Communicate Your Value: How to Get a Job and Keep It
December 19, 2009
What You Will Learn
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One of the best ways to realize the importance of communication is through simple services, such as getting a shoeshine, ordering hotel room service, or taking advantage of valet parking. In these situations the people providing the service must act quickly to show their value and win a large tip. If they fail to show their value, they risk selling themselves short and losing out on the extra cash. You can always tell how good someone is at these sorts of jobs because they communicate their value, or lack thereof, usually early on in their interactions.
Several years ago I was getting my shoes shined at a Washington, DC airport.
As the shine progressed, I noticed I was being treated to a ridiculous amount of attention. The man used a modified common contractor’s drill to buff my shoes, in addition to other specialized tools. He painted the heels with what appeared to be an artist’s brush and, as the shine progressed, it was one thing after another like this. Finally, towards the end of the shine, he sprayed something on my shoes, took out a match, and very briefly lit them on fire! It was the strangest thing I had ever seen. He put out the fire in less than a second and made a statement about how this would really make a major difference in the shine. The shoes ended up looking fantastic and I gave the man a giant tip. I’m sure he got tips like that all day long. The shoeshine man did everything he could to communicate his value.
Communicating our value is something we all must do to keep our jobs. We must also do the same in order to get jobs. Imagine if this man interviewed for a shoeshine position and described his approach to the job. Imagine an average shoeshine man doing the same. Who would you hire?
One of the biggest mistakes people often make when interviewing for jobs (or in their current jobs) is failing to communicate their value frequently and in detail. This kind of communication is one of the most important things in our careers. If you go above and beyond the call of duty on a daily basis, or have become aware of cost-saving measures or new sources of revenue, you owe it to yourself and the company to communicate this. It is extremely important that you communicate with your company and supervisors at all times.
If you were an employer, you would expect nothing less from your employees, right?
Why? Because the company you work for, or want to work for, cannot possibly know the multitude of ways in which you can or already contribute. The company cannot know all the improvements you can or already make to its bottom line. You need to make the people around you aware of who you are and what you can do. If people don’t know this information, you are doing yourself a disservice. People lose jobs all the time because their superiors do not know who they are or how they are helping the company. Don’t let this happen to you!
Earlier this week, I saw an employee (who works as a driver) sitting outside my office, using a computer. Sitting next to him was a manager. The driver appeared to be surfing the Internet and not doing much else. I watched this go on for a couple of hours as I passed by now and then. Later in the day, I called the manager into my office. I was very close to firing either the manager or the driver–or both. I could not believe that someone was being paid to sit there and surf the Internet.
“What is he doing?” I asked.
“He says his finger hurts,” the manager said.
I proceeded to question the manager about whether the driver could work or not. The manager said, “I assume he cannot.” I knew the driver had cut his finger earlier in the week, but I also knew it was not serious. I met with the driver to discuss the situation as well. What essentially happened in this exchange cast a very bad light on both of the employees.
First, the manager assumed the driver could not do any other work, because he had a hurt finger. The manager did not communicate with the driver further to see if there might be any other type of work he could do; He simply decided to end the conversation there, without giving the driver any other work to do.
Second, the driver did not ask for any more work. The driver simply decided that, since he was not given any more work to do, he would just sit there and do nothing. I know this driver quite well and he is very talented. He knows about carpentry and has many other useful skills. Obviously the driver’s wounded finger did not preclude him from playing around on the computer.
In many companies, both of these men would have lost their jobs that day. The driver should have spoken up and stated that he did not have anything to do. The manager should have spoken up and either found another task for him to do, or sent him home. Both men should have handled this situation much differently. They both failed to act as responsible employees.
It is like this with your job too–regardless of what you do. All employers want things done efficiently. No one wants to waste time or money. By communicating clearly you are able to avoid the appearance of inefficiency. For this reason, nothing is more important than effective communication.
Communication goes much further than this simple example. Communication is important in the highest levels of executive suites. Communication is needed to ensure that businesses are healthy and that you are preserving your job through positive efforts, and through garnering appreciation for those efforts. Effective communication can help you to know exactly where you are going and what is going to happen in your career. Most importantly, communication can help you ensure that you are always in a good position with your company–and if you are not, you can usually get out while there’s still time.
A couple of years ago, one of our businesses at Career Mission dealt primarily with student loans (and it still does, although much less so than in the past). In running this business I was always a little circumspect about its long-term prospects, mostly because a lot of the business was dependent upon major forces that were outside our control: (1) government programs to subsidize student loans from private lenders, and (2) the value of those loans as securities on Wall Street. Both of these eventually went away, and following this the student loan business suffered a great deal.
Had I been an employee at the time, I certainly could have benefited from knowing this information. I could have asked to be given work in other departments or divisions of Career Mission, which were not as dependent upon student loans. For example, I might have asked to work in an employment-based business as well. In short, I could have communicated with my superiors, relaying my value and how it could translate to other, healthier areas of the company.
The mortgage business in the United States was also built on the value of being able to sell securities (i.e., packaging loans into bundles and selling them as a group). Imagine if you worked for one of these mortgage companies two years ago. Down the street from our office in Pasadena is the shell of IndyMac, a former giant bank that did tons of these mortgages. The mortgage business of IndyMac is now completely gone. What if you had worked in this bank a couple of years ago? Would you have been asking questions about the bank’s long-term viability? What would you have done for the company and for yourself as the tide began to shift?
The ability to communicate your value is part of the big picture. You need to communicate your value but also understand where you and the value of your work fits into the grand scheme. Is your value to the organization dependent upon forces outside of your control? Is your job dependent upon the government like the student loans were? You need to understand these things well in order to assess the viability of your company and your employment.
Once you interview with a company–or even send in a résumé, you do not have anything to lose by communicating your value. A little-known job search secret is that a significant percentage of people get jobs each year using non-traditional methods to communicate with potential employers. For example, calling before sending a résumé is a great way to get the employer’s attention. Calling after an interview to reaffirm your interest is another great way to get an employer’s attention. Making sure you remain on the employer’s radar with a series of notes (even if you end up getting the job six months from now) is also a great way to get an employer’s attention. Remember, communication is key.
Communication means letting people know you are there. Let people know you are interested in working for them. Let people know you care. When you communicate with a potential employer, you make yourself stand out. Excellent communication can get you a job when you might not have otherwise succeeded.
What makes you special? What makes you different? Why are you a good employee? Communicate who you are and what you do well. This is what all potential employers want to hear, and it is what you need them to know.
Find Joy in Your Life’s Work–and Never Be Without Work
December 12, 2009
What You Will Learn
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In my work as an advocate for people to find jobs, I insist that the people who work for me enjoy their own jobs, and this includes the recruiting team. I expect the recruiters I work with to thoroughly enjoy, appreciate, and respect the people they are helping to find work.
Everything we do is affected by our mindset. Your mindset needs to be in the right place with regard to your work. A good mindset is a foundation for success. A poor mindset makes for job dissatisfaction, frustration, and long days, and, ultimately, can bring about failure. This is why enjoying what you are doing, and enjoying it immensely, is key.
Many people cannot seem to grasp this simple but powerful perspective, so I would like to elaborate on it a bit. I think it is one of the most important perspectives one can have. It will change the way you look for a job and, if you really get it, it can really help you achieve success in your life and career. After my first semester at the University of Chicago I had a mandatory meeting with a counselor. I had gotten a 3.3 average for that semester despite taking a difficult calculus class and several advanced classes that had made me study harder than I ever had in my life. I was feeling pretty good about myself for getting these kinds of grades.
In the meeting, the counselor asked me what profession I wanted to go into after graduation. I told her that I was interested in going to law school. She told me that if I wanted to have a “shot in hell” of going to a top law school, specifically the University of Chicago, that I would need a minimum of a 3.6 grade point average. That meant my B+ GPA wasn’t good enough. I would need to score at least an A- for the rest of my time in college. At the time this seemed like an impossibility.
I spent several weeks that semester thinking about how I could achieve this goal, and I worked even harder than I had worked to get my 3.3 average. Then, it hit me: I would get As if I simply took classes that I loved and knew I would do well in. Over the next three and a half years, that’s exactly what I did. I took classes in anthropology that studied African cultures. I took a class where I studied my hometown of Detroit. I took classes where I got to study and write about the personalities of American presidents throughout history. I loved these classes and my plan worked. In fact, in my junior year of college, every single grade I received was an A, except for one A-. This was not because I was smarter than other people. It was because I did what I loved and I was enthusiastic about all the work I had to do. I absorbed more information, I read more in my free time, I wrote more, I talked more in class–in short, my passion came through.
During this same time, I saw other students flunk out of school or come close to doing so. Many students had parents pushing them to be doctors or business majors. These students took one class after another that they hated and in which they did poorly. I watched all of this going on around me while I continued to read about tribes in Africa, and to take courses about fossils and other things that interested me.
When all was said and done, I ended up with great grades and a real love for school. I ended up having more opportunities, job offers, law school admissions, and so forth than I would have had if I had followed the pack and done what I believed I was supposed to.
I think the world would be a much better place if everyone followed his or her passion. People would enjoy work more and success would be much sweeter. I know that my career and life would be vastly different than they are right now if I hadn’t chosen to do what I loved.
Several years later, as I was spending 12 hours a day in an office tower in downtown Los Angeles practicing law, I thought of this advice again. See, I did not love what I was doing at the time. In fact, I did not even really like what I was doing–not to the degree I knew I should. As I investigated options for other employment I spoke with legal recruiters, and, incredibly, that sort of job had major appeal to me. I liked the creative aspect of it. I liked the fact that I would be able to do research the way I wanted. I liked that I would be able to speak with lots of people. I liked that I would be able to write. I liked that I would have more control over how much I earned. I knew instinctively, deep down, that this job was something I could love and do forever.
I quit the practice of law, walked away from job offers, and started being a legal recruiter. In the beginning I of course had no income whatsoever–but I was pursuing something I loved doing. Despite having had a good salary as an attorney, despite the prestige, despite all of the work I had put into becoming an attorney, I knew that I would ultimately be much happier as a legal recruiter than I would ever be practicing law. I also knew that loving my work would make me a better recruiter, far better than I ever would have been as an attorney.
The hardest thing about this career change was that it was going against what everyone told me I should do. Leaving the practice of law disappointed my parents and made me look something like a fool to the other attorneys I was working with. My law school classmates could not understand my decision either. It was just not what people expected of me. It was, however, what I wanted for myself.
Sometimes you need to take charge and understand that when you love what you are doing it changes everything. We are naturally better at the activities we love, and doing what we love simply makes us much happier.
There is a final point I would like to make: When you find what you love doing and you practice it with passion, you are able to touch more people with your work, and you create much more value in the world. You inspire more people around you, and more people want to work with you. You also fulfill a higher purpose and discover a life with deeper meaning. No matter who or where you are, you can bring greater worth to the world and to yourself when you find exactly what it is that gives you joy. Success will surely follow.
For example, there was a woman who worked in the restaurant up the street from me, where I would often go to eat as a child. She was always so enthusiastic about her job, and just seemed so happy to be there. This woman was the best waitress I had ever seen, and it still stands to this day.
I imagined that this woman, at one time, might have had to choose from a couple of career options. One choice might have been to take an office job as a file clerk. If she had worked in an office, she would have the prestige of that office, a steady paycheck, and coworkers to collaborate and be social with. Her other option might have been the waitress job. Working as a waitress would mean she would not have the prestige of working in an office, she would be on her feet all day dealing with the public–which can be difficult, and her income would be heavily dependent on tips. Obviously, if there was ever a choice to be made, we know which one she took; she chose to do what she loved.
This waitress was so memorable because she would anticipate your every need, call you by name, smile, and make you feel very good for coming to the restaurant. In fact, the waitress was so good that many people probably came to the restaurant just to see her. As it would happen, I had a relative who was a waitress at the same restaurant. I found out years later that the waitress had made three-times as much money working the same hours as my relative. Clearly the waitress absolutely loved her job, and that is precisely what made her so successful.
Not everyone respected the waitress, though. In fact, I remember some people actually made fun of her. I wondered if she would have been as good at an office job, only because she had such passion for her job as a waitress. Some may believe that working in an office would be a better career than serving dishes at a diner. But who cares what other people think? You need to do what you love and be happy in your career, no matter what it is.
Find what it is that excited your interest and grab it by the horns. Don’t be influenced by other people’s opinions or by society’s stigmas. Be passionate about your job and your career. If you do this and nothing more, you will have more success than you can imagine.
The Importance of Giving Access to Information–and Doing Good
September 25, 2008
What You Will Learn
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I am frequently reminded we are on this earth for a relatively short time. While we are here, it is in our best interest to create an abundance of outgoing goodness and love, and to simultaneously limit the amount of hate, anger, and sorrow that comes into our lives. Indeed this can be much of the struggle of human existence.
At times it seems the more good we attempt to put out into the world, and the more people we try to reach, the more the world challenges us by creating new obstacles. These obstacles actually serve to make us stronger, and ultimately assist us in reaching our goals.
The key is not to give up despite the difficulty. Telling jobseekers that perseverance is key, is in my view, the best piece of career advice anyone can offer.
I recently had a thought regarding some of the employment sites to which I dedicate myself seven days a week, 14 hours a day–specifically, the job sites Hound.com and EmploymentCrossing.com. Both of these sites are dedicated to consolidating all available job opportunities within specific industries, by gathering information from a vast multitude of employment websites. For some time, I have been developing and watching over these sites. My career in the employment industry is a mission of good, one that helps people find jobs or advance their careers.
I also believe the business model our sites follow is the correct one. For example, as with a site like Google, our goal is to consolidate and organize the world’s information. In our particular case, we are organizing job related information. Giving democratic access to this information is my prime motivator. Providing access to organized job opportunity information is no different from building libraries in different cities. It is no different from providing Internet terminals or wireless Internet access to retail establishments. Essentially, our companies are assisting people by providing information so they can make empowered decisions about their careers. After all, instructing a job seeker to search for all opportunity and information available is always regarded as good career advice.
Sometimes people misunderstand our service mission. While I hate to be negative, recently I’ve discovered some of this misunderstanding has impacted our business in a surprising way.
Some time ago a landlord with whom we were to lease an office found a website posting which claimed our company “steals” jobs from employer websites, and resells the information. The person criticizing us had started a long message thread about how what we were doing was wrong. Incredibly, the landlord did not want to rent to us because of what he read. I was completely taken aback by the news.
Organizing information is as old as the hills. Libraries consolidate and organize books and reference materials. Google does this as well with all the content it indexes on the Internet. EmploymentCrossing.com organizes job listings on the Internet, while Hound organizes employer jobs on the Internet.
I believe giving people access to information is a good thing, and provides a much needed service. I also believe a career is one of the most important things in people’s lives because it provides a sense of identity, and of purpose. Career choices can seriously influence the quality of one’s life.
I love what I do, and I hope to influence as many people as possible. I know the more I push, the more I, and the companies I work for will come under attack. That’s fine. I am ready for the challenge.
Our websites are unique. We do not accept advertising, nor do we charge employers to post job openings. Therefore, our only priority is showing our members every job we can possibly find, in the most democratic and unbiased way. I understand that with the democracy of the Internet it is easy for people to post their opinions, positive or negative.
But we must understand they are just that: other people’s opinions, not necessarily fact. I encourage everyone to be thorough in their research. Weigh your options not only with word of mouth or Internet posts, but with actual fact. I’ve built my businesses on thorough research and I’m happy to know it’s enriched thousands of lives.
Shoot for the moon. Even if you miss it, you will land among the stars.