Beware the Phantom Job Listing

Jobs Go Unadvertised as Managers Rely on Their Own Contacts

John Nottingham says he was planning to hire a new design manager eventually. But when he heard a talented fellow alumnus of his design school was looking for a job, he wasted no time: He created an opening and hired the man right away.

Under normal circumstances, Mr. Nottingham, co-president of product design and engineering firm Nottingham Spirk, might have posted the opening on the Cleveland-based company's website or LinkedIn page. But in this case, he says, he couldn't afford to wait. "Someone good was available, and we just grabbed him," Mr. Nottingham says.

With the labor market remaining weak, such back-channel methods are becoming the rule, not the exception, when companies hire. Many open jobs are never advertised at all, or are posted only after a leading candidate—an internal applicant or someone else with an inside track—has been identified.

Sometimes, as in Mr. Nottingham's case, a hiring manager creates a new position ahead of schedule to accommodate a favored prospect.

While this "hidden" job market frustrates applicants, companies point out that it is perfectly legal to hire without advertising a job or to advertise one almost certain to be filled by an insider. They say internal hires generally perform better than external ones, at least initially, as research has shown.

Duncan Mathison, an outplacement executive and co-author of the 2009 book "Unlock the Hidden Job Market," concedes that anything hidden is difficult to measure but, by parsing labor statistics and recruiting surveys, he calculates that around 50% of positions are currently filled by informal means.

Even though federal labor rules don't require employers to post openings, human-resources departments at many companies require them to be listed on a job board or career site for some period, says Debra Feldman, an executive career consultant based in Greenwich, Conn.

Such postings are meant to make hiring fair and transparent, and may help to protect employers from discrimination lawsuits or audits by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.

But hiring managers frequently sidestep personnel requirements, forcing HR representatives to step in and "re-educate managers about the reasons for the policies," says Lynn Hutson, director of talent acquisition at Brookdale Senior Living Inc. in Brentwood, Tenn.

"We tell them we have resources to help them, and we can find them a bigger pool to draw from," she adds.

At a previous job, Ms. Hutson says, she sometimes warned hiring managers that the organization could lose federal grant money if they didn't recruit widely, and added that the established recruitment process occasionally turned up better prospects, especially when a manager's preferred candidate proved to be a bad fit.

Not all HR departments are willing to fight that fight, and not all managers want to sift through a pile of strangers' résumés. Nottingham Spirk's Mr. Nottingham says his 40-year-old firm has built up a reliable workforce mainly through word-of-mouth hiring. The company often recruits on the campus of Case Western Reserve University, where its offices are located. "We can go to a professor and say, 'Who's your best student?' " he says.

Some HR officers don't mind being bypassed. Tim Sackett, a former staffing director at Applebee's International Inc. who often had hundreds of openings to fill, says he was relieved when hiring managers chose not to involve him in recruiting.

The size of the so-called hidden job market fluctuates with the broader economy, according to Mr. Mathison. When the talent market is tight, companies must advertise to fill key positions, making more open jobs public. In a soft economy, however, companies do more "opportunity hiring," creating jobs specifically to lure or keep promising individuals, he says.

Using data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, Mr. Mathison calculated the difference between the number of jobs that employers said they hoped to fill in the following month and the number of employees they actually hired. When a company hired more employees than it officially estimated, he surmised that they were filling unadvertised positions. To that he added another 30% of all jobs filled to account for the number of advertised positions that ended up going to inside candidates.

"Managers are still looking for people and keeping track of the best talent," even when hiring is frozen; when jobs do open, companies already have a handy pool of candidates, Mr. Mathison says.

Fair or not, the practice irritates many job seekers, who feel shut out of companies and often don't know they are applying for phantom positions.

"You never get a fair opportunity to show what you have to offer," says Jo Ann Bullard, an HR specialist who was laid off in April by Orc Software. She says she has since applied for more than 500 jobs and has interviewed for several of them, only to later learn from HR contacts that those companies preferred to promote insiders.

It can be nearly impossible to know whether a posted job is real, Ms. Feldman says. She recommends staying current with people who work in a given company: they will be among the first to know when someone is being transferred to another division, or when a firm is building a new team for a product launch.

Sometimes, it is obvious when a listing refers to an all-but-filled position. Take, for instance, a recent posting for a head football coach at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, a Division I Big Ten school.

"There are probably four or five people in the country who would be considered for that job, and I doubt any one of them will hear about the job from the ad," says Mr. Sackett, the former HR manager, who is now president of HRU Technical Resources, an information-technology staffing agency in Lansing, Mich.

The university, which has a policy of posting ads for all openings, admits the ad was "a formality."

The eventual hire, former Utah State University head coach Gary Andersen, was recruited by the school's athletic director, says spokeswoman Amy Toburen.

via finance.yahoo.com

Comments

[Queer Geek]

This is nothing new. Big Fancy did that with a few positions where they considered someone else in mind for the position while quietly posting the job title online. It's sad these things happen but you keep pounding the pavement until some good comes along.

[Spritzy]

This happens a lot. Many companies require any jobs be posted as part of procedure even if they already have the individual chosen.

[Skittles]

This might not be a new practice but with a little logic we can see how it has brought us to the current economic circumstances. Clearly the most qualified people are not being hired, if they were then companies would not be under such economic distress. This hiring method is how you get the cronie system into place where only certain people get into positions of any real power or influence. Consider that in the great depression the root cause of all the financial strife was the dust bowl. Now try to find a root cause of financial strife with our current situation.

[Eviscerator]

Skittles, the great depression was triggered by a collapse in credit and banks loaning out more money than they actually had. The Dustbowl was a concurrent event caused by poor farming practices and exacerbated the poor economy. The Depression made the Dustbowl problems worse than they had to be, but the Dustbowl did not trigger the Depression.

[Diane]

This is how most jobs in the IT industry are handled. I have a job opening up in my department next August, and I've already alerted three of my students that it's coming and that I want to bring them in for an interview if they haven't found anything by then. I'll still let HR know, and we'll still advertise it, but unless someone extraordinary comes along it will probably go to one of my students.

[Nobody]

The worst part of this is that they advertise the job opening, review the applications, and do the interviews, and you travel hundreds of miles for an interview for a job that you never had a snowball's chance of getting because they already know who they're going to hire and it's not you. Why don't they just be honest about it!?

[Damn Yankee]

This just happened to me, less than a month ago in fact. The person chosen is indeed qualified, but the lack of transparency was frustrating to everyone that was hoping to interview for a promotion. Especially since Asshole had spent the last two months promising to let us know of opportunities to advance.

And he wonders why we don't trust him now.

[CoG]

Something similar happened to me, though in the opposite direction. A business owner came into our class looking to fill a position. A fellow classmate recommended me, saying that I was "the best in the class". I was flattered, and took the job. It was a bad fit for both me and the business. Imagine that.

[James]

Being in the IT industry I've had this happen to me aswell. To be honest I find this lack of transparency and waste of my time as complete horseshit. I seriously wish they would cut it with this shit.

[cheltenham_dude]

I've had this happen to me, back when I was at Uni and applying for jobs at a Supermarket (it was the chain that was taken over by Mr M for those in the UK) - I and two other applicants turned up dressed smartly (in my case Shirt, tie, smart trousers and shoes - a suit is useally overdoing it for checkout work) and on time. A fourth guy turned up in jeans (with holes in the knees), grubby t-shirt and trainer shoes, ten minutes late.

First off we did some basic testing (just simple maths to make sure we understood how discount vouchers, etc, worked on a very basic basis) - now at one point the HR person who had handed out the test sheets had to leave the room and this guy started asking us for the answers!

I have no idea what his interview was like, because his was after everyone elses - but about a week later, I got the standard rejection letter then went shopping at the supermarket in question and lo and behold, who were they trying to train on the tills but the dumbass who turned up late!!!

I actually did get a job at that supermarket about 6 months later when they were in the process of changing their practices and logo's over to Mr M - I actually found out at that stage that he had gotten hired because he was the HR manager's nephew (he actually got the boot about a month later) when a new store manager was rotated in (as per Mr M's standard practice where they rotate Store and Deputy Store Managers between stores every 18 - 24 months).

[Chicajojobe]

Agreed with The Eviscerator. The Dust Bowl was a drought that occurred during The Great Depression. It wasn't the cause of it!

[Nocturnesthesia]

I see nothing wrong with promoting people who already know their shit, and having new hires start at the bottom. It makes sense in many circumstances. What I don't get is why companies are forced to put up the charade of considering outsiders, they don't want to do it and applicants don't want to be jerked around, it's just fucking stupid. Really I wish more people still took apprentices. Not abusing unpaid interns for a few months and canning them when they get good enough to deserve payment, but real apprenticeships.

[The Last Archimedean]

Agree with Nocturnesthesia. If the job isn't actually open for outsiders, it shouldn't be posted. I'd rather not go through and apply for a job that the company knows they're not going to hire me for because I'm an outsider.

[Skittles]

@Eviscerator and Chicajojobe: That is up for debate. The thing you have to consider is what money really is. Money is a promisary note giving the holder the ability to trade it for services or goods(food, materials, and other physical items). The stock market crash that happened would have caused rescession but it would not have gained historical signifigance without actually having fewer available rescources.

[lisa]

way to dash everyone's hope of getting a job against the rocks hiring within the company shouldn't happen give outsiders a chance they could do the job just as well as people within the company with proper training this economy is in the toilet and a lot of people need jobs so give them jobs don't give people who already have jobs within the company another job its a complete waste of time to post a job interview only to tell the many people hoping to get it they aren't hired cause you already have an insider you are going to hire waste of time don't get anyone's hopes up

[Spritzy]

@cheltenham_dude I know it sounds moronic...but sometimes people can dress to well for an interview. If a person applying for a minimum wage position shows up in a suit and tie, the hiring manager may think that the applicant will want higher pay or more work hours than the company is willing to give and therefore will dismiss the applicant based on that presumption...it's wrong for them to do that...but it does happen.
But it seems that in the case of grubby guy, it was clearly an incident of nepotism.

[Boho]

It's all about who you know. That's why networking is so, so important. Colleges can train and teach you, but that won't help you find a job. You have to meet people and get your name out there.