Psst…There’s a Hidden Market for Six-Figure Jobs. Here’s How to Get In.
Unlisted jobs help companies skirt pay transparency laws in New York and elsewhere. Getting one requires ninja-like networking skills.
4 min
Almost every day, someone who is quietly hunting for a key hire calls Diane Hessan to ask the same question: Whom do you recommend?
Ms. Hessan, a former consulting group CEO who sits on the boards of Panera Bread, Eastern Bank and Tufts University, is one of the best-connected business figures in Boston—and something like a password keeper at a speakeasy for six-figure job seekers.
All cities have such people, and being on their radars can open hidden doors.
/
“There’s a whole back channel of conversations going on about jobs that are available,” says Ms. Hessan, adding that many of the calls she fields come from private-equity firms seeking leaders for portfolio companies.
Far from the public job boards of Indeed, LinkedIn and Monster lies another set of career opportunities—often lucrative ones—that are never posted. The volume of such openings is hard to measure; those who hire and who’ve been hired out of sight say the quality of the positions is more notable than the quantity.
Some are management roles that are currently occupied by people whom senior leaders want to push out, but not before discreetly finding replacements.
Other unlisted positions may be at venture-backed startups or relate to new corporate initiatives that, for competitive reasons, companies don’t want to advertise in view of rivals.
Executives have long relied on their professional networks and headhunters to fill these stealth roles, though the hiring game is trending toward openness. New York City this week began requiring employers to include salary ranges in job postings, and some states are poised to do the same or already have done so. Yet businesses that don’t want to tip their hands (or show employees what’s offered to newcomers) can simply do more recruiting in private channels.
A common loophole in pay transparency laws is that companies don’t have to post every job and don’t have to reveal the projected compensation for those unposted positions, says Stephanie Merabet, a labor attorney at Holland & Knight.
It is too early to know how many businesses will skirt disclosure by keeping more openings off job boards, but some likely will, says Tae-Youn Park, who researches pay transparency as an associate professor of human resource studies at Cornell University.
That means you might not learn of an exciting role until someone else gets it, unless you’re the one who comes to mind when a company wants to hire on the sly.
“You want to be on the call list of somebody who’s working to fill a job that would fit you,” says Matt Massucci, chief executive of the recruiting firm Hirewell. “The only way you do that is to stay top of mind.”
Mr. Massucci suggests devoting at least 30 minutes a week to networking, and advises a targeted approach. Make a point to introduce yourself to people who work at companies that interest you. Connect with recruiters in your field, even when you’re not actively looking for a new job. Go to conferences. Speak on panels (yes, the ones that feel like unpaid, extra work). Freshen up that headshot.
Be visible to get a job that is not.
Brian Pestana, a food industry executive, says he wasn’t interested at first when a Seattle-based recruiter asked to connect on LinkedIn this fall. He lives in Miami and wouldn’t consider relocating, so he didn’t think that networking with someone on the other side of the country would be worthwhile. But you never know, he figured.
He chatted and hit things off with the recruiter, who introduced him to Maria Elena Ibañez, chief executive of El Latino Foods in Doral, Fla., about a 15-mile drive from Miami.
Mr. Pestana joined El Latino in October as vice president of business development, a position that was never listed on any job board.
“Don’t dismiss a small opportunity because the one that seems far-fetched might be the one that works out,” he says.
Mark Goldberger started this week as head of enterprise sales at Ramp, a financial software startup in New York, after he and a recruiter initially discussed a different position with another company. He says the headhunter quickly identified him as a fit for the Ramp job, based on their previous conversations, which put him on the fast track for the job that was never posted.
His early tasks include hiring more sales representatives for his team. One position has been posted publicly, an enterprise account executive with an estimated salary of $221,000 to $260,000, but Mr. Goldberger says it’s possible that he’ll hire multiple people from a single candidate pool, and he isn’t waiting for applications to roll in.
“I’m reaching out within my network—the people that I know would be great because I’ve seen them do something similar—and I’m also going to be scouring LinkedIn,” he says.
Mr. Goldberger and other hiring managers and recruiters note that companies sometimes list positions as open when their minds are already made up, often to comply with internal policies or collective bargaining agreements that require public postings. The real hiring action, they say, often happens away from the job boards.
Shawn Cole, president of executive search firm Cowen Partners, says all of the roles his company fills are unlisted. His clients like to appear to have talent pipelines, and posting an open call for executive applicants can make a business look desperate or disorganised, he says.
Mr. Cole says that to get in the running, it helps to build a rapport with a headhunter like him. Be direct—no vague requests to “pick your brain,” please—and don’t bother with an invitation to coffee or lunch.
“Send an updated resume and say what you’re interested in,” he says. “Talk about compensation, location and specific career goals. Lunch and things like that? Sad to say, but no one has time for that stuff.”
Copyright 2020, Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved Worldwide. LEARN MORE
From making unpopular decisions to learning when to listen, leaders from five businesses reveal what nobody prepared them for — and how running a company has challenged their expectations.
Technology and semiconductor shares fell sharply as investors questioned the debt financing the AI infrastructure boom and confronted higher rates and Chinese competition.
Elon Musk is exploring a potential merger between Tesla and SpaceX, a deal that could reshape the future of AI, robotics, autonomous vehicles and space technology. With a combined valuation potentially reaching $3.5 trillion, the move could bring Musk’s vision of an interconnected technology ecosystem closer to reality, although a deal remains uncertain.
5 min
Elon Musk has engineered ties between Tesla TSLA 3.41%increase; up pointing triangle and SpaceX SPCX 7.79%increase; up pointing triangle that are hard to break, and now he wants to fuse them together permanently.
Musk has run both Tesla and SpaceX concurrently over the past two decades, using a schedule that dictated which days he spent focused on each business.
The companies have often shared resources and personnel, signaling their close ties. Last year, SpaceX looked into creating a spacesuit for Tesla’s humanoid robot Optimus, a person familiar with the matter said. Tesla last week showed off its new Roadster, a vehicle featuring SpaceX rocket thrusters that it hopes to soon bring to market.
And in recent months, Musk has repositioned both companies by expanding beyond their core operations toward a shared mission centered on artificial intelligence.
The world’s richest man on Tuesday signaled his interest in tying up SpaceX and Tesla, marking what would be the biggest corporate merger of all time. Because he serves as chief executive of SpaceX and Tesla, Musk said committees of independent directors at both companies are evaluating a possible deal, adding that a transaction might not come to fruition.
The committees will likely evaluate, with lawyers and bankers, how each company would fare in a potential deal and how a deal might best be structured. They then present their conclusions to their respective boards, who typically vote on whether to proceed.
“It’s an odd Kabuki dance where two groups of people are talking and I can’t be in the conversation,” Musk told SpaceX investors on Tuesday in response to an analyst’s question about a potential deal.
For Musk, the merger supports his vision of a world full of autonomous cars, humanoid robots and weekly rocket launches, as well as the data centers and satellites required to keep the whole thing running.
Some investors and analysts said they expect a transaction would be structured as an all-stock deal, with SpaceX potentially paying a modest premium for Tesla shares.
SpaceX, which has a market value of about $2 trillion, said it is seeing sharp growth in revenue across its businesses, which include operating data centers, launching rockets and operating satellite networks such as the internet service Starlink. Tesla is valued at about $1.5 trillion and is expanding its operations beyond its automotive and energy business. Shares in both companies traded higher following the news Tuesday.
Musk’s substantial ownership stakes in both companies, along with voting control at SpaceX, has enabled him to set the deal in motion. Analysts and investors said the deal will probably face regulatory scrutiny internationally, though some see Musk’s close relationship with the Trump administration as an asset to getting approval.
Blurred lines
The companies haven’t said which directors are on the special committees evaluating a potential deal. Several SpaceX and Tesla board members have either personal or business ties to Musk. And like Musk, venture capitalist Ira Ehrenpreis sits on both boards.
In a filing this week, Tesla outlined millions of dollars in business agreements with SpaceX and its subsidiaries last year, including $143 million in car sales to SpaceX, $3.3 million in advertising that it bought on the social-media platform X and $430 million in revenue from the sale of Megapack batteries for SpaceX’s data centers.
The companies also split the cost of resources including the use of Musk’s SpaceX jet and the bill for his personal security, which he runs through a private company.
Employees at both companies routinely move between companies to work on special projects, and some executives have dual roles, including Charles Kuehmann, vice president of materials engineering at both SpaceX and Tesla, and Ashok Elluswamy, the vice president of AI software at Tesla who runs a joint venture with SpaceX called Digital Optimus.
Over the years, Musk has launched new startups within his empire, including brain-implant company Neuralink, underground-tunnel developer the Boring Company and xAI, the AI startup that merged with SpaceX in February.
It is that AI business that Musk thinks can serve a market worth tens of trillions of dollars, justifying the need for a merger.
The business case goes like this: Tesla is developing robotaxis and robots, which it calls “physical AI.” SpaceX is working on the back end of physical AI: the data-center capacity and internet connection required for those robotaxis and robots to operate continuously.
“I don’t see what the value of Tesla is if it’s not merged with SpaceX,” said investment adviser Ross Gerber, a former Tesla bull turned critic invested in both companies. “If they don’t merge, the brains of everything that runs Tesla is owned by another company.”
On top of it all, both companies face constraints on the supply chains they need to make this world a reality, particularly when it comes to chips. To address this, Musk earlier this year announced a joint venture between Tesla, SpaceX and Intel to design and manufacture chips in Texas. “The most epic chip-building exercise by far,” he has said.
Musk at the wheel
For Musk, a merger would also solve two problems: demands on his attention and his lack of control at Tesla.
Tesla for years was Musk’s only public company, a status that came with greater scrutiny. There, Musk reports to a public board, as well as individual investors who make up around 30% of Tesla’s voting power, according to FactSet.
The question of Musk’s attention became a particular focus for investors and the board in recent years after he acquired Twitter in 2022 and launched xAI in 2023, and again in 2025 as he spent time in Washington, D.C., running the Department of Government Efficiency in the early months of President Trump’s second term.
As Tesla’s car business suffered in 2025, Musk threatened to take his AI ambitions outside the company if he wasn’t granted 25% voting control. Last November, Tesla shareholders approved a new pay package for Musk, which created a path for him to vastly expand his stake.
As of Sept. 30, Musk owned a roughly 20% stake in Tesla, according to the company’s proxy filing.
The SpaceX IPO gave Musk a different path. When SpaceX went public in June, the deal’s structure enabled him to have more than 80% voting power at the company—so much that he can’t be fired and decisions can’t be made without his support.
If SpaceX acquires Tesla, he will likely stay in control.
Odd Culture Group brings a new kind of after-dark energy to the CBD, where daiquiris, disco and design collide beneath the city streets.
Studio apartments have almost disappeared from new Australian developments. Lura is bringing them back to Burleigh Heads from $495,000.
