Looking for a new job is scary enough. Being worried that your current boss or colleagues can see you gearing up for a job search can easily stop your efforts before you get started.
Here are seven ways to ensure you keep your job search confidential until you’re ready to announce to your current employer that you’ve landed a new role:
1. Use LinkedIn Privacy Settings
Early on, LinkedIn realized that while having a news feed to see what your connections are up to is helpful, having your current boss see that you’ve updated your profile and added new connections and skills isn’t exactly the best way to be seen as an engaged employee and keep your job search confidential.
There are several privacy settings in your LinkedIn profile to ensure that what you want kept under wraps isn’t visible or announced to your connections. Be sure to update your preferences before you start making any profile changes. Simply go to your picture on the top right-hand screen and select “privacy settings.”
The most important settings to change:
- “Turn on/off your activity broadcasts”: Be sure to turn these off.
- “Select who can see your activity feed”: Change to only you.
With these two options applied, your LinkedIn updates won’t be sent out to all of your connections, either in their news feed or in an update email.
2. Get Confidential References On Board
At some point during the search process, your potential employer will ask for your references. You should already have key references ready to go, well before you’re asked this question.
If you’re going to include references from your current position, be sure you’ve connected with them individually and asked that confidentiality be maintained during the search process. I’d recommend only using current company contacts if you consider them a confidant to you personally, instead of just someone who would speak highly of you.
Know that any time you provide references, you’re opening yourself up to the possibility of other people finding out you’re interviewing. So be very careful who you ask to be a reference.
3. Use Your Personal Email Account for ALL Social Media Outlets
To ensure confidential access and email security, you need to change the preferred email address for all of your social media outlets to a personal email address rather than a work address. You can continue to keep your work email as an alternative method of contact, but using it as your main log-in or email source could not only limit your access when you land a new job, but new connections will use your work address for new opportunities.
Remember, your work email account is not private. Anything that is sent to you, or that you send, using your work email address is company property. Using it to search for, contact and respond to new jobs can raise several flags.
4. Clean Up Your Associations
There are so many resources out there to help you land your next job. Unfortunately, when you join some of these groups, they want to “advertise” your connection. Particularly on LinkedIn, be sure to change the visibility of any job-related search groups that you join and interact with.
Simply changing the visibility will remove the immediate association, but unfortunately, you never know if contacts are in that same group. Be careful what you say and how you say it when interacting and posting in job search-related associations.
5. Don’t Interview While on the Clock
When you’re interviewing, request an interview during off-hours, or take time off of work to interview. It’s bad form and, frankly, frowned upon to use your current company’s time to interview for a position somewhere else.
Use your lunch hour to complete phone interviews if need be, but you owe your current company to actually work while you’re on their clock.
6. Be Discreet About Who You Tell at Work
The fewer people at your current company you let know of your job search, the better. In fact, that number should be at zero. (Tweet this thought.) Yes, this includes even your good work friends.
Not only does this protect you while you’re in the process of finding something better; it also protects your friends and colleagues from any potential backlash down the road. If you must spill the beans, be sure to let them know your search needs to remain confidential until you’re ready to speak with your manager.
7. Don’t Post Your Resume on Job Boards
Some job boards allow you to preemptively block your resume from certain companies, but those security protocols aren’t sufficient if you want a truly confidential search. The safest route is to refrain from posting your resume in any online forum where it can be widely found.
Use your resume instead to apply for positions that you find on job boards, but don’t advertise your job-seeking status on job boards.
Have you job searched while still employed? How did you manage to keep it confidential?
This post originally appeared on Chameleon Resumes.
Image: Flickr