Member-only story
COVID has hit me and my family hard. I was retrenched in the middle of last year and I have been looking for a job since. I am not young and, being rather senior in my industry, I must say that it is near impossible for me to find a similar job. Companies would rather promote from within. I am just thankful that I received eight weeks of redundancy pay.
Since my retrenchment, I have literally sent out 5 resumes a day. That works out to more than 250 job applications in the past 10 months, and I only succeeded in getting three interviews. After each interview, I was left with the impression that the employers already had somebody in mind and that meeting candidates was just a show to let people know that they have found their “ideal’ candidate.
Stressed, puzzled, and desperate, I spoke with friends in the HR industry and they told me about the “hidden job market.” In this “market,” jobs are filled even before they are advertised — just like what I experienced during my three job interviews. What usually happens is that before a job is made public (and sometimes before it even exists), someone other than HR knows about it. It could be a new position being created due to restructuring, or a vacancy due to a colleague’s resignation. The HR department hasn’t even started recruiting, but a contact knows that you would be a perfect match for the…
