If have a profile at a job portal, you would know that hundreds of employers post job openings on these websites daily. Most of these free job posting descriptions are suggested to fit your skill set perfectly. However many times it happens that employers post jobs anonymously. How do you apply to such jobs without falling into a trap?
1. As you have no clue about this employer, it may very well turn out to be your own! Now this does not happen a lot, but some employers may take action upon finding out that an employee of their company is posting his resume (and thus distributing company information) on job sites. This may become serious (in many cases) or may turn into a retention exercise by the employer (something which you may or may not be willing to go through).
2. You obviously cannot check the company’s website and thus know what exactly is the organization upto. Any candidate will want to check the company’s background, its services and financial status before applying. Who knows this company may be into something illegal!
3. Because you have no clue about the background of this employer, obviously your resume and cover letter can never be in place for any sort of application. Think about this: A financial company is looking for software engineers and they post anonymously with the Software Engineer job description. Now, if you are a software engineer with a background or past in finance. You will always have a greater chance of securing the free job posting than anyone else. But because of this anonymous JD. You may not be able to mould your cover letter or resume accordingly and hence lose the opportunity.
The solution is to talk to them first. Apply with a cover letter as the body of an email. Express interest in the position tell them what you are how this position is a good fit for your career. Next, ask them to contact you with some more details. So that you could share your detailed resume with them over email. You may want to include your LinkedIn profile URL in this mail, but not your resume.