Job hunting has become a sought-after skill worldwide for good reason. Unemployment continues to rise in many parts of the world and Covid-19 has left many more people in the lurch. The sad part is that there are many wonderfully talented and keen people looking for work, yet they remain invisible to people who are looking for them.
But you don’t have to be out of work. You might be looking for the job you really want, another role in your current organisation, or looking for more clients if you are self-employed.
When I left the formal workplace to start my own consulting business, I had done good carpet weaving, or as best I knew how. Except I had no work. A lady came to see me at my home office in my first month, clutching real cash in her hand to pay for her consultation. It was enough to take my family to our local burger joint that evening. What I didn’t know was that it would be the only money I would earn that month. It was time to start job hunting, and it would never end.
What are the hot tips out there? Well, looking for tips online can be overwhelming. When I put in the search criteria ‘job hunting tips’ I got 114 million results! Where to start?
Well, it starts with you.
A. Be kind to yourself
Job hunting is hard work, practically and emotionally, but you don’t have to work all day every day. You might choose to work a few hours each day, maybe in the morning if that’s when you work best. Or do this job only a few days a week but decide which those are. Rather than being constantly tired and guilty, decide that when you work you work, and when you don’t, you don’t. You are either at work, or not at work. Don’t mix or confuse them.
Some days might be administrative, other days connecting to people you have seen, or setting up meetings, or updating social media, or having online conversations, or looking for jobs online, or meeting up with real contacts and prospective employers. The real result however is how many people you connect with, not the number of likes on social media or the umpteenth revision of your CV, or aimlessly scrolling through ads. The all-important activity is having conversations with potential employers.
This can be a lonely journey and you don’t have to do it alone. Get yourself an inner circle of people who you meet with periodically to review your strategy, where you get to report progress and get feedback and ideas from them. We all need people in our careers who challenge, direct, and mentor us; people who are kind enough to take us to task and to hold us accountable for what we have decided to do. Set up your get-togethers ahead of time so you also have a deadline for getting things done.
B. Get Lucky
‘How do you get lucky?’ many people ask. There is always some element of luck or good fortune. Many of the activities suggested in this book so far will already have increased your luck. If you know what you are looking for and can clearly present that to other people, you are already way ahead of the pack who are simply looking for any job. You can now further increase your luck by job hunting with purpose and persistence.
Job hunting takes as much persistent work as any paid work, so the harder your work the better your chances. If you only speak to three people, it could take a long time to find work. This is a numbers game, which means you need a plan that will keep you fresh and moving. Winston Churchill said: ‘Success is going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm’.
Where to start? There is clearly no magic bullet, but here are some things you may want to do.
C. Get ‘Foxy’
I want to invite you to become ‘foxy’. During the Covid-19 lockdown many clients were wondering how to navigate this uncertain period. One of the things we did was go back in time to ancient Greece. The poet Archilochus wrote: ‘The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing.’ This wisdom, originally captured by the philosopher Isaiah Berlin, is now part of the fabulous body of work ‘The Mind of a Fox’ developed by Clem Sunter and Chantell Ilbury. It suggests that since life is uncertain, we need more than one scenario and more than one strategy to give ourselves the best chance.
What makes foxes different from hedgehogs is that they are agile and adaptable. They have more than one den, eat more than one kind of food and can adapt to a changing environment. They also remain curious and alert to new opportunities. Hedgehogs however live in a warm safe hole, near to a constant supply of food, and when threatened roll up in a ball and get ‘prickly’. And when winter arrives, they hibernate till the weather improves. Foxes don’t wait for the summer, till Covid-19 passes, or till the job market improves, to go hunting. Foxes are flexible but persistent hunters. You can be too.
Being ‘foxy’ means having more than one job hunting method, more than one offering, even more than one kind of work at a time.
Let’s explore a few things you might have tried so far. You might have sent your CV to a few companies, but you have heard nothing from them. You might have applied for a job online, but discovered you were competing with hundreds of other candidates and have not been offered an interview or heard from them at all. You might have posted your CV online with any job in mind, hoping that someone would find you! But no one has. You may have contacted agencies to find they are only interested in filling positions for their paying clients, they are not in the business of job hunting for you. You may have got busy on social media by posting ads and articles, even paying to reach your target audience. You may have got lots of likes, but no calls. Maybe you took networking seriously and asked for referrals. Some people may have been willing to help you, but others were less willing to share their prized contacts. Some might even have offered to send your CV to the HR department in their company, but you have heard nothing from them either. You might have put your details in your local newspaper, online classified ads or on the noticeboard at your library or supermarket. You may have had a few enquiries and a few small jobs, but not enough to keep you in groceries.
Dick Bolles, in his book What Color Is Your Parachute, the best job-hunting book in the world which I recommend unconditionally, shows how employers prefer to fill vacancies, and how job hunters typically do it the opposite way round.
Employers start by employing people they know and trust, and whose work they have seen. If they know no-one, they might employ someone who approaches them with some proof of what they do. But if no-one does, they contact their trusted network to see if they perhaps know somebody. If they don’t find anyone that way, they might then use agencies, or advertise themselves. Un-asked-for CVs that arrive in the mail in brown envelopes, is the least favourite way for employers to hire people, which is why you may never hear another word. Research shows that most of them go in the wastepaper basket, maybe your experience inside an organisation confirms this.
Consider if you wanted to build a carport, find a dentist, or hire someone for your home business. You might also first consider those people you already know and trust, and have worked with before. If someone approaches you with just the service you need, on just the day when you have run out of options, that might work too, but only if their timing is spot on. If no one approaches you, you might then call your friends and professional contacts to ask if they have anyone in mind; a builder that does good reliable work, a good dentist or someone they think would be a good fit for your business. You may remember some people that have approached you in the past, but their emails have got lost amongst thousands of other mails, if you even remember their name, and their business cards or brochures have long ago been put in the recycling bin.
With this in mind, you can become ‘foxy’ by not being dependent on any one system or person to find you work. You will also now be able to focus on high value rather than low value activities.
Certainly, you should send your CV to people who ask for it, or when applying for a specific role, but sending it out into the world to people you don’t know, particularly if it is unfocused, has a low chance of success.
Certainly, you should look at ads in newspapers and online, your job may be there, but if you are waiting for your job to appear in the ads, it might not. Keep moving.
Certainly, you should be visible on social media, particularly on sites like LinkedIn that have good job-hunting success, but if you are spending all your time on social media and not connecting with real people, you will be wasting valuable time.
You should certainly contact agencies, particularly those that specialise in your field, but if you are sitting at home waiting for an agency to find you a job, you could wait a long time, they can’t create jobs that haven’t been given to them to fill.
You should certainly apply for jobs online, but if that’s all you are doing, you could be unemployed a long time while others rush for those jobs and as employers apply criteria that exclude you for whatever reason. Apply anyway, it may be yours.
You should certainly put your CV online, it only takes a few minutes, but if you are waiting at home for the internet to find you a job, it could take a while, so don’t depend on it.
You can advertise on your online classifieds like Gumtree, or on the notice board at your local store or library. And even though job boards in your community don’t always deliver, if your card or ad is not on the board, you are guaranteed of not getting a call, and today might be your day, so keep it up anyway.
You should most certainly connect with people you know and let them know what you are looking for. That way you multiply your own eyes and ears. And keep in touch with them.
Start networking actively, particularly in your field of interest, and ask for referrals to people who may be willing to meet with you.
Identify places where you specially want to work, then set up conversations with people who work there and have influence to hire you. Express your desire to work there and ask if they need someone like you. After your meeting, send them a thank you note and include your contact details so they can find you again!
Get your foot in the door with an organisation, or an industry that interests you, even if it’s a lesser role. Stay flexible and accept non-permanent roles. Consider a short stint of voluntary work to get connected and show what you can do. To be busy and connecting with people is generally a good idea, even if it’s only a short-term job.
Be sure to keep your eyes and ears open and stay open to surprises. You may find your job through a conversation while having your hair cut. Or a conversation on the train. You never know what might happen when you begin to focus on what you want. A colleague shared with me how he got a lucrative executive role in South Africa from a packet of ‘boerewors’, a favourite local sausage. While on contract in the Far East, friends would send him sausage wrapped in layers of newspaper to keep it frozen till it arrived. Happily unwrapping his parcel, he noticed an old ad in the newspaper, applied for it, and got it.
I am not in any way suggesting this job-hunting journey is easy, but Goethe famously said: ‘At the moment of commitment the entire universe conspires to assist you’. May that be true for you.
D. Get Organised
Even though there is a lot to do, it needn’t be so complicated that you need an assistant to keep track of your activities. Rather blend your activities into your regular day. You might scan the daily newspaper ads, online ads, and your favourite social media sites over a second morning coffee. Later in the morning you might make focused calls to people who know you and may be able to provide referrals or have meetings with prospective employers. In your less productive time of the day, you might follow up mails and messages and apply for positions online that interest you. Instead of aimlessly surfing the internet, you might look for marketing events in your area of interest or join online forums.
Throw in an early afternoon nap, every day. Perhaps schedule an hour in the late afternoon to write some cards or send thank-you messages to people who have helped you, or perhaps a late afternoon meeting. Then pack it in, you’ve done well. Not every day will be productive, nor does it need to be. Just pick it up tomorrow with new energy. Even if you’ve done just one thing today, you are still better off than doing nothing. This is hard work, so be kind to yourself, and realise that some days will be best spent out of the house with a picnic basket, but not every day.
Be persistent with places you want to work at, without being a pest. Just because someone doesn’t have a contact today, doesn’t mean they won’t have one at a later stage. Just because a business didn’t need you last year doesn’t mean they don’t need you now. Things change, businesses change, people leave, people retire, people die unexpectedly.
But no matter what you do, you ultimately want to meet people who might need what you do, regardless of whether they are looking to hire someone right now. The very worst that can happen, is they say no, but then at least you know what to do next. And if people behave badly or are rude, despite you approaching them respectfully, it says more about them than it does about you.
One more thing before we move on. I spent a lot of time over the years with Dick Bolles, the author of What Color Is Your Parachute, not called the job-hunters Bible for nothing. Yet Dick was one of the shyest people I have met. He shared once in a group that at college they would say to him: ‘You won’t make any friends looking down.’ I tell you this in case you think this job-hunting methodology is for the gung-ho, super-confident extroverts with the gift of the gab. This is designed for ordinary people like you and me. So, with that in mind, let’s go job dating.
E. Get Dating
Job hunting has been likened to dating for good reason. You have two people looking at each other, asking themselves: ‘Do I want to see you again?’
The purpose of whatever job-hunting method you use is to get a date. It might be a formal face-to-face interview, an online interview, a meet-and-greet at their office, coffee at the local mall or an introduction at a cocktail party. It is highly unlikely you will be offered work by return mail when you send your CV, nothing is likely to replace a real-life connection unless you are buying an online product or service.
Online dating sites do a wonderful job connecting people. But their ultimate purpose is to get people together, right? Just as you are unlikely to get a wedding ring in the post after posting your picture, you are unlikely to get an employment contract without a job date in some form.
Since most jobs won’t find you without some effort on your part, you need to set up some of your own dates or you could stay at home for a long time, all dressed up and nowhere to go. You don’t have to do cold calling. Use the contacts you already have or begin to build them through social groups. Start with those people closest to you and as they refer you to other people your network will slowly expand. We all know someone, start there. Give up needing to be more in some way before you can job date. If you can speak, you can date.
If you are thinking ‘I’m too shy’ ‘I’m not pushy enough’ ‘I’m not confident enough’ here is the good news – you don’t have to be. You just have to be yourself and connect with people who may need someone like you. There may be many people looking for you, but they don’t know you exist!
No matter what job-hunting method you use, remember the primary purpose is to get an interview with someone who has the power to hire you. If you are spending hours tweaking your CV, scrolling job ads, putting up social media posts and making minor adjustments to your website that no one is visiting, you may just be moving deckchairs on the Titanic. If you are selling a commodity online that’s a different story, but to sell what you personally do, you are going to have to get in front of a real person.
There are as many online tips on dating as there are on job hunting, so I invite you to have fun finding those that work for you.
Here are some of my favourites as they relate to the job hunt.
- Don’t wait all dressed up for the phone to ring. It may take years to get a date. Ask to meet, otherwise they won’t know!
- Arrive on time, or early and look good and smell good without knocking them out with your perfume or after-shave.
- Don’t do all the talking. Ask questions and be interested to hear the answers. Truly engage.
- Put away your mobile and close your laptop so you are ‘all there’.
- Don’t jump the gun by asking how much they pay. But you can ask more questions if there are strong signals to proceed. (Like ‘When can you start?’)
- Send a thank you note afterwards by whatever means is appropriate, a written one is first prize.
- If you want to meet again, say so. There is no point returning home alone in the hope that the phone might ring, it might not.
- Just because someone doesn’t need what you do now, doesn’t mean there is anything wrong with you or that your skills aren’t needed elsewhere. The timing may not be right for them, or they simply don’t need what you do. Not everyone does.
- Don’t accept dates only at a 5-star hotel, sometimes the best meetings are at the local diner, and sometimes the most ordinary meetings blossom into spectacular jobs, so ‘stay loose’ and be curious.
- Avoid overdoing the qualifications bit. We know you have an MBA (because you already told us) but that doesn’t make you irresistible or the right person for the job.
- Say what you think, not only what you think they want to hear. And don’t make anything up. The truth will come out anyway.
- Thank them for meeting with you, it took a chunk out of their day, so be sure to say so.
But what will you say on a date? Well fortunately there is a kind of formula from a long line of great thinkers and job-hunting experts.
SHARE three things
Share 1: Share why you are here, in this meeting. Many people arrive with no idea why they are on this date and have little or no knowledge about the company, or what it does, or why it interests them. To simply say: “Well, I need a job” doesn’t set you apart from the crowd. And to start the conversation with “So, what does your business do again?” is a weak start.
This doesn’t make it a long lengthy speech as you’ll discover. It might go something like this: “Hello, I’m Jane, I so appreciate you taking the time to meet with me. The reason I’m here is because I’ve always been fascinated by publishing and have done some research on your organisation. You really do push boundaries on the articles you publish, and I would love to work for an organisation like yours.”
Share 2: Share what you can and want to do for them or their organisation. Avoid lines like ‘add value’ and ‘make a difference’. Decide what you want to do for them, specifically, and tell them. Read the chapter on skills if you need help here.
It might go something like this. “As I’ve thought about it, there are three things that I’m good at and would love to do. I am good at research, always looking for new information, I work well with images and graphic design, and I’m particularly good at copy editing and proofreading.” (As opposed to “I’ll do anything to get in the door” even if that’s true!)
Share 3: Share what kind of person you are and what makes you different. No one needs to hear the sordid details about your divorce and how long you’ve been out of work. Decide three things that describe you as a person and tell them. If there is something you believe sets you apart, here is the opportunity to share that also.
It might go something like this: “Being creative comes kind of naturally, I’m always playing with words and images to create stories. I love learning new things and I guess I can’t resist a challenge. If someone says I can’t do something, it really spurs me on to try it.
ASK three things
ASK 1: Ask if they need someone like you. If you don’t ask for anything in life, no one will know what you want. That might be asking for service, for a discount or for an upgrade on an airline. This is about asking if they need someone like you. If you don’t ask, how will you know if they do, or they don’t? There is no way around asking the question. Vague comments like “Thanks for coffee’ or “See you around” or, “Let’s stay in touch” are polite, but you still don’t know what to do next. Your question might simply be: ‘Do you need someone like me?’ The absolute worst answer you could get is “No” which is helpful since you now know to ask the next question.
ASK 2: Ask who else they can refer you to that may need someone like you. It doesn’t have to be the CEO, just someone who may know someone, who can refer you to someone who may need what you do. Get their name and contact details and when you call say who referred you. It increases your chances of getting a date many times over.
ASK 3: Ask for their business card in some form, in card or electronically. Carry some blank cards just in case. You are going to need their contact details as you’ll see, so don’t forget to ask for them.
DO three things
DO 1: Do take whatever action they suggest. If they refer you to someone, contact them. If they refer you to an article, find and read it. If they refer you to their website, look at it.
DO 2: Do send them a thank you note thanking them for their time, mentioning what you found interesting in the conversation, and letting them know the action you took following your meeting. This simple yet profound advice from Porot and Bolles, legends in this field, can literally change the game. In a world of information overload, a personal card can set you apart and shares your contact details to boot. Your contact details should be on the back of the card, not on the envelope that ends up in the wastepaper basket. They may not need you now, but one bright, or not so bright day, when their favourite staff member walks out, finding your card has a much better chance of success than remembering who you were, or finding a mail from a year ago. Like any good snail, leave a trail behind you. I have received some lovely cards over the years, often with no contact details, which makes it difficult to find them again. You can use electronic messaging, if you absolutely must, but there is nothing to replace a hand-written note that you post or deliver. Not only will it help build relationships, it will also force you to follow through on your dating system.
DO 3: Do set up your next date. Your last date may have been great, but there are no guarantees you’ll ever hear from them again. Many enthusiastic dates might say you are the best thing since sliced bread but never give you work. Others may be short, abrupt, and lacking in enthusiasm then phone you later. So, keep moving, you never know.
BE three things
BE 1: Be prepared for a No. After all, if everything you asked for was a yes, this wouldn’t be a job hunt, would it? A ‘no’ is also your signal to ask if they know anyone who may be looking for someone like you. You may have to kiss many frogs before you find your Prince or Princess and it could take many months in a tough market.
BE 2: Be willing to take on different roles to get into the industry. There are many ways to help an employer, so be prepared to be flexible and offer ways to assist.
BE 3: Be kind to yourself and reward yourself for every date you do. A cup of good coffee, an episode of your favourite TV show, a walk with your dog, something you would do for your best friend who has helped you. Give yourself simple rewards, they don’t have to cost money.
But everything I have said, so far, is pointless unless you do one important thing, and that’s to get busy!
F. Get busy
Your ultimate objective is to get yourself in front of the person who has the authority to hire you. No matter how good your CV, or your credentials, or your experience, without a date employment is out of the question.
‘How many dates should I have?’ many people ask. Well, that’s hard to say, but since it’s a numbers game set yourself a long target, like forty, that’s four zero.
Forty job dates might feel overwhelming! The good news is you can do this without having a stress attack. You could sleep late, have a leisurely breakfast, get some exercise and time to yourself, before meeting someone at 10.30. Then a lunchtime meeting at 1.30. Then perhaps a 4pm meeting after an afternoon nap. Then a late afternoon coffee with someone on their way home. At this pace you could do four dates all on one day, which you would certainly do if you were a salesperson for a business. At this pace, forty dates is only ten days work, but that may be difficult to keep up. At half that pace, it will take 20 days, which is as many days as anyone works over a month in a paid job.
If you have sufficient cash reserves, you could do one conversation a week for forty weeks, so you will need to decide what you can manage and how you want to spread it out. The key is keeping track of real dates and doing them. Remember that job hunting is real work, it’s your new job.
You might find it helpful to keep track of your activity. You could set up a spreadsheet on your computer or create columns in a book. Consider using the following headings, or similar: Date, Name of person you spoke to, Company, Date you sent a thank you card, Referral they gave you, Date you contacted referral, and so on. Just create something that works for you.
Will you find work in forty job dates? Well, there are no guarantees, but you certainly have a better chance than if you did only three. Once you have done forty dates you can review your progress, check in with those you have already met, follow up with those that had a ‘promise of romance’, or review your strategy and keep going. It may not take forty dates, but it helps to set a high bar since it stops the panic, when after three interviews no-one wants you or what you do. After all, number seven may be rude, number thirteen thought you were overqualified, number seventeen said you were a gift to the human race (except you haven’t heard from them again) and number twenty-eight said they would never hire someone like you, then gives you a call and says: “On second thoughts, could you help us?”
My friend Juanita says marketing is like putting on the lights in a room. You may be in the dark to people who need what you do. Remember you are offering a gift, so offer it proudly. Just because one person doesn’t need what you do, doesn’t mean the next person doesn’t. You may be one date away from your match, so don’t give up. The dating game is not certain, and you can’t marry them all, so keep looking for the person or the organisation who is looking for someone like you.
G. Carpet weaving one day at a time
Job hunting is about weaving your carpet one contact, one meeting, one advert, one email, one follow-up call, one day at a time. Carpets are colourful, so add just a bit of playfulness to your approach so you can also enjoy the process of meeting people and finding that role where you can make a difference. You don’t have to do everything in this chapter, but anything you can do to give yourself a better chance will help you weave your carpet more successfully.
Who could you date today?
© Andrew Bramley 2022, All Rights Reserved.