Many people approach the job market as if most openings were filled as follows. First, an organization identifies a need for new or replacement personnel. Then, through careful analysis of both current and forecasted needs, the organization creates a job description. Next, an expert in human resources, in consultation with line managers, goes over the description and determines what skills, knowledge, personal characteristics, and experience the position requires. Afterwards, a posting is created and circulated widely inside and outside of the organization so that a large number of qualified candidates learn of the opening and apply for the position. Finally, by careful weeding according to known principles, the best qualified individuals are invited for interviews and a selection is made, once again based on criteria that are well defined and against which each candidate is carefully weighed.
The above scenario accurately portrays reality in only a small number of large organizations. In most organizations, systematic selection procedures take a back seat to plain old "knowing the right people." The confirmation hearings for Clarence Thomas's appointment to the Supreme Court revealed just how important inside connections are in the actual hiring processes of most organizations. Even at the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), where we might expect jobs to be awarded based on the systematic, relatively bias free procedures described in the above paragraph, getting work seems to depend largely on having an avenue to insiders. Mr. Thomas was selected to head the EEOC by President Bush, both of whom graduated from Yale Law School. Thomas in turn selected Anita Hill, also a Yale Law School graduate, to be his special assistant, and when he left the EEOC, his replacement was a Yale Law School graduate. Getting good work depends largely on exploiting your connections if only because you will be competing against other job seekers exploiting theirs.
In addition, your strategy should take into account the fact that jobs are now being created most rapidly in small to midsize organizations. Smaller organizations are less likely than larger ones to have powerful personnel offices and formal policies for meeting their human resources requirements. Instead, they are more likely to depend on word of mouth to spread news of their personnel needs and to depend on personal recommendations in selecting from a field of candidates.
Your strategy for finding work should reflect the fact that matching people and jobs is a far from systematic process in the United States and that the most desirable positions go to searchers who have established relationships with people inside targeted organizations. The better able you are to establish yourself as a known quantity who will fit well with other employees of an organization, the more likely you are to be chosen to fill an opening or to work on a project.
Simply finding out which organizations have needs that you can fill often requires inside information contacts with people who know a target organization well enough to help you identify problems that you could help the organization solve or opportunities that you could help it exploit. People with this kind of inside information may be vendors, clients, competitors, or government officials with regulatory responsibilities, as well as people currently employed by an organization. Thus, your strategy for finding work should focus on creating opportunities to meet and talk with as many potential sources of inside information as possible.
According to authorities on hiring in the United States, only a fraction of the openings for managers and professionals ever find their way into public advertisements or listings. In fact, many vacancies are never even posted internally. What's more, many openings that are widely advertised are not really open because they are earmarked for a friend, relative, or political ally of someone with hiring authority. Organizations spend millions of dollars annually on recruiting programs, head hunting firms, affirmative action plans, advertising of vacant positions, and training to teach managers how to select employees. With all this investment in locating and placing personnel, you might expect the process of matching people and positions to be scientific: you might think top managements have evolved a set of guidelines for objectively defining their personnel needs and determining who best suits them. Nothing could be further from the truth.
