What's hidden about the hidden job market? Part 1 of 2

Something should be worth what you pay for it. Beware the man who wears
no shoes, but who will sell you a pair. (Susan Tait)

The hidden job market doesn't bear as much resemblance to Poe's "The Purloined Letter" as it does to an urban legend. The amount of self-serving advice available about what you have to do, and who you have to pay, to "uncover" the hidden job market should encourage your critical thinking skills. Caveat emptor.

It's very hard to learn to perform a "Power Interview" if there isn't a job to interview for. It's difficult to see how to use "five recruiter secrets," which can't be secret since the "secrets" are in the public domain. It's nonsensical to pay $100, $400, or $650 to uncover a hidden job market if that market only exists in the minds of the people who profit from the concept of a hidden job market. Yet people we know of locally are asking us to do just that.

The meme of a hidden job market is easy to maintain with many people seeking jobs. It comes as no surprise that some unemployed people with plausible backgrounds in HR, consulting, recruiting, and sales have turned to offering classes and seminars to other unemployed people. The problem with this dynamic is that it bears no relationship to the actual creation of jobs. Says Shawna Turner-Rice, a project manager, "There's lots of ways to separate the unemployed from their money." 

The unemployed have money? Who knew? Tell them that "you get what you pay for." What can't you sell desperate people if the packaging plays on their desperation and it's priced plausibly?

The notion of a hidden job market is attractive because it unites two cherished conceits: that jobs will be created if you're special enough, and that people will hire people they know and like. It's a little like assuming faith healing works if you only have faith enough, and if it doesn't, well, you didn't have enough faith. You'll get a job if you're special enough, and if someone likes you enough.

Notice that this makes the job search all about you, and not about the economics of structuring a position. If you don't get a job, you didn't try hard enough or long enough.

It's not that there's nothing good to say about the hidden job market meme:

1. It gives hope, for a time, to individuals.
2. It fuels social events and encourages healthy mixing of people who didn't know each other before, and helps break up clubs and cliques.

Three Common Problems with Purveyors of the "Hidden Job Market"

The problem is that the entire networking show becomes a game of acquiring shallow new contacts without actually creating new job opportunities. An analysis of eleven locally available outplacement and career transition services yielded three common elements:

• Exclusive focus on resumes, interviewing, social networking, and volunteering--all ways to increase contacts
• Nothing on locating funded opportunities--that is, real jobs.
• Web-only services featured the poorest advice (blasting resumes to thousands of companies, encouraging applicants to send unsolicited resumes "personal and confidential" to executives, sending articles to people you don't know in the hopes of cultivating a relationship) and the least service---which would make them the most profitable

Next: Hidden jobs are hidden for a reason; how to tell a good seller of outplacement services from a snake oil salesperson

Upcoming: New diagnoses from the DSM-IT