Avoid Sophisticated and Saturated Markets
One of the biggest mistakes people make in their job searches is going after jobs in sophisticated markets. A sophisticated and saturated market is one that’s populated by a lot of people like you—with your qualifications, background, and so forth. If you’re competing for a job in a sophisticated market, you’re going to be more harshly judged and more likely eliminated than if you’re looking in a less sophisticated market. The most sophisticated markets will be the most concerned about things like
- Where you went to school
- Whom you know
- How “solid” your experience is
- How you distinguish yourself compared to others with similar qualifications
The Dangers of Getting Jobs Through Friends
Men are more ready to repay an injury than a benefit, because gratitude is a burden and revenge a pleasure. “Oh, I already have a friend there. I’ll just contact him.” In the job market, it’s one of the more common things we hear after informing a job seeker that a certain employer has a job opening. There is a lot you need to consider before you decide to apply to a job through a friend or relative, or take a job working for a friend or relative. First, it is exceedingly rare that a friend or [Read more]
King Henry II and Understanding Your Employer
Under King Henry II in the twelfth century, England established a common law. This was a body of law that was common to all parts of the country. Throughout Europe at the time, there was a wide body of law that was applied—there were feudal customs, Germanic customs and other differing customs. For example, French King Louis IX was well known for having allowed each province of France to have its own laws and procedures after becoming part of France. He created a Parliament of Paris to hear appeals from the feudal lords around France. Each year, [Read more]
Why Aren’t There More American Day Laborers, Doctors, Engineers and Textile Workers?
From the time I have been young, I have watched people ignore the most basic law of economics. This basic law is all around us and it controls a great deal of what happens in the world. It controls who you are friends with, who you are married to, where you live, where you work, what kind of car you drive and much more. You too are likely ignoring this basic law of economics in some part your life. The employer you work for may be ignoring this basic law. All around you are people, companies, institutions [Read more]
The Kick-Ass Marketing Secret of the Most Successful Job Applicants and Employees
I have been going to conferences about one thing or another at least a couple times a year for the past several years. I have spent thousands of dollars attending marketing-related conferences. If I go to one more conference where someone talks about USPs (Unique Selling Propositions) I will probably get up and leave. I am going to teach you in the next few minutes what the best marketing minds in the world would charge you thousands of dollars to tell you about how to market yourself. You are going to know how to position yourself for incredible success—in life and in your [Read more]
Employers Want to Hire You
One of the most important things for you to realize when you are looking for a job and see a position advertised is this: The employer wants to hire you. If the position is advertised, the employer is actually desperate to hire you. When I say ”desperate,” I mean that the employer wants you yesterday and not today. The employer is losing money, or has a need that is really “calling out” when they start advertising jobs. A few years ago I was running a company that was growing like absolute madness. We could not hire or bring people on fast enough. I remember, at the time, that I hired a person and paid him $85,000 and his assistant another $50,000 just to bring people in to hire. I advertised our jobs on our own website and also made sure that those same jobs were advertised on numerous job boards. In one month I took out contracts for over $120,000 worth of job postings. Twice a week I would meet with this manager and the conversations would generally go something like this: ”I have over 40 job openings right now! Each of these jobs that is not being done is costing me a tremendous amount of money. You are probably costing this company like $500,000 a week by not getting these openings filled and filled fast!!” Each day I would watch this person go home with a stack of hundreds of resumes to review. He used to fall asleep every single night reviewing resumes. Our need for people was absolutely out of control. We needed bodies and did not know what to do. In other parts of the country I remember we needed people so badly that people would walk in, start interviewing, and if they looked like they were respectable they were hired on the spot. During this characteristically busy time, I heard a story from one of our managers about when a girl walked in for an interview to our office, which was bustling and out of control. He looked at her and said: ”You look fine. I do not have time to interview you. Sit down and start answering the phone!” This is what it is like when companies are growing and need people. They want to hire you. Sometimes if you get really lucky, they do not even ask many (if any questions). I remember walking out of my office one day and seeing a man with scores of tattoos down his arm sitting directly outside of my office. I had no idea how he had been hired. The man had a shaved head and was wearing jeans and a starchy clean tee shirt. He had a belt on that appeared to be a chain of some sort and was also wearing boots. The man had some of the most intimidating and scary looking muscles I have ever seen on a human being. He looked like a larger skinhead version of Mr. T, with a shaved head and a bad attitude towards humanity. Just to be clear, this is not the sort of office atmosphere I have traditionally fostered where I have worked. This was quite a scene for me and a lot to take in. I did not care, however. It is best to allow people to be themselves. ”Nice tattoos!” I told him as I exited my office. I noticed that his biceps were probably larger than my calves. I probably should not have said this. The tattoo on his arm appeared to be some sort of important scene. It looked like a woman with a snake wrapped around her body screaming. Whatever it represented, the tattoo was positively intimidating. I will never forget what happened next. The man looked up at me and growled, then went back to whatever he was working on. I was afraid he was going to kill me. I met with several people over the next few days and no one could figure out how he got hired. We had been so busy with everything he had been hired by mistake. He had showed up for work and people were so afraid of the guy they did not want to tell him that hiring him had been a mistake. Then, incredibly, he was allowed to start work. At the time we had around 120 people working in the particular office he was in. About 30 people who were sitting within 20 feet of this guy were stone cold silent during the day. It had formerly been a fun and playful work atmosphere, but they were all absolutely terrified. Men and women. ”We need to fire this guy and get him out of here,” I told a group of our managers behind a closed door meeting one day. ”I am afraid he is going to kill someone.” It certainly looked that way. The guy skulked through the office, bumping into people and staring them down in response when they did not react. Everyone (including myself) was absolutely terrified of this man. ”I’m not going to fire him. He will kill me if I do!”’ one manager said. One after another, the managers came back with the same thing. There was no way any one of them was going to fire this guy because they were terrified of them. Every single manager refused to fire the guy. They were afraid of physical violence directed towards them. We ended the meeting with none of us knowing what to do. A few days later a guy in the mail room declared that he was not afraid of the guy and would fire him. This completed the process and everything went pretty smoothly from there, as far as I know. When companies are in ”hiring mode,” they need people so badly that even assassins can make it through the door (as evidenced by this case). Back at this particular point in time our company was so desperate to hire people, it was amazing. These are the sorts of employers you need to find. A company that is growing and needs people. In a bad economy, places like debt settlement firms, collection agencies and others are growing and bursting at the seams. In a good economy it may be mortgage companies. The point is there are always tons of employers out there who are growing and want to hire you. I read a story the other day about a debt settlement company that is growing so fast, it is unbelievable. You need to find companies like this. When you go into interview with any company, they are desperate to hire you or someone else. Think about it. When an employer takes the time to line people up to interview you and bring you in to speak with them, they must be pretty eager to hire someone. Most employers that are interviewing people are very eager to hire. Exceptionally eager. Here is what happens, however. Most people go into interviews and throw off all of the wrong signals and end up not getting the job. It happens to everyone. You do not get the job because you throw off the wrong signals and the employer thinks you do not want the job, do not have the confidence or charisma [Read more]
You Need to Be Able to Close
The ability to ‘‘close’‘ and get the sale is the most important skill in selling. It is something that few people know how to do. Many people can get a consumer, an employer, or others to the cusp of making a purchasing or a hiring decision; however, it is the final ‘‘push’‘ that makes all of the difference. It takes a tremendous amount of skill to sell yourself and get a job. It takes a tremendous amount of skill to go from someone who a potential employer will consider for the job to someone who is hired. Your job in getting hired, in getting a better job and when looking for a job, is to push the employer over the fence and make them hire you. This is all there is to it. You need to get hired. There is nothing wrong with developing the skills of a master salesperson and ‘‘closer’‘ in order to get the best job you can. The desire to get a good job and ‘‘close’‘ the deal is a desire for employment, which leads to a richer and more abundant life and the desire to better yourself is praiseworthy. If you do not desire to have a better job or to find a job when you are unemployed, you are not living up to your full potential. It is absolutely essential that you give your best efforts to ‘‘closing’‘ and [Read more]
Socrates and Your Job Search
Several years ago, we were launching a newsletter for law schools. One of our employees who was working on the project decided that the title of the newsletter should be “The Signal” and he was very enthusiastic about this particular title. In fact, I had never seen him so enthusiastic about anything. The problem with this name was that the domain name for it had been taken long ago and I seem to remember that the person who owned the domain name had no interest in selling it. Without a domain name, it did not seem like it made sense to have an important newsletter going out to law schools with this particular name. The newsletter was supposed to be electronic, and due to it being electronic, people would start associating the name “The Signal” with the newsletter and looking for it under this URL when they did searches online. I explained this to my employee but he was having none of it. He did not care what the URL was. He was convinced the newsletter needed to be called “The Signal,” and when I would not agree to this he became extremely irate. He stomped out of work. He stopped working on the project and refused to work on the newsletter the next day. What had happened to this particular employee is that he had decided that things just needed to be a certain way and he did not want to hear anything that was different from this certain way at all. He had made up his mind that only one name was appropriate and had thrown all of his thinking, energy, and spirit behind something that was really unnecessary. However, this is something that many of us do in one form or another, and we do it with numerous, numerous things. One of the biggest challenges for me in working with people looking for jobs, is that most people seem to believe that their search needs to work in a certain way. They believe that there is one way of looking for a job and that way is the only way. People are extremely attached to doing things a certain way. For someone who is in their mid 50s, they may believe they should never go online and that the best sources of jobs are always in the newspaper. Other people may believe that networking is the only approach to getting a job. Still, other people may believe they will only be able to ever get a job with a certain type of employer. People are very stubborn and this obstinance is something that really holds them back. The guy who worked for me was so frustrated by the title of the newsletter, he ended up not coming into work regularly and turned from a very dependable employee to one who was completely unreliable. This was a huge mistake and he ended up losing his job. He was pigheaded about something that did not really matter. Many of us are pigheaded [Read more]
Athens, Sparta, America and Your Job Search
One of the greatest conflicts in the ancient world was between Athens and Sparta. In fact, the history of ancient Greece was dominated by the conflict between these two different cultures. Both cultures ended up leaving an important legacy to the world.
- On one hand, the culture of Athens left a legacy of art, drama, architecture, philosophy, the enjoyment of wealth and opulence, the idea of a governmental democracy and a strong navy.
- On the other hand, the government of Sparta left a legacy of asceticism, military supremacy on land and oligarchy (rule by a few).
These two societies fought repeatedly between the years of 500 BC and 350 BC. Their clash was a fight between two civilizations in the fullest sense. Each believed that their society and their way of [Read more]
Finding a Job in a Down Market
I made a video recently called “Job Search Secrets for a Recession,” which discussed the best way to locate a position during a recession. In my experience, the best way to find a job is and always has been to approach the widest variety of employers possible. There is another aspect to finding a job in a down economy, however, which is even more important: your own psyche. The psychological aspect of finding a job is what slows most people down in their search. People get depressed and stop taking action. This is not the right way to [Read more]
