Hidden Job Market: Ask for, Prepare for, Conduct, and Follow-up from Exploratory Meetings

Learn how to use the hidden job market to land a better new job sooner. While Ivy Exec culls the very best job postings for you, most jobs are never posted, and someone lands them – why not you?  Get specific techniques, tools, and templates to land meetings with potential hiring managers and turn one of them into a job offer.

A.  Ask for Exploratory meetings

1.    Using the methods you learned in Step II: Selecting your best target market, find 3-4 people at the hiring manager level in the department you want at the organizations you want (the people to whom the job you want reports to are considered “hiring managers” whether or not they have openings right now.) Online research sites such as LinkedIn, company websites, and industry association directories (and perhaps offline networking) are the best methods.

Tool: LinkedIn webinar.

2.   Try to find a connection to each person to make it easier to get the meeting. (My LinkedIn webinar covers this process.)

3.   Ask for in-person exploratory meeting wherever possible

a.    Write out an “other-centered”, ”target-specific” and “work-centered” reason why you want to meet them.
b.    Either using a connection or “cold”, use recommended email templates or telephone scripts to request a meeting and in-person meeting
c.    If you are local or will be traveling to the location, push a bit for an in-person if they suggest a phone call.

B.  Prepare for Exploratory meetings

1.   Prepare questions for you to ask them about both the job and the organizational structure (the latter are almost like “org chart” questions). Purpose is explore the hiring manager’s organization, personal work, work of the team, and his/her and team’s current work needs and pain points. As a result:

•  Manager will really like you because you listened so well and seemed to really “get” him/her and the business.
•  You will have a deep understanding of the business and what the manager needs and wants
•  You will know if you are a fit for the group’s needs.
a. If not, you should ask for an introduction to a manager in another part of the organization.
b. If you are a fit, you will know everything you need to know to start to make the manager want to hire you if/when he or she can.

2.   Research hiring manager, company, department, and job.

1. Organizations’ Business/Funding Model

•         What are its products or services?

•         What are its short- and long-term goals?

•         Who are its customers?

•         What is the client life cycle?

•         How and how much do they pay?

2. Hiring Manager – Background and Role

•         Study the hiring manager’s LinkedIn profile in detail and read more than one page of Google results

•         Continuously learn about your desired boss’s role in the organization

•       Who is his/her boss(s) and other internal clients?

•       What are his/her job responsibilities other than the ones you will be taking on?

•       What are his/her biggest challenges?

•       What milestones would lead to dramatic success for him or her?

3. Rest of Department’s Roles

                    Work to completely understand the hiring manager’s entire organization, and the department you will be leading (to the degree that you could draw an organizational                                           chart).

•         Who else/what other areas does desired boss manage?

•         What are each team member’s job responsibilities?

•         Does team have the right mix of skills?

•         What are the biggest challenges in the group?

•         What is the workload like?

4. Your Desired Position/Work

                Completely understand the work done in your desired role:

1.    What are the exact day-to-day job responsibilities?

2.    What are the big cyclical projects?

3.    What performance milestones would lead to a big bonus or promotion?

4.    What contact is there with other departments?

5.    What contact is there with external clients?

5.    Keep Focus on Them

•         When interviewing with a hiring manager you should talk 1/3 – 1/2 of the time, mainly in the second half

•         Try to postpone lengthy answers until you’ve gotten them talking about their priorities.

•         Never talk for more than a minute without pausing so they can redirect

•         Try to end answers with a reference to them or a question for them

•         Understand their needs

•         Act like an employee – talk to them about their work, not about your career aspirations

•         A good interview feels like an idea-generating, problem-solving meeting between two professionals who aren’t working together yet, but should be

Why such a focus on the work?

Try a Variety of Questions

•         What’s going well with the ecommerce initiative?

•         To help me understand your role, what milestones are you tasked with meeting in the area of ecommerce?

•         If you had carte blanche to add an additional ecommerce executive, what are three key things you’d like the new hire to accomplish?

•         How would you define a successful launch?

•         Demonstrate expertise & amplify their awareness of a “labor gap” via specific questions

•         What you want to do is actually amplify (increase) their awareness of their unmet needs

•         In other words, delve into the problems you’ve learned about to get them more unhappy with the status quo of not having you on the team!

3.   Write out job/company-specific questions to ask hiring managers and internal and external and answers to likely interview questions from them.
4.   Practice answering and asking questions these questions and set up and participate in company-specific mock interviews and filmed mock interviews as needed.

General Tips

Continuously to learn everything about the business model, hiring manager, department, and the job/work you would want to do for them.

• Before each meeting, write out all the questions you can’t answer and bring them to the meeting

• Use each meeting to fill in the blanks

• After each meeting, do more research as part of your follow-up and bring new questions to the next meeting

C. Conduct Exploratory meetings

Ask Specific Questions

·         Keeps the hiring manager doing most of the talking

•         Keeps the focus on the work they need done

•         Detailed questions show your knowledge of the function and industry

•         We tend to like those who listen to us

•         Our own work is more interesting to us than the work someone else did elsewhere

•         Asking technical questions shows your expertise without bragging or boring your listener

“Labor Gap” – Too Much Work

•         Are you confident about launching by March with only a team of X?

•         What kind of hours has the team been working? How is their morale? What about the management team?

•         How has your employee retention been throughout this process?

•         Do you feel like you have sufficient resources for the launch? Do you have the time to keep making sure you do?

“Labor Gap” – Specific Projects and Risks

•         How are things going with the server capacity testing?

▫          Does your team have the bandwidth to manage this?

▫          If you’re using a vendor, are you pleased with it?

•         Do you feel like you have the ideal payment solutions set up and sufficiently tested? Who’s leading that?

•         Do you have a marketing project plan to modulate demand as well as capacity? Do you think one would help?

“Labor Gap” – Lost Opportunities

•         How much additional monthly profit might the ecommerce site bring in if launched successfully?

•         How much revenue do you estimate Zara has gained from their US ecommerce sales?

•         Do you think you’ll lose sales to Uniglo assuming they get back online soon?

•         What was your first thought when you heard that Uniglo’s site had gone down?  :)

•         Maintain likeability with all decision makers

Display unwavering positivity

•         never say anything negative about anything to do with you, even the weather!

•         Smile as much as possible

•         When you do answer a question, begin each answer with a broad-based, positive statement conveying positive emotion about the subject of your answer

•         Demonstrate your value proposition to each decision maker

•         Talk about your background and successes only in a way that match the interviewer’s or company’s key needs.

•         Finish each answer by bringing it back to them and their needs and/or by asking them a question.

D. Follow up from Exploratory meetings:

1. First email:

a.    thank them
b.    summarize, in detail, your understanding of their work needs/main points. Do not write more than a sentence about yourself or how you’re the answer to those problems (and put this near the end of the email).
c.    suggest next steps, such as you meeting with their boss or colleague.
d.    Send them something helpful if you can think of anything, and offer to be of help to them.

2. Second email

a.     if next steps aren’t in process:

•  Suggest or remind them of next steps, such as another meeting/call with them or their boss or colleague.
•  If the next step is a meeting with someone else, include a draft of an introduction email about you, from them, to their colleague.
•  Send them something helpful if you can think of anything, and offer to be of help to them.

b.    if next steps are in process:

•  Update them about your progress, such as telling them about your meeting(s) with their boss or colleague(s).
•  Send them something helpful if you can think of anything, and offer to be of help to them.

3. Third email

a. update them when you land at a new job and thank them.
b. end them something helpful if you can think of anything, and offer to be of help to them.