Practice Makes Perfect
February 12, 2010
A year or so ago I was at a wedding, and a very successful doctor started talking to me. I was very impressed with this doctor and already knew of him through several people before our meeting. He was involved in some fascinating and cutting-edge research I found quite interesting.
I love meeting people who are passionate about their careers because they give off so much energy. People who achieve amazing and significant success in any profession always have a lot of passion for what they do. If you allow them to, these people will talk your head off about what they are doing. They will show you their collection of books about the subject, debate various philosophies about what they are doing, and more. People who commit to something are the most exciting people in the world. They provide me with an incredible education. I wish everyone was committed to what they do.
In speaking to this doctor, however, I realized despite his incredible knowledge of what he was doing, he was not satisfied. “What I really want to do is start a business,” he told me. “That is what being successful is to me. I have a friend who is doing very well in the manufacturing industry now that steel prices are up.”
The manufacturing industry? Steel? Why would someone spend years going to medical school and becoming a successful researcher only to go into steel manufacturing? I am not saying this is the wrong thing to do. But when you are an expert in something, it is not always in your best interest to switch jobs completely.
I spent many hours of my career going to various law firms and meeting with successful attorneys. I would say in at least 25% of these meetings, the attorneys I met did the same thing as this doctor–they started talking about how they wanted to pursue careers in completely different professions. One memorable meeting was with a famous attorney in Los Angeles who told me about opening a chain of ice cream parlors on the other side of the country only to see them fail miserably. Of course they failed miserably! The man running them was a famous attorney involved in all sorts of high profile cases. How on earth could he be expected to also run a chain of ice cream parlors?
At this particular point in history, I know many people who’ve lost all their money and life savings by investing in real estate. They bought homes in Arizona, condominiums in Florida, and other properties for little or no money down. They jumped face first into the real estate game because they believed they would get rich. Most of these people taught high school, sold cars, or were accountants, for example. Of course they lost money in real estate! This was not their expertise and they knew nothing about it. I saw the same thing back in 2000 with the Internet stock crash. Back then, all sorts of people aggressively invested in these stocks and lost their shirts. These people did things like sell insurance, or own auto repair shops. Of course they lost their shirts! None of them had expertise in the stock market.
The point I am trying to make is you can never be in two places at the same time. You need to choose who you want to be and what you want to do. You can never become an expert in multiple things. You need to concentrate on doing one thing.
An excellent book I recently read is called “Outliers” by Malcom Gladwell. Gladwell examines the people who are able to achieve incredible and massive success in various callings. He looks at people like Bill Gates, the best lawyers in the United States, chess grandmasters, Mozart, Steve Jobs, the Beatles, professional hockey players, and others. Gladwell cites study after study describing the fact that people do not get really good at anything, at a world class level, until they have been doing it at least 10,000 hours. According to Gladwell:
“The idea that excellence at performing a complex task requires a minimum level of practice surfaces again and again in studies of expertise. In fact, researchers have settled on what they believe is the magic number for true expertise: ten thousand hours.”
“The emerging picture from such studies is that ten thousand hours of practice is required to achieve the level of mastery associated with being a world-class expert–in anything,” writes neurologist David Levitin. “In study after study, of composers, of basketball players, fiction writers, ice skaters, concert pianists, chess players, master criminals, and what have you, this number comes up again and again. Of course, this doesn’t address why some people get more out of their practice sessions than others do. But no one has yet found a case in which true world-class expertise was accomplished in less time. It seems it takes the brain this long to assimilate all that it needs to know to achieve true mastery.”
I get very concerned when I think about people vacillating back and forth between various skill paths. Instead of choosing to do one thing, so many people spend their careers floating from job to job – each one different than the one before and requiring a completely different set of skills. There is nothing wrong with changing careers, of course, but the most important thing anyone can do is ensure they choose something and then focus on it completely. If you continue to change your mind, you will never develop true mastery.
One of the most amazing things I have seen in my life is people who become incredibly happy, successful, and rich by seeking out and doing simple jobs to which they have committed. The universe rewards commitment. Warren Buffet has become incredibly rich committing to one form of investing. Some people make their fortunes doing simple things you would not expect.
When I was an asphalt contractor, I knew a man who’d built a giant company putting hot tar in the cracks in roads all over Michigan. I know of another man who became very wealthy building pallets for the automotive industry. In college admissions, people with stand-out interests always do the best. I remember a high school teacher who talked about his students who’d gone to schools like Yale and Harvard, and how those students all had incredibly focused interests. Some were interested in bug collecting, another liked translating Japanese poetry, etc. The world rewards people with specialized interests who nurture that interest and continue to get better at those interests year after year.
One of the most unusual things I’ve witnessed is that most people are flirting with life and their careers. Instead of committing to a career and something, these people continue to dissipate their energies in many different directions. As a consequence, they never achieve anything near what they are capable of achieving. What are your capabilities? How much do you think you can achieve? The sky is the limit if you focus and continue to improve at something.
Why do I call focus “a law of the universe”? In the family unit, marriages, children and so forth typically only occur when two people decide to commit to one another and get married. People choose to focus on one another. This is a rule in virtually every culture in the world. It is almost as if the rule is saying life cannot begin until two people choose to focus. In your life, your career will never really begin until you choose to focus.
As a legal recruiter, I very quickly get a sense after looking at an attorney’s resume of how long it is likely to take for the person to get a job, and where. The most important factor determining an attorney’s future employability is his or her focus, beyond where they went to law school, their previous employer, or specialty. If the person has had several jobs in a short period of time, then employers will stay away (they know the person is unlikely to commit). If the person has flirted with other jobs in addition to practicing law, a smart employer will stay away. Employers are looking for commitment, and they want to make sure people accepting jobs with them are going to be committed to their company. Employers want their employees to use their commitment to help the company grow. The level of commitment legal employers look for is the same as in other professions. People want to hire people who are likely to do a job long-term.
Your life and career will change when you learn to commit to something over the long term.
Seek The Experience and Knowledge of Others in Your Job Search
August 29, 2009
What You Will Learn
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Back in college there were men I knew who would always shadow other men at parties. The first man would typically spend his entire evening drinking and talking to a woman he met at the party. At some point he would have had too much to drink, and would start losing his focus. At that point the shadow would appear, and would talk to the girl and, oftentimes, end up going home with her. Since the woman was usually also a little drunk at this point, she was not processing if she liked the shadow as much, and she was discounting the fact that she really did not know him at all.
There was a guy in my fraternity known as The Shadow, who did this all the time. Also, when I moved to California there was a girl who worked for our company, who the other employees started calling The Shadow, to my astonishment. In sororities, fraternities and, indeed, workplaces all across America, there are shadows–people who let others do all the work and then sweep in at the last moment and steal the show.
Shadowing is not only popular on the party scene; it is also popular in business, in nature, and in the job search market.
Several years ago I was doing some work outside my office and one of my employees came down to talk to me. He was a writer.
“You have a phone call on my line. Can you take it at my desk?”
I walked into the employee’s office and took a seat at his desk. The computer in his office was on and right in front of me was some correspondence between him and another writer in our office. They were comparing leads for other writing jobs, and sharing job search information. The correspondence was quite in depth and went into detail about the location of the other employer, the pay of the job and so forth. Since the correspondence was right in front of my face, I was naturally intrigued and could not help staring at it. As I spoke with the caller I absorbed what I saw on the computer screen.
I was, of course, disappointed by the fact that the employee was interested in looking for another job, since he had been working in our company for years. After my initial shock wore off, I realized that something interesting was going on, and I started to consider the massive advantages we can gain by comparing notes and collaborating with others when we are looking for job opportunities. The two employees both had been interviewing and looking at other jobs. Each was telling the other about good places to apply, poor places to apply, jobs that seemed to be one thing but were not, and so forth. It was as if they had doubled up in order to achieve the most effective job search possible for both of them.
There is a huge advantage in working with others to help find jobs. The other person you are working with will pound the pavement and do a lot of the work for you, as you share the load. You do not necessarily need to apply to every job, interview with every employer, and research every job yourself to get the best result. There can be real drawbacks in being self sufficient in your job search, and not collaborating with others. The more people you know who are looking for jobs, the more you should pool all your information together, because the information everybody has can be of great value to the entire group.
Sharks are content to eat virtually any other fish in the ocean. However, there is one fish that the shark will not eat: It is the pilot fish, which provides great benefit to the shark. Once a shark has eaten another fish, the pilot fish cleans the teeth of the shark and eats the small bits of dead fish all around the shark’s teeth. It is an excellent relationship for both the shark and for the pilot fish. The shark gets its teeth cleaned, and the pilot fish gets to eat without having to hunt. According to one account:
The pilot fish’s relationship with sharks is a mutualist one; the pilot fish gains protection from predators, while the shark gains freedom from parasites. It was often said by sailors that sharks and pilot fish share something like a “close companionship”; there were even tales of this fish following ships which had captured “their” shark for up to six weeks and showing signs of distress in its absence.
Whatever the veracity of such reports, it is extremely rare that a shark will feed on a pilot fish, and smaller pilot fish are frequently observed swimming into sharks’ mouths to clean away fragments of food from between their teeth. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pilot_fish
This relationship between the pilot fish and the shark is an example of two species collaborating to achieve an outcome. The pilot fish are smart: They let the shark do all of their work for them. You should be smart in your job search as well. Why should you spend all of your time tracking down jobs and learning about employers when there is a faster and much more effective way to do this? You can get other job seekers to do all the work for you. When you get other job seekers to do work for you, you can tap into all the pavement pounding, research and trial-and-error that the other job seekers have done. Think about how much time you may have spent looking for a job. If you can let others do all this work for you, you will do much better in your job search.
If you know of others who are looking for jobs in your industry, the smartest thing you can possibly do is to contact these people and talk to them about their job search. If you do this and nothing more you will do incredibly well.
I had an intensely private attorney acquaintance that, at one time, decided to move from another market to Los Angeles. Since I was actively involved in the legal recruiting market and this person was an excellent attorney, I could have easily helped him move to a high paying and reputable law firm in Los Angeles. However, the person did not want to “network” with me or other recruiters, and decided to pursue his job search all on his own, without letting others know anything about what he was doing. This attorney, who had been making $180,000 a year before he moved to Los Angeles, ended up taking a job for around $110,000 a year.
“The job market is really bad. There were not a lot of ads in the paper and this was the best job I was able to get,” he later told another acquaintance of mine.
The paper? I was incredulous when I heard this. Most legal employers had stopped advertising their jobs in the paper over a decade ago. The jobs were, instead, listed in online publications and other areas. This person had been so private about his job search, though, that he did not even know any of this. Had the person been aware of this, he could have easily gotten a job paying $180,000 a year, or possibly more. However, because he was not able to network with others, and to obtain valuable and current information about the market, he accepted a job that offered well below his market potential. The few times I saw the attorney over the following years I told him some stories that illustrated the importance of having good information when searching for a job–just to get him thinking. The attorney stayed with his lower paying job for several years before eventually moving on to a better job. I think (but do not know) that he probably followed my advice the next time he looked for a job.
In your job search, you must make use of each and every asset available to you. It is important to be strategic and to take advantage of the experience and knowledge of others. Remember that others often possess the knowledge and have done the work that can help make you successful in your own conquest. Seek out this knowledge, and learn from the experiences of others. Then use this information to the best of your ability, and you will find success.
How to Explain “Job Hopping”
February 16, 2009
What You Will Learn
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“Job Hopping”
Most people switch jobs and there is nothing wrong with doing so. However, if you are looking at your third or fourth job within the past few years, something is wrong. I see resumes of people attempting to do this several times a day and, for the most part, cannot help such people. “Employer hopping” is taken into account by employers assessing your qualifications. Having moved several times in a short time span can, in fact, impact your ability to get a job because it leads employers to question your loyalty and long-term commitment to what you are doing.
In addition, moving several times in a short time span gives employers the indication that you may have moved because (1) your work was not well received, (2) you may have been asked to leave or (3) you are unable to get along with others in a work environment. None of this is to say that any of the above factors may be relevant to your reasons for moving in the past. It is important to realize, however, what employers are thinking and that their thoughts (without even hearing your explanation) will have a strong influence on their decision of whether or not to interview you.
Your reasons for moving need to make sense. The reasons which typically make the most sense to potential employers are (A) quality or type of work, (B) structural changes with your employer, or (C) location. While these are the best reasons for making a move, it is important to note that people who have moved several times have done so because (A) their work was not well received, (B) they were asked to leave or (C) they were unable to get along well with others in their work environment. If you mention any of these reasons to an employer, you are unlikely to get hired. It is important in any job search that you emphasize reasons for moving that are likely to not prejudice employers against you.
I. REASONS THAT EMPLOYERS “BUY” FOR MOVING
A. Quality or Type of Work
It is permissible for people to move due to the quality or type of work they are doing. For example, an employee might move to bring about a transition from litigation to transactional work (or vice versa). If that is the case, such a move makes perfect sense and employers will not be prejudicial against the employee for moving for this reason. In addition, if you want to do more sophisticated work, that will also make sense. During the boom in corporate work in the late 1990s and the first part of 2000, many corporate people from smaller law employers moved to larger law employers. Here, a suitable explanation for moving was almost always because they wanted to get more “public company work” or be staffed on larger deals. Explanations such as these were almost always considered permissible.
One of the most perverse reasons for moving, that employers do not like to hear, is that you are interested in moving because your company does not have enough work. This is, in fact, one of the most common reasons that people move. The problem with giving this explanation is that an employer is likely to think that you are moving due to the fact that you are not being given much work because (1) your work is not good, (2) you are not proactive enough in asking for work, or (3) people in charge of doling out work do not like you. In explaining that there is not enough work at your current employer, you need to be clear with potential employers that there is not enough work for anyone in your company and you are not alone. You also need to express this fact in a way which does not make it sound like you are attacking your current employer. Permissible ways to explain this is to mention that there have been key defections in your department, that major work that has occupied you for months (or years) has gone away, or that the employer has recently lost several major clients. However you explain this, you need to do it with tact and without appearing to be attacking your current employer. In addition, you need to be cognizant while giving any explanation that the employer may be wondering, “Is this person short on work because something is wrong with him/her?”
Moving to get higher quality work or a different type of work shows ambition and a need for constant improvement. Most people can explain the need to move in these terms. Conversely, moving because you do not have enough work needs to be explained in a way which connotes ambition.
B. Structural Changes With the Employer
Many employers go through significant structural changes that have an adverse effect on employees. For example, employers merge, offices close and key supervisors leave. When this occurs at the largest employers it is generally known by numerous others in the business community. Each of the reasons discussed above are permissible reasons for leaving a employer if they are handled the correct way.
One way that smart job seekers can often explain moves is to say that because of significant structural changes in their current employer, they do not believe there are opportunities to advance. The former Brobeck, Phleger & Harrison’s real estate practice in San Diego is a perfect example. In early 2000 this practice was staffed by two partners and three lower associates. One partner left in 2001 and then it was staffed by one partner and three associates. In combination with a partner defection and other market forces that were acting on this employer, the amount of available work for the lower level employees obviously decreased quite dramatically. Because this was not a large practice area in the employer’s San Diego office, it should be obvious that there were few opportunities for associates in this office to make partner unless they had a significant book of business or the partner that was left had such extreme amounts of business that he needed to elevate an associate to partner in order to further grow his practice. In this instance, explaining this particular dynamic would make sense.
When structural employer changes do occur, employers are also looking for various “warning signs” that may indicate you are a potentially problematical employee. If a key partner supervisor leaves, the employer will often want to know why the supervisor did not take you with them. Similarly, if an employer merges with another and your position is put at risk, the employer will want to know why there was no one to protect you. After all, if you made yourself indispensable, the key person would want to take you with him and important supervisors would presumably protect you during any merger. Because employers will be thinking these things when they evaluate your candidacy, any explanations you give for your contemplated move should certainly take these factors into account.
Employers experience serious structural changes quite frequently. Most lower level employees that are at employers that close, or where key supervisors leave, are quite successful in finding alternative employment quite quickly. To me this is a very interesting phenomena; however, I believe the reason these people find new employment so quickly is related to the fact that—more so than with most other moves—the move can explained by negative forces completely beyond the employee’s control, rather than anything potentially negative in the employee’s background.
C. Location
Location is often an exceptional reason given for moving. The best location-related reason for moving is that you want to move back to your home city to be near either you or your spouse’s family. Reasons that employers do not like to hear for relocating are (1) to get to better weather, (2) for a change of scenery, and (3) that you are moving to join a girlfriend or spouse.
Employers are generally quite receptive to people who are leaving to be closer to their family. This is especially so if you moved to a large city such as New York and are going home to a much smaller market. Spending your first few years of work in a major market can be explained as a product of your ambition to be exposed to the most sophisticated work possible before settling down at home. You can also explain this based on the fact that you thought this would be your only opportunity to work in a major market before settling down and you therefore enthusiastically embraced the opportunity. If you commenced your career in a smaller market and are now moving to a larger one that is not where you grew up, the above discussion of quality of work should be used. The reason that moving home to work is accepted so readily by employers is due to the fact that it connotes a desire for stability. Individuals moving home to work are likely to remain with the same employers for a long period of time.
Employers do not like to hear that you are moving to get better weather or a change of scenery. Each of these reasons for moving raised the distinct possibility in the employer’s calculus that you are unlikely to be stable with them. Employers all over the country have been “burned” by lower level employees who moved to a certain area only to be disenchanted with where they were living and move again. If you are moving because of the weather, for example, this might indicate to law employers that the weather in a given city is more important to you that loyalty to your employer or the quality of work you are doing. If you are interested in moving to Los Angeles for better weather, what would you do if offered an equally paying job on Maui a few years later? Similarly, if you are tired of big city life and moving to a small town to work, what will happen if you decide you do not like the extreme of a small town and want to move to a more mid-sized town? You get the idea. Moving for reasons related to weather or scenery are never good ideas.
I see people each year who are attempting to relocate to Colorado because they like the Mountains, Las Vegas because they like the nightlife, Paris because they like the culture, San Diego because they like the beach, Portland because they like the music scene, New Orleans because they had so much fun at Mardi Gras … and on, and on, and on. In heated economic climates when employers were literally begging for people, I often made these placements with some frequency. My candidates were more than open regarding their specific reasons for relocating with us, and the employers hired them anyway. In a poor economic climate, though, employers are far more prejudicial and unlikely to accept such reasons. It is simply not in their best interest to do so. Indeed, few people who relocate for reasons such as this are likely to find happiness in their next positions.
Since this is somewhat of a sensitive subject, I have saved the discussion of relocating to join a spouse or significant other for last. At the outset, I should point out that the generalizations we are about to point out do not apply to all employers. Nevertheless, I am repeating something that I have heard over and over from employers. Employers are not always open to you relocating to join a spouse or significant other. The reason they are not always open to you leaving to join a significant other or spouse is because in the employer’s mind, it connotes that someone other than you is responsible for your career. If you are relocating to join a spouse who has found a better job, will you move again if they find a better job a few years down the road? If your significant other or spouse does not like where you are currently living, will they like the next place you move?
At their heart, most employers are craving people who can contribute to their overall stability. Employers do not like to have to contemplate that someone close to you may potentially influence their bottom line and your career at some unstated time in the future. In addition, the higher paying the job, the more likely it is to be extremely demanding. Most people practicing in large cities have a very difficult time holding together families given the demands of their jobs. While the demands of your profession are another topic altogether, employers generally expect their employees to be the ones with the primary job responsibilities and their spouse or significant other to be the ones on the sidelines supporting that effort. This statement sounds extraordinarily wrong and I am not necessarily expressing approval for this line of thought. Nevertheless, this is how most employers think and it is something you need to keep in mind when explaining your reasons for moving.
The fact that relocating to join a spouse may be viewed as a “negative” by a employer needs to be understood as part of employers’ overall desire for stability in the people they hire. Anything that does not suggest stability is viewed as a negative.
D. Conclusions
II. YOU SHOULD DO YOUR BEST TO AVOID SPENDING TOO MUCH TIME HIGHLIGHTING TO EMPLOYERS THE REASONS YOU HAVE FOR MOVING
You will have a very difficult time getting hired if you tell employers you are moving because (A) your work was not well received, (B) you were unable to get along with others or (C) you were asked to leave. If you have moved several times in your career, after your third or fourth move most employers will begin to presume that you are moving due to these reasons. While you need to be honest with every employer you speak with, you should also be very careful how you explain any move that involves one of these three issues.
A. Your Work Was Not Well Received
If you are contemplating moving because your work has not been well received, or if you have moved in the past due to this reason, it is important to do a very careful self analysis before explaining this reason for moving to any employer.
Every employer has different standards for their work. At many insurance defense employers it is quite common to turn in work riddled with typographical and other errors. At some employers a typographical error would be near cause for dismissal. At some employers, there are supervisors that are notoriously difficult to work with and set such a ridiculous standard that no associate could possibly meet it. When economic times are very rough, performance appraisals can become unnecessarily harsh to the degree that they should not be taken as seriously as they appear.
Most lower level professional employees working for large employers have their work criticized with a high degree of severity. While few lower level employees speak about this, even the most talented lower level employees feel a great degree of inadequacy with respect to their professional abilities in a demanding organization, especially in detail-oriented large organizations. The reason large employers often are so harsh in their performance reviews is that they are pushing their lower level employees to think in different ways and have an extremely high standard for their work. While many people are detail oriented by nature before they even go to college or professional school, the level of detail an employee needs to develop with respect to their work product and thinking processes is something that most people do not learn in college or professional school. Most of this is taught through formal and informal reviews of peoples’ work over time. Over time, an employee is expected to develop their skills to the point where their work does not need to be severely criticized. Generally, by an employee’s third year of work, this should no longer be the case.
If you are in your first few years of work and contemplating leaving due to harsh criticism of your work, or you are in a particularly demanding work environment, you should probably give yourself some time and attempt to improve to the level that is expected of you. This is something that most people do. The time that other people take to criticize your work should be something that you appreciate, even if they appear somewhat hostile while doing so. As your work is further criticized your professional abilities should improve.
If you moved or contemplated moving during your first few years due to criticisms of your work, it is probably not a good idea to bring this up. I would estimate that a majority of the people who move during their first few years do so due to harsh criticisms of their work. Most people facing harsh criticism of their work simply do not speak with other people about this with a great degree of frequency due to factors such as internal competition or their own desire to keep this private and not be seen negatively by others. Sadly, many people move for this very reason during their first few years of work and this movement is more related to their self confidence and ability to take criticism than any actual problems with their development as people. Since most people working for the largest and most prestigious employers are unusually accomplished to begin with, the level of criticism they receive from large employers during their first few years of work can be emotionally devastating to them.
After working for a few years for a large or demanding employer, however, you will be in a position to know whether the criticism of your work is justified. If this criticism is justified and you continue to make serious errors, you should probably do your best to find an environment, which you have reason to believe will not be as critical of your work or not have as exacting of standards. This also raises issues such as whether or not you are a good employee, whether you are suited for what you are doing and if it makes sense for you to continue. One important factor to remember is that some employers are more critical than others, and just because your work is not well received in one employer, does not mean it will be poorly received in another. If this pattern continues to repeat itself after a few moves, however, then you need to be realistic that the problem may be your work and not the employer. If this is the case, it might be a good idea to consider whether you want to continue practicing at the same level.
B. You Were Unable To Get Along With Others
It is important to recognize that some degree of politics exist in virtually any employer environment, whether large or small. In fact, they exist in most office environments, including those outside your profession. The key to succeeding, then, is developing the skills to strategically navigate in these sometimes difficult situations. These skills generally develop over time and exposure to a wide variety of situations.
There are numerous different types of personalities and some people are more suited to working in a certain work environment than others. Getting along with others is among the most important aspects of work, and employers want to hire people they believe will get along with others. Since people spend countless hours with each other at work, they do not want to be around (or hire) people that are likely to have personality conflicts with other people. Employers are economic engines and people who are critical of the environment or other factors related to personalities in the employer, are seen as people who put the employer in danger.
“Explaining” the political games you have encountered in your positions at past employers may not be a good idea when interviewing with prospective employers. First, it is generally not a good idea to ‘badmouth’ your current employer to a new potential employer. Depending on the type of environment you are leaving, you may only call into question your ability to integrate yourself into the environment at the employer who is interviewing you. During the interviewing process, employers are generally wary of candidates whose main complaint is some sort of personality conflict or general complaints. You should be clear that your reason for moving is not a problem with the employer environment as a whole, lest you come across as someone who works against the “system.” Employers primarily and perhaps most importantly do want people who are hardworking, flexible, have the ability to deal effectively with other colleagues and with clients, and who ultimately have developed the key skills to understand and deal effectively with political situations within the employer.
You are encouraged to take a strong look at the factors that influenced your past departures from the past employers. If they are all mainly political, you should consider making a list of the characteristics you are looking for in your new employer environment. You should also consider whether your attitude and approach to problems within these large past employers in any way contributed to your overall unhappiness and departure. Also, determine whether there is anything you need to change in your approach. We suggest this because of what was mentioned earlier – you will encounter this in every single professional environment, whether you make a move to a big, medium, or small employer. So it is important to learn through these experiences so that you can enhance your ability to make a successful move this time.
C. You Were Asked To Leave
If you were asked to leave any of your past employers, this is generally not a good topic to bring up as a reason for moving. You need to understand that a large percentage of people have been fired at some point in their careers. How this is handled is the important thing.
The justification that employers give for asking a lower level employee to leave are generally related to the quality of the person’s work. Sometimes this explanation is accurate and a lot of times it is not. You may be asked to leave due to your seniority, the fact that you are not working hard enough, or a major downturn in the employer’s work. In most respects, however, lower level employees are asked to leave because they do not get along well with supervisors or others in authority. Conversely, very few employers actually ask lower level employees to leave because they perceive their work quality as poor (although this is the explanation most frequently given by employers when they do not like someone).
If you have been asked to leave an employer this sends all sorts of negative messages to the potential employer. If you were asked to leave because the employer you were at did not have enough work, you were not going to make partner, the employer will be thinking to themselves that not all lower level employees were asked to leave so why you, in particular. There must have been something about you or your work that motivated the employer to ask you to leave instead of others.
You get the idea. If you are asked to leave an employer you need to de-emphasize this fact in your discussion with future employers. Most employers will not directly ask this question in interviews and if an employer did ask you to leave they will very, very rarely tell this to anyone who calls them to check references. It is interesting to us that the largest employers will often give the best recommendations to the lower level employees they ask to leave. Smaller employers tend to give the harshest recommendations.
While this is something that is not often discussed, the largest employers actually want lower level employees to leave after several years of work because they depend on a constant stream of hungry lower level employees to show up and earn them large profits for several years and then depart before being promoted and taking larger income or, at worse, a share of the profits. Indeed, I have very rarely seen the most prestigious New York City legal employers, for example, ever give a negative evaluation of the work done by one of their former lower level employees. Smaller employers, however, have less at stake and are often not as highly leveraged and dependent upon a constant stream of lower level attorneys.
III. CONCLUSIONS
If you have moved too many times within a short time span, employers will likely conclude that you are likely to move again—regardless of what kind of place they are to work. What is so unusual about this discussion of “job hopping” is that most of the reasons that people actually move are wholly unrelated to the reasons that are actually acceptable reasons (in the employers’ eyes) for moving.
While this article could have spent a considerable amount of time discussing even additional reason to justify moves, each of the acceptable reasons can be summed up in one sentence: I am moving, but I am a stable and good employee. Similarly, the unacceptable reasons for moving can be summed up in one sentence: I am moving because I am unstable and may not be a good employee.
Focus on Other Geographic Areas to Get Your Job Search Going
October 20, 2008
“The median job search among those winning positions in the third quarter lasted nearly 4.4 months,” up from 3.6 months in the second quarter.
It’s also notable that 13.4 percent of the job seekers ended up relocating to take new positions. That’s up from a first-quarter figure of 8.9 percent, but still lower than the share who relocated in 2006 and most of 2007.
Moving is stressful and expensive, and some people may simply be unwilling to take that step. However, fewer people are relocating, no doubt, due to the state of the housing market. Job seekers eager to move for the right job may find themselves trapped by an inability to sell their homes, and perhaps are even wishing they were renters right now.
What You Will Learn
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One of the reasons it’s taking so much longer for many to find employment is that many areas of the United States have been devastated by the economy, and there are fewer jobs available in those areas. The troubled automotive industry has had a serious effect on the Michigan economy, for example. Regardless of the economic status of the area where you live and work, you may be in a position in which you should consider relocating to find a job. If you are under economic pressure, relocating and getting a job may be a crucial priority for you right now.
Relocating isn’t always an easy decision to make. However, relocating for a job is perfectly normal and is something you should not hesitate to do. This is especially true if you’re living in Detroit or another area of the country where your skills are no longer in demand. Essentially, the entire history of the United States was essentially built around people who relocated here because they felt there were better opportunities.
For most of us, our careers and the time we spend at work take up most of our waking hours. Considering this, you need to be focused on finding an area of the United States or the world where people are seeking and hiring workers with your given skills.
It is extremely important you live in an area where your skills are in demand. Life is in many ways like a game, and so is your career. If you were a fisherman, would you rather spend your career working in a small lake with a few fish or a large ocean with many fish? The more opportunities, and the more competition there is for your skills in your market the better off you will be. You need to put yourself where the action is to survive.
Several years ago I was working at a federal judicial clerkship job in Michigan. In three months, the clerkship would be over and I needed to find a job. Although I already had a job lined up with a New York City law firm, I wanted to get a job in California. I sent a targeted mailing of résumés out to legal employers in California. I meant to send my résumés only to major cities, like Los Angeles and San Diego, but also ended up targeting several small towns by mistake. I received several calls from law firms in small towns, and they all had similar questions:
Why was I applying to a law firm in a small town?
Who did I know in the small town?
Was I also applying to law firms in larger cities?
One of the potential employers from a small town firm called me and asked those questions because he was worried that, if I did not have a connection to the small town, I would simply leave if I did not like the job.
Employers want you to have a connection to the area if you are relocating, because they are concerned you will not have incentive to stick around. They get nervous if you are looking at employers in larger cities as well because they feel like you are less interested in them.
The questions about why I was relocating did not come up as much in larger cities. Employers in cities like New York are generally of the opinion anyone would want to relocate there because New York is New York. People in smaller markets are a little less confident. As a general job search strategy, I would recommend you stress the fact you have a real interest in the company and believe it’s a perfect place for you based on your personal interests, as well as your future career goals.
Generally, employers like to hear you have close family in a given geographic area. If you do not, you may have a significant other or friends there, or perhaps you went to college or grew up there. The point is you want to assure them you have some sort of personal connection to the area. Absent family or friends, you should focus on the company and your sincere interest in them.
As an aside, I want to bring up an important piece of career advice about applying for a position outside of where you currently live. The employer receiving your résumé is going to wonder why you are applying there and not in your own geographic area. You never want to send the message you are unemployable or cannot find a job where you currently live. Employers want to hire people who are “winners” and are employable in all markets. Therefore, you should never approach an employer by telling him or her that you cannot get a job where you live. Prospective employers should believe you are relocating because of reasons related to your personal long-term growth objectives–not because you have been defeated in trying to get a job in your existing market.
In a down market, many people end up stuck with large mortgages and unsold homes. They feel saddled with this and cannot relocate. If you are in a market that is getting worse and worse by the day, you may have to relocate before you sell your home. This is not something that you should be talking about with your potential employer, however.
An employer does not want to feel guilty you may be leaving an unsold home behind. Sharing this sort of information can also hurt you because the employer will suspect you have to return to your hometown to deal with the situation. Keep such personal matters to yourself in your job search. Never give them any possible reason to believe you are not their ideal candidate.
Shoot for the moon. Even if you miss it, you will land among the stars.