Uncover the ‘hidden’ jobs market

Garreth Hanley:
This is INTHEBLACK, a leadership strategy and business podcast brought to you by CPA Australia. Hello and welcome to another episode of INTHEBLACK’s Career Hacks, I'm Garreth Hanley. In this series, we bring you the latest strategies and tips to help you supercharge your career.

Today, we're speaking with Richard Triggs about the hidden job market. Richard is an executive search and recruitment specialist who has perfected the art of uncovering hidden jobs. He's the founder of Arete Executive, where he spends his days helping people find their dream job. And he's the author of ‘Uncover The Hidden Job Market: How to find your next senior executive role’ and ‘Winning The War For Talent: How to attract and retain top performers’. Welcome to the podcast, Richard. It's great to have you with us.

Richard Triggs:
Thank you, wonderful to be here. And as we said earlier, this conversation has been a while in the coming, so it's excellent to finally have the opportunity to have a chat to you.

Garreth Hanley:
Thanks, Richard. Richard, there's currently around 240,000 jobs listed on Workforce Australia and around 8000, I think it was 7800, of those are accounting and finance roles. What is the size of the hidden job market in Australia, and where are these jobs hiding?

Richard Triggs:
When I refer to a hidden job, what I'm talking about is an employer sees somebody who can solve a problem or take away their pain, and they hire them even if there isn't a job. So, probably less than 20% of the roles available are actually advertised. These are roles that are never advertised, they're never given to a recruiter, they're never in the open job market. They are simply employers being reactive and hiring top talent as it comes to their attention, so I think it's probably impossible to put a number on it except to say that it would be, in my opinion, at least 80% of actual roles that are available at any one time.

Garreth Hanley:
So you're saying that those jobs that are advertised only account for 20% of the job market?

Richard Triggs:
Yes.

Garreth Hanley:
Wow, have these ten jobs always been there?

Richard Triggs:
For sure, the example I use the day I turned 15, I got my little CV because that was the first day you were allowed to work legally in Queensland and I went to Westfield Indooroopilly, and I walked up and down and I walked into a few different shops and I walked into Woolworths and I said, “Can I have a job please?” and they said, “Yes when you start, tomorrow?” So, nothing has really changed here, all that’s changed is that one of the wonderful things about LinkedIn is that it gives you very direct access to your employers of choice.

So, in the past, let's say for example, I was wanting to work for the CFO of Rio Tinto, I might have to think “Who do I know that might know somebody that might know that person?”, whereas now what I'm able to do is to find them directly on LinkedIn, reach out to them and send them a message saying, “Can I have a 15 minutes of your time to have a chat to you?” Obviously, there's a bit more involved, which we can either talk about in this podcast or people can read my book.

And so, you can immediately and directly access those employers of choice that you never could before, which has sped up the process of people being able to get out there and make approaches to their employers of choice. But fundamentally this is the way that jobs have traditionally been filled. Recruitment is a more recent phenomenon than what has been hiring practice in the past.

Garreth Hanley:
I'm aware of the ‘get resume and go and knock on doors’ system. How would somebody find the hidden jobs using these newer tools like LinkedIn? And how long might it take someone to do this?

Richard Triggs:
What I suggest people do is to start to think about who are your employers of choice. And within those organisations, who is the key decision maker that would decide whether or not you were hired and then to start a process of reaching out to them. My recommendation is that if you've took an hour of your day, and in that hour, you identified 3 employers of choice, you reached out to them, you asked them for a meeting, and you did that every day, that's 15 per week. That should result in two to three meetings per week. That should result in my experience in somebody achieving a new job within a maximum of 12 weeks.

I've had people find CFO and other very senior finance roles far more quickly than that, but typically it comes down to the volume of activity that you're prepared to do. It really is a case of, what I suggest, if you're interested in a finance role at Rio Tinto, you would not reach out to HR because Human Resources are only tactically focused on the vacancies that they currently have in front of them. So, unless they have a vacancy, an open market vacancy that suits you, they probably won't give you much, if any, attention.

So, you're reaching out to the strategic leader, the person who has their focus on their team. Do I have people who are retiring, who are moving into other roles, do I have special projects coming up, do I have people that need to be terminated, etcetera, etcetera. So, you're reaching out to your relevant line manager. And so, in this instance, the CFO of Rio Tinto and when you reach out to them, say to them, “Hi, I'm hoping you can help me please” we love to help people “I'm hoping you can offer me some advice” people love to offer advice. “I'm starting to consider my next career move; I'd love to have a chat to you about the market and where you think the right opportunities might be for me.

In the first instance, can we have a 15-minute call on Zoom or Teams?”. So, you're not asking them “do you have a job” but you're saying will you help me by offering me some advice. And whereas when I wrote my book back in 2015, I said, “can I buy you a cup of coffee?” Well, people don't do that anymore and it's a big commitment to in terms of time. But most people have 15-minutes on Zoom or Teams. So “can I have this meeting with you?” And you start to ask them questions about their business, they will start to talk to you about their pain points, or what I say, “What's keeping you awake at night? What's the pebble in your shoe?” And if you can demonstrate to them that you can solve those problems for them, they will hire you. Now of course, this is a numbers game, So what I suggest to people is reaching out to three a day.

If you put your entire attention on, I must have a job at Rio Tinto, they may simply just not have a job available at that time. But if you're reaching out three a day, three a day, three a day, three day, etcetera. You're getting out there. You're meeting some great people. They may not have a job, but they may be able to refer you to a job. But typically, I find, and I've coached literally thousands of people through this process now, that if somebody is doing it consistently and proactively, they are generally easily finding a new job within 12 weeks.

Garreth Hanley:
Some great templates there Richard, I noticed that you had some of those in your book as well, and we will leave links in the show notes to resources for people as well. So, if anyone listening does want to look for more resources, just check the show notes. You said you've coached thousands of people through that. Are people generally hesitant to start doing this have you found, and what's the block?

Richard Triggs:
Yes. That's an excellent question. I would say. So firstly, just going back on previous point you made, if anybody would like a free copy of my book, you just need to go to my website and download it for free. I'm not here today to sell books. Of course, if you want to buy a hard copy of it on Amazon, you go for it. But if you're happy with the PDF version. That you can get it for free. I would say, since the book first came out in 2015, I have probably sold or given away at least 15,000 copies of this book.

I would say of those 15,000 people who have read the book, assuming that they have all read their books, a very, very small percentage of people actually do it. How do I know this? Because they ring me up three months later, “Oh, Richard. I read your book and it was so good and you know, I updated my CV, and I updated my LinkedIn profile” and I say to them, “How are you going in terms of reaching out to your employees of choice?” and they typically say, “I'm not doing it” and when I asked them why they might come up with all kinds of excuses.

But the reality is they're either too lazy or they're too egotistical or most likely, they're too scared of rejection and a lot of people in your profession, CPAs and accountants and so on, they by nature are a little more introverted. But the reality is there is a war for talent. These employers want to hire you. They can't hire you if they don't know who you are. And if they can hire you directly, then in some instances they're going to be saving tens of thousands of dollars in recruitment fees. So, it is absolutely in their interest to meet you. So, a lot of this hesitation or reservation from candidates from a fear of rejection, just start to get into a habit every day, three a day, three a day, three day and you'll start to see these people respond.

You'll start to have meetings you'll enjoy. Having these meetings because, apart from anything else, it's just a nice person meeting another nice person. And so, it's like any new habit it might take you a little while to find your feet and build up that resilience necessary to do it. But once you start doing it and realising how easy it is, it becomes a fun thing to do.

Garreth Hanley:
I was going to ask you about the skills that are required. I think you might have just gone through some of those and personality type, maybe it's more suited to extroverted people, but introverted people maybe just need to practise, is that right?

Richard Triggs:
Yeah, and if you need to, practice with a friend or practice with your partner or practice talking into the mirror. But the thing about it is that if you follow the structure, you're saying to somebody, “will you help me please?” Well, I love helping people and I would say 99% of people love helping people. So, you're not being a telemarketer. You'll send them a message. “Will you help me, please? I'd love some advice from you. Can you give me 15 minutes of your time?” It's not hard, and it doesn't require you to be the world's greatest salesperson. You're just asking for help and that's it.

Garreth Hanley:
Sounds like setting up the process is the most important thing.

Richard Triggs:
It is definitely, I find regularly people will read my book and then they will say I'm not getting any people who are responding positively to my messages. And then I asked, “well, what message are you sending?” And they say “I'm sending you a message saying have you got a job?” There's a very clear reason for why I suggest not to do that which we've already got into. So I think you're right, it does come Garreth down to getting a process right. And then the other thing is not getting “paralysis by analysis” where a person might say I want to come up with my list of 200 top employers before I start. It's just three a day, and then the next day another three and then the next day another three.

And what often happens is at the beginning, people will think, “I don't know who my employers of choice are”. Well, one of the best ways to find that out is to reach out and to talk to these people and ask them, “where do you think the right opportunities might be for me”, “oh, have you considered XYZ companies”. Reading magazines such as the magazines that you produce with CPAs? Going to CPA events and talking to other Members and asking their opinions? So there's many, many ways to start to build out. A list of employers of choice, but don't wait until you've got a conclusive list before you start. You know that I was saying how do you eat an elephant? One bite at.

Garreth Hanley:
A time. It's the same way you walk a mile and step at a time.

Richard Triggs:
That's right, I need to do that more often.

Garreth Hanley:
Is your LinkedIn profile as important, or maybe more important now, than your CV?

Richard Triggs:
Well, I think firstly, I think they're both still very important. If you are going through a traditional recruitment process, they will ask you for your CV. So it's very important that you have a good CV. One of the most important things with your CV, there's a sales expression it's called you sell the sizzle, not the steak, right. So, a lot of people have CV and quite frankly, really boring ‘I was a management accountant for this company I led a team of 12 and we did finance stuff’. okay, what makes you sexy, why are you exciting, why do I want to interview you? It comes down to your key achievement. It might be I introduced a new ERP system, or it might be that we reduced our number of days to produce our financial reporting from 15 days post end of month to three, or whatever it is.

For each of your jobs think back on them and think, what did I achieve there that makes me, to use a very Aussie expression, “why would I hang my hat on and say, this is why I'm bloody good at my job” and that is how you sell yourself. So your CV should definitely have that information. Now the thing about with your LinkedIn is that you can literally cut and paste that information from your CV into your LinkedIn profile. Most people's LinkedIn profiles are literally just a summary of my career history to date. Pretty boring, right? There's a marketing term. It's called zero moment of truth.

So if I use the example, let's say I'm going to buy a new car. I might before I go to the car yard and see the car, which is my first moment of truth by zero moment of truth is all the research that I do online, you know, the articles I read, the reviews that I look at, etcetera, etcetera. Well, in this context, your LinkedIn profile is your zero moment of your truth. If a recruiter is head hunting, they don't have your CV. They are head hunting you based on what they see on your LinkedIn profile. If a employer of choice is making a decision about whether they will meet and talk to you often they won't have your CV, so they're making a decision based on what's on your LinkedIn profile.

And then of course, not only is your LinkedIn profile being viewed from a recruitment point of view, but all prospective future employers, employees, strategic alliance partners, suppliers, customers, your lending profile really there's to just sell you. Why am I awesome? Why would somebody want to talk to me? And it comes down again to one of those key achievements and transferable skills that I have which make me different and more appealing to others in the market. You still need to have a chronology of your career history, and in each job. These were my core responsibilities; I led a team of 15 it's a responsibility it's not an achievement, I reduced staff turnover by 47 percent is an achievement, I was responsible for completing end of month financials is a responsibility,

I was able to reduce that from 15 days to three days is an achievement. So especially for your more recent jobs, let's say within the last 10 years, depending on how ancient you are, like me being 56. Under each role, you should have three or four key responsibilities three or four key achievements, it's not instead of, it's as well as. It's the same thing with the hidden job market, I'm not telling people don't talk to recruiters or don't apply for jobs. Of course, you should still do that. You should just not only do that.

Garreth Hanley:
Are there any myths about CVs that you're seeing all the time that are worth busting?

Richard Triggs:
Yeah, there are loads, there are certain CV experts that would say you should limit your CV to two pages. Well, as far as I'm concerned, your CV needs to be long enough to sell you. for most people who have been a professional for at least some time, their CV is probably going to be 4 to 6 pages long and there is nothing wrong with that, OK. If it's 26 pages long, then maybe it's a bit long, but you have to be able to sell yourself. It's very difficult to sell yourself in two pages.

What is true, however, is that a CV typically will probably get about 15 seconds consideration. So, if I'm recruiting a CEO role, as I currently am, and I've had 197 applicants, I need to be able to see very quickly whether that CV is worthy of further consideration or they get the dreaded “thanks, but no thanks”. So definitely on the first page of your CV you would have your contact information, you would have your qualifications and you would have a career summary table.

And then in subsequent pages you would go into more detail. Are there any other rules about perfect CV? Don't worry about making it look all beautiful and pretty and text boxes and all of these things don't get too stressed out about it must be beautifully written, 8 out of 10 is enough. All your CV has to do is to get you to the meeting. It doesn't have to be perfect. I would say 98% of people, if not 99% people can write a good enough CV without paying somebody to do it for them.

There are excellent guides on the Internet, there's information in my book, but most people should be able to sit down and write a really good quality three-to-six-page CV relatively easily, but remember to put in those key achievements. In relation to cover letters, I have been an executive recruiter now for over 20 years but I never ever read them, ever. So unless an ad calls specifically for a covering letter, I would not bother wasting my time writing one. But of course, if the ad says, we want a covering letter, then then you would do one in that instance.

Garreth Hanley:
Thanks, Richard. You also advise that people in interviews ask about problems, so it's a very similar idea to have the problems that you've solved on your LinkedIn and your CV.

Richard Triggs:
What I suggest in interview is that the candidate, once they've built an amount of rapport but quite early in the piece, the candidate finds the right opportunity to ask a question, “if we were doing my performance review in 12 months’ time, what would I have needed to achieve in that period for you to be delighted that you employed me?”. And to typically try and get three or four key deliverables. So they might say, “OK well in the first three months we need to investigate and acquire a new ERP system, and then another challenge we have is our accounting team currently are very siloed from the rest of the business, and we need to build better relationships across the other teams”.

If you can try and find a minimum of three to four of these key deliverables, then that gives you the opportunity to use those key deliverables as a what I call a hook to hang your key achievement on. You say, “OK great, let me tell you when I've done that before”. I talk about star stories, STAR – what was the Situation, what was I Tasked with, what Actions did I undertake and what were the Results? But basically, what you want to understand, and I'm sure most people listening to this are both candidates and employers at the same time, is that employers want to hire people who've done it before, they've done it well and they're motivated to do it again. So as a candidate, what you need to demonstrate is that you've done it before.

You can't demonstrate unless you understand what they want, and the reality is most position descriptions are just motherhood statements – Oh, we want somebody to run the team and do it well, hopefully with this kind of background, but they don't actually talk about the key deliverables. Every job has its own unique key deliverables, even if it's the same, well in the same organisation being recruited at two different times. At one point, what the person they recruited, the key deliverables in three years’ time, the new person might be in many ways very different. And the other thing to understand most employers are terrible at interviewing and they don't know how to interview, they don't go to interview school.

That's why I've written my second book, because I'm trying to teach the employer how to be better at interviewing. But as this is a podcast aimed at candidates by you saying to them, what do you want me to do? What would you like me to achieve? The thing about that also, is that they might say something that they want you to achieve, and you don't want do that. That's a great way very early in the piece to make a decision about, “Am I actually interested in this job?” Everybody has things that keep them up at night. They have pebbles in their shoe that need to be solved. As a candidate, it is your job to solve those. So, solving those, you can't know what to solve until they tell you what needs solving.

Garreth Hanley:
And also looking for those things to solve when you're contacting people.

Richard Triggs:
Yeah, it's the same thing in the hidden job market you go, you meet, and once you start the conversation, you build some rapport with that person. You say, “if you don't mind me asking, what's keeping you awake at night and what's the pebble in your shoe?” and probably say we've got this project and or we've got this particular challenge or whatever it might be. And then if you say to them, “if I could help you to solve that problem, would that be valuable?”

And they say “oh, Garreth, if you could help me to solve that problem, that would be absolutely amazing” and you say “excellent, let me tell you when I've done it before”. That is how you get these hidden job market opportunities because you're getting in front of somebody. Solving problems and taking away people's pain is what they want. If you can demonstrate that through your key achievements and transferable skills, whether that's in an interview scenario or in a, “can I have 15 minutes just to ask your advice about the market?” scenario. That is how you find these opportunities.

Garreth Hanley:
Thank you so much, Richard. Thanks for sharing your insights into the hidden job market for us today. I think you've really pulled back the curtain on some things for our listeners.

Richard Triggs:
Well, I appreciate it and certainly once again, we've done a very quick summary of a book that I've written that you can easily access for free through our company website. Please feel free. To do that. And if we can be of any further assistance to you, we would love to hear from you. We'd love to hear your success stories and I wish everybody all the best in their job search.

Garreth Hanley:
Thanks, Richard. It was really great talking and thank you for listening to INTHEBLACK career hacks for more great career content. Please check the show notes for links to CPA Australia and Richard's career resources until next time. Thanks for listening.