359: The Hidden Job Market

Sep 17, 2025

Discover the concept of the hidden job market, where positions remain unadvertised and are often filled through personal connections. Learn how employee referrals, networking, and direct outreach can uncover these elusive opportunities. Estimates suggest that 70-80% of jobs fall into this category, emphasizing the importance of strategic networking and targeted approaches. Delve into practical tips for building relationships with recruiters and companies, ensuring you're not missing out on your dream job!

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INSIGHT

What The Hidden Job Market Is

The hidden job market consists of roles not publicly advertised through job boards or company pages.
These positions get filled by alternative channels like referrals, networking, and recruiters.

ADVICE

Leverage Employee Referrals

Use employee referrals by asking current contacts to recommend you to hiring teams.
Companies prefer referred candidates because they are known quantities and often come with referral bonuses.

ADVICE

Network Before You Need It

Build and maintain professional relationships before you need them, across industries and roles.
Networking creates introductions and informal opportunity alerts that bypass public job listings.

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Let’s talk about the Hidden Job Market, which I first covered in Episode #4.

What is the Hidden Job Market?

Let’s start with a definition: The “hidden job market” refers to job openings that are not publicly advertised through traditional channels like job boards, company career pages, or public job listings. Instead, these positions are filled through alternative methods, primarily including:

Employee Referrals: A company's current employees recommend candidates from their personal and professional networks.

Networking: Job seekers build relationships with professionals in their desired industry or at target companies, which can lead to informal announcements of opportunities or direct introductions to hiring managers.

Internal Promotions and Hires: A company fills a vacancy by promoting or moving a current employee into the new role.

Recruiters and Staffing Agencies: Companies work with specialized recruiters who have a network of pre-screened candidates and are often aware of positions before they become public.

Direct Outreach: A proactive job seeker reaches out to a company or a specific hiring manager to express interest and inquire about potential opportunities, even if no public job posting exists.

Companies often prefer to use the hidden job market to save on recruitment costs, reduce the time and resources spent sifting through a high volume of applications, and hire candidates from trusted, pre-vetted sources.

The most recent and commonly cited range is 70% to 80% of all available jobs. This means that a large majority of all new positions are filled without ever being advertised to the public.

Why aren’t some jobs advertised?

-An employer needs to confidentially replace an underperformer. They don’t want a gap between terminating the underperformer and hiring the new employee, so they are conducting a confidential search.

-The employer at a public company fears that news of hiring a critical role might hurt stock prices.

-The company doesn’t want to reveal plans for a new project or a new direction to the public.

-The employer wants to get referrals before, or instead of, publicizing the vacancy.

-The company is going to work through a third-party executive recruiter. In this situation, the executive recruiter will be doing the advertising (or using his/her network to recruit).

-The employer uses social media or other free means to advertise the position.

-There is a hiring freeze at the company, so they can’t publicize the position yet – but they are informally seeking candidates in the interim.

-The employer is very small and doesn’t have the time or financial resources to publicize the vacancy.

-The employer simply fails to publicize the vacancy.

While I have gone into the specific strategies for accessing the hidden job market in previous episodes, and will update those strategies in future episodes, here is a brief overview of some of the ways you can access these jobs.

Keep in mind that no one is intentionally keeping YOU, personally, from these opportunities. You can have just as much access to them as anyone if you work your network effectively.

The key is being proactive and strategic – building relationships and positioning yourself for opportunities that may not even exist yet.

1. Master Professional Networking

2. Leverage LinkedIn to Its Full Potential

3. Identify Your Target Employers

4. Develop Relationships with Recruiters

A final word on the hidden job market: Create a system for yourself in which your networking efforts constitute a low level, but consistent effort on your part. Ideally, you have built your network when the sun is shining for you, so that when the weather changes you can access an existing, vibrant network.

If you don’t start building your network until you need it, your climb will necessarily be much steeper. And if you let your network go fallow when you’re gainfully employed, it won’t be ready when you need it – and you will have missed many opportunities to help others and yourself in the interim.

The Document & Coaching Package is designed for current job seekers who want world-class marketing documents, a targeted, proactive job search strategy that gets results, and skill-building around how to network, interview, and negotiate compensation. To learn more or to schedule a consult, visit my website at https://theexclusivecareer.com/doccoach or email me at lesa@theexclusivecareer.com.