Isn’t it too bad that you can’t be everywhere at once, and find out about every major career opportunity that might interest you?
Wouldn’t it be great to have your own equivalent of a spy-in-the-sky satellite that could survey a forty-mile radius of your house…or the entire USA…or the world…to identify all the situations you’d like to know about, whether current openings, soon-to-be openings, or searches underway at recruiting firms?
Then you’d be sure not to miss any situation that could foster your career.
Of course there’s always the likelihood that you’ll learn of career-enhancing job possibilities through personal contacts and networking…talking to old business friends and associates, meeting lots of new people, and picking the brains of everyone you reach.
Unfortunately, although face-to-face communication is the most powerful form of contact, your time is limited. No matter how diligent you are, you simply can’t be everywhere at once. You’ll make your networking contacts one at a time, maybe two or three a day, a dozen or so a week. That’s not exactly a speed-of-light aerial reconnaissance. And it’s likely to miss most of the jobs available “out there somewhere,” which your contacts don’t happen to know about.
You’ve also clearly seen that retainer executive recruiting firms aren’t going to show you everything they’re working on. They’ll reveal only one job at a time, and probably no more than two or three per year.
In fact, there is only one way by which you can even attempt to find out about all the available or soon-to-be-available jobs that may be the right “next step” for you. That’s Direct Mail, number four on our list of five main methods. Number 5, the web, although less comprehensive than Direct Mail, can reveal a v
Let’s look again at our list:
1. Personal Contacts…getting in touch with people you already know.
2. Networking…getting in touch with a series of people others refer you to.
3. Executive Recruiters…dealing with the various species of “headhunters.”
4. Direct Mail…letting the Postal Service take your message more places than you can visit and phone.
5. The Web…taking advantage of modern technology in job-hunting and career management.
What do 4 and 5 have in common? They’re ways to get yourself known to far more people than you’ll ever be able to meet face to face.
One Message. Two Different Distribution Methods.
Your message, obviously, is:
“Here I am. And here’s what I can do for you.”
To find out about all the jobs that might interest you, you’d have to get that message to (1) every employer currently needing to hire someone exactly like you, and (2) every recruiter now being paid to search for such a person.
Up until a couple decades ago there was only one way to simultaneously reach such a vast number of employers and search firms that statistical odds would guarantee you’d surely hit a few who were actually seeking you when your message arrived.
Direct Mail was the only way to dispatch your message to more people than you could meet through networking. Indeed, it still is the only way to make a dignified and appropriate—rather than an obnoxious and self-defeating— overture to a CEO or to the head of a division or a department who might right now want to hire someone exactly like you as a subordinate.
The web, however, is now an alternative way to reach many recipients. E-mail is lightning-fast It’s also convenient and appropriate in many situations. It defeats “snail mail” in every speed contest, and it also has an appealing informality and even intimacy that can sometimes be very desirable. But it is absolutely not the way to send an unsolicited self-introduction and an accompanying resume to any never-heard-of-you chief executive you want to impress favorably.
First of all, you probably can’t get his or her personal e-mail address. But even if you had it, would you use it?
Ask yourself: Are you pleased when unexpected e-mails are spammed into your list of incoming messages? Do you read those e-mails? Are you grateful that someone has sent them your way? Does your assistant open them, glance at their content and appearance, and select a rare few that might actually be of interest to you?
Your answers: No, No, No and Probably Not. So don’t even dream that someone at the right level to hire you as a subordinate is going to react any more eagerly to your spammed e-mail than you would if you received something similar from someone else.
Forget the web —method #5—when you’re trying to contact strangers in the most polite and persuasive possible way. An elegant on-paper letter and resume delivered by mail is still the best way to do that.
Clearly, barging onto the incoming e-mail list of a person you might want to work for is usually far too pushy and obnoxious. If someone invites you to send a resume by email, that’s a wonderfully fast and efficient way to transmit your information. But when you merely invite yourself to do the same thing, it’s often a tragically dumb move. Either you may get deleted and not remembered at all…or you may get noticed as impolite and obnoxious and perhaps shunned when you later arrive in a more polite and appropriate fashion. Heads…you lose. Tails…you lose.
However, there’s nothing impolite or too pushy about sending an elegant and persuasive letter to someone you don’t know and want to reach with a message that might be of interest. That’s been a common and effective practice for at least two hundred years. Indeed one of the most prized possessions of a friend of mine is a letter handwritten by Abraham Lincoln, who is graciously responding—albeit in the negative—to a person he’s obviously never heard of, who wrote to the President about wanting to become his personal assistant.
But isn’t direct mail a weak method?
Many people think direct mail is a weak technique, particularly for a job search. I’ve had lots of senior executives…even top marketing executives (who should know better)…say to me:
“John, I don’t believe in direct mail. It’s not effective. Nearly all the letters you send are either thrown away or relegated to the Personnel Department for a polite ‘no-thank-you.’ Therefore, you just don’t get anywhere with a direct mail campaign. It doesn’t have the punch that personal contact does.”
Mostly true. But whenever I meet people who criticize direct mail as weak and ineffective, I remind them of their own reactions when they’ve needed to hire someone they were having a tough time finding:
“When you had a really difficult hiring problem and you urgently needed someone with a particular background to fill an important spot, didn’t you then follow up by contacting everyone whose resume came to your attention and seemed to show exactly what you were looking for?”
Invariably they reply:
“Well, of course then I did. Anyone would.”
So I press the point:
“What if, instead of the Postal Service bringing that resume, it just blew in through the window…all tattered and dirty, along with a bunch of autumn leaves? Wouldn’t you still call up the person if he or she looked like the possible solution to your problem?”
You know their answer. It would be yours too.
My firsthand experience as a retainer executive recruiter doing searches at the highest compensation levels for well over 30 years has proven beyond doubt that mailed-in employment inquiries do get attention.
In about one out of every two searches I conduct, the ultimate decision-maker who hires me hands over at least one…and more often several…resumes he or she has collected before calling me. Approximately a third of those have been forwarded by outside directors, employees, customers, suppliers, lawyers, accountants, etc. (the product of personal contact and networking). The majority, however, were merely delivered by mail. And of course I’m not called—and never see the resume—when anyone is so tempting that there’s an interview, offer, and acceptance without any need for me.
It’s all a matter of timing.
The key advantage of direct mail is not how strong a medium it is, but the fact that it’s strong enough, if it reaches a decision-maker at exactly his or her moment of need.
Moreover, it doesn’t matter what method you use, if you reach the decision-maker when he or she has no need. Even you-in-person…with all your persuasive logic, charm, wit, elegant grooming, and both your new shiny shoes… won’t achieve a sale if your host isn’t seeking what you’re selling. That’s always the problem…with most networking calls, and with most mailed-in resumes, too.
On the other hand, your resume, dog-eared and folded, that a CEO happens to find protruding from the pocket on the seat ahead of him when he takes a commercial flight to the Coast could net you an exciting phone call. The same lucky break might also occur if you happen to sit next to him on the flight… assuming of course that he talks to seat-mates.
The value of direct mail is not in how it’s delivered, but rather in the great number of potential buyers it can reach simultaneously, in order to stimulate one or two of the rare few who happen to have the right need right now.
Use direct mail to reach the whole universe of potential buyers.
That way, you should hit some of the very few who are actually ready to buy.
Consider what corporations do. The President and the Chief Marketing or Sales Officer may personally contact key accounts that provide enormous volumes of business. Customers who buy fairly often will be handled by the direct salespeople…perhaps 150 or 300 professionals spread across the country. And finally, to reach customers in out-of-the-way places or who order only once-in-a-while—customers it isn’t feasible to serve with salespeople—companies rely on direct mail, or telephone marketing, or a combination of both.
But even telephone calls have serious limitations. You can only call so many people per day. Your listener will seldom stay on long enough to hear a comprehensive sales pitch for a complex product. And afterward there’s nothing left behind on paper to refresh his memory and encourage follow-up.
So the method companies turn to when they want to cover the whole market at once, to get where they can’t send a salesperson, and yet deliver their entire selling message and have it remain afterward in writing…is a wide-ranging direct mail campaign.
Indeed, direct mail is effective, or it wouldn’t be so widely used. The proof is in your mailbox every day. If direct mail weren’t effective, the companies who send it would soon be out of business, having thrown their money away on something that doesn’t work.
You’re surprisingly similar to the other products direct mail sells very effectively.
What kinds of products are sold through direct mail? Not the inexpensive, uncomplicated things that everyone needs every day. Soap, corn flakes, diet cola, floor wax, and nationwide “fast food” chains are best advertised in TV commercials aimed at the entire population. Such products are easily understood. Just about everybody is a potential purchaser. And the whole story can be boiled down to 30 seconds or a minute. Forget the “cents-off” coupons. The long letters in your mailbox are not about canned soup and laundry detergent.
What are those long letters about? Seldom-purchased products and services that:
1. only a few people out of the vast population are likely to need and be able to afford at the moment they get the advertisement, and
2. require more explanation and persuasion than can be crammed into a 30-second or one-minute TV spot, or even into a one-page magazine ad.
Examples: professional-development seminars; building lots and time-share condominiums; insurance plans; expensive “limited-edition” books, porcelains, and store-of-value collectibles; tax planning and investment services; special-interest magazines; economic newsletters…those sorts of things.
You see the analogy. An executive is a seldom-acquired item…very costly, unique, and relatively complicated to understand and evaluate. One of the best ways that the marketing geniuses of the 20th and 21st centuries have found to spread the news about such an item was by direct mail advertising. And the fact that—despite the advent of the web —you’re still receiving plenty of direct mail in the 21st century, is dollars-and-cents proof that it’s still highly effective.
The Networking vs. Direct Mail Trade-Off
If you reach someone when he or she has no need and knows of nobody else who has a need, there’s no sale. And it doesn’t matter whether you get there in person or in writing.
The advantage of a personal visit—networking—is its human interaction. Your host may not have or know of a job that could advance your career. But seeing and befriending you…and wanting to do a favor for the person who referred you…she can usually be persuaded to pass you along to several others. Your contacts will, indeed, “increase geometrically.” But “geometrically” only until you have more people to see than you have hours to go see them. After that, you’ve got strictly a linear progression of appointments to make, two or three a day…probably ten to fifteen a week.
The advantage of direct mail, on the other hand, is that you can reach an unlimited number of people simultaneously. Therefore, you can inflate that number to the point of very high probability that you’ll reach some of the rare few who actually do need what you’re selling at the very moment you happen to make your contact. And when you finally do reach someone with an immediate need for what you’re offering, that person is likely to be interested… even though no mutual acquaintance made the introduction.
Is there a downside to direct mail?
Will reaching the potential decision-makers in lots of companies make you seem:
a. too available?
b. too eager?
c. unwanted and unloved?
d. desperate?
e. none of the above?
The answer, of course is E, “none of the above.” And the reasons why, when you think about them, are pretty obvious.
No chief executive nor anyone else in control of a job that might represent a valuable career advancement for you is sitting at his desk wishing a letter and resume from you would arrive…that is, unless he’s one of the infinitesimally rare few who right now happens to have that job wide open, urgently needing someone like you to fill it.
The person who doesn’t need what you’re offering will merely throw away your mailing, or pass it along for filing and a courteous “no thank you.” He’s not going to pick up the phone and ask his peers in other companies and his contacts in the leading executive recruiting firms if they also got your mailing, and what did they think of it, and what are they going to do about it, and weren’t you stupid not to have known in advance that he and they didn’t need anyone like you right now.
The fact is, either he’ll do you some good, or he’ll do you no harm. And in the “some good” department, you may be pleasantly surprised. If a colleague in his own organization, or a friend, or an executive recruiter calling him for suggestions happens to mention a need for someone like you, the person who’s just received your resume and doesn’t need you himself will probably pass your resume along, just as one of your networking contacts would.
And if your mailing is so impressive that the recipient or his HR department saves a copy for a few weeks or months, he might wind up referring several inquirers to you. When extremely well done, direct mail can, with luck, take on a bit of the same “geometric” dimension networking has.
“But,” you ask, “will I diminish my luster and usefulness to the prestigious retainer recruiting firms if I conduct a direct mail campaign?”
No. A lot of people worry needlessly about this possibility, so let’s examine it.
Retainer recruiters actually expect you to send your mailing to the decision-makers in a wide range of companies, because it’s in your best interest to do so. They realize too, that you’ll contact other retainer search firms. Since no two retainer firms are ever working simultaneously on the same project, you simply must send to additional firms to reach additional searches.
Of course, as we discussed, it’s unlikely that you would simultaneously be presented… “sold” at the rate of $15,000 or $30,000 or even far more per candidate... to more than one client of the same retainer search firm because of the reasons we looked at earlier. But there’s no client PR damage to either firm when two different retainer firms present you to two different companies. If either or both of these companies should find out, they can’t blame their own retainer firm for what a different one has done.
Moreover, the idea that you may have written to her client company won’t scare away the one-and-only recruiter in a sizable retainer firm who, for the moment, has the right to deal with you. She always expects you to have taken that perfectly logical step. And she has no reason—or method—to reward you if you haven’t. Indeed, going directly to companies is the only way you can possibly break through the barrier that confines you to this recruiter and her client company, while putting you “off-limits” to all the other recruiters in her firm and to all their client companies.
Believe it or not, if you’re really a good candidate, a retainer recruiter is less worried that his client won’t be amazed when he identifies you, than he is that the client will think he’s a dope for not finding you when you’ve already made yourself obvious to the client company.
The bottom line on trying to be more attractive by being less known:
It doesn’t work!
Known is like pregnant; you’re known or you’re not known…by each person individually. The way the relationships we’re interested in work, each player in the game either knows of you or he doesn’t; they’re never going to gang up on you and take a poll to see how many know about you.
What will make you less attractive is being unemployed a long time, and the fewer people who know about your fine background and your availability, the more likely that might happen.
The only circumstance where being widely known is dangerous to your economic health is when a recruiter operating on contingency submits you… price-tag attached…to companies who never specifically engaged him to do so.
Getting around on your own is altogether different. It’s great. Circulate!
Enough about the “why” of direct mail; let’s take a look at the “how.” And in the process, we’ll add the persuasiveness of direct mail copywriting to your resume.
You may never need to conduct a full scale direct mail campaign to advance your career, although it is one of the “Rites of Passage” you should thoroughly understand.
You and every other executive should always have a persuasive sales-representative-on-paper standing by, ready to go anywhere…by hand, by mail, or by email… to do the best possible job of communicating your abilities and achievements to people who haven’t witnessed them firsthand. That’s a resume. And its purpose is to be where you can’t be and sell when you’re not there. Direct mail marketing is the science of doing just that…the most thoroughly understood and quantifiably proven of all the marketing techniques.
In Chapter 13, I’ll tell you ways to use mailings to advance your own career development.
First, however, I want to show you in Chapter 12 how to employ proven direct mail copy writing techniques to make your “sales representative”—your resume—as compelling as it can possibly be, regardless of how it’s delivered.
When polished to maximum effectiveness and coupled with a cover letter, your resume is also your Communications POWER TOOL, highly effective when sent to just one prime prospect you already know controls an ideal job for you.