezing margins at the top end and the increasingly aware consumer is demanding improved services and quality. Employers cannot afford to pay over the odds,” said Manahan. More than half of Manahan’s executive-level clients gain entry into the jobs marketplace “through some level of personal contact”.

Seamus Considine, a partner at Amrop Hever, has had the same experience at his executive search firm. “More and more employers are less likely to use newspaper advertising in place of networking and other methods,” he said. “Up to 70% of people get senior level roles through methods other than advertising.” This does not mean you should ignore adverts, but rather you should not rely on them as your only source of information. To find the best candidates, clients often employ the services of an executive search company. “These can identify, select and recruit top level senior management,” Considine said.

Firms such as Amrop Hever present their clients with a list of options. “It is a very rigid process where we examine if the candidate will fit in with the culture and climate of the job,” he explained. “We examine both the behavioural and the technical aspects of the candidate.” Considine advises the jobseeker to have a strong understanding of his skills and look at these from an employer’s perspective. Also he suggests that people have a current CV in the top drawer and be aware of what is going on in the market place. “Jobs don’t just become available when someone retires, the majority of roles come about by organisational restructuring, mergers and acquisitions, business growth and new product opportunities,“ he said.

After that finding the best hidden job is down to luck. But remember the words of Oprah Winfrey: “Luck is a matter of preparation meeting opportunity.”

original article here