We’re all familiar with going to Dice, Craigslist, Indeed, and CareerBuilder while searching for our next technical position. But many companies are not in a hurry to post their openings to these sites because when they do they are inundated with far more resumes than they can comfortably process. As such, they will often start by posting the position to a careers page on their company website. Depending on the response they get from that action, they may or may not post the job elsewhere. Until they do, these unpublished job postings are a treasure chest of opportunity.
My advice in the past would have been to visit the careers page of companies for whom you would like to work, but recently I read about an approach that is much more efficient and far-reaching. Most companies use one of the four top Applicant Tracking Systems (ATS) to advertise their jobs and to provide a portal for candidates to submit their applications: Aplitrak, Bullhorn, SmartRecruiters, and Taleo. With a simple Google search you can gain quick access to these jobs. To search for Java developer positions posted on Aplitrak, for example, you would use the following search string:
site:aplitrak.com intitle:"java developer" AND "[location]"
For location, you could focus on one city but I found it more effective to use “Michigan” to see job postings in all of the surrounding cities. Search strings for the other sites are similar:
site:bullhornreach.com/job intitle:"java developer" AND "[location]"
site:smartrecruiters.com intitle:"java developer" AND "[location]"
site:taleo.net (inurl:careersection OR inurl:requisition) "java developer" AND "[location]"
You can narrow your search to include jobs posted in the last week or the last month by clicking on “Search tools,” then “Any time,” and then selecting the time period desired. Bookmark your search string if you plan on returning to it frequently.
Don’t compete with the thousands of other job seekers looking on the popular sites; increase your odds by getting a head start on the these hidden job opportunities before they end up posted to the job boards.
