Guerrilla Marking for Job Hunters 2.0 - Jay Conrad Levinson [26]
Sally Poole, Poole Advertising LLC, www.pooleadvertising.com.
■ THE MOST COMMON CAUSES OF FAILURE AND HOW TO AVOID THEM
It is the little things that trip you up when you are job hunting. You know, the inconsequential details like knowing what job you want or expecting other people to do your job hunting for you. Here are the 4 biggest mistakes and how to avoid them.
➤ Mistake 1: Fuzzy Goals
To wage an effective job-hunting campaign, you need to know your marketable skills and where you can sell them. Starting a job search before you know the job you want and what you have to offer will end in frustration. Employers expect you to be able to tell them how you can contribute. They don’t want to figure it out for themselves, and that is not in your best interests anyway. If you are going to expend the effort to find a new job, then take the time to do it right. Target your efforts toward a job you want—or you’ll likely be job hunting again very soon.
The Solution
The answer to fuzzy goals is self-assessment. If you can’t do this yourself, find a career counselor and invest in yourself. More important than telling you what salary you can command, career counselors will help you understand the following:
• Your likes and dislikes,
• Your unique marketable skills,
• The transferable skills that you enjoy using most,
• Your most prominent personality traits, and
• The working conditions and people environments you most value.
To do this on your own, read Claiming Your Place at the Fire: Living the Second Half of Your Life on Purpose, by Richard J. Leider and David A. Shapiro (San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler Publishers, 2004). The following web sites also have tools you can use to help discover your purpose:
• Stephen Covey’s 7 Habits of Highly of Effective People (New York: Free Press, 2004), Mission builder tool www.franklincovey.com/missionbuilder/index.html .
• The Inventure Group at www.inventuregroup.com.
➤ Mistake 2: Procrastination
I had a colleague 20 years ago who lived to reorganize his office. He had the most meticulous desk and working area I have ever seen. He would do anything to avoid making marketing calls. Daily he would regale his colleagues with the elaborate tracking systems he built to log how many people he interviewed. I felt totally inferior because my office was a living, breathing disaster. It was only after I left to start out on my own that I discovered that during the time I billed $758,000, he billed $5,000. You need to be able to find your files, but don’t let that block finding your dream job. There is a huge difference between activity and results—$753,000 if my math is correct.
The Solution
Admit you are terrified at the prospect of failure. Most people live in constant fear that someone else is going to find out that they are not really as good as they say they are, so you are in good company. It is all in your head—literally; fear of failure and fear of rejection cause many people to build the perfect resume or cover letter over and over and over again—but never send it. You have to complete the process by putting the resume in the mail and following up by telephone. The sooner you start, the sooner you will finish. Recognize that activity still matters, as long as it is the right activity that moves you closer to your goals. Here are a few truisms to keep in mind if you are procrastinating:
• You were hired for your last job without a perfect resume.
• If you increase the quality (targeting of employers) and the quantity (sending resumes and calling to book interviews), you will experience explosive results.
• 25 million people change jobs in the United States every year, which represents:
— 68,681 successful job hunters every day
— 2,861 per hour
— 47.6 every second
That means that 364 days per year, while you are poring over the latest revisions to your