Cost of Living4:37Tapping into the hidden job market
When Rose Asgharzadeh moved to Calgary in 2023, she wasn’t worried about finding a job. Her 14 years of experience teaching human resources at a university in Iran made her a literal expert on finding a job.
But after 500 applications on LinkedIn and Indeed — mostly to corporate HR departments — Asgharzadeh had received virtually no response, apart from a little feedback that she lacked Canadian job experience, or was overqualified due to her PhD.
“It was very frustrating and very disappointing,” Asgharzadeh told Cost of Living. “So what should I do? Should I delete my PhD from my resume?”
Asgharzadeh took courses and workshops to boost her knowledge of the Canadian human resources landscape. She’d spend five or six hours daily scouring jobs posts, tailoring her resume and applying to around 10 positions each day.
But it wasn’t until she pivoted to in-person networking, going on a whopping 79 coffee meetups, that she landed a job.
Asgharzadeh stumbled upon an important and somewhat surprising truth about the labour market: Even in a world where online job applications appear to be the norm, it still takes in-person networking to reveal a significant portion of the opportunities.
While there’s no definitive data on the subject, some estimates and surveys have suggested the “hidden” job market” may account for anywhere between 50 and 70 per cent of all positions.
Employers try ‘lots of different methods’
Brendon Bernard, senior economist for job site Indeed Canada, says it’s hard to quantify exactly, but data from Statistics Canada’s job vacancy and wage survey provide some helpful insights.
For every vacancy reported from the survey’s representative sample of all industries, employers are asked to select all their methods used to fill that role.
In the third quarter of 2024, the most recent for which data is available, online job boards were selected the most often, at 79.8 per cent. But just behind were personal contacts, referrals and informal networks, at 72.5 per cent.
Company websites and social media were the third and fourth most popular.
“It’s clear that companies are trying lots of different methods,” said Bernard.
April Dyrda, a registered psychologist and career coach with Canada Career Counselling, says if you’re only applying for jobs online, you could be missing out.
“One of the tips that we always recommend is for every one job application you submit online, try to make two genuine curious connections outside of that,” said Dyrda, who lives in Calgary. That can mean letting your network know you’re looking for work in a particular field, she said, reaching out to individuals you know in that industry to ask if they know of opportunities, or approaching new people for coffee chats, like Asgharzadeh did.
Pushing past discomfort
Asgharzadeh said she was initially uncomfortable about reaching out to people to chat. Still, she made herself message hundreds of strangers on LinkedIn who worked in her field.
She’d introduce herself, outline her experience, and say she was new to Canada and eager to learn the ropes here. If someone said they were too busy one month but open to meeting the next, Asgharzadeh would note that in an Excel spreadsheet and follow up accordingly.
“It took half of my day getting dressed, being ready, taking a bus or whatever, going and finding that place, meeting someone and coming back.”
On some days she’d have two or three coffee chats: “It was very energy-consuming, very time-consuming,” she said.
But those meetings eventually led to three job offers.
Why some jobs aren’t posted
There are many reasons why employers may not list every job opportunity online, says Cheryl Nakamoto, managing partner of McNeill Nakamoto Recruitment Group in Vancouver.
If it’s a small organization with a tiny HR department, “they may not post, just because they can’t keep up,” said Nakamoto.
And in a tighter labour market, like the one we’re in now, hiring managers are more likely to be inundated with applications, she said. They may try to avoid that situation through more focused recruitment efforts or word-of-mouth recommendations.
There can also be confidentiality issues at play. If a staff member is about to get laid off, says Nakamoto, “they don’t want to alert, within the company, that there’s this position coming up.”
Then there’s the pay transparency piece.
More provinces are passing legislation requiring companies to include salary ranges with job postings, a move advocates say can help close the pay gap. Hiring without posting is a way to get around that, Nakamoto says.
Nakamoto recommends that job seekers also reach out to recruiters as part of their networking efforts, because they’re in the know about upcoming opportunities.
The networking grind eventually paid off for Asgharzadeh, who still vividly recalls how she felt when she got an offer for an assistant professor role at Mount Royal University last summer.
“I cannot express my feeling in words because I was on the cloud in the sky.”
Asked what advice she has for others, Asgharzadeh stressed the importance of staying focused on the end game.
“I know how frustrating and overwhelming it is,” she said. “But the point is that you have a goal and you need to go and get it…. Don’t let anything stop you.”
There is one thing she has stopped, though: “I don’t drink coffee anymore.”
