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Information overload affects everyone. Our organizations know more and more about themselves. They are less and less able to utilize that knowledge.

The workplace contains members of 4 four generations. Differing preferences for differing communications technologies drive the vast gulf between them. Collaboration and file sharing, the favorite tools of the young, look like cheating and stealing to their elders. The ever-present texting and social networking seem rude and unproductive to the technologically illiterate.

Several things make the workforce older with each passing day. The United States (and the entire industrialized world) produces fewer offspring than it takes to keep the population constant. As a result, the average age of workers in the economy rises continuously. More elders stay at work. Changes in finance, housing, and pensions raise the real retirement age. The differing generational perspectives cloud the certainty needed to make productive decisions.

New technology flows relentlessly into our lives. Cell phones became ubiquitous in under a decade. Universal Wi-Fi dominates public spaces, including your car. Computers merge with phones to create an omnipresent connectedness. Old media dies; new media replaces it. Disruption and change define the era.

Amid all of this, we find our work. The orderly processes of the last generation are evaporating as quickly as newspapers. Old industries disappear while new ones explode on the scene. Looking for work means finding people we want to work with. It means helping them find us. Guerrilla job hunters stand out from the crowd with purpose.

The goal is disarmingly simple: identify and build relationships with the kind of people who either do what you want to do or want you to do it. Let them know you are available, better than competent, creative, and persistent. Demonstrate your value. Demonstrate it again.

The problem is always the opportunity. Today, so much has changed, from demographics to technology, that getting simple things done can be confusing. An environment like that rewards people who are clear about what they want. It pays big benefits to people who persist. Environments with great potential are confused and noisy.

You are on your own. Exhilaration, autonomy, and self-direction are now the necessities, not the consequences. You find your next engagement by being distinct from the noise.

John Sumser is the CEO of Two Color Hat, a company devoted to the development of Recruiting Strategies. Visit him at www.johnsumser.com. See him on LinkedIn at www.linkedin.com/in/johnsumser.

Chapter 1

Why You Need to Become a Guerrilla Job Hunter

The New Global America

It’s not the strongest of the species, nor the most intelligent, that survive; it’s the one most responsive to change.

—CHARLES DARWIN

Under siege from layoffs, outsourcing, offshoring, rightsizing, downsizing, and bankruptcies, America is in the midst of a profound business transformation. It is the result of developments in information and communications technologies, changing human values, and the rise of the global knowledge-based economy. The sheer complexity and technical sophistication of business has transformed the job market. Business is becoming knowledge based and technology intensive.

Knowledge workers are the backbone of the United States. They are employed in all sectors of the economy, most prominently in the information technology and communications sectors, but also to a growing extent in health care, manufacturing, education, finance, natural resources, defense, and government—in any field that requires innovation to sustain competitiveness. Competitive advantage is rooted in the new ideas of these skilled workers.

Twenty to forty million Americans change jobs every year. Already reeling from the struggling economy, competition for the remaining jobs is tougher than ever, the rules for getting jobs have changed, and global