• 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.

• Maybe you know someone at the firm that has said good things about it.
• Maybe they do a certain type of computer work you have been interested in since high school.
• Maybe their office is right across the street from your house.
• Maybe you want to work in a smaller firm so you can feel a more collegial atmosphere.

You need an arsenal at your disposal to give the employer compelling reasons for hiring you. If you give the firm enough reasons why you are a good fit, they will look upon the fact that Google is interviewing you as something that verifies your worth in the market. The small firm needs to think that you will be their first choice over Google. You taking an offer from them over Google will be a major vote of confidence in the small company, which is something the company will use to impress upon its employees as to what a great place they are. When I was interviewing candidates for the University, I would answer the question of whether or not the candidate was really interested in my opportunity in several ways. For example, if the student has 1580 on their SATs (almost a perfect score), is Captain of the football team, student counsel president and first in their class, and my school is the only top school they are applying to, then my job is easy. The student was most likely interested in what my school offers. Even if the student is applying to several more prestigious schools, I could still judge whether or not this same applicant really wanted to attend the University by several methods:

• If their parents went to the University and they have always wanted to go there,
• If they attended the University for summer school,
• If they worked for a professor of the University during high school, and
• If their life has been profoundly influenced by the work of some professor they want to study under.

You should get the idea. Even without this, a stellar applicant will still get serious consideration. The point is your interviewer wants to be able to say “this school is their first choice and I believe it.” An employer wants the same assurances that they are your first choice. These assurances need to be given at the interview stage and they need to be given early on. This is not an article about interviewing and I cannot tell you how to interview. I can tell you, though, that when an employer believes you are their first choice, you will have a better chance of getting an offer with the employer. If you apply to enough employers and package yourself correctly you are likely to get more than one interview and may very well end up with several offers. Accordingly, you may often be asked in interviews who else you are speaking with and so forth. How you address this question will actually have a strong bearing on whether or not an employer hires you. 2.How You Justify Why You Are Interviewing With Other Employers Will Have A Direct Bearing On Whether Or Not The Employer Hires You There are several scenarios that you should be aware of and each one merits a separate response. If you have prepared the interviewer properly, you will do very well when asked where else you are interviewing. Some potential scenarios are:

• (a) you are not interviewing with any other employers,
• (b) you are interviewing entirely will less prestigious employers,
• (c) you are interviewing with a mix of more prestigious and less prestigious employers, and

Given the importance of each of these hypotheticals, they will all be discussed below.> a.You are not interviewing with any other employers If you are not interviewing with any other employers then you should tell the employer as much. If you are in school and this is occurring, the employer should be under the impression that you are just starting the interview process if this is the only interview you have so far. Employers do not want to feel as if you are the black sheep and someone without a lot of options. If you are interviewing laterally (i.e., you are already employed and interviewing somewhere), it is perfectly acceptable to tell the employer that you are not interviewing with any other employers. In this situation, the rationale for having only one interview should be that (1) you are not interested in a new job for the sake of a new job, and (2) the only reason you are speaking with this employer is because they are a perfect fit for your interests. The employer needs to think they are a perfect match for you. There are several additional reasons firms like to hear you are interviewing only with them: It makes you look loyal to your current employer -By stating that you are interviewing with only one employer, it makes it seem as if you are not doing an “all out” search to find new positions. You are only interested in this one interview because the employer matches what you are seeking so closely. It puts the employer in a position where they know if they make you an offer you are likely to take it -By having only one interview, the employer can give itself more assurances that if an offer is made you will likely accept. It puts the employer in a position where they know if they make you an offer you will not choose one of their competitors over them-If you inform the employer that you have only one interview, the employer will have the assurance that they will not have to “lose face” if you take an offer from one of their competitors. b.You are interviewing entirely with less prestigious employers There are some potential positives to this admission. The positives are: Since we are the more prestigious employer, if we make the candidate an offer they will most likely come here. If the employer is more prestigious than the one you are currently at, the employer will think that you are trying to “move up”. It is almost axiomatic in American culture that we respect individuals who are trying to move up and improve their lot in life. After all, most of our ancestors were immigrants at some point and moved up the ladder. If you tell your interviewer that your other interviews are with less prestigious employers, you may have a problem. Here, the employer will certainly think to itself: “Can’t this individual get an interview with better employers? Is there something wrong with them that we are missing?” In this situation, you need to be very careful. One way to approach this is to state that you only are applying to places with openings and these are the only employers you are aware of with openings. In this way, the employer will believe that you are applying to these other employers simply in response to what you know. While in all likelihood you probably applied to more prestigious employers and have not heard back or were rejected, if the former is true, you need to make the employer aware of it. The most important thing you can do in this situation is to make it clear to the employer that you are qualified to work for them. For example, if you are interviewing with less prestigious employers that pay far less, then tell the more prestigious firm that money is not a concern for you. Here, you can tell the firm you are most concerned with finding the “right fit” and that the less prestigious firms have a lot of attributes that might not be immediately transparent. In this instance, you put yourself in the position of someone who is more concerned with practicing law in the right environment, than someone who is concerned with making as much money as possible. This sort of characterization can only help you. There are many ways to get creative with this response. In sum, the most important thing you can do in a situation where all of your interviews are with less prestigious firms is to make the firm aware that (1) you are very interested in them, (2) seeking to move up, and (3) most concerned about finding a good fit. c.You are interviewing with a mix of more prestigious and less prestigious employers The issue in this situation is about the most normal occurrence for people. Most people that are interviewing are speaking with more prestigious and less prestigious employers. Here, your case does not need to be as compelling. Like all the situations discussed above, the employer must still be left with the impression that they are your first choice. In addition, the employer must have a basis for understanding why you are interviewing with more than one employer. Assuming that you have done your job of giving the employer the impression they are your first choice., the employer should also understand why you are speaking with so many different sorts of employers. Here, the employer needs to be aware of why you are doing such a broad search. Accordingly, the employer needs to be aware of why something is seriously wrong with your current employment situation. Again, this is a delicate topic. In all interviews you never want to leave the employer with the impression that you harbor any sort of ill will towards your current employer. Employers typically do not like interviewees who say bad things about those they work for because they believe that they could one day be on the opposite side of this. This simply makes you look bad. What you do need to do in the interview, though, is convince the employer that your current employment situation is preventing you from reaching your full potential. You need to project that you are leaving your current employer, because you are trying to grow. By upward momentum, I mean that your desire is to be better at your job, get more business, get better work and so forth. In sum, you should always try and portray yourself and your job search as follows: While your decision to join your current employer was a good one, you have continued a pattern of “growth” that has characterized you from the very beginning and is evident in everything you have ever done. While it is unfortunate, your current employer is limiting your growth potential. The environment of the employer you are interviewing with offers this growth potential and that is why you are speaking with them. In fact, the growth potential of the employer you are interviewing with offers is “hands down” the best of the bunch in terms of the employers you are speaking with because of X and Y and Z … If you were someone in charge of determining who you were going to hire, which candidate would you want to hire (1) someone without compelling reasons for being interested in your company, (2) or someone who needs the environment your firm offers to grow? I am sure you can see the logic of this. It is a fundamental human characteristic that we want to feel good about ourselves. Finding someone who needs an organization like ours to thrive and letting them work with such an organization is something that makes hiring authorities feel good about themselves. You need to give employers compelling reasons for hiring you. Moreover, giving yourself “upward mobility” makes you sound like a winner and not a loser. People want to associate with winners and not losers. Employers want to hire winners and not losers. Give yourself upward mobility. THE LESSON Employers sometimes ask in the course of an interview about other interview you may have had, and how you handle this question can determine your success. You must convince your current interviewing employer that their position is your first choice before divulging any information about other interviews, and be careful how you justify your other interview to your prospective employer. You must convince your current interviewing employer that you consider their position to be your best fit, and would most help you meet your career goals of upward mobility.

• 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 strong 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 that 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, and other perks. 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 accoutrements 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 most significant 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 ultraprestigious, 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 career paths 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 who 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 as 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 a hundred, 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 antidiscrimination 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 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 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” and “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. THE LESSON Just an ad for the Career Coaching Club.

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 of 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. THE LESSON Concentrate on the process, not the results, in order to succeed in your career. Focus on the entire process of what you are doing, refine each step of that process, and make sure to constantly improve each step. Pay attention to the small, seemingly insignificant details, because they will add up to make a huge difference.

From: John Quinn Sent: Thursday, October 09, 2008 2:10 PM To: Attorneys Subject: things are slow right now More so in some offices than others. Lawyers are funny. In April, May and June we averaged over 200 hours per attorney – an unbelievable, perhaps unparalleled work pace for a firm as large as ours. Many wondered how we could possibly keep that up. Now we’re averaging 150 plus per month and people are worried. So one point to be made here is that “slowness” is relative. The pace is down significantly because a number of major matters, on which scores of attys were working full time, went away–trial ended, the case settled, etc–at the same time. 10 of the largest billing matters in 2008 thru the end of Sept, 9 have been completed. These are the kinds of cases you do not replace immediately. This really shouldn’t be a cause for concern though. Our basic practice strategy–focusing on financial litigation, trial work, being able to be adverse to financial institutions, etc–is clearly sound. In fact, in this business environment, we’re better situated than any firm I know. Lots of claims will be brought arising from the financial chaos and they will require firms that can be adverse to banks. We are at the top of that list. Many law firms will suffer. I don’t think we will. There are lots of business development issues and non-billable tasks to be done. We expect everyone will pitch in on such projects when asked to do so. John B. Quinn Quinn Emanuel Urquhart Oliver & Hedges, LLP

While there is likely truth to a memo like this, the fact is when work starts decreasing inside companies and law firms, people may get very nervous. The attorneys inside law firms become very nervous because the less work there is, the more they realize the sun may not continue to shine forever. It is a very scary world when we realize we do not always have employment stability. This is what happens in all companies and organizations, however. Things eventually slow down, and jobs eventually begin to disappear. There is a cycle of creation and destruction which characterizes all industries. A few years ago, I was reading about what a big deal Dell Computers was, and how the company was invincible. Now I am reading article after article about its layoffs and declining market share. A couple of years ago, I remember reading articles about how amazing Goldman Sachs was, and how it was the most successful investment bank of all time, and how certain people there were earning 100s of millions of dollars. Now I am reading how this company is no longer an investment bank and had to borrow money from Warren Buffett. Recently, I’ve read about how great Apple Computers is, but even more recently, I’ve read rumors that Steve Jobs is sick and dying. When he dies, the company could lose any momentum it has. Yesterday, I read that in September the American steel industry had one of its best quarters ever, but the final quarter of the year was one of its worst. Now steel plants all over the United States are being shut down, and workers are being laid off. Things are so bad for the US steel industry they are now seeking a government bailout. I read articles like this on a daily basis, and what it all says to me is we cannot take anything for granted. Inside law firms, people start losing their jobs when work slows down. The law firms generally begin whittling away their weakest (i.e., the people they dislike the most, or the people they feel contribute the least) for performance reasons. The attorneys are told their work is not up to par, or asked to look for other jobs. This process will generally occur until the law firm is healthy and earning again. This same process occurs inside companies. The companies will do everything within their power to eliminate as many redundancies as they possibly can so they can return as rapidly as possible to profitability. The more layoffs I’ve read about in the papers recently, the more I realize how the sun has stopped shining for so many people. All over the United States, and throughout the world, an incredible number of people have built lives for themselves which are now slipping away. Employers are doing everything possible to eliminate waste. Where does this leave you? First, you need to be ready for change. You simply cannot expect that your job will go on like it has forever. The idea that the steel industry in America could go from one of its best quarters ever, to one of its worst almost overnight, sends an incredible message: nothing is secure. My grandmother lived through the Great Depression and after this she lived her life in an incredibly frugal way. While this extreme may not be necessary, it is important to understand you need to be ready for change and should have a rainy day fund. If you do not have one now, start creating one. You should also be prepared for change. This means being aware of other potential jobs you could have and knowing what is going on in the market – one of the most important things anyone can do. While I am the Chief Executive Officer of EmploymentCrossing and am biased, I can assure you using a site like this is an incredibly intelligent and very good use of your time. A site like this is no different than checking the stock market to check your worth and the worth of your stocks. You need to be watching the market because the market is your job security. In a good market, you are fine, and with a poor market, you need to be prepared for change. Do not spend your life guarding against change. It will do you no good. You need to be proactive with your life and your career. If you find you are protecting yourself and guarding yourself in your existing career, this is not a good sign. Generally, this means you feel you may not be providing value commensurate with what you are paid. If this is the case, you need to step up and provide more value, or find somewhere you can provide value that matches your contribution. THE LESSON Since the sun does not always shine forever, you must take a pragmatic approach towards your life and career; remember that good fortunes are never permanent. Do not take your job for granted, but instead watch the market and be aware of other potential jobs. Rather than guard against change, be prepared for it.

“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. THE LESSON Rather than committing to a career, many people switch jobs and take positions that require completely different skill sets; consequently, they never truly master their primary skills. While there is nothing wrong with changing careers, you must find something and devote yourself to it; many people have succeeded in relatively simple jobs, because they have committed to and mastered their craft. Develop a specialized interest, nurture it, and continually improve at it, and you will find the universe rewarding you.

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 (at $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.

THE LESSON Your career is a business, and you yourself are a product that you are selling to potential employers. Your goal is to survive and sell your product for as much money as possible. Use simple business principles to market yourself, such as identifying markets for your product and recognizing the importance of your brand. Good basic business skills can take you and your career far.

• Some men only want to work for other men
• Some women only will work for men.
• Some women will only work for women.
• Some people only will work in large companies.
• Some people will only work in small companies.
• Some people refuse to ever assume a management role.
• Some people refuse to be anything but a manager.
• Some people avoid working for new companies.
• Some people avoid working for older, more established companies.
• Some people will only work alone.
• Some people will only work in large cities.
• Some people will only work in small cities.
• Some people will only work in jobs where they are represented by a union.
• Some people refuse to work in jobs where they are represented by a union.
• Some people will only work in the service sector.
• Some people will only work in the manufacturing sector.
• Some people will only work with groups of large people.
• Some people will avoid work where they have to talk on the phone.
• Some people will only work places where they have to talk on the phone.

I could continue with this list of preferences almost indefinitely, and these preferences are something that really control what happens to us and in our lives.  Many of these preferences could be seen as more than just “preferences” and could instead be called “musts” because many people refuse to work in certain types of environments and do certain things that are largely controlled by their past. When I was growing up, down the street was a family that was extremely poor.  The family never had proper clothes, and they never had enough to eat.  One the the real low points must have been the time that my mother went out and bought a Boy Scouts uniform for one of the boys because their mother could not afford one.  The mother had asked my mom to do this, and she had.  My mother then asked me to take the uniform over to their house and give it to the boy.  I remember that, despite the fact that he and several of his brothers were at home, he did not answer the door.  I left it in between the front door of the home and the screen door. This family was incredibly poor and never had enough of anything because, back in the 1970s in Detroit, plumbers were unionized.  If you did not belong to a union, it was apparently extremely difficult to get a job, and this particular man was chronically unemployed.  He did not drink or smoke and was fit and willing to work.  Due to some early experience he had with unions, however, he simply refused to have anything to do with any job that involved the unions.  Due to this one belief about how “evil” he believed unions were, he was effectively cutting himself off from participating in virtually every job out there.  His family literally starved due to this, and his wife ended up divorcing him because he could never find work. This is an example of someone whose beliefs about something in the past are controlling their future.  I am sure that there are examples in your own life about beliefs from things in the past and how they are controlling your future.  You need to insure that you do not shortchange yourself and your future life due to erroneous beliefs you may have about the past. Because most of my career has involved legal recruiting, one of the conversations I have had many times throughout my career is a call from attorneys in New York City who inform me they no longer have any interest in working in New York City.  They may say something along the lines of the following: “I never want to work in New York City again.  The people there are too competitive and mean.  I need to get out of here and work in a smaller market.” The experiences that these people are having in New York City are typically just related to the practice of law in general.  The practice of law in any law firm is “competitive” and “mean” in many respects.  However, most people that do not like practicing law who are working in New York City will generalize the fact that they do not like New York City, and not that they do not like the practice of law.  This is another sort of generalization that is extremely dangerous.  Here, someone is making a generalization about a massive geographic market and the people within it instead of looking at what really may be the cause of their frustrations. The attorney who forsakes the entire City of New York is often making a very reckless mistake.  First of all, there are thousands of law firms in the city.  To surmise that not a single one of them may be a place the attorney would like working is dangerous.  Secondly, the attorney who is contemplating moving out of New York may already have a life set up there.  They may have children in school, and they may already have a substantial network of professional contacts.  Third, the attorney has already taken the bar exam in the state.  To simply walk away from this is extremely reckless. In speaking with these people, I am always pretty amazed because they will have all sorts of generalizations about why they do not like New York that involve things like public transportation, the size of their apartments, and other trivial things.  Most of these conversation never revolved around how the situation may be fixable in New York itself and not require a cross-country move of some sort to another part of the United States.  For example, the person may be better off practicing law inside a corporation or working in a different practice area of the law in New York City.  However, few of these people will regularly undertake this sort of rigorous self-examination and will instead make various conclusions about why New York is the wrong market for them to be working in. This person may subsequently pick up their family and moved to a small southern town to practice law.  They may end up earning one third the salary and working just about as hard as they did in New York.  The attorney may have a wife and children they bring with them in the move.  Almost invariably, once the attorney starts working with the new law firm in the small city they will start experiencing the same pressures and issues again.  They will have left all of their friends and maybe even some relatives back in New York and now will be isolated in a small town.  The attorney may spend years trying to convince themselves that the problem they had was New York City and not the practice of law, their practice area, or another issue with the work.  They will spend the rest of their career avoiding New York for jobs under the belief that this is something that created problems for them. You need to be aware of beliefs that you may have from things that have happened to you in the past that may be limiting you today.  What are these beliefs and how are they hurting you?  The past never equals the future and associations of what things represent from the past can be extremely dangerous. Several years ago, I had a customer in my asphalt business, Ken, who owned a giant mansion in Grosse Pointe, Michigan. I would see this man every year when I would come by to work on his asphalt, and I made personal friends with him to some extent over the years.  He was a person I liked very much, and I feel bad for not staying in more contact with him throughout the years.  On his property, he had a guest house, and he had a tenant in the guest house who was a man around 45 years old.  The man had never been married, and Ken noticed that there was a constant procession of new women continually going to the guest house over the years.  Eventually, Ken told me he sat down with the man and asked him why he could never have a steady relationship. He said that the man told him that he wanted to, but that he kept cheating on his girlfriends.  When Ken asked him why he continued to do this, the man stated that he had learned somewhere along the line that if he did not cheat on the women, they would eventually cheat on him, so he never saw any reason to be faithful.  Ken tried to reason with the man, but the man simply could not bring himself to believe anything different than this. Think about the gravity of this statement and how truly significant it is.  This one belief this man had picked up in the past was preventing him from ever settling down and having a family.  He was essentially dooming himself to a life of short-term relationships and connections with other people due to a belief deep down that no one could be trusted.  We all have beliefs like this, and these beliefs can be guiding our careers for the positive or the negative. A couple of years ago, I purchased a house that did not have any air conditioning or heat in it. I still live in this house today.  The previous owner of the home had been forcibly evicted from it and, for whatever reason, had taken the entire air conditioning and heating system with him.  I am unclear what someone would do with used heaters and air conditioners, but this guy was able to accomplish this.  The situation was even a bit more alarming because the owner of the house left in the middle of the night.  He was being watched and pursued by the Federal Bureau of Investigations and other authorities for stealing $40,000,000 from school teachers and others.  He was eventually arrested in Aspen, Colorado, for various crimes after checking into a hotel under the name “Bryce Pilaf”  (“Rice Pilaf”)–not his real name–and passing numerous bad checks. For several weeks, I lived in this house with no air conditioning or heat.  We had moved in during the Fall and despite the fact that I live in Los Angeles, the nights do get pretty cold.  Showers in the morning were the worst.  While I was enjoying the significant financial savings, my wife was starting to get really upset by this.  Eventually, I got estimates for having the work done.  It was not an inexpensive job.  In fact, I believe it cost about $15,000 to have everything done.  I selected a contractor based on price alone and not anything in particular other than that. For several days, the air conditioning contractor worked on the job with another worker.  The contractor in charge of the job was extremely dramatic about the entire thing. “This is hard work, oh boy!!” he would say every time I saw him running around the house. After he had completed the job, he came to me and presented me a bill for the work he had done.  I owed him around $5,000 because I had given him two progress payments of $5,000 each for the job.  The bill he presented to me was for $10,000. “Clearly, this is not the correct amount,” I told him.  “The balance due is $5,000.” The contractor then puffed his chest out and started telling me how the work was “much harder” than he had originally believed and, due to this, he “deserved” an “extra $5,000″.   Obviously, I did not pay him the extra $5,000.  However, I was absolutely fascinated that this guy thought he could get away with this and proceeded to talk with the contractor about his experience doing this sort of thing.  I got him to “loosen up,” and he told me that he always did this on jobs, and everyone always agreed to pay him more money.  He told me that, in his experience, this “always works”.  He related a belief about his customers that they were basically “evil,” and his job was to take as much money from each person as he possibly could. The man was a complete “scum bag,” but I realized right then and there that somewhere in the past this man had learned that the best way to get ahead was to rip people off like this.  I found the experience extremely informative on several levels.  Here was someone who had learned and came to believe that his customers were there to be stolen from, intimidated, and not served.  He had to take as much money from each person as possible, and he needed to do it unethically and in whatever way he could.  This was this man’s belief about business and how he did his job. I looked this guy up with the State of California a couple of days later and saw that he did not even have a contractor’s license because it had been taken away by the state for this sort of behavior.  What I found so difficult to believe was that this guy’s entire career had been defined by being incredibly dishonest.  The more I had questioned him, the more I realized that this was the only way he knew and understood how to get ahead in his work.  He only knew being dishonest. One of the most destructive things that we all do is that we look at the world in front of us in a way which is defined almost entirely by the past.  We use the past as a guide to what objects, people and circumstances represent in the present.  You do this.  I do this, and everyone around us does this.  The past has an incredibly defining impact on the things that happen to us in the present.  In fact, all of the decisions we are making about our lives and what is going to happen to us in the present are affected by what has happened to us in the past. In the case of this contractor, somewhere deep down he believed that the only way he could get ahead was to be dishonest.  He literally did not know how to be honest in business.  His entire perception of the world was controlled by a belief that it is best to be dishonest.  People seek to control their future by making giant generalizations about the past.  They generalize the way things are going to be by things that happened to them in the past. You need to look very closely at your life and see how your beliefs about the past may be limiting you in the future.  Do not allow the past to limit the opportunities you have today. THE LESSON For most of us, our limited understanding of the past can in turn limit our future opportunities; looking at the future as defined by your past experiences is among the most destructive things that you can do. Instead, look very closely in your life and determine how your past opinions may be limiting your current situation, and change those opinions.