By Jim Wiederhold

A lot of people looking for the next step in their career rely heavily on advertised openings and recruiters, but many jobs on the market are never made public. You lose a lot of the market if you wait to see what becomes available. Sending a marketing letter to the organizations you’d like to be part of—even if they don’t have any advertised openings—opens you up to opportunities you wouldn’t have otherwise.

Companies often go through a lot of steps before they decide to advertise or invest in a recruiter. For many employers, before a position is publicly announced, its leaders ask themselves, “Do I know anybody who would be a good fit for this position?” They reach out to people in their organization or to their network to see if they have someone in mind. Furthermore, employers tend to use recruiting firms when hiring for a particular position is political. It’s easier for a recruiting firm to say no to an internal candidate than to have to do so in a way that reflects negatively on the company or its leaders. Sending a marketing letter increases your chances of being top-of-mind when an organization opts for a less public hiring process.

Start an investigation.

Track down the individual who would be responsible for making decisions about your position or the person to whom you would be reporting in your desired position in that organization.  Gather information about that person and the organization.

It might be helpful to put the person or the organization into Google alerts. You could also talk to a few lower-level people at the organization or executives at other similar companies in the same market to gather information.

Read full article.