Confidential Search

Tips for keeping your job search confidential: with the 

• Be ready to respond to questions if your employer learns that you are looking. If your employers questions relate to your LinkedIn activity, you can defer and say that you are just trying to connect with other professionals in the field to stay on top of trends and best practices.
• Don’t conduct job search tasks on your work computer or the work phone.
• Move to private areas to have job search conversations on your cell phone and/or return messages during breaks and lunch.
• Don’t post your resume to a job board
• If you do post your resume to a job board, select one your current employer isn’t using
• If you do post your resume to a job board, make your current employer anonymous. Use a general enough description so someone can’t say definitively that it is ABC company but specific enough so they know the type of company. (For example: a fortune 500 consumer products company in Chicago)
• Utilize the job board privacy settings, if available, to make your profile private.
• If a prospective employer asks for references, don’t list someone from the current company.
• If a prospective employer asks for contact names at your current company, indicated that you are conducting a confidential search, but would supply the contact when it is needed to finalize an offer. Use the same language when a prospective employer asks to check your references.
• Since networking is such an important part of your search, I would still recommend establishing a profile on LinkedIn. Just make sure that the publically viewable part of your profile, online discussions, and personal updates don’t indicate that you are in an active search. You will need to utilize private communications and offline conversation more than online or group interactions.

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