The Job Search
Let me make a bold statement
Learning to acquire the skills that will allow you to conduct a professional and effective job search will be the most important step you take in your entire career.
Conversely, trying to conduct a job search without the necessary skills is much like throwing a grenade up in the air and then running underneath it. The results are predictable and very rarely positive.
Here’s the worst part: most people conducting job searches today think they know what they’re doing. There’s about an 80% chance that they’re wrong. How do I know? Experience. If you’ve read my “About” section, you know that I have over 40 years of experience as a hiring manager. I have reviewed thousands of resumes and conducted thousands of interviews, and I can’t begin to tell you how bad most of them were.
Two key “Truths”
In 2008 and 2009, when I was conducting my employment seminars to try to get people back to work, I discovered two things:
- Most of the participants were quite good at what they did.
- Most of them were mediocre or worse at the job search.
In the course of working with 180 people, perhaps 10 or 15 of them could conduct a reasonably effective job search,
Why are so many people bad at the job search?
It’s pretty much inevitable. Very few people were ever taught the principles of the job search. You don’t get this education in either high school or college. Some colleges have career centers that most students never go near. If they do, they find the help they’re getting is often basic and not conducive to really becoming a professional at the art and science of the job search.
Even now, when the unemployment rate is near an all-time low and when there are thousands of open jobs, if you are out of work, it will take you roughly 6 months to land a new job. That’s incredible. Folks who are professionals in the job search are rarely out of work, and when they are, they can get back to work in periods measured in days or weeks, not months.
Prove it to yourself
Don’t take my word for this. Conduct a little experiment of your own. I want you to role-play: You are now a hiring manager. And you’re looking for someone like yourself that you can hire. Go to LinkedIn, put in your parameters, and look at the results. Keeping your” hiring manager” hat on, take 30 seconds to a minute – no more – evaluating the LinkedIn profiles that come up, and ask one question:
What value did this person provide in her current and past experience?
Key point: you’re not interested in nebulous answers like “I’m creative” or “I’m a hard worker”. You’re also not particularly interested in what jobs they had. What should interest you is what value – concrete and measurable – they provided to their organizations.. You will be amazed at how few people provide that information.
If you’d like to try another exercise, here’s one I used at the beginning of my unemployment seminars. Pretend that a hiring manager just walked up to you and asked the following question: Why should I hire you?
Start answering the question. If you want to take it a step further, crank up your computer, record a video of your answers, and then review it. When I put this question to my students at the beginning of the seminar, I rarely got an acceptable answer.
Folks, this isn’t Brain surgery:
It’s all about VALUE!
If you do not successfully communicate what value you brought to your previous organizations, nobody’s going to be interested in you.
Take a tip from the pros.
In almost any field of endeavor, the very best and most dedicated workers seek out people who can help them improve. We call them coaches. Think of the world of sports for a minute: every individual and every team employs coaches:
- Major League Baseball: In addition to the manager, each team has at least 13 coaches.
- Professional football: Each NFL team has between 20 and 30 coaches
- Professional golf. Virtually every great player has a coach. I remember when Jordan Spieth came on the scene and was winning one tournament after another. He talked about the support team he had behind him: a strength coach, a swing coach, a a psychology coach. Tiger Woods, Roy, McElroy, Jack, Nicholas: all benefited from the help of a coach.
- Corporations. CEOs seek help from people like McKinsey and Bain. These CEOs are some of the smartest people in the business world, and they recognize the value of getting coaching.
- The list is endless. Tennis, swimming, learning to drive a car, singing, acting—the pros in all these areas seek out the coach. Why? So that they can reach their full potential.
That’s what I do: I’m a coach
I coach people. I have participated in, studied, and worked on every aspect of the job search and developed ways to help people get results. And it’s not just for the unemployed. It’s for everybody who works for a living.
Helping a solid sales pro change jobs – while he was still working
Several years ago, I got a phone call from a woman who attended my unemployment seminar. She wasn’t seeking my help, but thought that her husband might benefit from working with me. When I met her husband, Gerry, I was immediately impressed by how good he was at what he did. He worked in the finance industry and was an expert in the field. He was making an excellent income in the mid-six-figure area. But he wanted to change jobs. His reasons were well thought out: he was concerned about his current company. He had four different managers in the last year, and the company had two different presidents. He was looking for a company that had stability and would appreciate the value that he could bring.
Like lots of my clients, he was much better at his profession than he was at the job search. The difference was that he recognized this. I told him what a tough task he had in front of him. He was going to commit to two separate jobs: the one that was paying him and the job of getting a new position. I asked him how many hours he could devote each week to the job search and he promised 15 hours. He kept his promise, and I kept mine.
We worked together. I set him up with an exercise to have other people tell him what they thought of his abilities. He was amazed at how highly he was regarded. We set a target of six months and beat it by several weeks. He got the “Job of his Dreams” at a higher income level and, most importantly for him, at a company that met his requirements for stability.
Your Goal: The “Job Of Your Dreams” – and so much more
Let’s be clear about something: if your goal is to “just get back to work,” we probably don’t have a good fit. You don’t need me. You want to get back to work right away? It’s easy. Just lower your expectations. Let’s say you have a middle management job. Go to your local Stop & Shop and ask if they need anybody to stock shelves. Or, go to Walmart and ask if they need another greeter.
Now, there is absolutely nothing wrong with any of those jobs if that’s what you want out of life. I work with people who want much more than that. I’m looking for people who are seeking the “Job of their Dreams, and are willing to work hard to achieve that goal. With people like that, we will quickly start a skill development program that will result in them going from a “job beggar” to a “resource provider”. That is an enormous change, which will bring enormous benefits. You will find the “Job of Your Dreams”. But this new skill set allows you to do so much more—some examples.
- Skillfully negotiate for more frequent and higher raises.
- Skillfully negotiate for more frequent promotions.
- Create LinkedIn profiles and resumes that are so powerful that you are always executing a “passive” job search: on LinkedIn, other social media, and with an array of Executive Recruiters ( or, as I like to refer to them, “headhunters”.)
- Create and cultivate a “Network” of people who know your skill set and your accomplishments and would be delighted to have you with them.
- And the list goes on and on
There’s a world of opportunity at your fingertips if you only know how to reach out and grasp it. If you’re interested, I’m here to help. Let’s talk. Just hit the button below.
Couldn’t hurt; might help.