Looking for a job without your employer knowing

Most searches leak in the same few places. Here is where, and how to close them.

Most people who find a better job were employed when they found it, and most of them would rather their current employer did not know they were looking until they had something to say. The two are harder to reconcile than they should be, because the ordinary tools of a job search are built to make you visible.

Where a search usually leaks

• Public profiles. Marking a professional profile as open to work is visible to recruiters, and the recruiters at your own company have the same tools as everyone else.
• Job boards. A resume on a board carries your name and your employer, and boards are searched by the people who hire for your company too.
• Devices and networks. A work laptop, a work email address or a work network can log what you do on it. Treat them as if they do.
• References. A reference check that reaches your current manager is the most common way an employer learns early.
• Colleagues. A search mentioned in confidence to one person is no longer confidential.

The ordinary precautions

• Use a personal email address and a personal device, on a network your employer does not run.
• Keep interviews outside working hours where you can, and tell recruiters plainly that you are employed and need discretion. Good ones expect it.
• Decide in advance who may be contacted as a reference, and say that your current employer is not on the list until there is an offer.
• Announce nothing publicly until you have signed. An offer is not a job.

How IncognitoH is built for this

• Your profile carries no name, no employer names and no resume file. Recruiters search skills and experience and see you under an opaque handle. A recruiter at your own company sees the same anonymous card as anyone else.
• Your resume is redacted before it is analysed. Contact details, addresses and links are stripped first, and the original stays sealed in a store the search systems cannot read.
• An approach shows you who is asking before you answer. The company name is on the request. If it is one you do not want to talk to, decline or block them; neither reveals anything about you.
• Nothing moves without a tick. Accepting an approach says you are interested and releases nothing. Your name, contact details and employment history move field by field, only when you choose, and each release is recorded.
• There is no public activity to be seen. Being on IncognitoH is not announced anywhere, and your profile is not a page anyone can find by name.

Where honesty is due

Anonymity has limits that no system can remove. A career specific enough to be found may be specific enough to be recognised by someone who knows it well. If your current role is one of a kind, write the profile a level more general than you otherwise would; the recruiters who matter will still find it.

And IncognitoH keeps your identity from recruiters. It cannot keep your search from your own employer if you run it from their laptop. The precautions above are still yours to take.

Look when you choose. Be known when you decide.