How to look for a job without your boss and colleagues finding out

How to keep your current boss from finding out you are applying for other jobs

It’s not difficult in today’s day and age for any employer to not know if you are looking for alternatives. It starts with every day signs - Your energy level or willingness to put in the extra hours changes. You have more “sick” days or “doctor visits”. You’re spied sporting a suit when the office dress code is more casual. Your lunches are suddenly longer. People pick up on those things.

The conventional wisdom says that you should keep your job search a secret from your employer. But if you are not being careful, you have to ask yourself, ‘what will happen if they find out I’m looking?’ What happened to the last employee who was caught searching for a job? Were they fired? There have been several times when employers found out there employees were looking and countered with more pay to get them to stay. Doesn’t mean you can get that lucky!

Also many people embark on a job search only to realize that the position they have is better than the new opportunities they discover. If you want to stay put, it’s usually best not to rock the boat.

Therefore, you need to think about all the ways you go about searching for a job while in office and make sure to keep it low profile. Here’s how:

1) Avoid hunting during office hours: Use your own equipment on your own time. Many companies keep logs of websites visited as well as incoming and outgoing call logs. Leaving a copy of your resume in the office copier is another dead giveaway that something is amiss.

2) Use your personal email address: This is a MUST. You should never conduct personal business using company email.

3) Research before posting resume online: Be selective about where and how you post your resume. For example, if you post on Monster, you can make your posts confidential. This is important since your employer may be looking at the same sites you are posting your resume on.

4) Don’t use sick days for job interviews: Schedule your interviews over your lunch hours or take the day off. Don’t use “sick leave” for job hunting. Also, be careful about dressing up too much and too many times.

Job hunting is part of life. Just remember, when you get caught, it’s normal, everybody does it!