Why Employers Have Trouble Filling Open Positions – and How to Take Advantage

…and why the previous strategy I posted on how to successfully use the Internet to land a job works so well. 

 
 
First Things First, Stop Being Afraid.
 
Ignore everything  you hear on TV about the decline of employment. 
 
Stop buying into the fear, all it does is discourage you from trying and believing that any effort at all would just be a waste of energy. Not True.
 
What if I told you that a large majority of employers actually have trouble filling open positions, and that job openings will often sit unfilled and hidden from most potential candidates for up to 6 months to a year? The more technical the role and more specific skill set required, the more true this is. There are jobs out there right now that you could be landing interviews for that are right underneath your and the competition’s nose. 

 

Industry job recruiters rarely have the network and experience to know where to look to find qualified candidates. HR representatives and recruiters tend to be office based employees that handle large volumes of paperwork, sort out conflict between employees, and handle the hiring process. They are outsiders to the industry.
 
It is most likely painfully obvious to you where you would go to find people to fill roles for your industry and you can probably list several names right off the top of your head of people that are looking for employment, this is insider information that you have accumulated during your time working. Recruiters have not spent time in your actual feild, they spent time moving paper.  They are not privy to this information, and the ones at their company that do, are too busy focusing on the demands of their day job to do anything useful with it to fill openings. 
 

Recruiters want to do everything in their power to fill any openings before having to resort to going to a major career site such as career builder, monster, and indeed. The minute a job is posted to one of these sites, recruiters  become extremely overwhelmed with the sheer number of responses that come in. Think of an extremly attractive girl on an online dating website, but worse. Much much worse. 

 
Second: Take Advantage 
 
 This gives you, the job seeker, a huge opportunity to take advantage of. 
 
The gap that is created by the lack of insider knowledge in the hands of the company employee in charge of advertising open positions means that a high percentage of job openings stay unfilled for a long time and are kept out of major job searches. 
 
 
 
 
The typically process goes something like this:
 
  1. The opening is advertised internally 
  2. Are there any internal candidates to fill this position?  
  3. The opening gets posted to the company website
  4. Are there any recommendations from existing employees? resumes sent in for friends and family
  5. Opening sits on company website for a pre-determined set of time usually 6 months to a year and is never found by hopeful candidates. 
  6. Opening gets sent to a mass career website. 
 
Third: Take Action 
 
 
The correct attitude to have to take advantage of this scenario is to realize that at any given time, for what ever skill set you have, there exists an employer that is hopelessly trying to hire someone like you and even pay more than your last job.  It is simply a numbers game. 
 
Out of the hundreds of thousand employers in your field, there will always exist one that is looking for YOU.  You can’t find them because you don’t know how to look (See my previous post: 10 Steps to Sucessfully Find a Job Using the Internet) They can’t find you because recruiters lack the insider knowledge to know the right rocks to turn over to find you. 
You need to strike as soon as you can from the moment an opening is posted to a company website.
 
After an opening has gone stale and unfilled, it will inevitably get pushed to one of the mass job websites, an online black hole of resumes. And when that happens,  good luck trying to be the lucky sperm to fertilize that egg. 
 
 
 
Now go after them before they get there.
 
Post any experience you have ever had in this manner down below, we would absolutely love to hear from you.