Note: This post is a draft; work-in-progress.
If you have ever been in the job market looking for the next move on your
career, you cannot have failed to notice that job advertisements on various
job boards fall in two distinctly different categories: those that disclose
the identity of the employer, and those that do not.
As a rule, a job advertisement will not fail to state exactly who the employer is when the employer is doing their own hiring, either direcrly or via
an exclusive partnership with a hiring agency. On the other hand, when the job
advertisement keeps the identity of the employer a secret, referring to them as "my client", or utilizing subterfuges such as "a well-established company",
"a leader in the field", etc., this means that it has been posted by an
independently acting recruiter (henceforth simply "recruiter") who does
not have an exclusive agreement with the employer. (And the term "my client"
is almost always a lie.)
The reason for the secrecy is not understood by most candidates; a common misconception is that some employers wish to remain unidentified when hiring. This is true in such an exceedingly small percentage of cases that it is almost mythological. The true reasons for secrecy in job advertisement are the following:
- To prevent candidates from bypassing the recruiter and directly
contacting the employer.
-
To prevent other recruiters from finding out about the job and creating
their own competing job advertisements for it.
-
To post advertisements about jobs that do not actually exist. (You
might say, huh? -- I will explain, keep reading.)
