Job Development in a Recession With the fears of and the potential reality of a recession, management and job developers need to examine their employment strategies and job development techniques to ensure they can still get jobs for their candidates as the North American economy worsens. Job development in a recession requires that we acknowledge both some old and new truths about employment. The first is the distinction between the open and hidden job markets. You may know that the open job market accounts for a maximum of 20% of all jobs and is open because jobs are advertised in public venues like newspapers, internet, or public signs and therefore available to anyone who chooses to apply. In the open job market there is a lot of competition in normal economies, but in a recession, competition can significantly intensify as the numbers of jobs in the open market declines. This is disastrous for people with visible employment barriers. They get compared to many lesser, equal or better-qualified people without visible employment barriers. Their visible barrier identifies them and excludes them. Comparison is always happening in job development strategies that focus on the open market regardless of the economy. Comparison to other applicants is not effective for us in good economies and much worse in bad economies. Negative comparisons to others make job developers feel what they represent is inferior to what is available in the market place. Job developers can become more reluctant to place the visibly barriered candidates, believing they will lose the competitions. This job developer loss of confidence in the candidates is demoralizing in good or poor economies. In a recession it builds a great lack of enthusiasm in the task, making everyone think finding jobs is impossible. No one will hire from us so why bother even trying to find jobs. Job development techniques and employment strategies become illusions of trying to get jobs when in reality the job developers have given up. This becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy of continued unemployment, based in the assumed reality that there are better candidates and too few jobs. This emerging recession scenario is a catastrophe for someone with a visible employment barrier wanting to go to work. The internalization of negative employer feedback, and consequent decreased energy put into solving the organization and the candidate's employment needs, happens even in good economies. It is exponentially worse in a recession. Organizations give up on employment and feel justified in doing so. In a recession, retaining and supporting the job developer's confidence that job placement is possible is crucial to sustaining effort. As there are so many more negative responses, the job developer needs to not give up before reaching the yes hidden in so many nos. If a belief grows that there are no jobs and the job development effort is useless, job developers will exit or stop going out. Both are big trouble for the employment organization. In a good job market, job developer confidence can be bolstered by chance success; in a bad market chance success produces very little. Now let's understand the hidden job market. The hidden job market contains jobs, which never come to public attention. This market accounts for 80% or more of all jobs and has the greatest variety of jobs. With higher unemployment and the job market decline, where are the hidden job market jobs coming from during a recession? They are not coming from new business or business expansion (it may happen to a small degree) but from jobs that are in transition. Jobs in transition are the jobs that come available everyday, regardless of the economy. These include retirements, people quitting, people being fired, people leaving their jobs, people dying, maternity leaves, etc. All the life circumstances that move a person out of their existing job and thus open it up for someone else. The issue is not if there are jobs, during a recession as there always are, but can you access these hidden jobs? Hidden job market jobs are filled through connections (you know someone) or by being in the right place at the right time. Fewer people are considered in a hidden market job as the jobs are known only to a few and qualifications are set lower than open market jobs (there are some exceptions). In a recession, jobs retreat into the hidden job market. Jobs just don't get publicly advertised. Employers don't want to be inundated with applications so they only tell a few connections they have openings. The jobs are exposed to people that the employer already knows and trusts for recommendations. With high unemployment, as everyone knows someone looking for work, the employer's traditional contacts can produce good recommendations and the employer does not need to proceed further in searching for applicants. In a good economy, the employer's contacts may not be as fruitful as most people are already working. The reverse is true for a recession. To be effective in the hidden job market job developers must become an employer's trusted contact. Trying to break into the hidden job market during a recession is difficult. The market is more hidden, more clannish and more wary than normal. If a recession and higher unemployment are coming, employment organizations need to start planning now for building connections to the hidden job market. They need to check if they have an over- reliance on the open job market (mostly chasing newspaper and/or web-based leads) such that working in the hidden job market will be completely strange to existing staff strategies, beliefs and work culture. A tool for assessing hidden job market potential is to count the number of existing employers who would take your call because they know you and/or have done business with you in the past. If this number is not seriously above 15-20 employers per full time job development staff (exceptions made for rural organizations who don't have 20 employers in total) then in a recession, your organization will be on the outside and not the inside of the hidden job market. The next article will be on strategies, techniques and skills to penetrate the hidden job market and prepare your organization and job developers for a recession.