Treating Your Career Like A Small Business

No one seems to take the time to consider that their careers are businesses. Your career is no different than any small business. You have a product (you) that you are selling to your audience (your employer). You need to run your career exactly like a business person runs a business. There is no greater skill to have with your career than to run it like a business. As a business, your goal is survival and to sell your product for as much money as possible. So too it is with your career.

Be a good business person and your career may go far, ignore the business realities and you are likely to run into trouble. I have been a recruiter for several years and have seen countless attorneys “go out of business” because they did not run their careers well. In fact, this is something I see on a daily basis while reviewing resumes of out of work attorneys. Just as companies make bad decisions that result in them going out of business, people also make bad decisions with their careers that result in them going out of business and finding themselves unemployed.

• They may choose to concentrate on a profession that becomes obsolete–They are trying to sell a product no longer in demand.
• They may have resumes that do not serve them well–They are not presenting/”packaging” their products correctly.
• They may choose to work in an area where there are no jobs–They are trying to sell a product in a geographic area where there is no demand.
• They may have done something bad that makes people not want to hire them–They have a bad “brand”.
• They may be too old to get a job–People are “tired” of their product.
• They apply to only a few jobs and do not get a job–They are not marketing their brands to a large enough demographic.

Your career is a business and you are a product. You need to understand that using simple business principles to market yourself is something that can be of massive benefit to you.

Before I go further, there are a couple of other things I would like to cover. First, I believe that working for other people is an incredibly smart thing. When you think about your career and working for other people as a business, you will quickly realize that there are few businesses that offer higher pay for less risk, the ability to shut off work when you are not there, the ability to leverage others’ assets as your own, the ability to be part of a social network and the ability to concentrate your efforts on one thing.

Working for other people has a tremendous number of rewards and these rewards are both psychological, financial and otherwise. When you are working for someone else you are in business for yourself but allowing your employer to take most of the risk. Another secret of working for other people is that you can take advantage of economies of scale and inefficiency. If you go to work for a large enough company, the company will hopefully be throwing off huge amounts of money with thousands of workers and you can claim your desired share of this as your compensation. For some strange reason, however, when I meet people at various public functions (and elsewhere) they all start telling me how they want to start their own businesses. Whether they are doctors, accountants or lawyers, everyone seemingly wants to start their own business. I do not understand this.

When you meet people who have little education and start hugely successful businesses and become fabulously wealthy, they rarely want their children to follow in their footsteps. They want them to go to school and become professionals and work for other people. There are a lot of reasons for this–the respect, the stress, predictability, the ability to be involved with large groups of people, the ability to be part of society and more. The point I am trying to make to you is that working for other people is something that the most successful people in the world want for others. It is good to work for other people.

Many Americans seem to have a belief that it is much better to work for themselves and stay fixated on this idea throughout their careers. The truth is when you are working for someone else you are actually already in business. Working for others is a very smart and shrewd choice for many people and if you were a business person it would be advisable in most instances to work for others rather than yourself. Someone who makes a $100,000 a year working for a company is no different than someone with a $1,000,000 a year at a company who is clearing a 10% profit margin. This is an impressive profit margin and something that not many people could accomplish, but being able to step into a job where you are guaranteed this profit margin is extremely smart. When you work for others there is often less risk; other people are risking capital and not you. And if you choose the company right, you may have a lot of security.

A few years ago I was meeting with a lawyer friend of mine who had a salary of $200,000 a year, who was (like many people I spend time with) telling me in detail how interested he was in starting a business. The more I thought about it, the more incredible I realized making a salary like this is. He was sitting there talking about how he wanted to start one business after another. One business he wanted to start was a winery. Another business was a dry cleaners. The list of businesses he was interested in went and on.

“What sort of profit margins are you interested in making?” I asked him.

“At least 10%” he said.

“Well, in order to make $200,000 a year you are going to have to bring in at least $2,000,000 a year. If a bottle of wine sells for $5 wholesale that means you are going to have to make and bottle over 400,000 wine bottles to generate the $2,000,000 needed to make your profit margin.”

He gave this idea some thought and is still practicing law today. There are many people who dream of starting businesses when they would be far better off not dealing with the idea of a business at all.

Running businesses is hard. Most businesses fail.

How hard is it running a business?

A couple of years ago I hired a now world famous executive consultant to come and look at my companies. At the time the companies I was running were generating several millions of dollars a month and had over 700 employees. The coach sat me down and for a full day (and $40,000) lectured me about everything that was wrong with the companies I was running.

“You would be a good CEO,” I said. “If you know so much about this why don’t you try going to work for a company,” I said.

There was a pause and then the guy said something I will never forget.

“I could never run a real business. I have never been able to fire people. I just cannot do it.”

It occurred to me that here I was paying someone thousands of dollars an hour and he did not even have the nuts to be able to fire people. Running a business involves all sorts of things like this. You must be willing to take the unpopular position for the benefit of the company and consistently do this regardless of the consequences to your psyche. And then there are budgets, payroll and all sorts of other things that most people do not even think about. The stress of running a business is incredible. There are a million small things like this that come up when you run a business as a business owner. When you limit your business exposure to your career and what you are doing on a day-to-day basis, you are much better off.

Just understand that when you are working for someone else you still need to run your career like a business. I would like you to consider the following business realities of your career.

First, that your career, like any business, needs to have a marketable product. This means that you need to be in a profession that is marketable in the geographic area you are in. There are countless professions that are marketable in some geographic areas and not others. For example, it would not be profitable to be a cowboy in New York City, but this would work in rural Wyoming. It would not be profitable to be a financial analyst in rural Wyoming, but it would be profitable to do this in New York City. Furthermore, the profession you are in can be under attack from various forces (including the economy) at various points in time. If you were a computer programmer 15 years ago you had a very bright future. In today’s economy, however, this is not necessarily the case. Many of these jobs have been outsourced to India, Romania and other locations where they can be done more cheaply. At all points in time you need to be asking yourself whether or not you have a marketable product.

Second, you need to understand the importance of your “brand” to marketing your product. Everything you do in your career will have an impact on your ultimate brand. The better your brand is, the more in demand your product will be. The best brands typically work in the most competitive markets. The worst brands typically work in the least competitive markets. For example, if you go to Harvard Business School you are going to have a better chance of getting a job with a top bank in New York City than you would if you went to University of Phoenix at night for an executive MBA. This is not to be insulting to this school, it is just to point out a reality that you need to consider when you market yourself.

Third, you need to know how to market your product for the maximum possible success. When you market yourself you need to put your brand before the largest possible market to make the most “sales”–i.e., to get the most interviews and job offers. You need to know how to position yourself and your resume. You need to understand what to say in order to impress the employer in the correct way.

A. Your Career, Like Any Business, Needs a Marketable Product

Every business needs to have a marketable product in order to succeed. While businesses can sell all sorts of things, your business is selling yourself and what you do. This is something that will need to be carefully managed throughout your career. It is important to realize that when we are in the workforce we are all like small business people. We are selling a product (which is ourselves) and need to follow certain rules in order to sell this product effectively.

The first thing you need to consider is that your product needs to be marketable. A lot of my family is from Toledo, Ohio. They are house painters and do other sorts of blue collar jobs. From the time I was around 10 until I was around 17 or 18 they kept telling me I should be a machinist. The told me about how they knew various machinists and how well they did as machinists. One machinist had his own boat, another machinist just redid his home. Being a machinist was a very good profession 20+ years ago in the Midwest. You could work for auto companies and other companies that were doing work that required the skills of a machinist. Today, it is almost impossible to find jobs as machinist in the Midwest. If I had chosen that career path I would be “out of business.”

What do most machinists do when they lose a job? They try and find another job as a machinist. If you are working in an area where auto companies are closing and there are no opportunities for machinists (like Toledo, Ohio) you might have to wait a very long time indeed before you get a job. The problem with finding a job is not you–it is that you do not have a marketable product. Lots of people do not have marketable products and yet continue to look for jobs when their product is not marketable.

When people lose a job the path they follow is often ass backward. They do not think about themselves as a product in need of a market. You can only sell what people are buying. You need to have something that is in demand. You can never cling to something that once was. I have seen so many careers ruined by this very idea.

I know someone who, 12 months ago, was in a field that was very much in demand. It no longer is. He was making upwards of $70,000 a year at this profession. Now the most he can make if he continues doing this for a living is $12 to $14 an hour. He goes into every interview and tells people he expects to make $70,000 a year. The market for what he is doing around his geographic area has gone away, and to the extent it has, he can no longer sell himself for that amount. This is just the way it is.

If I was a machinist in the Midwest I might try looking for a job in other areas around the country where the skills of machinists are in demand. I would get the hell out of Toledo, Ohio if I realized there were no opportunities. If there were not opportunities for machinists around the United States, I might consider another career. Or, I might consider how to package myself differently.

Since I am in the legal career industry, I have recently witnessed something quite remarkable that I think you can learn from. During the real estate boom in the United States, a ton of small real estate firms became overwhelmed with real estate work. Companies and others were purchasing an incredible amount of real estate and this generated a lot of work for these real estate firms. About 18 months ago this work started dramatically slowing down to the extent that most of these firms started aggressively letting go of real estate attorneys. Things got so bad I was under the impression that most of these real estate firms would start going out of business. The crisis they were facing was incredible and beyond anything that had happened in the past. I was not sure what was going to happen. Recently, something incredible has happened with many of these real estate law firms. They have started representing to their clients (real estate companies) that they have great skill in bankruptcy involving property. Now, many of these bankruptcy law firms are thriving again and doing well. They are actively hiring. This is a remarkable reversal of fortune and something I certainly did not expect to see. This is because these law firms have figured out how to have a marketable product.

As a business person and operator of a small business you are going to be faced with countless decisions as to how you operate your own business. You need to remember that every decision you make will determine your marketability.

Everyone has a myriad of choices about how they operate their businesses. They may brand themselves as a big company employee, small company employee, government employee, you name it. Whether you are working on your own or for a large firm, you are always in charge of your career.

There are aspects of your product that will never change. Wherever you are in your career right now, you simply cannot change the things you have done in the past. This includes your education to date, performance in school, the first company you worked at (or second, or third), your current skills and any variety of things that you have done in your career. However, if you look around, there are literally thousands of small businesses operating. The pedigree of these businesses does not matter so much as whether they are in business and how well they are operating.

You need to look at the field you are in like the business world as well. Whatever type of business you are running, it must have a marketable product. If you are a computer programmer who programs in PERL, you have a product. You will be able to sell your product in certain areas and with certain audiences better than others. For example, your programming skills will be more valuable in Silicon Valley, most likely, than rural Nebraska. The list goes on and on. Everything is about having a marketable product throughout your career in the area that you are working in.

The point of any business is to survive and, for many businesses, to grow. You need to consider the market for your skills and run your business accordingly. One of the most important aspects of running your business involves the type of work you do. If you are a sales person of premium automobiles, you help companies sell expensive cars. If you are an accountant, you will help people deal with tax issues. Whatever you do, it is important to understand that your product likely has more appeal (to the market) in some areas and points in time than others. Your objective is to get business and the decisions you make in this regard are important.

There are certain jobs that may be bad business to choose. For example, railroad law used to be a popular practice area for attorneys, but you would have a difficult time running a small business now that focused on such an antiquated type of law. Several years ago, corporate work was enormously in demand. Later, however, this market was doing horribly and corporate attorneys from top 10 law schools who performed well both in school and in high profile firms were, in some cases, looking for work for more than a year. Years later, corporate work was again available. For many small businesses/attorneys, corporate law would have been a bad choice for them to get into because there is no demand for that product. In this current economic climate, bankruptcy would be a more prudent venture for the business-minded attorney.

The list goes on an on. The point is that you need a marketable product.

Likewise, the geographic area you are in, the stability of your current employer and your opportunity for advancement at your current firm are all factors to keep in mind in operating your small business. These are all things that will have a bearing on whether or not your business will succeed.

Far too many people fail because they fail to adapt their business to the current economic climate. This is why most businesses out there end up failing. They simply fail to adapt.

B. The Importance of Your “Brand” to Marketing Your Product

When you are working in any profession, you need to have a good personal brand. The quality of your brand will determine a great deal about what happens to you. The quality of the work you do, your interpersonal relationships and a variety of other factors will determine the strength of your brand. The point is that all brands have certain attributes and over time you will develop a certain brand.

Companies spend an inordinate amount of money both protecting and developing their brands. There are certain things that come to mind when you think of any brand. For example, think of BMW or Chevy. Likewise, RC Cola creates a different thought than Coke. A brand is developed over time. The places you work, your practice area and all of the aforementioned factors will have a bearing on the quality of your brand.

Generally, better brands can charge more and have more interest directed towards them than poor brands. All of the rules of the business world apply to managing your own brand. You always need to be cognizant of how you want your brand to be viewed by the outside world and potential employers. Think through what type of brand you want carefully, and ensure that you manage that brand the best you can.

You are shaping your brand in so many ways, both by the things that you do and do not do. Your brand is shaped by the type of companies you have worked for, how long you have worked at these companies, the promotions or the demotions you have received, the awards you have received, the articles you have written and the general enthusiasm you have demonstrated for your job.

There are numerous things that shape your personal “brand,” which is the general perception employers have of you. You need to be conscious that everything you do is reflecting on this brand. Something I have seen a ton of in my career are employees who move around a lot–they move every one, two, or three years. Once you have done this enough times you and your brand will start getting a reputation as someone who cannot be trusted to work with the same employer for a long time. If you do the opposite, you will also get the reputation as someone who can be trusted and will remain with the same employer for a long length of time.

If you start out working for small, non-prestigious companies and gradually over the course of several years rise into more and more prominent positions and companies, you will get the impression as someone who is improving. Similarly, you will get the same reputation if you are consistently rising to higher and better positions with your employer over several years.

It is important to understand that everything you are doing has a major impact on your brand. You shape your brand by the choices you make. The reason your brand is so important is due to the fact that it will impact your ultimate marketability.

C. How to Market Your Product and Brand for Maximum Possible Success

As an attorney, consider hypothetically that your salary is $100,000 per year. Also consider that you are being billed out at approximately $200 per hour and expected to bill 2,000 hours a year in the law firm you are working in. This means that your small business is generating $400,000 per year and out of that amount you are “netting” $100,000. This is not bad from a business standpoint.

As a legal recruiter, I am not surprised that most attorneys want to go to the law firms that pay the most money and have the most prestige associated with them. These are all business decisions. If you are an attorney, over time you presumably would like the amount of money you make to increase. You would also like the percentage of the money you collect from your billings to increase. For example, if you generate $400,000 from your work, you would rather make $200,000 than $100,000, as in the prior example. You want to become a partner and earn more. The business game continues.

Everything that happens to your career is the result of selling your product on the marketplace. The amount of money you receive as your salary (i.e., the amount of money the market will pay) will be influenced by the type of brand you have. Hypothetically, you could have no education and start out as a clerk in a small firm. This is something thousands of people do each year. Then, several years later, you could be earning in excess of a million dollars per year leading the same company you started out in. To many people this may seem like an aberration. Nevertheless, this is not an aberration and it happens all the time. The reason this happens is because of how people ultimately (1) brand themselves and (2) market their brand.

Marketing is the single most important thing you can do for yourself and your career. Marketing is about how you package yourself, the things you say and the value the market perceives that you offer.

The point of this essay is not to act as a diatribe on marketing; however, a few comments on marketing should make a helpful point. When you market a product, you need to appeal to people on both an emotional and rational (cost) level. When marketing personal services-which your specific skills are-people tend to want to deal with people like themselves. It is for that reason that large companies typically prefer a certain type of employee, small law firms prefer a certain type of employee and certain types of clients (rich, poor and in between) prefer dealing with a certain type of employee. We have a tendency to want to deal with people like ourselves. Thus, your product is likely to be well accepted in some areas and not others.

I remember one thing when I was clerking for a federal judge and I had the opportunity to see different trial lawyers come into court and conduct trials. I also spent a year trying to write a book about personal injury attorneys several years ago and once again I made a similar observation. The one thing I noticed about the most effective personal injury attorneys was that they were nothing like big firm attorneys and almost never had big firm experience or top law school credentials. What they did know how to do was market themselves and their clients’ grievances to like-minded jurors. They also tended to be quite flamboyant in their marketing efforts, but that is another story.

In small towns all across America, there are very successful attorneys. In most cases, these attorneys grew up in the area and are similar to the people they do work for. What is most significant about the attorneys who are most successful in small towns, from those who are not, is their marketing ability. They fraternize in local clubs and bar associations. Stories circulate about their successes. All of this is marketing.

The same thing occurs in large law firms in big cities. Here, the marketing is confined to the law firm and getting clients to hire you as you advance in seniority. What is most significant, though, is that the marketing component and what the individual’s brand represents are always at the forefront.

The issue then is how you market yourself and advance your own career. While this may not be obvious, a large part of a recruiter’s job is helping people market themselves to employers. They know what the employers want to hear and how the attorney should say it. Virtually every week at our recruiting firms we get attorneys jobs at firms that I know they could not have gotten on their own. That is because we “packaged” the person to the employer in a certain way and told him/her what to say in order to portray the particular brand the firm is interested in.

What is so interesting about the work exceptional recruiters do is that none of what we do is dishonest. In fact, it is just knowing the market, the particular brand of the firm and what makes a person marketable to them. People need to be themselves, but also be aware of what the particular employer wants.

If you are looking for a position you need to keep the idea of marketing at the forefront of what you do and how you think about everything. You have a product to sell and in order to sell your product you must brand it and package it in the right way. In order to sell your product, and get the highest price for it, you also need to have the largest possible market. Everything I have done in my career is geared towards helping people market and package themselves. One service I recommend that anyone look at is Legal Authority (www.EmploymentAuthority.com), which can assist you in marketing yourself to the largest potential demographic of employers possible. It helps you professionally package yourself and get the highest price for your product. Two other companies I recommend are Hound.com and EmploymentCrossing.com, which can help you see the most openings.

You need to know what the market is for your product.

EmploymentCrossing is an exceptional way to learn about the market. Here, you can be aware of the market at all times and know exactly what is going on and who is hiring. EmploymentCrossing is your personal barometer of the market and shows you where you can market your product. The benefit of knowing this information at all times cannot be overemphasized. Think of your career like a product. You have invested a tremendous amount of time and expense creating your product. You may have spent upwards of $100,000 on your education to get to where you are today. (If you are not educated, you have likely spent years of your life learning a given skill.) If you had that much money in the stock market, my guess is that you would want to watch what is going on in the market at all times. Your career should not be any different. Do not lose your investment. Do not allow yourself to go out of business. Know where your product is marketable.

D. Conclusions

You are a product. Your career is a small business. Run it like a small business and realize the importance of your brand. Most importantly, realize you always need to have a market for your product. If you remember this, you will be well served throughout your career.

Do Not Get Involved in the Social Side of the Office

Several years ago we had an employee at one of our companies who was extremely intelligent. This person was older and had worked at several jobs before coming to our company. Although he’d never excelled at any of these jobs, he’d done well enough. He was hired as a writer to assist with various tasks for our companies. His abilities were not bad, and had he simply kept his head down and done his job I am confident he would still be here. Instead, this person was our company’s worst nightmare and still is to this day. The characteristics this person exhibited hurts more companies and careers than I can count. There are people like this person in every company and you need to know what to look for and how to stay away from them in order to be successful in your career.

Before this person ever took a job at our company, he was very angry at, and critical of the world. While he didn’t make his criticisms known directly to management of our company, they ended up finding their way back. Most of the criticisms were things that really undermined the company and the people in it. This person seriously disrupted his superiors, the company, and others. It was as if this person’s greatest skill was undermining the company and those around him. For that reason, I refer to this particular employee as “the Underminer.” There are underminers in most companies. I am sure you know one where you are working now, or have known one in the past.

The Underminer would tell other employees things such as:

• They were not being paid enough
• They should be working for a larger company
• The company was poorly managed
• People had been screwed over by the company

His list of criticisms could fill several pages. What was most alarming about this particular person was the pattern we started to notice. The Underminer would often attempt to become friendly with our best employees. If any of them became friendly with this person, in a very short time, formerly enthusiastic employees would change right before our eyes. They would no longer be as enthusiastic about their work, stop completing assignments on time, get a “depressed” look and feel about them, and stop consistently showing up on time for work. If these employees were not fired, they would often quickly quit and leave the company. Sometimes the Underminer would affect the employee so negatively the person would quit and leave the company without having secured another job.

In less than one year I noticed this pattern negatively affect the careers of at least 10 people. People who otherwise could have had excellent careers with our company left or were negatively influenced by this individual. This individual eventually was let go from our company and, incredibly, to this day is still trying to undermine our company and the people in it by spreading negative information. Am I upset by this? Am I hurt? Of course I am. However, you need to understand in every organization you will find people who try to undermine the company.

The most alarming thing about the Underminer is the people this person approached and influenced are still floundering years later in their careers. They have moved from job to job and many are unemployed. Before learning to think negatively about work and the company, these people had been incredibly enthusiastic and talented. It was as if the Underminer had planted so much negativity in their impressionable young minds they were permanently affected.

Over the years I have noticed patterns like this one repeat themselves in our company. Looking back, I’ve even seen this pattern repeat itself in law firms and other companies in which I have worked. It is often not just one person negatively influencing others, but several. What I am about to share with you could be some of the more important career advice you ever receive.

You need to stay away from negative people inside companies. There is something called “guilt by association” that is easy to pick up and that can negatively affect you. If you are spending your time with people who are known as troublemakers or who are hostile towards the company, the implication is you may share these sorts of opinions as well. Once a company picks up on this and associates you with this behavior, you will be marked as someone who is not a friend of the company and is, instead, an enemy.

When I was practicing law I saw many careers stalled and/or ruined in law firms because of the associations people made inside the office. When you associate with the wrong people a firm will view you as someone who is unlikely to be looking out for the firm and, consequently, will avoid promoting you, advancing you, or protecting you. Choosing to associate with the wrong people in the office will create huge problems for you.

You are at work to make a living. Your job at work is to go there, be professional, and leave. You are not expected to go there to make friends or be a participant in various forms of gossip. You can choose to get involved in the social side of the office and watch your career stall, or you can choose to be removed from it.

Not all social activity in companies is bad. In fact, a lot of it is good. However, you want to be removed from the social side of the office because you cannot be viewed as a supervisor by people with whom you’re friends. The further away you are from people in the office socially, the closer you are to being their manager. In addition, the closer you are to colleagues in the office, the more you are going to be affected by their negative behavior.

None of this is to say you can’t be friendly with your co-workers. You need to be friendly with everyone in your company. However, you cannot become too chummy and you do not want to participate in the social network of the office too much.

When I was in high school, one of my best friends got into serious trouble. He was on his way to lacrosse practice and was eating a giant bag of candy while sitting in the passenger seat of a car. He asked a couple of kids walking by if they wanted some of his candy because he noticed they were looking at him. The kids screamed and ran. My friend thought the whole thing was very strange (although he realized they may have misinterpreted this as a kidnapping attempt) until a SWAT team began fanning out on the practice field where we were playing lacrosse and threw his face in the dirt and arrested him.

The entire thing had been a giant misunderstanding; however, the misunderstanding was serious enough he was suspended from school for three months. He would have been kicked out if his father was not an extremely influential person in Detroit who donated a lot of money to the school. During my last year of high school I asked my math teacher to write a recommendation for me for colleges and he agreed to do so. This math teacher had been very close to the parents of the children who had mistakenly believed they were about to be kidnapped.

There were two sides to my friend’s scandal. One side thought the arrest was ridiculous because the offer of candy was genuine and there had been no kidnapping attempt at all. There had been other passengers in the car and they all testified the candy offer was legitimate. The other side thought the mere words were evil and my friend should be expelled.

A few months after my teacher wrote the recommendations for me I was interviewing at a college, and the interviewer said to me, “What’s the problem with this math teacher? Why did he write such a horrible recommendation for you? It is so bad and there is so little substance to it we were actually going to call your school about it.”

I think the math teacher may have gotten in trouble for the recommendation. He sought me out and apologized and one of the deans of the school took me into a meeting and told me the reason he had written the recommendation the way he did was because I had been friends with the kid who was suspended. The teacher actually withdrew his previous recommendation and wrote another. It was a strange episode. In fact, I do not think I ever spoke to my parents or anyone about it. Now that I am thinking about this I am wondering if this had an impact on the colleges I did and did not get into. The more I think about this the more I believe that it probably did.

You need to realize guilt by association can hurt you with companies and other organizations. You also need to realize it is incredibly important you keep your distance from people in the workplace if you want to be considered for supervisory and other such roles. The social side of the office can be a great deal of fun and can also be entertaining. More often than not, however, the social side of the office will cause you far more problems than it is worth.

Practice Makes Perfect

A year or so ago I was at a wedding, and a very successful doctor started talking to me. I was very impressed with this doctor and already knew of him through several people before our meeting. He was involved in some fascinating and cutting-edge research I found quite interesting.

I love meeting people who are passionate about their careers because they give off so much energy. People who achieve amazing and significant success in any profession always have a lot of passion for what they do. If you allow them to, these people will talk your head off about what they are doing. They will show you their collection of books about the subject, debate various philosophies about what they are doing, and more. People who commit to something are the most exciting people in the world. They provide me with an incredible education. I wish everyone was committed to what they do.

In speaking to this doctor, however, I realized despite his incredible knowledge of what he was doing, he was not satisfied. “What I really want to do is start a business,” he told me. “That is what being successful is to me. I have a friend who is doing very well in the manufacturing industry now that steel prices are up.”

The manufacturing industry? Steel? Why would someone spend years going to medical school and becoming a successful researcher only to go into steel manufacturing? I am not saying this is the wrong thing to do. But when you are an expert in something, it is not always in your best interest to switch jobs completely.

I spent many hours of my career going to various law firms and meeting with successful attorneys. I would say in at least 25% of these meetings, the attorneys I met did the same thing as this doctor–they started talking about how they wanted to pursue careers in completely different professions. One memorable meeting was with a famous attorney in Los Angeles who told me about opening a chain of ice cream parlors on the other side of the country only to see them fail miserably. Of course they failed miserably! The man running them was a famous attorney involved in all sorts of high profile cases. How on earth could he be expected to also run a chain of ice cream parlors?

At this particular point in history, I know many people who’ve lost all their money and life savings by investing in real estate. They bought homes in Arizona, condominiums in Florida, and other properties for little or no money down. They jumped face first into the real estate game because they believed they would get rich. Most of these people taught high school, sold cars, or were accountants, for example. Of course they lost money in real estate! This was not their expertise and they knew nothing about it. I saw the same thing back in 2000 with the Internet stock crash. Back then, all sorts of people aggressively invested in these stocks and lost their shirts. These people did things like sell insurance, or own auto repair shops. Of course they lost their shirts! None of them had expertise in the stock market.

The point I am trying to make is you can never be in two places at the same time. You need to choose who you want to be and what you want to do. You can never become an expert in multiple things. You need to concentrate on doing one thing.

An excellent book I recently read is called “Outliers” by Malcom Gladwell. Gladwell examines the people who are able to achieve incredible and massive success in various callings. He looks at people like Bill Gates, the best lawyers in the United States, chess grandmasters, Mozart, Steve Jobs, the Beatles, professional hockey players, and others. Gladwell cites study after study describing the fact that people do not get really good at anything, at a world class level, until they have been doing it at least 10,000 hours. According to Gladwell:

“The idea that excellence at performing a complex task requires a minimum level of practice surfaces again and again in studies of expertise. In fact, researchers have settled on what they believe is the magic number for true expertise: ten thousand hours.”

“The emerging picture from such studies is that ten thousand hours of practice is required to achieve the level of mastery associated with being a world-class expert–in anything,” writes neurologist David Levitin. “In study after study, of composers, of basketball players, fiction writers, ice skaters, concert pianists, chess players, master criminals, and what have you, this number comes up again and again. Of course, this doesn’t address why some people get more out of their practice sessions than others do. But no one has yet found a case in which true world-class expertise was accomplished in less time. It seems it takes the brain this long to assimilate all that it needs to know to achieve true mastery.”

I get very concerned when I think about people vacillating back and forth between various skill paths. Instead of choosing to do one thing, so many people spend their careers floating from job to job – each one different than the one before and requiring a completely different set of skills. There is nothing wrong with changing careers, of course, but the most important thing anyone can do is ensure they choose something and then focus on it completely. If you continue to change your mind, you will never develop true mastery.

One of the most amazing things I have seen in my life is people who become incredibly happy, successful, and rich by seeking out and doing simple jobs to which they have committed. The universe rewards commitment. Warren Buffet has become incredibly rich committing to one form of investing. Some people make their fortunes doing simple things you would not expect.

When I was an asphalt contractor, I knew a man who’d built a giant company putting hot tar in the cracks in roads all over Michigan. I know of another man who became very wealthy building pallets for the automotive industry. In college admissions, people with stand-out interests always do the best. I remember a high school teacher who talked about his students who’d gone to schools like Yale and Harvard, and how those students all had incredibly focused interests. Some were interested in bug collecting, another liked translating Japanese poetry, etc. The world rewards people with specialized interests who nurture that interest and continue to get better at those interests year after year.

One of the most unusual things I’ve witnessed is that most people are flirting with life and their careers. Instead of committing to a career and something, these people continue to dissipate their energies in many different directions. As a consequence, they never achieve anything near what they are capable of achieving. What are your capabilities? How much do you think you can achieve? The sky is the limit if you focus and continue to improve at something.

Why do I call focus “a law of the universe”? In the family unit, marriages, children and so forth typically only occur when two people decide to commit to one another and get married. People choose to focus on one another. This is a rule in virtually every culture in the world. It is almost as if the rule is saying life cannot begin until two people choose to focus. In your life, your career will never really begin until you choose to focus.

As a legal recruiter, I very quickly get a sense after looking at an attorney’s resume of how long it is likely to take for the person to get a job, and where. The most important factor determining an attorney’s future employability is his or her focus, beyond where they went to law school, their previous employer, or specialty. If the person has had several jobs in a short period of time, then employers will stay away (they know the person is unlikely to commit). If the person has flirted with other jobs in addition to practicing law, a smart employer will stay away. Employers are looking for commitment, and they want to make sure people accepting jobs with them are going to be committed to their company. Employers want their employees to use their commitment to help the company grow. The level of commitment legal employers look for is the same as in other professions. People want to hire people who are likely to do a job long-term.

Your life and career will change when you learn to commit to something over the long term.

If You Want to Earn More, You Need to Be Worth More

Your financial requirements and what you would like to earn have nothing to do with what you are worth in the market. In running my various organizations, I have hired superstars from the very best universities with the very best work histories who ended up contributing next to nothing to the organization. I have also hired people who started out making close to minimum wage, and whose contributions were so great their salaries doubled, and in some cases even quadrupled. Several years ago, the contribution of one of our departments, which was then around 10 people, was so great I literally doubled each and every member’s salary in one short 15 minute meeting.

Are you someone who contributes so much to your organization your salary merits doubling? Or do you merely have a sense of entitlement and feel you are worth more than you are paid?

I cannot tell you how many times I have heard statements like the following:

“I made this much four years ago; therefore I should be making more right now.”

“My wife told me that I need to get a raise.”

“I think it is really important that I get this car because it will show some outward sign of success.”

“I know of someone who makes even more money than this in [some other city] and, therefore, I need to make that much as well.”

“This is an expensive city, and I need to be paid that much to live well.”

“I would like to have some extra spending money for travel and other things, after paying the mortgage on my house.”

“I need to make enough money to afford to send my kids to a private school.”

These are actual statements I have heard from people over the years. The sense of entitlement that drives people to make these sorts of demands needs to have a basis in reality.

Again, your financial requirements have nothing to do with how much you are worth in the market. Unless you are truly indispensable, your employer simply does not care what those requirements are. You are paid a certain amount based on your ability to generate value for your employer, and, with very few exceptions, that value generally must be far greater than what you are paid. Your contribution to any organization must generally be at least three times greater than the reward you are seeking.

Far too many people fail to realize what they are paid is based on the company’s profitability. Organizations have overhead, such as rent, advertising, and the cost of manufacturing the products or services they provide. Organizations need to have reserves in order to pay you when money is not coming in. Organizations need money for research and development. Organizations need money to pay for your health benefits and social security taxes, to print brochures, pay for office machine maintenance and more.

Since I am a legal recruiter, I would like to share with you some information about how partners are traditionally compensated in law firms. There are numerous compensation systems. However, the one I am about to share with you is the most prevalent.

When many young attorneys graduate from elite law schools, they tell themselves when they join equally elite law firms they will one day make astronomical amounts of money. About 10 years ago, I remember the number young attorneys my age were throwing around was $1 million. How does an attorney make $1 million a year?

Remember: any amount of money you are paid will have to add much more than that to the firm’s bottom line. Typically, the rule is that for every $1 a partner makes they have contributed at least $3 to the firm. That means that the partner is lucky to receive only 33 percent of what he or she brings in as business to the firm.

How does a partner contribute a total of $3 million to the pot for a firm? The partner brings in loads of business, works extremely hard, and then collects the money that has been billed. The partner also has associates doing work, he ensures their work is getting done and that all invoices are getting paid.

If partners in the world’s largest law firms are lucky to receive only a 33 percent return on the contribution they are making, you should understand you will need to make a giant contribution to any organization you are part of in order to justify the amount you would like to be paid. In order to justify a high salary, it is important you begin concentrating on what you can do to make your contribution even greater than it is now.

You need to make yourself indispensable to your employer by virtue of your hard work and contribution. There are certain people within any organization who are indispensable, and others who are not. These employees usually don’t last very long in organizations.

I want to tell you a quick story about one of the worst hiring mistakes I ever made. It involved hiring a manager to lead a small company I was starting at the time. In order to try out for the job and show me what he could do, I asked the man to put together some financial figures that took into account the potential performance of the company and what he believed he should be paid if each milestone was met. Since it would take several hours to go over these figures, I agreed to meet the man at my home on a Sunday afternoon to go over them until we could reach an agreement.

After three to four hours of reviewing these figures with him, I realized there was absolutely no way the company could make any money and that, no matter how well or how poorly the company did, the man would end up making plenty of money from the business. It really didn’t make a lot of sense, and I saw immediately this man was not interested in making a contribution to the company. He was only interested in taking money from the company as quickly as possible.

There were many warning signs I should have noticed early on. The man was extremely flashy in the way he dressed. He bragged about always getting stuff for free. His car had been modified, and was very over-the-top. Basically, the man made me feel uncomfortable.

By 10 p.m. that Sunday, I realized I could not reach any sort of agreement with this man. Instead of offering him the job to lead the company, I offered him a commissioned sales-type job in another company. The man had stellar qualifications and had formerly been the leader of a large division of a national company.

The man responded by telling me how he had a home in Beverly Hills with an expensive mortgage payment, a nanny he needed to pay, a private school he sent his daughter to, and that his wife really liked to shop for expensive shoes. Therefore, he told me, he needed to bring home a certain amount of money every two weeks to pay all these extravagant expenses. I told him I understood and I agreed to loan him a massive amount of money against his future commissions over the next several months, as he started his job.

This man ended up being the worst performing salesman in the company’s history. He failed like no other and disappeared with all of the money he was lent. To this day, I still do not know where he is.

The primary mistake I made here was not paying attention to the various signs this man would make an extremely bad hire. Mainly, he was entirely focused on what he believed he deserved, and not at all focused on what he could contribute. The most revealing thing was his business plan, which basically did not permit the company to make money and survive.

In order to thrive in your job, you need to be the sort of person who over delivers and provides incredible value to your employer and organization. You need to focus on over delivering in order to be worth more than the other people who are doing similar jobs.

I am from Detroit and an interesting subject to me is the decline of the American automobile industry. I remember in 1984, when I was 14, my mother purchased a Honda Accord. Before she purchased the car, we went and looked at numerous other, American cars. Even then, I realized that the quality of the Honda far surpassed any American car in the same price range. You could tell by the way the car started, the way the doors closed, the way the lights clicked when you turned them on, the way the radio fit into the dashboard, the hue of the paint, the tightness of the ride, and more. As a young teenager, I thought someone would have to be an absolute idiot to purchase an American car in the same price range.

At the time I did not even know about things like resale value, how long the car would last, and overall brand reliability. Purchasing the Accord would actually be even more valuable to someone in the long run, once reliability and resale were factored into the equation. In this respect, it made even less sense to purchase an American car. Ten years later, I sold that Accord to a classmate of mine for around $4,000. If it had been an American car (assuming it were still running), the sale price would have probably been around $400.

My main point is the Honda provided far more value than its competitors at the time. It was worth far more than its American counterparts, even though it was priced less. It is no wonder, then, the market share of Japanese manufactured cars has grown rapidly in the United States, while the market for American cars has declined. It is an issue of providing more value for the money.

Since your labor is a commodity to your employer, you should aim to become a higher-priced commodity that is worth far more than your competition. In order to merit raises and other employment related benefits, you need to shine and really stand out as someone who provides tremendous value. Do not expect to be paid a certain amount simply because it is what you want. Get paid more because you are worth more and because you deserve more.

Your Ultimate Goal: How You Can Find Job Security

What You Will Learn It is crucial for job seekers to choose the right kind of job, the right kind of organization, and to have the perfect pay-package in order to enjoy security. Professionals in high positions within an organization are more prone to getting let go, as opposed to those in lesser positions. The complexity of an organization also plays a crucial role in hampering or promoting a sense of job security among different workers in an organization. Competitiveness can also bear a loss of job security, as there is a constant pushing and pulling, with regards to company resources.

One of the worst things that can happen to people is getting fired from a job with no notice whatsoever. It can be devastating to lose your source of income unexpectedly, especially in a contracting economy. Losing a job can color our perspective on the world and our future. Going forward, we have a difficult time allowing ourselves to ever feel secure again. We believe that things can change in an instant and that we might be suddenly out of a job again. This fear of sudden job loss is something that many people who have been terminated from jobs carry with them throughout their careers. The goal for all of us is to be in positions where we are secure, and to keep that security. Recently, I saw the movie American Beauty again. When I first saw the movie I was younger; I didn’t really understand the importance of what was going on, and how it applies to everyone in the working world. In the movie, the protagonist is fired from his job. In response to this, he decides he wants to simplify his life and he takes a position in a fast food restaurant–which is far beneath the sort of job he had been fired from. He takes this job, the viewer is led to believe, because he wants to go back to a simpler, happier time in his life, and have again that feeling of empowerment and security from his youth. His goal is to find that stability in a world that had grown dark and uncertain around him.

Stability and certainty are so important to many of us that we often settle for far less than we could have simply because we want that security. We settle for worse jobs than we could get, we settle for less pay than we could earn. Simply stated, we settle because our cost benefit analysis of the world tells us security is more important than pay, job satisfaction, or status.

Several weeks ago, I wandered into an impossibly expensive bed store in Beverly Hills with my wife (where some beds cost as much as $50,000) and when I asked why someone would spend so much on a bed the salesperson told me that we spend one third of our lives there. However, we spend far more than one third of our lives at work–or thinking about it. Furthermore, if we do not work we cannot even afford a bed! Therefore, work is one of the most important aspects of our existence.

When you add up everything we do in our lives, whether it is participating in a church or synagogue, spending time with friends or family, or engaging in various hobbies-you will quickly discover that most of our time is spent working. Work may be the predominant activity in our lives, whether we want to admit it or not, and, more importantly, if we do not like our work, we are probably not enjoying life.

Have you ever spent time with people who hate their jobs? This is practically all they talk about. Not liking their jobs makes people depressed or angry. Being around people who hate their jobs is a miserable experience. I remember growing up in Detroit, where many of my friends’ parents would come home at the end of the day from jobs they hated. They would walk straight to the liquor cabinet, pour a drink, and, after 20 minutes or so, begin complaining to their spouses about how much they hated work, or about some slight they received from their boss that day. Several hours later, a loud argument might even break out between the parents. This process would be repeated day after day. Even at the age of seven or eight, watching this process taught me that not liking one’s job was a huge problem.

Sometimes it takes a child’s mind to see what is really going on in the world. I remember writing reports about Russia when I was around seven or eight. The major conflict in the world that existed up until the 1990s was the threat of communist Russia against the United States. We were afraid of communism, but, in reality, communism is nothing more than an economic system wherein people are given jobs and told exactly what to do. They are paid less by the state but, in exchange, they receive security. In the United States, capitalism is built on a lack of security. You have your choice of jobs, but it is up to you to find security within the capitalist system. Entire civilizations have been built on the quest for security.

In the United States, a giant strike was going on in late 2008 between the machinist union at Boeing and the company. The company was demanding the right to outsource certain work, and the workers were demanding security in their jobs. This fight cost the company $100 million a day. At the same time, similar conflicts between unions and automobile companies were having far-reaching implications for the American auto industry.

The fight for security is all around us.

When a man loses his job, you will usually find him in a bad mental state. Sometimes the man will stop shaving. He may look confused. He will fight with his wife more and snap at people around him. The stress of not having a job, or feeling a lack of purpose, can quickly bring on emotional problems. When people are having emotional problems, a psychologist or doctor may prescribe drugs or treatment, maybe wanting to talk about the person’s parents, for example. Most often a better solution would be to look at how the person’s job is going-or how their lack of a job is affecting them. Fix a person’s career and most other things often quickly fall into place.

If security is so important, how does one go about finding it in a job? People get college educations, professional degrees, and do everything within their power to make themselves attractive to employers so they will have security. People rehearse interviewing so they can get a job. People attempt to go into industries or work in sectors with presumed security, whether they are in government, real estate, medicine, or law. Every industry out there has been presumed to be secure at one time or another. However, all of them involve some level of instability.

After studying the employment market for some time, I believe there are several ways to look for security. There is a push and pull between finding security and making a great deal of money. The question is, what do you want and how much are you willing to risk? Since I am a former attorney, I will draw from my experience to give you some career advice, and an indication of how the employment process works in the legal industry.

When attorneys graduate from law school, they typically try their hardest to get the highest-paying jobs they can. The highest-paying jobs are with large law firms and they typically pay around $160,000 a year. Due to the massive amount of money these attorneys make, they are expected to work extremely hard; they are also very quickly let go if they are not billing as expected or if there are issues with their work. These jobs typically do not have a lot of long-term security, and if young attorneys believe they may lose their jobs they will usually try to find another job at another high-paying firm. They will likely keep doing this until they either become a partner at a high-paying firm, or they end up changing careers.

Once attorneys get a few years of experience at a high-paying law firm, they generally start wanting to leave the law firm to work for a corporation. Jobs with corporations are very much in demand. In most cases, corporate jobs pay at least 50 percent less than jobs at law firms. The reason attorneys want to work for corporations, though, is due to the security factor. Security appeals to some attorneys far more than money (jobs with corporations typically also require less work).

Most (over 95 percent) attorneys do not end up with jobs in the highest-paying law firms. These attorneys typically do not change jobs as often and, in my experience, have a lot more long-term security. As an example, almost all of the attorneys I personally know who started practicing law with large firms that paid large salaries are no longer practicing law ten years later. The attorneys I know who went to small law firms or took positions with the government, on the other hand, are still practicing law. This phenomenon bears some examination, and I think there are reasons behind it.

I believe that the attorneys who went to large firms saw so many people lose their jobs (and may have lost their own jobs) that they simply became disillusioned with practicing law because they saw no security in it. Conversely, smaller firms, which typically pay less, do not let people go as aggressively; the attorneys working there experience far more security within the practice of law and therefore continue their legal careers.

Generally, the higher paid or more competitive the job you take, the more insecurity that job will involve. Think about investment banks letting go of thousands of people. You will rarely find an investment banker in his mid-30s even who has been with the same firm his entire career.

I also want to note that the more complex the organization you are in is, the less security you will generally have in your job. For example, giant companies like Yahoo! might suddenly decide to let go of 10 percent of their staff to save money. A larger organization is, in many respects, more impersonal and, due to its complexity, there are forces involved that are simply beyond the control of the people working there.

A few months ago, I went to the dentist and, as I started speaking with the dentist and his staff of four, they told me that they had all been working together for over 20 years! I thought about how rare this is in today’s society, where people move around so frequently between jobs. In considering this, however, I quickly realized the reason. A dental office is not a complex institution. If it is set up in the right area (an economically stable one) and the dentist is respectable (this dentist was also a professor of dentistry at USC), the operation should continue going indefinitely. In this case, the lack of complexity in the dentist’s operation, and the presumed stability of the business, made it a secure work environment. Working in a small dental office is a secure job, it would seem, and in that sense, not much different from the job that the protagonist in American Beauty found working in a fast food restaurant.

There is one last point I want to make that is crucial and involves the people or person you will be working for. I am sure you have heard stories of the crazy boss in a given company who randomly lets people go, or who is altogether unbalanced. If you make your choice of employer based on one thing alone, make sure you are working for a stable person. You can detect a stable boss by many factors, such as the length of time certain employees have worked directly for him or her. Being around stable people is very important in your work environment, and so is feeling comfortable around the people you work with. You need to feel comfortable or you will have reason to doubt your security.

Security in a job is one of the more fundamental issues in all societies and is a basis for conflict between nations and people. Realize that you need to seek security and find it at all costs. This is the most important aspect of any job.

Concentrate on the Process, Not the Results

What You Will Learn Pay attention to the small, almost invisible things that collectively make a difference. Think of yourself as an instrument, like a fine piano – it is the attention to everything that will go into making you ultimately produce the best notes. You need to make sure that you continually improve every single data point that is involved in the process of your seeking a job, or growing your career.

Some time ago, I was listening to a seminar about a company that was in the furniture business. This company decided that because it was doing so well, it should expand into the piano business, and also sell pianos. They went out and purchased a Steinway and took the piano apart to study all of the pieces. Then they made the same pieces themselves and built a piano. When they finally had built their own piano and tried to play it, nothing but thuds came out of the instrument. Discouraged, not knowing what they possibly could have done wrong, they decided that they would no longer go into the piano business.

They reassembled the Steinway Piano so they could return it as well. When they reassembled the piano, however, the same thing happened: only a thud came out when they tried to play it.

This is how it is with many people and businesses. We only look at the results, and not the process that goes into creating a particular result. In order to build a piano, you need to have studied instrument- making for some time, and to really understand a lot about the process. You also need to understand and study musical theory. It could take generations for a family to become proficient in making a great piano. There is just so much that goes into it.

This is how it is with everything. You cannot just call yourself a piano company and start making pianos. You cannot just decide that you want to do something and expect immediate success just by trying to copy an outcome. You need to understand the complete process that goes into what you are trying to do.

My first year as a legal recruiter, I generated over $1,000,000 in fees. This means, essentially, that for the work I did personally, I sent out over $1,000,000 in bills to law firms for my services. Since the average bill for recruiting back then was probably around $30,000 or so, this means that I made a tremendous number of placements. When you are doing well, it tends to attract more business to you.

Within a few months, I had hired various people to help me with recruiting, and pretty soon the word had gotten around that our team was really good. Soon after that, various local attorneys around Los Angeles started calling me. Several people I know of copied me and went into the business only to fail pretty quickly.

I loved recruiting and I am sure I had some natural skills for it. However, by the time I started recruiting in an office, I had already essentially been doing the job in one capacity or another for almost 15 years. Since a young age, I had run an asphalt business that had required me to sell door-to-door to people, businesses and others. Sales skills were really important in that business. While asphalt and recruiting are very different in many respects, in actuality they have a tremendous number of similarities. Here is the biggest similarity:

If you emphasize the process over the results in the recruiting and asphalt business, you will succeed.

One of the biggest mistakes many people make in business is emphasizing results over process, or style over substance. The more people concentrate on the process and substance of their work, the better they do:

• The more people concentrate on their intended results, the worse they do in the long run.
• The most successful job seekers are the ones who have the ability to excel in their work process.
• The most successful companies are the ones who have the ability to excel in their work process.
• The most successful workers and employees are the ones who have the ability to excel in their work process.
• The most successful asphalt contractors are the ones who concentrate on their work process.
• The most successful legal recruiters are the ones who concentrate on their work process.

I am not saying that results do not matter; they do. But what ultimately matters most, and what makes people successful is focusing on the process and how things are done.

A lot of the problems in the American economy have been caused by a massive emphasis on results rather than process. For example, the Wall Street practice of emphasizing quarter-by-quarter profits and gains has been extremely dangerous to our company in numerous respects.

I believe that in business, in your job search, and in everything else–process is the most important thing. It is how you do things that matters, and not just the result you hope to attain.

Process in the Asphalt Sealing Business. In the asphalt sealing business there is essentially one thing you are doing: You are putting black stuff on people’s asphalt and then leaving.

This is the result of what happens when you do the work. This is what most contractors and others concentrate on, and it is why most of them fail or eek out poor livings at best.

In the asphalt sealing business, there are a lot of tricks that contractors can do. When you are putting asphalt sealer on a driveway or parking lot, essentially what you are working with is a black coating that fills in cracks and pores and makes the surface look good. More importantly, the coating serves to protect the surface from oil spills and other things. This material is typically purchased from a factory in a raw state, when it is very heavy and thick like molasses. The contractor has to water down the material in order to make it the proper consistency to be used on asphalt.

From the consumer’s point of view, it does not matter how much water you put into this concoction, within limits. After the material dries on someone’s asphalt, it is generally going to look quite similar, regardless as to how much water was used in the mix. Contractors can save a tremendous amount of money by watering the material down more heavily. This is something that many contractors do. The difference is that a few months later, the material that has been applied ends up looking very bad, which does not do the customer much good.

There are other tricks of the trade as well. One of the most outrageous scenarios involves people traveling from city to city purchasing used motor oil (which used to be practically free) and then putting this on peoples’ driveways and parking lots. They would get paid for the work, and the customer would have a piece of pavement that looked decent when the “contractors” left, but the asphalt would never dry and the job would end up having been a complete waste of money and time.

Here are some other tricks of the trade:

• There are chemical thickeners you can buy to bulk up watered down sealer, for example.
• Using a squeegee will apply much more sealer than a brush, but it costs more.
• You can fill cracks with sand instead of tar (which is more expensive).
• It is better to put the material on when the asphalt is cool because it can cure longer (but this means you cannot work when the asphalt is hot, unless you have cooled it).

I could create a long list of the various things that contractors do to cut corners when they are doing this work. However, it is really never a good idea to cut corners. This is what most people and contractors do, however.

Asphalt contractors who emphasize the process of the work they are doing always do much better in the long run. They come back and work for people year after year. There is a certain confidence they exude in their work. They are craftsmen, not salesmen. They take pride in their work. They build careers, and meaningful careers at that. You can do very well financially (and in many other ways) as an asphalt contractor. However, very few people truly do well in the asphalt business. In fact, not only do most asphalt contractors fail, the contractors who do not fail end up making mediocre livings at best.

Every year tens of thousands of people go to law school. They all graduate and compete for the same jobs. How many people choose to become asphalt contractors? Hardly any. You could learn most of what you need to know about this job in less than a week. There are some complex areas of the job that require engineers to work on roads and stuff, but basically anyone can do the work or run a business doing this. When a state or city needs to build a road out of asphalt, they will get bids from a contractor. Most times there are only a few people bidding on many of these jobs because there are just not a ton of people in the business with credibility. The reason is that most people get a single job and simply try and make as much money as they can as quickly as they can. They cut corners. The people who do not cut corners get good reputations and end up doing better in the long run.

Process in the Legal Recruiting Business. In the legal recruiting business, there is essentially one thing you are doing: Finding an attorney and making an introduction between the attorney and a law firm or a legal employer.

This is the result that occurs when you do the work. This is what most legal recruiters in the business concentrate on, and it is why most of them fail to even moderately reach their full potential.

When I got into the legal recruiting business, I quickly noticed people cutting corners, just like people do in the asphalt business. If you were looking at the profession from a distance, without any form of understanding, you too would likely think that all that recruiters do is find people and make introductions. I remember one of the most upsetting interviews I ever had was interviewing someone for the job of being a recruiter, who told me that the job sounded great. He told me that he thought he could spend time out on the golf course doing the work, forwarding résumés around on his Blackberry between strokes. This person simply thought that all the job involved was forwarding résumés from one person to another.

Incredibly, the more I learned about the business, the more I saw that most recruiters seemed to feel this way. In fact, this sort of idea was indeed how most recruiters seemed to approach the entire business. They would put a little advertisement on a job site, or in a legal newspaper, and then forward someone’s résumé to an interested employer. Others would simply cold call attorneys. The idea was that they were simply going out and plucking people from one firm, and sending them over to other firms.

This simplistic understanding of the job characterizes the way many people approach it. Without going into too much detail, however, there is a much more in-depth way of looking at the work:

• The best recruiters are constantly writing and lecturing about recruiting-related issues and their industry.
• The best recruiters put together very compelling and in-depth presentations about their candidates.
• The best recruiters meet with employers on a weekly basis.
• The best recruiters know about the industry and the most important things happening in it.
• The best recruiters are constantly networking at industry events.
• The best recruiters have highly developed research skills to find jobs.
• The best recruiters have highly developed research skills to find candidates.
• The best recruiters never compromise their integrity.
• The best recruiter help people, even when it does not mean a short-term reward.
• The best recruiters are committed to working hard throughout their careers.

There are actually thousands of little things like this that the best recruiters are constantly doing in order to excel at their jobs, and all of these details are what make them incredibly good at their job. Most of these things are not, however, related to simply emailing résumés. They are related to the deeper process of recruiting.

When you speak with recruiters who are process rather than results oriented, you can always tell. They are not focused so much on getting résumés out the door or making money. They are doing a good job at all “touch points”.

The importance of process in recruiting also has a huge impact on the bottom line. The best recruiters do well in all economic climates due to their emphasis on process and not results.

Process and Your Career and Job Search. Just as a successful piano maker, contractor or recruiter needs to concentrate on the process in order to be successful at their trade, so too do you in both your career and job search. Good results only come about when you concentrate on the entire process of what you are doing, refine each step of the process, and ensure you are getting better and more skilled each step of the way.

A job search ideally should not start, for example, when you are looking for a job. There are thousands of data points that go into finding a job and ensuring that you get a good job when you are looking for one. For example, you need to consistently be building relationships, and building every single relationship you can over time. The more relationships you build both inside and outside of work, the more people you are going to have to call upon when you are interested in getting a new job.

The harder you work in your existing job, the more people are going to be interested in helping you when you are looking for a job. People will come to your defense and do everything they can to help you when they believe that you are someone who will work hard. When you do the right thing and always make a good effort, this will come back to help you.

This is the opposite of what many people do, however. Many people are only out for short-term rewards and “quick fixes” at every turn. They do not think in terms of building long-term relationships with those around them. In your career, you need to be consistent, to give results and perform over time–not just in the short term.

When you are looking for a job, the quality and the depth of work you put into your résumé matters. The quality of the letters that accompany your résumé matters. Whether or not you apply to enough employers, to increase your odds of getting a job, matters. Your interviewing skills matter. The entire process that you follow matters and the better that you do at each step, the more likely you are to get the results you want.

Think about the manufacturing a world-class piano. A lot of thought goes into each little component of the piano. Whether it is the wood used, the thickness of the wood, the polish of the wood, where the wood comes from, how the wood is sanded, how the wood is fitted into the piano, the glue that is used in the piano, the dexterity of the person working with the wood, the machine that the wood is compressed on (if it is compressed) and more–the thought that goes into each part of the process matters. Every data point is refined and studied and probably has been refined and studied for a long period of time.

You need to make sure that you continually improve every single data point that is involved in the process of your seeking a job, or growing your career.

Several years ago, in the late-1980s, I was taking a test drive of a Corvette with the President of a German car company. He thought the American Corvette was a piece of junk, and did not like the car at all. He told me a story about how his company operates, contrasted with how a typical American automobile company operates.

He said that American car companies build a car model, and then completely change up the model the next year. They may throw a different transmission in the car, a different engine, radically change the styling and so forth–the idea being that they are trying to show progress and innovation, although, in reality not much is really changing. In contrast, he told me that when his company builds a car, over the next decade or so they keep refining it and making it better and better. They figure out a way to make the transmission better and to make small “almost invisible” changes that continually improve the car. They are concentrating on the process of improvement in building a car, and the result is that when you get in one of their automobiles, it feels very different. The cars also last longer. They run better. There are a myriad of powerful things that make these cars superior, and they are all the result of concentrating on the process.

You need to be focused on the process in your job and job search. Pay attention to the small, almost invisible things that collectively make a difference. Think of yourself as an instrument, like a fine piano. It is the attention to everything that goes into you that will ultimately produce the best notes.

Do Not Ever Be Afraid to Broadcast Your Value

What You Will Learn You need to broadcast your value constantly in your job. You should be very clear about the value that you are providing and ensure that your bosses are aware of what you are doing. The hiring authority wants to know the value you are bringing to the organization. Do your best to communicate your value to those around you at all times.

One of my favorite quotes is by Ralph Waldo Emerson, who wrote: “Build a better mousetrap, and the world will beat a path to your door.” A similar quote is this: “Build a better mousetrap, fail to advertise it or let people know about it, and the world will beat a path around your door.”

If people don’t know about the true value of what you are offering, they will simply ignore you. You need to broadcast your value constantly in everything you do. Let me share with you a pair of quick stories about how to broadcast your value, and the importance of doing this.

Donald Trump is not the biggest real estate tycoon in the United States, although he is great at what he does. There are numerous men who have vastly larger real estate holdings than Mr. Trump. What Mr. Trump does, however, is broadcast his success everywhere he goes. He gives speeches; he does television shows; he writes books; he does countless media interviews. Everything that Trump does is geared towards self-promotion. He does all of this because he knows the attention he receives from his promotional efforts will keep him visible and make his personal brand name stronger.

When I was practicing law, several years ago I was on a large case with attorneys from several different law firms. One of the attorneys kept sending me and the other attorneys on the case various articles he was reading during his spare time, about relevant legal issues. I never forgot that attorney because this behavior was so unusual. That attorney went on to become very well known, and he ultimately became an important politician. I think a lot of this has to do with the fact that he was the most visible, and managed to stay close to mind for many people.

If you do extra work behind the scenes, tell your superiors. In your career you need to educate people as to why they should work with you as opposed to other people, and one of the best ways of doing this is to do lots of work behind the scenes. If you go out of your way to say something positive about your boss to a coworker, tell your boss. If you are running an errand and get your boss extra service, tell your boss. At every single turn, you should be very clear about the value that you are providing and ensure that your bosses are keenly aware of what you are doing.

Nothing is assumed. One example of this is in the construction and marketing of a car. Automakers go into excruciating detail in telling prospective buyers everything they do to make a car as safe as possible. The automaker has to tell people the size of the engine, the number of airbags, the sophistication of the stereo system, and everything special that the car does, because the buyers assume nothing. You want to know this information when you are making a purchase. In the same way, your supervisor (or the person who is hiring you) wants to know the value you are bringing when they hire you and while you are working for them. Do your best to communicate your value to those around you at all times.

Show that you have passion for what you do. One of the ways to educate your superiors as to why they should be working with you is to demonstrate that you have a passion for your subject matter. For example, let your superiors know that you like to study materials related to your profession during your spare time. Forward them articles and keep books lying on your desk regarding the subject matter of what you do. Become a member of clubs and other organizations related to what you do. Having genuine passion and interest in your profession also shows that you are likely to have more insight into it, and that you will probably be better at your chosen job, whether it is in public relations, healthcare, or government.

I once watched a relatively unknown marketing person sell probably $100,000 worth of CDs and other instructional materials after giving a one-hour speech. The man got up on stage and started talking about how he had the largest collection of marketing books in the world and had read them all. He spoke about how he loved marketing and was extremely passionate about it. Given that he was relatively unknown, I think it was the fact that he communicated a major amount of passion for what he did that assisted him in selling so many CDs and other products. Essentially, people seemed to feel that if he was so enthusiastic about marketing, he must be someone they could trust to teach them about marketing.

When you are communicating with your superiors or with people interested in hiring you, you must appeal to what they are interested in. Ultimately, you need to be concerned about what other people believe is most important, not necessarily what you think is most important.

In 2002, the market for corporate attorneys in the United States was absolutely horrible. One firm in Denver, Colorado, had an opening for a corporate attorney, one of the few openings in the United States. The firm was using our legal recruiting firm, BCG Attorney Search, exclusively. The qualifications of the candidates who were interviewing for that one opening were absolutely fantastic. Most of the candidates interviewed were from the best law firms, the best law schools, and all had stellar communication skills. The job of one partner in the law firm was to interview about twenty-five different candidates and to hire one. After a few interviews, the partner told us that basically all of the candidates seemed pretty much the same.

One of the candidates had an interest in snowboarding and spoke about this interest during the interview. The partner he was speaking with was also an avid snowboarder, and the two spoke about the sport at length. As you can imagine, this is the person who was hired for the job. He spoke in terms of the other person’s interest. The reason the candidate had started talking about snowboarding in his interview was because he had noticed that the partner had a picture of himself snowboarding on his wall. The candidate could see that the interviewer was bored by the procession of candidates coming through, and he wanted to ensure that he stood out.

It is important career advice that you communicate in terms of the other person’s interest. If your value to the organization is the fact that you can snowboard, and that you can quickly bond with your coworkers, that is perfectly fine. If your potential employer is interested in discussing stamp collecting, do your best to discuss that too. Whatever it takes.

Your superior, or the person who is hiring you, needs to ensure that the business they are working for makes money. They need to make sure that what you are offering can contribute to the bottom line. Contributing high value, and broadcasting that value to your superiors, is key to securing and maintaining your position within any organization.

The Importance of Culture in Organizations

What You Will Learn An organization culture relates to your success and happiness. In any business environment, when the employee and employer are on the same plane, success is much more likely. When making a lateral move, it is important to select your employer based on your preference of work culture. The key to defining job satisfaction is to determine which culture suits you the best. You need to feel comfortable and appreciated in your work environment.

Employees’ level of success and overall happiness has more to do with a particular culture (which is sometimes also referred to as the personality of an organization) than with any other factor. This article discusses (a) the importance of organizational culture, (b) why some employees do not give strong consideration to culture, (c) the reason that failure to seriously consider culture prematurely ends many careers, and (d) why making a lateral move provides the best opportunity to evaluate culture and the course of your career.Just as the work, salary, and prestige level can vary from employer to employer, the cultures within each organization can be very different. Consider the following examples:

• There are organizations in which style is definitely valued over substance.
• There are organizations in which substance is definitely valued over style.
• There are organizations in which people wander around in Birkenstocks and call each other ‘dude’.
• There are organizations in which employees are expected to call superiors ‘Mister’ and ‘Ms.’.
• There are organizations in which employees need to make appointments with superiors before speaking with them.
• There are organizations in which supervisors chew tobacco in the office and during meetings.
• There are organizations that value your having string family connections more than your work ability.
• There are organizations that are extremely secretive with their employees.
• There are organizations that believe everyone who puts in a solid effort over the course of six or seven years should be promoted.
• There are organizations in which employees work around thirty hours per week, which is considered a good effort.
• There are organizations in which employees are hired and are then almost universally encouraged to leave after five or six years of service.
• There are organizations that have been collapsing for years, but which portray themselves to employees as strong and secure.

I could go on and on. Suffice it to say, however, that your success and happiness in your career may have more to do with your thoughtful and intelligent decision to join an organization that best fits you culturally. People simply want to be around people they like, and when people like each other in the workplace, both sides of the relationship benefit.

OBSERVATION:

We all have certainly heard that Albert Einstein flunked out of grade school. Perhaps Einstein was too concerned with the theoretical rather than the practical. Whatever the reason was, Einstein simply did not experience success in the environment he was in at the time because the school, and the people in it, could not understand or appreciate where he was coming from intellectually. Do the employees in your organization understand where you are coming from? In a business environment, when the employee and the employer see eye to eye, success is far more likely than in situations where they do not.

Employees Often Fail to Give Strong Consideration to Culture When Choosing an Employer.

The problem with the way many employees manage their careers is that, when choosing a job, they are motivated primarily by prestige and money, more so than by the cultures of the organizations they are considering.

When an employee instead evaluates offers based upon where she believes she fits in the best, that employee is far more likely to find happiness and success in her career. The problem, however, is that most employees simply do not think this way, the reason being that employees are competitive by nature, and “fitting in” is not nearly as easy to quantify as things like money, company cars, etc.

In almost all respects, it is most difficult to gain the best positions with the largest, most prestigious, and highest-paying employers. Yet, the pressure to join these organizations typically commences while an individual is in school.

The problem with this type of thinking is that it can often lead employees to make horrible career decisions. If an employee is always thinking in terms of what he can do to look best to others, he will often neglect what is best for him personally. None of this is to say that there are not numerous advantages to come from being part of a truly significant organization. Nonetheless, this should not be the only consideration on which an employee bases his career choices.

OBSERVATION:

Many people, in fact, have subordinated much of their happiness in life in pursuit of money, respect, power, and admiration from their peers. This leads many people to base their entire concept of happiness on things like having the largest house, the most expensive car, and other traditional accouterments of the American Dream.

Failing to Consider Culture Ends Many Careers Prematurely–

Careers that Could Have Otherwise Been Highly Successful.

It is easy to find out an organization’s compensation structure, but this is a simple and superficial distinction to make between organizations. It is not as easy to gauge an organization’s prestige level; however, it is much more difficult to evaluate a organization’s culture and whether that working in that culture will keep you happy over the course of your career.

One of the largest mistakes employees make when evaluating competing offers from organizations is believing that money is the most important factor they should be considering. While money is certainly an important component of any analysis, it is not the most important factor. Making any career decision solely based on money can be a horrible mistake. If you properly assess all variables, including culture, and you choose the right organization, you may have a stable career and life. If you go to an organization just because of monetary considerations, you may wind up so disgruntled that you are eventually not working at all.

OBSERVATION:

On a day-to-day basis, in each of our offices, we speak with employees who began their careers with ultra-prestigious, high-paying law firms. Many of these attorneys stopped practicing law two to seven years into their careers because they became disillusioned. Most of these lawyers say things like “I would never work in another law firm. I would only work as an in-house attorney. The résumés of these attorneys are sometimes littered with one firm job after another, where the next and then the next firm were virtually identical in terms of culture to the very first firm that the attorney joined right out of law school. Of course these attorneys are not happy practicing in a law firm. They have only worked for one type of law firm during their entire career. The problem is that these attorneys have worked in a firm culture that was such a bad fit for them that they never got the opportunity to experience practicing law with a group of people they like, respect, and emotionally profit from. Not all law firms are the same. Fitting in with the community of lawyers that make up a particular firm is the key to long-term success and satisfaction in law firm life. Not fitting in is often the key to failure, and can even lead to one changing one’s career path altogether.

Consider the choice of where to live, and compare the process of making that decision with choosing to join any particular firm or organization. Some people prefer the lifestyle in New York to Los Angeles, or prefer San Francisco to Seattle. Preference for one city or neighborhood is entirely personal and individual. The considerations are whether we feel accepted and appreciated in a community and whether we see people around us that share similar goals and aspirations. Whether that community supports and enhances your lifestyle becomes a driving force in your deciding where to live. And, just like you need to feel that you can thrive in the community in which you live, you should feel that you can thrive in the environment in which you work.

You should constantly ask yourself these questions: Is this organization a place where I will feel accepted? Will I be surrounded by people with the same values and goals? Will this organization complement my lifestyle? Boiled down, what is the culture of the organization?

Making a Lateral Move is Your Best Chance to Find Your Perfect Firm Culture

Many of our candidates, when preparing for an interview, want help identifying those questions that will help them unearth the true culture at a firm. In short form, the question that needs to be answered for each lawyer and every employee is simply, “Will I like it at this firm or organization?” Unfortunately, try as we might, we cannot always answer these questions as well as we would like. The culture of a firm may vary from practice group to practice group, and it is impossible to pin down with any meaningful certainty whether or not a good firm is always a good fit. Often, the only way to learn this is to actually go to the interviews and speak with the attorneys or individuals you may be working with.

It’s important to remember that the interview process for a lateral move is much different from when a law student interviews for a summer clerkship. This is a plus. Unlike summer associate openings, which can sometimes number in excess of 100, when a law firm conducts a lateral search many candidates are interviewing for one, or possibly two available openings. In these situations the law firm is not as concerned with competing for any one particular candidate. Conversely, when a firm is in a heightened state of competitiveness, it can sometimes be more difficult for the lawyer interviewing for the job to get a sense of whether the particular law firm is comprised of people with whom the lawyer would want to spend the rest of his or her career. But this is the kind of firm you should be seeking. Keep your best interests at heart, and do everything you possibly can to ensure that you find a good fit. Obviously, your task is to get the job; however, you also need to understand the firm’s culture. At BCG we have identified several ways in which you can evaluate whether a particular firm is right for you.

Preparation is the First Key to Evaluating Culture.

You’ve gotten an interview. Before the interview, you should research as much as possible to determine the objective factors: How big is the office? What is the salary? In our opinion, this objective fact gathering is helpful in determining how well the firm or organization is doing financially, and how it has grown over time.

Diversity. It may also be important for you to look at the firm’s or organization’s commitment to diversity. We don’t know of any organization that doesn’t have an anti-discrimination policy. However, some organizations are more proactive in this area than others. Is it important to you that there are employees of color or of various sexual orientations?

Location, location, location. Where is the office located? Of all these factors, we find that this tends to be the least important factor in evaluating culture. A California company known for having employees that wear Birkenstock sandals around the office might have a New York office with that same type of atmosphere. However, even in Hawaii or Miami, there are going to be radical distinctions amongst organizations. These distinctions are important. The city makes little difference, in regards to the type of culture that exists within the organization. There are laid-back firms and organizations in Chicago that are down the block from offices where you wouldn’t think of entering without wearing your most formal business attire. The key is identifying and understanding the various cultures of the organizations themselves.

Governance. How an organization conducts its day-to-day business is important. Employees have to run the business of their organization, and how they choose to structure the organization can say a lot about its culture. The business model often reveals the core values of the organization. Generally, organizations are governed in one of several ways:

The democratic organization allows each employee to become involved in the decision-making, regarding anything from new hires to compensation to long-term planning. For many organizations, the democracy may only include supervisors, so it is not necessarily realistic that a junior employee will be making high-level management decisions, or even weighing in with an opinion. However, many democratically run organizations do have some level of junior involvement within the organization’s governance, such as on pro bono committees or with respect to summer associate entertaining and recruiting. This type of culture is entirely inclusive, although sometimes it is the result of too much administration bogging down each individual lawyer’s already heavy workload. The values reflected here are participation and integration, which may come at the cost of expediency and/or consistency.

Many organizations govern using a small, centralized committee of decision makers, which results in greater consistency, in terms of vision and management. However, this culture is more exclusive in terms of firm governance, which may turn off the young attorney or employee who wants to be a part of the decision-making and planning efforts of an organization. In this system of governance, it’s important to find out how the leaders are chosen and the values they hold dear.

At the end of the day, however, what is more important than the method of governance is the reason behind why a particular organization chooses the business model it does. Asking an organization’s superiors why things are the way they are helps define an organization’s culture and vision for the future. If you hear that the goals of the business match yours, you have likely found a culture in which you will be succeed and be happy.

Word on the Street. You probably know the reputation of the organization where you’re interviewing. Is it known around town as a sweatshop or a quality-of-life organization? BE CAREFUL! Even if a reputation is mostly on target, you could end up joining a practice area or working with a partner that is decidedly unlike the overall firm or business culture.

“Lifestyle” or “quality-of-life” are other ways the business community may refer to a certain organization. These terms have become somewhat hackneyed of late, but still have value in terms of defining a particular organization. A quality-of-life organization is fairly self-explanatory, which is to say that the organization has placed a premium on allowing associates to have lives outside of work. What does that mean? Sometimes, it means a slightly lower billable hour requirement than at other firms. Other times, it may mean that the firm’s or organization’s management is more amenable to situations other than typical full-time associate positions, including part-time, telecommuting, flex-time, or non-partnership track. The popularity of this term has caused it to be somewhat diluted. Don’t take these types of labels at face value, and investigate what that term means within a particular firm.

Again, be careful. Sometimes attorneys and job seekers interviewing for a position swing too far in terms of evaluating. Spending all of your time in this process wondering, “What can the law firm or business do for me?” will prevent you from showing a potential employer that you are a good match for it. This is a two-way street, so showing a law firm or other organization what you are made of is just as important during an interview as evaluating the organization.

Conclusions

The key to true job satisfaction is determining which organization’s culture suits you and your career. Finding the right culture will allow you to find a job that won’t feel like work. What is going to make the difference over time is not a $5,000 per year salary differential, but whether or not you feel comfortable and appreciated in a particular environment. No matter what the reputation of the organization is, going through the process of discovering who the people are and what they think of you and your skills will be the best indicators of your potential long-term satisfaction and success.

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The Best Way to Prepare for a Job Search and Interviews

What You Will Learn You are always being watched, observed and judged – you can never ‘fake it’. The best employees can spot other good employees. Just by doing a good job, you are preparing for interviews. Go for your job with a sincere desire to make it work and do not switch jobs frequently. Being a good employee and a job searcher is something that takes the same amount of time and effort to achieve.

Several years ago when looking for a position in Los Angeles I interviewed with numerous law firms. In virtually every one of these interviews I ran across an attorney who knew not one, not two, not three—but numerous, numerous attorneys in my current firm. If this is the case in a market the size of Los Angeles (and the market in Los Angeles is huge), I cannot even imagine what it must be like in smaller markets. For example, I am from Detroit. I grew up in a suburb of Detroit. When it came time for me to decide where to work in law school, when I started interviewing with firms in Detroit I knew many of the attorneys before I even arrived at the interviews–they were the parents of people I grew up with.

The following are my suggestions for the best way to prepare for a job search and interviews:

1. Know you are always being watched, observed and judged

When I was in high school I remember that one of the best looking girls in my school was known to be a prude and someone who would date boys but never let anything all that exciting happen. She was also a star athlete and a student counsel leader and a very respected student. My parents were divorced and lived about an hour apart. I lived with my father. The funny thing is that this same girl also had parents who were divorced and spent a lot of time in one city visiting a parent.

The girl had the exact opposite reputation in the city where she did not live full time. Her strategy it seemed, like the strategy of many, was to have two separate personas. She knew that if she behaved one way in her school and around people there she would experience fall out. She also knew that by keeping her “wild side” in another town this would not affect her directly in her own back yard.

In life we are always being observed. We are being observed in our communities. We are being observed in our jobs. We are being observed by our peers. We are being observed by our superiors. There are a lot of people out there who understand that. The smart woman discussed above certainly understood that (albeit, in a different context).

When I went to look for a job in Detroit, despite the fact that I had not spent time in the city since high school I already knew which firms I would likely get jobs in and which ones I likely would not. This had nothing to do with the prestige of the firm—it had to do with the people inside the firms. I knew that I had been close to certain people growing up and their parents like me. I also knew that I had not been close with others and had made some enemies along the way. Sure enough, when I started applying for jobs in Detroit I was preceded by my past. The Detroit legal community is small enough that most people know one another.

In everything you do in the public arena you are likely being observed, watched and judged. The people you need today will likely have some impact over events that may happen to you tomorrow. It is as simple as that. Like the woman discussed above, you need to do everything you can to maintain a strong public face at all costs.

One thing about interviewing is that there will likely almost always be someone where you are interviewing that knows of you. That person will likely have a say in what is happening to you in your new position. Be aware of this and you will be preparing for interviews every second of every day.

2. Remember that the best employees can spot other good employees and you cannot “fake it”—you are always preparing for interviews just by doing a good job with your current work

There are many people out there who go to work in jobs and for whatever reason are not challenged. Most often the people who claim they are not challenged are the same people who go out of the way to not challenge themselves. We all know the type of person who does not challenge themselves in the job. These are the sorts of people always looking for shortcuts and other methods to do as little work as possible. I have never understood this sort of person—but they are there. This sort of person is also the same one who is likely to be very defensive when asked about something they do not know but think they should know—“oh, I already know that!” they will say.

When you are good at something and really doing your job you have the tendency to get “immersed” in your subject matter. Over time the subject matter and its intricacies and innuendos becomes almost second nature to the good student. You also become more astute and a level or presumed understanding emerges between people who understand the subject matter well. Little tidbits and other bits of understanding emerge. Two people who are very good at something share a similar understanding.

When you are interviewing with a truly excellent person, they will also be able to tell if you share this level of understanding. If you are a slacker and not a hard worker, or someone who does not consistently challenge their mind, they will see right through this. This level of understanding is particularly important at the higher levels. You need to always be working hard and doing good work even when you may not want to make long-term plans to be at your current firm. This is essential.

3. You need to go into your job with a sincere and 100% desire to make it work and switch jobs infrequently—if at all

Until the 1980s, the majority of workers in America changed jobs—if at all. One of the major changes that happened was when the Japanese started importing cheaper and better cars into the United States. American car makers (a major industry at the time) could no longer afford to be as loyal to their employees and mass firings and layoffs became increasingly commonplace. Furthermore, pensions were fairly rapidly phased out at most companies in favor of 401ks—because employees began to be more “portable” in their jobs.

Despite that fact that people can switch jobs at a whim, switch jobs is not always the smartest thing to do. Young people like to feel as if they are in control and more valued by their employers than they value them. In addition, young people are likely to move for a slight bump in salary, an person in the firm they do not like, or some other trivial sort of factor.

These are not good reasons to move. In fact, there are few good reasons to leave most employers. The best reason and the only reason is if there is something inside your firm that is so endemic to the firm and so pervasive that unless you leave your career will never go forward. These factors also should be near 100% beyond your control. When you join an employer it is much like getting married. If you show a lot of commitment to your current employer you will be respected if you have to leave due to factors outside of your control.

The reason all of this is important is because the person interviewing you wants to trust you. If the person or organization interviewing you does not trust you and believes you may leave for a trivial reason then they are will be unlikely to hire you. If your reason for leaving is sound and the next firm who hires you believes you are likely to remain on board in the face of adversity then they are more likely to hire you. People want to have people with staying power in their organizations. No organization is perfect and all organizations go through ups and downs.

Conclusions

In everything you do—both inside and outside of work—you are always preparing for your job search and interviews. You need to remember that the time to prepare for interviews and a job search is before you ever know you will need to prepare. Being a good employee and a job searcher is something that takes the same amount of time and effort to achieve.

Do Not Be Immobilized in Your Job Search

What You Will Learn Never blame circumstances for what happens to you. Get up and look for the circumstances you want – if you can’t find them, make them! Take charge of your life – make sure you do not leave any stone unturned and do whatever it takes to survive. Things like lack of self-confidence, fear the unknown, or are jealousy of someone will keep you immobilized. Play by the rules and you will experience the success you are entitled to.

Several years ago, I was sitting in my office and the most amazing candidate came across my desk.  The attorney had a degree in a hard science discipline from a school like CalTech or MIT (I believe it was physics), had gone to a good law school and finished first in his class.  Not only that, he was currently working at one of the top law firms in the world and was in a practice area that was not just desirable at the time, it was white hot.  His practice area was so in demand at this particular point in time that one law firm I had been dealing with offered another candidate of mine (an attorney only three years out of law school) a $50,000 bonus to take an offer (which was unprecedented at the time).  This was the year 2000 and things were more different in this particular year than they ever were in history.  The demand for this particular type of attorney was through-the-roof. The candidate who had received this bonus offer did not look 10% as good as the candidate whose resume I was staring at right now.

This stellar attorney wanted me to assist him with moving to another law firm.  At this particular point in history, the market was so good that I estimated this person would get interviews at every single law firm that I sent him to.  However, as I studied his resume I became nervous.  I did not want to offend any of my clients by having them not accept an offer.  I figured that law firms would literally be salivating over this candidate and throwing offers at him.  I was concerned and wanted to make sure that I did not create a feeding frenzy the likes that had never been seen before.

When the market is really good and a recruiter has an exceptionally good candidate, he/she often needs to be careful because he/she does not want to upset his/her clients if the candidate does not take an offer.  As you can imagine, it costs law firms a lot of money to bring people in to interview.  They need to schedule the interviews, first of all.  These blocks of time that the attorneys are interviewing the person could be used for productive work.  With attorneys billing at $800 an hour and more in some of the best law firms, five or six hours of their best attorneys’ time could easily cost a law firm $5000.  Law firms will also typically bring an attorney they are recruiting in more than one time, take the attorney recruit out to lunch or dinner and spend time debating amongst each other whether or not they are interested in hiring the attorney. Due to this, I realized that I could really upset a lot of people by sending this attorney to them if he was not interested in working for them.  The cost to recruit this person for the average firm, up until an offer was extended, could easily be $20,000.

The best recruiters typically have a tremendous amount of credibility with law firms.  If the recruiter tells the law firm to go ahead and extend an offer, the law firm knows that the offer is very likely to be accepted.  When I was most actively recruiting, I believe a great part of my success was that I would always tell law firms when offers were going to be accepted. This made my candidates get jobs with the best law firms and it also enabled me to get more offers for my candidates.  A good recruiter does not allow his/her clients to play guessing games with candidates.

This particular candidate was in a different part of the United States and I did not end up meeting him face-to-face until weeks later.  Instead, I spoke with him on the phone for several hours extensively going through his goals and needs.  The situation was somewhat complicated because at the time the candidate was also going through a divorce, and I remember spending just as much time discussing this with him as his job search.  However, after days of speaking on the phone, I believed we had finally settled on the perfect firm for him.  I say “firm” because it was crystal clear to me that he would almost instantly get an offer from any firm he went into.

There is something else that I want to bring up, which is a really unusual phenomenon that I have noticed with law firms and the most exceptional candidates.  Throughout my career I have had a few candidates like this particular one who had perfect records and were incredibly in demand in the market.  It is always interesting to me to watch what happens.  Something I have learned is that all firms (and employers) have inferiority complexes.  For example, had this candidate had a more average record (schools, firm) within 30 minutes of sending him out to law firms they would have immediately started calling to schedule interviews.  When you send someone who is incredibly stellar, however, a lot of the firms simply do not end up calling right away to schedule interviews.  Instead, they wait for you to call and convince them to interview the person.  I am not sure why this is, but my opinion is that it has something to do with the fact that the firms suddenly want to play “coy” when someone who is exceptional shows up.  They suddenly do not want to look desperate.

After I sent this candidate out, I called the “coy” law firm a couple of days later and explained to them that the candidate looked like a perfect match for them. I explained to them that I had spoken extensively with the candidate about them and that I thought things would go very well.  The firm summarily agreed to book the candidate for an entire day of interviews, followed by a dinner.  This was something that law firms rarely did on first interviews.  Instead, they typically bring the candidate in for what is called a “screening interview” and meet with the candidate for 20-30 minutes.  This is basically so the law firm can get a sense of whether the candidate looks like they might do okay if the interview process goes further.  They want to make sure that the candidate is someone who looks like someone they would hire before committing to further interviews.

The day after my candidate came in, I called the law firm seeking information.  After sending them this particular candidate, they became a big fan of mine and my phone calls were getting returned in less than 20 minutes.  On this particular day, I did not receive a phone call back until several hours later.  There is a bit of a ritual that plays itself out with law firms when you send them candidates they really like. I will typically chat with them for an hour or more about nothing.  This is something that really breaks down the ice and puts me in a position where they will willingly share information.  If the candidate is good enough, the law firm is also “recruiting” when speaking with you and they want to be nice to you so that you will say good things about them to your candidate.  With this particular candidate, I had probably spent 2 or 3 hours chatting about nothing with the hiring partner of this particular law firm.  We knew a lot of similar people and agreed that we would grab lunch if I was ever in his part of the country.

Late in the day my phone call was returned by the hiring partner’s secretary.  “He wanted me to tell you we are not moving forward,” she said.

“Any reason why?”  I asked her.

“He did not give me any reason,” she said.

For the next several days I started stalking this particular hiring partner with phone call after phone call.  Worse yet, my candidate kept asking me when he was going to be receiving the offer.  I told him I did not have any “final news” yet.  Now what I am about to say may seem a tad unethical, but I want you to understand a little bit about what really good recruiters do.  A really good recruiter can literally snatch candidates from the jaws of death and get them hired when they are about to be rejected.  This is something the very best recruiters out there can do.  When you have rapport with the law firm they will follow your lead and often actually hire the people you are recommending to them.  Here, I needed to know what was going on.

Several days later I managed to track down the hiring partner.

“I am really sorry I did not return your calls,” he said.

“You cannot reject this guy.  He is exactly what your law firm has been looking for.”

“I know,” he said.

I sold the partner on the candidate for at least 15 minutes, finally getting him to agree not to reject the candidate and to bring him in for another full day of interviews with different people.  I have no idea how I did this, but I did not give up on my candidate.  I absolutely refused to give up because I knew that he really wanted to work in this particular law firm.

As the conversation with the partner was winding down he asked me if I had met the attorney.  I told him no.

“You should meet him,” he said.  Generally, when you are talking to exceptionally important people (and this attorney was, at the time I saw him, in the legal newspapers frequently and I am sure he was making well over $2,000,000 a year) they have the ability to keep most of their interactions to niceties.  Here, the fact that this came up at the very end meant that he was leaving me with something that he wanted me to think about.  This one remark about meeting the candidate was something I should do.

It occurred to me that I had never seen a picture of the candidate. I had also never had the opportunity to observe his mannerisms and how he might do in interviews.  Given the fact that an Oracle of an Attorney had just given me the strongest possible hint that I should meet this attorney, I decided to do so. I called him up and told him I wanted to fly him to Los Angeles at my expense so we could chat and get to know one another.  Not a lot of recruiters will do stuff like this, but it was a habit I had really gotten into doing. I flew candidates from all over the country to meet with me, and the process had really yielded some outstanding results.  When you get behind someone and show them what they need to do and say once you understand their particular interviewing style, incredible things can happen to them.  It can change their lives.

I will never forget the moment this particular candidate walked through the front door of my office.  He had the longest hair of any man I had ever seen.  His hair went clear down past his buttocks.  He had so much hair that he had manipulated it with barrettes or something to keep it away from his eyes.  When he sat down and started talking to me he was also quite depressing. He just kept talking about his divorce.  The divorce was the least of my worries, however. I simply could not get over how much hair this guy had.  I had never seen a man with so much hair in my life.

Hair is a personal thing and I did not want to upset this particular guy and did not bring it up immediately.  In fact, it was not until we were eating lunch that I decided I should say something about it.  It was the white elephant in the room.  I did not want to upset him because men can get really sensitive about their hair.

A couple of years prior, I was visiting my home in Michigan and saw one of my dear childhood friends. He had lost a little bit of hair and he was sitting in the front seat of a car and I was in back.  I tapped the back of his head and said “looks like you’re getting a little bald spot.”  To the astonishment of everyone in the car he turned around, leaned over the seat, starting punching me in the face and screaming never to call him bald again.  It was a bizarre episode from a guy who was traditionally very mellow.  It was for this reason that I was careful not to say anything about my candidate’s hair for some time.

“I do not know how to say this,” I finally said as we were eating desert. “But do you think cutting your hair may make it easier for you to get a job?”

Unfortunately, my worst fears were confirmed.  The candidate started going off in a rampage, saying “there [was] no fucking way!” he was going to be cutting his hair and would not bow to the establishment and a whole host of other things. He must have gone on a verbal rampage for at least 15 minutes and I realized it was an incredibly sensitive issue for him.

He told me it had taken him over 3 years to grow his current hairdo–just about the amount of time he had been working in his current law firm.  He had not always looked like this, and if he had I am sure he would have had a very difficult time getting a job with the law firm he had joined when he was in school.

In addition to his incredible depression over getting divorced, the biggest issue this guy had was his hair.  He also told me that if the law firm that was not interested in him and was unwilling to make a decision about him right away, he wanted to look at other firms.  A lot of other law firms.  We discussed at least 15 more law firms and he told me he wanted to speak with them all.  I knew they would all want to speak with him and I was afraid. However, I also knew that he was qualified to work in them and I should abide by his wishes.  If they wanted to discriminate against him because of his long hair there was nothing in particular I could do about this.  That was their issue and not mine.

Over the next several weeks he interviewed at every single one of the 15 law firms and was rejected from every single one of them.  After he was rejected from those firms I managed to get him interviews at several other law firms, and he was rejected from these as well.  While the law firms did not say it directly, I knew that for all of them the issue was the hair.  They could just not get over this.

The stupidest and saddest thing ended up happening with this candidate.  Due to his long hair, no one ended up hiring him.  He might have been able to get hired if he had a little bit better attitude, but as the interviews progressed he seemed to get angrier and angrier.  At one point he told me he was contemplating suicide.  Everything just kept going downhill.

A couple of months later he finally called me up and said, “I may consider cutting my hair.”  At this point, however, he had already interviewed with almost all of the firms in his geographic region of the United States.  There was not much more that he could do.  He ended up dropping off the map and doing something else besides practicing law.  His career as he knew it, had come to an end.

I have thought about this particular episode several times throughout the years, because this person sabotaged himself and his career.  This particular person could have fixed everything by simply getting a haircut.  He was in charge of what happened to him, just like you are in charge of what happens to you as well.  You choose what the world and your career will be for you.  As George Bernard Shaw wrote in Mrs. Warren’s Profession:

People are always blaming their circumstances for what they are.  I don’t believe in circumstances.  The people who get on in this world are the people who get up and look for the circumstances they want, and if they can’t find them, make them.

This statement is incredibly relevant to your life as well.  You are in charge of what happens to you.  Anything you want to happen, you can make happen.

If someone was to come to you and say that unless you got a job working as a bank teller in some part of the United States within the next 12 months, you would be executed at the end of 12 months, you would find a way to get a job as a bank teller.

• If it meant cutting your hair, you would cut your hair.
• If it meant moving to another part of the country, you would move to another part of the country.
• If it meant applying to 10,000 jobs, you would apply to 10,000 jobs.
• If it meant mass mailing your resume to every bank branch in the United States, you would mass mail your resume.
• If it meant calling every bank manager in the United States, you would call everyone you could.
• If it meant losing 100 pounds so you were more presentable, you would lose 100 pounds.
• If it meant taking English lessons so that you sounded better, you would take English lessons.
• If it meant learning how to do math equations in your head, you would learn how to do this.
• If it meant learning to always be smiling, you would learn to always smile.
• If it meant learning to laugh at stupid jokes, you would learn to laugh at stupid jokes.

In fact, my guess is that you would do absolutely whatever it took in order to get a job as a bank teller.  You would make sure that you did not leave any stone unturned, and would do whatever it took to survive.  I know you would, anyone would do this.  People are in the business of surviving.

Why then do so many of us not do whatever it takes to get every job we are going after?  You need to do whatever you can within your power to get a job. You need to go after a job like someone who is going to be executed if they do not get the job.  This level of commitment to your job search will change everything.  This is what you need to do if you are going to get the job that you are seeking.  This is what the people who really succeed do. They make their search for a job an all consuming obsession.

What I saw that was so disappointing in my long-haired candidate was that he was not doing everything within his power to get a job.  You may think it is unfair that someone cannot have hair past their buttocks and get a job in a white shoe law firm paying well into the six figures, but this is just the way it is.  Society has rules and we can use these rules for our benefit or against us.  Having hair that is not past your buttocks is a rule that must be followed to get a job with most major law firms. I am sure there have been historical exceptions, but probably not many.

As a consequence of this man not playing by the rules and not doing everything within his power to get a job, he was almost driven to suicide.  In fact, he may very well have been, I do not know.  What I would impress upon you is that you need to do whatever you possibly can to succeed in your job search.  If you do not do this, you will not experience the success you are entitled to.

Many of us believe that being smart is about how high our IQ is.  However, the ranks of the unemployed contain plenty of exceptionally intelligent people.  The real test of someone’s intelligence, in my opinion, is their ability to take action and get the results they want from life.  When I think about the story of the man with the long hair, what I think about is immobilization.  His job search was immobilized because he refused to cut his hair.  Are your immobilized in your own job search and career?  If you are not doing whatever it takes to get a job then you are surely immobilized.

Does your lack of self confidence prevent you from applying to every possible job?  If so then you are surely immobilized.  Does your fear of the unknown prevent you from looking for a better job?  If so, then you are surely immobilized.  Does your jealousy of someone else prevent you from working effectively in your job?  If so, you are surely immobilized.  You are immobilized whenever you are not functioning at your highest and best state.  This is what you need to do and if you are looking for a job, the most important thing you can possibly do is throw out all of the stops and do whatever it takes get the job of your dreams.  You never want to be immobilized.

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