75 percent of jobs are never advertised. So how can you find these gigs? Better yet, how can you get hired for them?
Career coach Nimish Thakkar offers three strategies that have worked for job seekers. In some cases, the jobs they got didn’t even exist before they were hired.
1. Don’t be afraid to cold call. Max Smith, a recent graduate with a Master’s in Healthcare Administration, essentially pestered his way into a Pharmacoeconomics (Health Outcomes Research) Fellowship at a company that had never considered applicants who weren’t Pharm.D. or Ph.D. candidates. His secret? Doing his homework. He carefully prepared scripts and presentations showing how his background would add to the diversity of the program.
2. Network. Stella had a job in search engine marketing at a company, but wanted a job as an affiliate marketing manager — one that didn’t exist at her firm when she started talking to people. Using her connections, she identified the need for the role, put together a proposal, and successfully pitched it as her new job.
3. Talk to their wallets. One of Thakkar’s clients, Amanda, was certain that her prospective employers would be better off to hire someone to do a job that was traditionally outsourced to consultants. The key to her proposal was a cost-benefit analysis. (Proving once again that money is the way to any organization’s heart.)
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(Photo Credit: Dani P.L./Flickr)
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