The hidden job market has been touted as the place to go if you want to find the best jobs. It’s been said that this sector of the job market accounts for seventy-five percent of all the job openings out there. If that is true, then what we see in the classifieds and on the Internet job sites account for only twenty-five percent of all job openings. So the question becomes, is the hidden job market a myth or does it truly exist? The hidden, or unadvertised, job market does exist, and can be located. When a company advertises a job opening in the classifieds and on the various job sites, it takes three to four months for that position to be filled. Since companies lose money every day a position remains open, advertising a job opening is seen by many as a non-viable approach. Roughly seventy-five percent of all job openings are therefore unadvertised, which means you will not see them posted on any of the job sites. You will not be aware of their existence. They are indeed hidden opportunities. It is absolutely worth your effort to find these opportunities. Companies have learned to search for viable candidates using three fundamental strategies other than advertising: networking, using recruiters, and probing the job sites. So how can you take advantage of these approaches to tap the hidden job market? Networking isn't an approach exclusive to hiring companies. You, too, can engage in networking with all the people you know. As an extremely powerful strategy accounting for roughly 80% of all job fills, networking allows you to get in doors that would otherwise be impossible to enter. You can network your way into potential opportunities that can turn into the right job created just for you. Networking is one of the best ways to tap the hidden job market! Screening and reviewing hundreds of resumes for accuracy and position viability is time-consuming. When the job-required personality doesn’t materialize at the interview, more time is wasted. For this reason, more and more employers turn to recruiters for a more efficient hiring process. A recruiter uses exhaustive screening procedures as part of their candidate search process. They charge a fee to the employer for this service, but it is worth it in terms of time and effort. Recruiters utilizing keyword searches scour the top job sites in search of candidates to fill their unadvertised job openings. Recruiters will find you as long as your resume is a match to the qualifications of the position they need to fill. So one of the best ways to capitalize on a recruiter’s mission, and to indirectly tap the hidden job market, is to post your resume to the top career sites. It's a simple yet powerfully effective way to avail yourself of all the unadvertised positions out there, and take your job search to a whole new level.

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