Find Work You Love

finding jobs in the hidden job market

Good news! If you have worked through the CFT Career Mastery Program steps, you have already completed about 80% of what you need to do to market yourself effectively and find work you love! You have focused your job search by identifying key aspects of your unique design and comparing job options with your design. Specifically, you have:

  • Developed an understanding of your transferable skills, personal skills, and content skills;
  • Identified your Holland code;
  • Determined which jobs use your favorite skills and are of most interest to you;
  • Decided which job option fits you best; and,
  • Set strategic goals and action plans for your future.

The CFT Career Mastery Program features the critical steps to “showcase” your skills in your resume and other marketing tools, as well as in interviews and salary negotiations. Your job focus will enable you to find openings in both the advertised and the “hidden” (or unadvertised) job market.

Many people search for a job, hoping to find something they like without knowing what they are looking to find. The CFT Career Mastery Program will focus on how you can find the right job openings for you and market yourself strategically in your job search campaign. You can become one of the 5% of job hunters who efficiently and effectively obtain the job they want. Are you ready to learn the best strategies for finding and getting your desired job?

Use this page as your jumping-off point for finding work you love.

1. Focus on a job target.

Find one or two job targets–that is, job titles–that fit you best and focus your job search on them. Being focused in your job search will help you to write a better resume with the right keywords, search for jobs more effectively because you will only be looking for specific jobs, allow your contacts to help you find jobs, and help you interview more effectively because you know what type of work you want to be doing.

2. Analyze the typical job requirements for your job target.

Through “Discovering Your Career Matches,” you have already learned about many requirements for your job target(s). Using the O*NET job descriptions and conducting informational interviews, you know many transferable, personal, and content skills are needed. An additional step before preparing marketing materials is to analyze advertised jobs to identify consistent skills you want to include in your marketing materials. Learn to analyze jobs of interest.

3. Develop quantified skill statements for your job target.

Quantifying your skills (whether transferable, personal, or content skills) means giving examples of how you have successfully used key skills and demonstrating how your experience will transfer to the current job opening. Quantifying your skill statements means describing how you have used your skills using numbers, dollars, and percentages. Here is an example of a customer service representative: “Maintained a customer satisfaction rating above 95% through prompt resolution of inquiries, resulting in a 20% increase in positive customer feedback within the first six months of employment.”

Studies have found that a major reason for extended unemployment is that 80% of job applicants cannot prove their top ten skills for the job they are applying for. In other words, they cannot communicate effectively to an employer that they can do the job! Learn how to develop your quantified skill statements.

4. Develop Your “Big Six” Branding & Marketing Tools

You will use your quantified skill statements to develop your “big six” marketing tools, which will help you connect with employers, get interviews, and ultimately receive a job offer! These “big six” marketing tools will prepare you to conduct an effective job search and market yourself to your clients and customers. The “big six” marketing tools are:

  • Targeted resume (According to The Ladders research, recruiters spend an average of “six seconds before they make the initial ‘fit or no fit’ decision” on candidates. Learn how to make your resume stand out and showcase how your skills meet the employer’s needs.)
  • Strengths summary, a.k.a. “elevator pitch” (Many employers decide about job candidates within the first 30 seconds to two minutes of meeting them. One of the most strategic things you can do to make a good first impression is to develop a “commercial,” about 30 seconds in length, about what you can do for an employer. Here’s how to create yours.)
  • Targeted cover letter (According to a survey by the professional staffing service Robert Half, 91% of executives polled said cover letters are valuable when evaluating job candidates. Learn how to develop a cover letter that makes you stand out.)
  • LinkedIn profile (Also known as Resume 2.0, LinkedIn.com can be your online resume and a vital tool in your job search process, which we will look at later. According to top recruiting research company Jobvite, 94% of recruiters use LinkedIn to find qualified candidates. Learn how to develop and maximize the impact of your profile.
  • Personal contact letter (William Frank, the author of 200 Letters For Job Hunters, says, “Fifty to seventy-five percent of good jobs come from friends and acquaintances—and from their friends and acquaintances—by word of mouth. The higher the level of the job, the more that rule applies. At the senior executive and professional level, for example, as many as 90 percent of good jobs come through personal friends.” The personal contact letter is a cover letter that lets your friends and acquaintances become involved in your job search. Learn more and develop your own personal contact letter.
  • Direct employer contact letter (A direct employer contact letter is used to tap into the hidden, or unadvertised, job market where up to 85% of jobs are located. This type of cover letter is written to the hiring manager of a company for a job that has not been advertised and/or may not currently be available. In step five, you will learn how to effectively use this letter to tap into the hidden job market. Develop your direct employer contact letter.)

5. Develop a job search action plan for the “unadvertised” job market.

While 95% of job hunters rely on the advertised job market to find employment, only 15-20% of the available jobs are advertised on job boards. As you can imagine, only using the advertised job market makes the job search process frustrating and slow. Not only is there only a small percentage of actual job openings listed, but applicants will find more intense competition because of the large number of job hunters searching online job boards. Some job hunters even give up their search for a particular job because they either see no openings on job boards for that type of work or they get no responses to the resumes they have sent.

Most jobs available at any given time are found in the “hidden” or unadvertised job market. The jobs are “unadvertised” or “hidden” because they are filled without employers advertising them on the Internet or in other “formal” ways. Finding these jobs involves a more proactive and strategic approach. Job seekers find out about job openings through developing personal contacts and contacting employers directly (whether or not an employer is advertising job openings). Phone calls, referrals, and interviews are the keys. This market is more challenging but yields much more fulfilling and rewarding work. Here are the steps for tapping into the “hidden” job market.

6. Develop a job search strategy action plan for the advertised job market.

While the Internet is a valuable resource, only a relatively small percentage of people obtain jobs through Internet job postings. Employers may receive hundreds of responses to a job posting, and most job hunters (approximately 95%) utilize Internet job boards as their primary job search tool, so the competition is keen. You do not, therefore, want Internet job boards to be your only job search strategy. Having said that, however, jobs advertised on the Internet are organized and easy to access. Many job listing websites also allow you to set up “alerts” so that new jobs matching what you are seeking are emailed to you. Here are some of the best websites for finding jobs online.

7. Set up a job search organization plan.

An effective job search plan can reduce the time needed to find work you love by 50-75%. Here are resources and worksheets to help you reduce your job search time in half.

8. Master the key interviewing skills that lead to more job offers.

The “Big Six” marketing tools aim to obtain job interviews. An interview is defined as any time you talk by phone or in person with the person who has the power to hire you (or at least influence the person who has the power to hire you.)

One of your goals in an interview is to give the employer an accurate picture of how well you can perform the job you are interviewing for. You can emphasize your transferable, personal, and content skills that would allow you to meet the employer’s needs. The quantified skill statements and the Strength Summary you developed in the steps above will enable you to prove to an employer that you can meet their needs.

One candidate often gets the job over others because of slight communication differences. Here, you will find interviewing strategies for better understanding the interview process, frequently asked interview questions and how to answer them, questions you can use to screen employers, the “dos and don’ts” of effective interviewing, and much more.

9. Learn the secrets of salary negotiations.

Many job applicants are unprepared when asked salary questions during an interview. Poor answers to money questions can cost the applicant the job or, if hired, being paid thousands of dollars less than the employer would have been willing to pay. These steps will prepare you to negotiate your salary like a pro!

10. Have a system for following up with employers, recruiters, and personal contacts.

It is important to be gently persistent in your job search. This means always following up after any contact with an employer, recruiter, or personal contact to whom you have sent a resume, email, snail letter, or called on the phone. You can use your Microsoft Outlook account to schedule follow-ups or online sites like StarWire.com.

11. Develop a Support System

A job search has exciting moments, such as when you make a great contact, are called for an interview, or receive a job offer. However, job hunting also has its challenges. At times, you might find yourself feeling discouraged. After all, change is seldom easy.

In times of increased challenge, you need increased support to stay motivated. Support can come from many sources: professional career coaches, friends, and family; a “buddy” with whom you regularly talk about your job search; leisure activities to renew your body, mind, and spirit; and spiritual practices. Your job search can be a season of personal and professional growth that bolsters your confidence in your abilities to reach your career and life goals.

Here are the steps for setting up a support system to overcome job search challenges.

Balancing Challenge and Support

12. Be Persistent!

Persistence is known as the top trait of a successful job hunter. The job search strategies in the previous steps will work well with persistence. Many job hunters have given up because of discouragement. Job search work is hard even when using all the best marketing tools and strategies. The higher your job level and salary, the longer it takes to find the right job.

Tom Jackson describes the job search as looking like this: “NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO YES!” This description should be encouraging because: 1) Everyone will hear NOs during a job search. Don’t take it personally. 2) Every NO is getting you closer to hearing a YES if you use the best marketing tools and job search strategies. 3) If you want to hear more YESes, work on hearing more NOs faster.

The strategies above are a proven track to run on. Be persistent, and you will find work that you love to do!