Or, alternatively:
Why
job seekers welded to conventional job search strategies are doomed to failure:
Why is
it that the most common approach to solving a problem is so rarely the most
effective one? I have worked with thousands of clients over the years who
believe that their next job is going to come from sitting applying to jobs
using traditional methods such as responding to: newspaper ads, internet job
sites and recruitment agencies. Then they wonder why, along with about another
1,000 applicants, they end up filed under ‘B’ (for bin).
I regret
to inform you that traditional job search methods are for clueless people with no
idea who they are, what they want to do or where they’re going to find it -
Painful to watch and absolute agony to experience. After 15 years in the field of
career development, a frequent metaphor I use is to liken great potential to
fire hoses; they need firm direction to do their job or they risk damaging the
bearer (or the person who let go of their responsibility). Have you ever seen
how much damage a ‘wild’ fire hose can do?!
It’s
extreme. The same damage can be done by anyone holding great potential and not
knowing what to do with it. In fact, possessing great potential and
misdirecting it can be the root-cause of substance abuse, self-harm and
delinquency. Can you remember those kids at school with heaps of personality,
brimming-over with cleverness and seemingly always in possession of the right
answer? Yet we bump into them 20 years later to find them a shuffling wreck of
uncertainty and broken. The bearer of the most potential may also experience
the most risk of failure because the potential for disappointment is greater.
As I
have written many times before in various guises, people lacking a sense of
purpose are palpably going nowhere (because possessing potential can make
knowing where to take it all the more challenging). Therefore they lack the
positive energy required to get hired. Hirers - either overtly or on a
subliminal level - are looking to be engaged with. They’re looking to be
seduced by the candidate’s passion for the subject and forced to visualise that
person doing the job so convincingly that they would be a fool not to hire
them. It would be foolhardy for any company to let a talent escape them as they
risk joining the competition and helping them do well.
The
majority of people I work with take as long as 1 to 2 months to have this very
important penny drop. Successful job search strategy is all about research and
getting to grips with the specialist knowledge you require to land a job that
you love. It’s the enthusiasm that proves so attractive in the interview. Self-belief
is a form of charisma and very hard to resist. It is also the keystone in
rapport-building and I defy anyone to get hired at interview without the magic
ingredient of rapport.
Strange,
for many people, is the fact that quite a few of my clients don’t even use a CV
to get hired. CVs, or resumés as they call them in North
America, are a deeply subjective veneer of who a person might be. CVs are
rarely what clinches the job. At best they might open the door to the
interview. But why would an experienced hiring manger place too much faith on
the legitimacy of an un-vetted – and generic - employment history?
In his
world’s bestselling job hunter’s bible ‘What
color is your parachute?’, Dick Bolles uses an up-turned triangle diagram
called: ‘Many if not Most Employers Hunt
for Job-Hunters in the Exact Opposite Way from How Most Job-Hunters Hunt for
Them’ in Chapter 5‘The Best and Worst
Ways to Look for Those Job Vacancies That Are Out There’. Savvy hirers are looking to promote people
whose work they have already seen. Or whose reputation is already evident from
recommendations they have received from their network. Hiring blind is a flawed
approach and increasingly unsustainable strategy.
So what
are you going to do about modifying your job search from ‘reactive’ to ‘proactive’?
Start
with seeking to understand yourself, your skill-set and your experience.
Extrapolate this information into the future and work hard to visualise what
kind of organisation needs this profile. Don’t forget that your value system
and your interests are key ingredients in deciphering ‘best fit’ and helping
you whittle-down the list of potential employers. If you don’t understand
yourself, or you are blind to your various career attributes, seek-out informational
meetings with people whose jobs you are interested in knowing more about. Ask them
what they like about their jobs? Ask what skills they make the most use of?
What subjects they enjoyed (and didn’t enjoy) in school or university? Ask them
if they could introduce you to someone else they know who might be able to help
you you’re your quest for information?
As you gradually
build information and distil it, your career passions with rise to the fore and
your career strategy will become increasingly obvious. Your weather vane on
knowing when you are onto something positive is your energy and interest levels
go up. Constantly remind yourself that a rewarding and sustainable job is the
kind of work where you draw upon as many of your career attributes as possible.
[Dead-end
jobs are the kind of jobs where your skills are redundant and you have no
interest in the subject matter. Remember one man’s poison could be another’s
cure. No two people are the same and we should never judge where other people
derive their sense of self-worth and livelihood. When faced with ‘job judgemental-ism’ I always hark back to the London Road Sweeper given the Freedom
of The City of London because he did not miss a single day off work in over 40 years,
you could eat your lunch off his pavements and singleton shopkeepers could set
their watches by the punctuality of his dustcart as he called in to check on
their safety. He was so evidently proud of a career some people might look down
at.]
Next we
picture the people and contacts we know in the kinds of companies that we can
picture ourselves working in. I call this a ‘network audit’. Our contacts may
stem from who we went to school with, their parents; who we play sport with,
and their friends and families; who we went to college with and their contacts,
our previous work colleagues and so-on.
This is
why knowing what work we want to do and where we want to do it is crucial. A
job search strategy without knowing this vital detail is lacking in the fuel
required to last over a potentially long haul. There are those people who would
fire-off many tens, maybe even hundreds, of CVs and résumés
a month and wonder why they don’t get anywhere. A well-planned job search is
all about firing at the labour market with a high velocity rifle and
high-powered telescopic sight, taking time to be vigilant and well-prepared, to
stalk our prey with patience and intelligence. It is not about point-blank rapid
fire strategy with a sawn-off shotgun or, even worse, a machine gun!
Sadly, I
pick the pieces up from this short-sighted approach all the time, when a great
deal of damage has already been done, rendering the job search campaign untold
harm. Over the years I have found that thought-less, fast pace and ill-prepared
job search ends up with nowhere to go. Job searchers using this approach
burn-up their potential pool of prospects at such a rate that they lose
credibility with the hirers they do meet and never really possess the specificity
of purpose to get hired in a job that really suits them.
As with
most conventional wisdom and traditional ways of going about things, it is very
difficult to challenge the status quo and successfully alter attitudes.
Inadvertently, it is often the spouses who pressurise the job searcher into an
ill-fitting and ill-considered machinegun approach. Perhaps it is because people
tend to be fearful of trying something new and having their conformist ideas
rattled; which is why the majority of people struggle to cope with change
throughout.
This is
why we need to work hard to manage our own expectations and those around us.
Are we better taking a longer run at landing a job that we love, care for and
can commit to; a job that will sustain us over a longer period? Or are we
better off just landing any job in the shortest period of time possible; a job
that risks the imprisonment of our most saleable career attributes? Those
attributes which fuel a power-packed symbiosis between employee and employer
over the long haul of a mutually energised relationship.
Experience
has taught me that ill-considered and rash job search strategies aimed at
landing any job quickly may solve a
short-lived crisis today, but they’re unsustainable in the medium to long term
because we start by making a big mistake – by not landing a job that we’re actually
equipped to do well in. All this short-termist approach achieves is to increase
the likelihood of us not performing to our maximum potential by trying to
deliver on a role we’re not well-equipped for; increasing the risk of us
getting fired and right back to square one on the virtual ‘Snakes & Ladders’
board of employment and unemployment – a soul-destroying experience for all
involved. Ultimately, this is a very fraught and stressful recipe.
I’ve
seen too many people roll with these punches at a time when what they really
deserve is a break and somebody who can empathise and help them build onwards and upwards. Job-loss is hard enough. The
excruciating irony is that when we’ve just lost one job, the world’s
expectation is that we market ourselves positively as if nothing happened. When
people are recovering from the bereavement of job-loss, they need help not
hindrance. This is one time in our careers when quality definitely outweighs
quantity. Perhaps this is why it takes my clients an average of 3 to 4 months to land a job that they love; a one that 'fits' them well.
What does job search success look like?
Commit
to getting hired at a job that you have the potential to do well. Commit to
being bold. Get smart. Get prepared. Get connected. Get informed. Distil. Know what
you are aiming at. And above all build your confidence by knowing what you’re
interested in, what you are good at doing and doing what it takes to make it
work. Above all, harness the power of positive thinking and visualise your
goals. Make them real and turn them into reality.