Are You Here? The Importance of Being Present in Your Job and Job Search

What You Will Learn It is important to be present and totally focused in your job. You need to be present in life and in your career and feel a connection to your work – this breeds career longevity and success. Passion and commitment are attributes people notice – they help build careers. The person who is “here” will always win over the person who is not. Employers want enthusiasm, commitment and presence.

What makes someone successful in his or her career? When it comes down to it, I believe one of the greatest determinants of success is whether or not you are “here.”

“Being here” takes two forms. The most obvious is to be here physically. Coming into the office each day and going through the motions is the most basic way to be here and the minimum requirement for success. An example of being here for a salesperson would be coming into the office and making a certain number of cold calls each day. If this is done, and nothing more, the salesperson will experience some degree of success. However, in all likelihood the success will be mediocre.

A more significant way of being here is to have a connection to your work. I am sure each of us knows many people who are, for one reason or another, never really present. Being absent even when you are physically present, shows in (1) not listening to those around you, or not otherwise paying attention to your environment, (2) not taking the time to understand where your work fits into the larger picture, and (3) not taking any interest in the people and activity going on around you. Such a person is unable to extrapolate “signs” and various important signals from his environment. The most important thing anyone can do in their career is be here, completely present and focused. In my job as a recruiter, I saw first-hand that every major success was a result of my ability to be here, focused on my job and attuned to my clients’ needs:

-I understood my candidates and thought a great deal about their situations.

-I wrote a letter fro my clients that showed passion, and had a clear and compelling message.

-I spoke in depth with the candidate and developed a greater bond.

-The bond I had with my candidates drove me to deepen my relationships with law firm clients so they would want to hire from me.

-I sought even more opportunities and got creative with the employers who would consider my candidates.

-The more my candidates and I bonded the more we continued our search together, even after an initial round of submissions may not have produced any results.

I found that I was more likely to place the candidates I took the time to get to know and understand. Conversely, for virtually every candidate I did not place, I was typically guilty of not being fully present with him or her. I simply went through the motions with my submissions and hoped something good would come from that alone. Sure, that approach had worked for me a few times, but rarely was success that simple. When absently going through the motions one can hardly expect to produce meaningful results.

The career advice I will give is that you need to be present in life and in your career, and to feel a connection to your work. You need to be engrossed in what you are doing and feel the passion and energy that comes from that. This breeds career longevity and success. The more you are here, the more you are also likely to keep your job when companies go through transitions or downsizing. If you are here you may even find yourself getting a promotion, even in the most unlikely of times.

Several years ago, I gave a lengthy speech about the importance of legal recruiting. At the time, I was very concerned about instilling passion in the recruiters who worked for me and showing them the value of this at all costs. Passion changes everything. I wanted my workforce of recruiters to believe in what they were doing and in the people they were doing it for. I wanted them to help their candidates to the greatest extent possible. After the speech, I overheard one lady speaking to another, and she said something I will never forget: “I would rather work for a place that cares about what it is doing and takes it seriously than work at a place that does not.”

This stuck with me. I think we all want to be surrounded by passion in what we do. Time and again you hear about how important it is to love what you do. Passion and commitment are attributes people notice. These qualities help build careers. Your boss or future employer wants to see that you love what you are doing. If an employer is deciding to hire one person over another they are likely to hire the person who connects to his or her work, instead of the person who does not. If an employer is deciding to lay off one person over another, they are likely to keep the person who is passionate over the person who is not.

My favorite example of this is in hiring an attorney. If you had been falsely accused of committing a crime, which attorney would you hire?

Attorney A

• Does not belong to any special groups involving what you do, or your situation.
• Is difficult to reach on the phone.
• Does not seem that passionate about what he does and does not seem to take a sincere interest in you.
• Has held multiple jobs at different firms.
• Is very interested in golf and wants to talk about it a lot.
• Likes to collect cars.

Attorney B

• Is a frequent speaker on matters involving the wrongly accused.
• Is the president of the local bar association.
• Recently wrote a book about the wrongly accused and how travesties of justice occur every day in America.
• Admits to having few hobbies because he spends his free time reading about the rules of evidence and how they can be used to free the wrongly accused.
• Calls you early in the morning and late at night to discuss your case.
• Is always reachable.

A person who has been falsely accused will almost invariably choose Attorney B. The person who is here will always win over the person who is not. We want enthusiasm and commitment. We want presence.

You Need to Be Relevant to Your Employer

What You Will Learn It is essential to realize what business you are in. You need to sell yourself to the correct audience and know where and how to market yourself in the best way possible. You need to be relevant and understand the skill you are offering. You should understand your market and know what your customers want.

In the mortgage industry many jobs have simply disappeared. This has put tens of thousands of people out of work.  While there are many who manage to hang on in all downturns, for the most part, many people in the mortgage industry have lost their jobs.

People who lose their jobs in the mortgage industry generally have a couple of options. One of the most incredible options they have is to try and find another job in the same industry, because this is what they know, which is what many are doing.  They do their best to network, and email their resume out to every opening they can find in the mortgage industry.

“The job market is really tight,” they will tell you.

They may get an occasional interview, but they do not get the job because the companies they are interviewing with eventually realize they do not have the business to hire the person.  They may also realize there is someone out there who is more qualified.  The criteria for these jobs has become much more stringent.  Eventually, after weeks or months of looking for a job, the person may say something like:

“I need to wait for the market to pick up.  I simply cannot find a job.”

To illustrate further the current state of the mortgage industry, the headquarters of Countrywide Mortgage is located in Hidden Hills, near Los Angeles. As you might imagine, there are acres of buildings for Countrywide and other mortgage companies around this area sitting practically empty.  Not too long ago, these buildings were filled with thousands of people selling mortgages to mortgage brokers and others.  Now, most of these people are out of jobs. All around this area, businesses are closing and people are pretty desperate. In the early evenings, if you drive by these Countrywide buildings, you can see inside. There should be hundreds of people, however, in most cases you see no one.

Recently, I was playing golf with a friend who lives in Hidden Hills. When he arrived to play, he was very upset.

The night before, my friend had been invited to a small party at his friend’s multimillion dollar house. The friend was an unemployed mortgage broker who’d purchased the house when he was employed and doing very well. He’d been told the party was a social occasion. Happy to go, he’d shown up wearing jeans. When he arrived he immediately realized something was wrong – his friend was wearing a suit, and everything seemed a little  ”too professional.”  A few minutes later, he was given a brochure about some Donald Trump condominium going up in Florida.  His friend started showing a movie about the development and began telling everyone at the party if they “wanted in,” he could immediately assist them with financing a condominium.

Everyone was astonished. A group of people who’d been invited to a party were suddenly being encouraged to buy and finance condominiums thousands of miles away they’d never seen in their entire lives.  My friend got up and left the party upset he’d been suckered into a sales presentation.

While I have nothing against aggressive sales practices, what this story represents to me is someone who is holding on to a paradigm that no longer exists. While people may have been speculating on condominiums sight unseen years ago, this is no longer the case.  Here, the mortgage broker was doing everything he could to hold onto a profession and a life that no longer existed for him.  This example is extremely important to understand because it has a lot to do with you, your career, and what will end up happening in your life.

From what I understand, the mortgage broker, in this example, was on his way to losing his house through foreclosure.  His world was literally crumbling around him.  Like the man in the store, he was making a fundamental error so many people make: He did not understand how to adapt to a new paradigm.  Understanding your paradigm and what you do for a living is the most important thing you can possibly do with your career because paradigms are always changing.  The sun does not shine on every specific type of job forever.  We get comfortable with one specific type of job and believe we should always do this.

A couple of weeks ago, while shopping, I met a man who was working in the computer industry.  He told me he had made over $250,000 a year just two years ago writing software for mortgage companies.  Now, he was working in a store selling sweaters and shirts to men for probably no more than $12 an hour. 

“There are no jobs for programmers in the mortgage industry,” he told me. 

The man who was trying to sell mortgages and Trump Condominiums in Florida was in the business of sales. If he realized this, he would likely not be having the problems he is having now.  He could apply to every sales job available and probably easily get one. 

The man I met selling sweaters in the store was also in a business: The business of programming.  Instead of applying to every programming job available, he was stuck in believing he was a specialist in programming computers for mortgages and, for this reason, he could not find a job.

In everything you do, you need to understand what your basic business is.  Far too many companies and individuals fail to understand this.  They end up “going out of business”.  Some of the largest and most profitable companies in the United States used to be railroad companies.  These were the “Internet moguls” and tycoons during their age.  However, when trucks came along, none of these railroad companies entered the trucking industry.  Instead, they clung to the belief they were in the railroad business.  If they had realized they were actually in the transportation business, they could have started offering trucking and other transportation services to their clients. Because of their belief they were in the railroad and not the transportation business, many great railroad companies ended up going out of business.

In your career, it is essential you realize what business you are in.  You should not be blinded by the specifics of what you do and, instead, should understand the generality of what your specific profession in fact is.  This is the way to stay employed, and it is also the means to continual improvement.

W. Edward Deming gives an excellent example of a time when there were carburetors in all cars.  The people who made carburetors continued to improve their product.  Soon, however, fuel injection was developed, and everyone stopped using carburetors.  With very few exceptions, many very large companies that formerly made carburetors went out of business.  They should have realized they were in the business of finding better ways of putting the correct mixture of fuel and air in the combustion chamber of engines.  This is what the mortgage broker was doing wrong as well: He failed to realize he was in the business of sales.

Something similar happened to the makers of Swiss watches in Switzerland.  The Swiss invented the quartz movement; however, they failed to realize the gigantic impact this would ultimately have on their business.  The Swiss continued to make mechanical watches and market these even after inventing the quartz movement.  Eventually, the number of people making watches in Switzerland went from 65,000 to around 10,000 in a decade.  The Swiss failed to realize they were in the business of making watches and they did not take into account the needs of their market.

What you need to do in your career is the same thing companies need to do: they need to understand their market.  When you understand your market, you have the ability to provide your customers with products and services that meet their needs.  You and your career are a product.  You need to sell yourself to the correct audience and know where and how to market yourself in the best way possible.  You need to know what your audience wants and requires.

In 2001, General Motors released the Pontiac Aztek.  The car was voted the ugliest car in the world by the British newspaper, The Telegraph.  The vehicle was criticized many times in Steve McConnell’s book about software design, Code Complete 2: The Pontiac Aztek and the Perils of Design by Committee.  According to another commentator, Dan Norman:

In the mid-1990s, then-General Motors Corp. Chairman John G. Smale decided to bring the world’s biggest automaker a dose of the ‘give-the-people-what-they-want’ethic that’d animated Smale’s old company, Procter & Gamble Co. And what the people wanted was sexy, edgy and a bit off-key – in short, a head-turner. General Motors’ culture took over from there. Design would be by committee, the focus groups extensive. And production would have to stick to a tight budget, with all that sex appeal packed onto an existing minivan platform. The result rolled off the assembly line in 2000: the Pontiac Aztek, considered by many to be one of the ugliest cars produced in decades and a flop from Day One.

 

The Aztek represented all that is wrong with GM’s design process, that official said. The concept car actually did something few GM designs do: arrive before a trend — this time, the crossover SUV that combined the attributes of a truck and a passenger car. And GM had high hopes to sell 50,000 to 70,000 Azteks a year, putting Pontiac on the cutting edge.

 

Then came production, the executive said. The penny-pinchers demanded costs be kept low by putting the concept car on an existing minivan platform. That destroyed the original proportions and produced the vehicle’s bizarre, pushed-up back end. But the designers kept telling themselves it was good enough. “By the time it was done, it came out as this horrible, least-common-denominator vehicle where everyone said, ‘How could you put that on the road?’” the official said.

 

Sales never reached the 30,000 level needed to make money on the Aztek, so it abruptly went out of production. The tongue-in-cheek hosts of National Public Radio’s “Car Talk” named it the ugliest car of 2005. “It looks the way Montezuma’s revenge feels,” one listener quipped. http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/000321.html

In an oval office interview in January of 2006, President George Bush said he believed General Motors and Ford needed to produce “a product that’s relevant.”  The idea of producing a relevant product is one of the most important things any manufacturer can do.  Being a relevant product is also something essential for your success, as well.  In a bad economic climate, one of the strangest things people do is try and continue being a ‘product’ that is no longer needed.  This is nonsensical.

You need to be relevant and understand what the skill is you are offering.  The worst thing you can do is not be relevant to the market you are serving.  It’s easy to be relevant when you understand what you are doing and what purpose you serve.  Being relevant is about much more than just getting a job, however.  Being relevant also relates to serving your employer with the skills they need.  You need to understand your market and what your customers want.

One of the biggest failures in my career was due to not understanding my market.  When I got out of law school, I worked for a federal judge who had recently been appointed to the bench.  My interest in this job was being brilliant and showing how smart I was, what a good writer I was, and how much detail I could put into opinions and more.  I did a very good job with the harder intellectual aspects of the work.  The judge I worked for admired my intellectual abilities, but his biggest concern was for me to produce work that was completely error free.  Because I was so interested in the intellectual aspects of the work, I did not always give him what he wanted in terms of error free work.  This was upsetting to him.  Because of my concern with the “meat” of what I was doing, and not the details, I ended up leaving this position after one year, when I’d been hired for two. Had I not left, I am pretty confident I would have lost my job.  I was not giving my employer what he wanted and, instead, was making up my own rules.

The next legal job I held, I was sought out for my intellectual insight into legal issues. You need to know your audience.

When you think about your career, how often have you made up your own rules?  You need to understand your audience.  You need to know you are in the business of selling a product to people, and you need to give them what they want.  You are a product, and your job is to give your audience exactly what it wants.  This is the way to get, and keep a job.

Finding a Job in a Down Market

What You Will Learn Your state of mind can help you with your job search during a recession. It is important to understand that depression, anxiety, and other such states of mind will slow you down and prevent you from taking action.  You need to be enthusiastic, positive, aim to rise above obstacles, and believe your mind has the true power to decide your future.

I made a video recently called “Job Search Secrets for a Recession”, which discussed the best way to locate a position during a recession.  In my experience, the best way to find a job is and always has been to approach the widest variety of employers possible.

There is another aspect to finding a job in a down economy, however, which is even more important – your own psyche.  The psychological aspect of finding a job is what slows most people down in their search.  People get depressed and stop taking action.  This is not the right way to find a job. Finding a job requires a specific state of mind.

When you get hired, someone is spending money to give you a job.  People need to be inspired to spend money.   The person who gets hired is the one who is able to inspire the employer (whether it is for a government job, sales job, education job or otherwise). In order to be an effective job seeker, you need to put yourself in the right state of mind to get hired.  This means constantly thinking of all that is possible, and specifically what you yourself can achieve.

You must bring a lot of enthusiasm to your work, and you should picture and present yourself as being successful.

One of the best books I’ve read on this subject is Napolean Hill’s Think and Grow Rich. This book makes very clear the true power our mind has over the circumstances of our lives.  You need to think and aim high in order to rise above and overcome the obstacles in front of you.

If you are employed and are dissatisfied with your current job, giving in to negativity is the worst thing you can do.  When employers are faced with a bad job market, the first thing they do is differentiate the people who like being on the job from those who do not.  

Employers tend to keep the people who have good attitudes and get rid of the people with bad ones.  My career advice is that a positive attitude can be your best asset.  In order to find that positivity, each day you should ask yourself what you are grateful for and concentrate on the answer.