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Should you Approach a Company that isn’t Hiring Right Now?

Should you approach a company that hasn’t posted any job openings, and is clearly not hiring right now? If you do, is there a right way to do it? Read on.

Job postings and advertisements about openings help companies to do exactly what the words suggest- advertise that they are hiring and applications are welcome. But is it a good idea to approach a company that hasn’t advertised that they are looking? Would that mean that there’s no chance of getting a job there even if you got in touch with them?

Many candidates may have thought of approaching companies that they have always dreamed of working at but may be hesitant because of an absence of advertisement. Does approaching them still work? Is it a good idea? Let us quickly delve into this!

There’s No Harm:

The straight answer is this: there is no great harm in reaching out to the company, via mail or LinkedIn. The most that might happen is that you don’t get a response. There’s nothing to lose as such. On the contrary, if your approach is compelling enough, you might get on the company’s radar (in a good way) and they might consider your ‘application’ if there’s a relevant opening in the future.

But as mentioned, the approach has to be compelling enough. Many companies do get emails and enquiries about potential job openings even without them advertising, so it’s crucial that the way you approach them is memorable. You don’t want your message or email to get buried in deluge of enquiries.

How to do it Right:

Say, you want to approach a company but maybe not directly ask if they are hiring, but you wish to show interest in working there. Or maybe, you are feeling adventurous and you simply want to take that leap of faith by asking them directly that if there’s any chance that a position might be available. Whichever of the two approaches you take, you need to be very specific.

  • One way, is to email them directly, telling them why you are emailing, let them know that although there isn’t any opening declared, you are laying out your introductions, experience, skills and qualifications, and what you can offer to the company, in their present setting. You can look up a few of their ongoing projects on their LinkedIn page or their website, and describe how you’d be able to contribute in those. You can provide examples of your own work to further make your point. Don’t forget to link your resume in the email!  
  • Another way, is to find the right person who is responsible for hiring for the company (most likely a recruiter) and get in touch with them. A slightly less direct approach, here you show interest about the industry in general by asking very specific questions. No matter how good of a candidate you might be, a recruiter may or may not be able to straight away create a position that doesn’t really exist at the company but they might be able to say ‘yes’ to certain questions. Instead of directly asking if their company is hiring, you may first establish a professional rapport with the relevant personnel, ask specific and informative questions about the industry, to let them know that you’d like their help to gain insight into it, and then let them know you’d be interested in working at their company if the opportunity arises.

In the age of talent crunch and skill-gaps, companies would welcome interest from candidates who genuinely want to make a difference. There’s no harm in reaching out for what you want, and you never know- the right approach may give you a pleasant surprise, even without any advertisement!

What is Job Crafting?

Job crafting helps one find little ways to make their job more interesting.

Job crafting is the latest buzzword doing the rounds all over our social media and LinkedIn feeds.

The thing with buzzwords and jargon is that often what they ask of us is unrealistic. At best, they are at times irrelevant and just add to the noise around us.

What exactly is job crafting and is it something that is realistic, doable and achievable without sounding outrageous and demanding by a normal employee?

Let us quickly look into it. Job crafting involves seeing the job description as a work in progress, and finding ways to make it more aligned with one’s goals, strengths and values. It is a bottom-up approach.

However, that does not mean employees should be reshaping the jobs such that they don’t have to do what they don’t like. It is not about throwing responsibilities away or Quiet Quitting. As suggested in our earlier article about Quiet Thriving, job crafting is a lot about shifting perspectives. Job crafting is about finding ways to do more of what makes your job more enjoyable.

In our earlier article about Quiet Thriving, we mentioned how a shift in perspective can help us see our jobs in a new light. That too is a kind of job crafting, at the cognitive level. Finding a new sense of purpose in our jobs is also a kind of job crafting. Let us take a look at a few aspects about job crafting in a little more detail.

Task crafting:

There are some tasks which we genuinely find interesting and motivating. Finding the tasks you enjoy and crafting your role to do more of those is what task crafting is all about. This could involve talking to your manager, and asking them to assign you more responsibilities that you enjoy. It can also be about finding new challenges and avenues to learn, and hence can also involve asking your manager to assign you a different than usual role in group projects.

This little tweaking can go a long way in helping one see their work in a new light, helping to break the monotony and finding healthy ways to channelise the need to be challenged and combat the boredom that may have set in over time. For example, you may come to realise that you love interacting with new people. Communicating that with your manager might mean that you get more responsibilities that involve interacting with new people, such as mentoring new recruits, meeting delegates from other companies and so on. This is all about gaining a fresh sense of enthusiasm about your job.

Speaking of a fresh sense of enthusiasm, social support at workplace can go a long way in enabling us to keep our motivation levels in check. Read on.

Relationship crafting:

People, aka, colleagues are an important part of most jobs. Relationship crafting is about consciously trying to better your relations with your colleagues. While many of us do enjoy simply coming to work and doing our job, without needing to interact with people much, some basic cordial rapport building is important.

Relationship crafting, that is, trying to build some rapport with the colleagues enables one to find some social support when the work itself might get challenging. A good rapport with colleagues ensures some community and network building at work. It also can get us going through good and bad times. While your job description may or may not really mention the need to work interdepartmentally, establishing a good rapport with people from the other departments would add an ease of functioning, access to more perspectives and even more learning opportunities. 

Amidst the ever-evolving job market, and the demands it brings, job crafting enables employees to ensure their job remains relevant, purposeful, and up to date, with never-ending learning. What’s more, it enables employers to have motivated employees.

Quiet-Quitting vs Quiet Thriving

What if we decided to make a minor tweak in our thinking that enables us to see more value in our present job, rather than doing the bare minimum? That is Quiet Thriving. Read on.

All through the years surrounding the pandemic, we have heard the buzzword ‘quiet quitting’. Quiet quitting refers to employees doing the bare minimum- engaging in the bare minimum way with their job, doing the bare minimum that is needed out of them.

It all happened as during the pandemic many people realized that life is too short to stress over a job that they do not like. Life is too short to stress over frustrations in the professional sphere, the office politics, colleagues they don’t gel well with and bosses who don’t hear them out. And so, people just did the bare minimum and focused more on their life outside work.

But soon many people also started to realize that although life is too short to do a job you do not like, it is also not a very good practice to do the bare minimum when the job pays your bills and lets you live a life of comfort. After all, boredom comes when there’s the space and comfort to be bored.

Enter Quiet Thriving. It is essentially understanding that the job may not be perfect, but still finding ways to engage with it in the best way you can.

Before we go into our definition, a word: If one looks up online, there will be tons of articles mentioning some Quiet Thriving strategies. One of them is setting up boundaries. For example, not checking work emails after an agreed upon time, or being clear with how much work you can handle before you approach a burnout. Another strategy also includes finding a few colleagues you can become friends with. One more strategy is taking little breaks, or setting realistic intentions about accomplishing just a few things on your to-do list and so on. But let us face it, we all must have tried one thing or the other at some point, and it can still not be enough to find a way to thrive at your job, to find it more likeable and less tedious. Quiet Thriving is actually a lot more about changing your perspective as these articles rightly mention.

 It is actually about doing small tweaks in your thinking, more than attempting to control the factors outside. 

Quiet Thriving in simple words is a shifting of perspective. It is a reframing. It is asking yourself questions like:

  • ‘Do I really dislike my job so much that I am closing my mind to everything?’
  • ‘What is that one thing about my job that I genuinely like?’
  • ‘This is my job, and it is necessary that I see some value in it. What can I do to add more meaning to it?’

And so on.

What are some strategies that can help one get that shift in perspective and actually start to Quietly Thrive?

  • The number one strategy is in the above explanation itself- shift your perspective! As cliché as this sounds, looking at the positives of the job can help you find more meaning and motivation to do the job. Sure, there are negatives (they are everywhere!), but what are the positives? It could be something as simple as recognizing that this job gives you a sense of structure. Or it could be something as complex as connecting it to wider purpose. Miss P didn’t like working for an online shopping portal company because she thought they were acting as middle-men between vendors and customers. A shift in perspective helped her understand the wider purpose- they weren’t just acting as middle-men, they were making life easier for the vendors who might not always know whom to approach to sell their products online, giving them more sources of income and more reach. Her company was making lives better.
  • Another strategy, similar to shifting your perspective is called ‘job crafting’. There will be certain responsibilities you might enjoy more than other responsibilities. You can seek out more of those responsibilities by asking your manager or the team leader, and find a way to ‘craft’ your job a certain way, such that you end up doing more of what you like. It will be a work in progress, but it can offer a high sense of thriving and fulfillment nevertheless.

Once we get the ball rolling, it can actually a become a fun activity to finding ways to Quietly Thrive at work. It can become a fun activity to shift your perspective and understand that the job you dislike might actually not be that bad. Quiet Thriving could be that one positive missing ingredient in your perspective.  

Do you have the ladder thinking or rock-climbing thinking?

Rock-climbing could be a more realistic and accurate metaphor for handling careers, than climbing ladders.

We have heard the age-old metaphor of climbing the ladder:

We take a step, and then we look for a step above. When we aim to climb the corporate ladder, we aim to take a career, rise up the ranks through L&D and promotions, one step at a time. A very easy looking ladder. Almost too easy, too simple. Actually, too simplistic.

What if we were to think of a more organic metaphor? Something a lot more realistic and less simplistic? How about the metaphor of rock-climbing?

We all must have seen visuals of climbers, with their harnesses and equipment, climbing over steep rocks and mountains. Or we might be familiar with those rock-climbing gymnasiums that offer a protected environment to develop our skills.

Rock-climbing, in any case, seems to be a more relatable and realistic metaphor that we should be applying to the concept of career growth. Let us delve into it.

Climbing requires us to be strong and competent enough. If we aren’t, we can slowly learn, through the support of ropes, harnesses and other equipment. Similarly, to be a competent employee requires that we have some skill-set that can support us. We learn. We start small- we don’t aim to reach the peak, when we know two feet above the ground is what will be a major achievement for us. Shadowing, internships, mentorship programmes, observing colleagues and seniors we admire, upskilling workshops could be the harnesses through which we learn in the corporate world. The more we practice, the more we learn, the stronger we get- in climbing and in our field.  And the beauty of it is there is a possibility to get stronger.

When we are strong enough, it becomes easier to climb the most complicated surfaces.

Climbing is complicated indeed. Beginners will tell you how each step can be a challenge. Each little movement requires one to calculate the move, and at the same time, rely on one’s instincts. Climbing doesn’t simply involve going in an upward direction. Experienced climbers will tell you how there are times when we must ‘read’ the surface, and adjust our positions- spot the tiny but sturdy rock that offers support and saves you from a fall, or stretch ourselves just about right, consider the physics, and with one little pivot, climb a few feet at once. Systematically. Similarly, in the corporate world, we sometimes need to think about lateral growth. Perhaps as we can explore other departments. Through those ‘tiny rocks’ we might end up acquiring more skill-sets, finding our own hidden talents, which will eventually help us find our own niche.

And big rocks that appear sturdy and strong, might come loose as you step on them. Just as big companies might not always be as they appear- mass lay-offs, toxic competitiveness are only some ‘loose rocks’ we have heard of recently. You see, climbing isn’t simply about going up– it is also about going side-ways, maybe take a few steps down, make a diagonal move and then perhaps make a move that will finally take us to the next level. Just as exploring inter-departmental growth.

Growing in one’s career can be all about encountering challenges, and finding the best possible move at that point. The move might take us a few notches sideways, perhaps even seemingly down a few steps, but eventually, it is all progress.

A career can be a straight line for some people, of course- go study accounting, and become an accountant. Have an MBBS, finish your MD, a bunch of internships, residencies and finally become a doctor. But for so many of us, career growth involves some trial and error. Perhaps you started off with a science degree, but realised eventually that you find much more fulfilment in having your own business. Or you started off with a keen interest in journalism, only to realise later that a management job is where you thrive.

Like climbing, handling a career is about staying strong in the present, and still finding a way to move forward. It is about finding out that as skills, strength and competence develop, as we learn new things about us and our environment, there might be unexplored avenues for us that might surprise us.  

Better Together: Growth for the Companies is tied to Career-Growth of its Employees

career-growth of employees, companies

Thinking about career growth is one of the favourite pass-times, it seems.

We have thought about it in the middle of a meeting, or when we were having a quiet moment in the office, or maybe when we were on a holiday, all happy and relaxed. Suddenly, muscles go tense, and the mind goes racing. Sometimes, these thoughts act as motivating factors, the ‘positive’ stress that propels us to think ahead.

Individuals think about career growth a lot.

It’s time companies think about it too. Thinking about career growth shouldn’t just be a concern of the individuals. Companies can benefit a lot by sharing this concern. Yes! Companies can benefit from thinking about the career growth of their employees! How so? Let us delve into it quickly.

The first benefit is right there in our introduction! Individuals think about their career growth a lot. When the company they are working for is genuinely concerned about it as well, it can motivate them to stay. Talk about retaining talent! When companies show interest in helping their employees advance in their careers, it attracts more candidates, because of course, people like to work at places where they see a possibility of concrete growth on paper.

Secondly, companies can reduce their talent acquisition costs by thinking about the career growth of their employees. An employee who sees a career growth while staying at the company means that the company would be able to hire internally. Hiring internally means cutting down on sourcing and onboarding costs. And think of all the time that could be saved on background checks and references.

Thirdly, companies can improve their employee engagement when they think about the career growth of their employees. Employees who know there is a scope to grow professionally within the walls of the company, that there is a chance that they will get an opportunity any moment, are naturally more likely to engage with their work. When the employees know that what they are working at is nota dead-end job, it is likely to increase their motivation and engagement levels. They can attach more meaning to their work and to the company, because they know it is indeed leading them somewhere, that is, it’s not a dead-end job.

So, what can companies and employers do to implement this idea of showing interest in their employee’s career growth?

Think which positions and skill gaps are hard to fill in the company. Talk to the employees about their goals. A few conversations later, it should be possible to align the two, and realise the kind of opportunities the company can offer so that those hard to fill positions and skill gaps are no longer that hard to fill.

Opportunities can range from digital learning, workshops and seminars, sponsored L&D opportunities, shadowing positions and so on.

Now, companies may or may not be able to offer everything to everyone, and even if they do, there’s still a chance that the employee might have different priorities and choices.

That doesn’t mean companies should only and only think about offering career growth opportunities to those who would promise to stay, or to those who would directly, most certainly, be helpful to the company in some way. Benevolently given career growth opportunities to employees ensure a good word of mouth of the company, a good employer brand, and a chance that someone might come back as a boomerang employee!