THIS SECTION WILL show you how to discover, define, and package your skills, and how to put together a comprehensive plan of attack that uses all the most effective job search techniques.
ONCE UPON A TIME, long ago, there lived a man who spent his days watching life go by. He lived in a town ravaged by bears, and one of his dreams was that if he could shoot bears, he could travel the world as a bear slayer. Every day he sat on his porch and waited for a bear to go by. After weeks of watching and waiting, he thought he might go looking for bears.
He didn’t know much about them, except that they were out there somewhere. Full of hope, he loaded his single-shot musket and set out. Arriving at the edge of the forest, he raised his rusty old flintlock, and fired blindly into the trees. Then, disappointed at hitting nothing he could eat, he slouched back to sit on the porch.
Because our hero couldn’t tell dreams from reality, he went hunting unprepared and earned exactly what he deserved: nothing. The moral is: When you go bear—or job—hunting, get a grip on reality, and don’t go off halfcocked.
Out there in the forest of the professional world are countless opportunities. Even in times of severe economic downturn—and remember they are cyclical and likely to come by every seven to ten years throughout your career—there are always jobs out there. Yes, they are harder to find, and yes, the competition is tougher, but someone is going to find those jobs and land those job offers. It can be you.
All companies have two things in common: They are in business to make money; and things go wrong, so they hire problem solvers to fix them. This is an important life lesson. Think about your present job: You were hired to cope with certain problems within your area of expertise, to anticipate and prevent them from arising, and where they cannot be prevented, to solve them. At some elemental level, everyone, in every profession and at every level, is paid to be a problem solver. There are three lessons you should take away from this:
Lesson One: Companies are in business to make money; they have loyalty only to the bottom line. They make money by sales and by being efficient and saving time. If they save time, they save money and have more time to make more money; we call this productivity.
Lesson Two: Companies and MeInc. are exactly alike. You both want to make as much money as possible in as short a time as possible: think efficient systems and procedures, and multitasking (time management and organization). Think of focus and goal, not task and activity.
Lesson Three: There are buyers’ markets (advantage: employer) and there are sellers’ markets (advantage: employee). Job offers put you in a seller’s market and give you the whip hand.
Lesson One tells you the three things every company is interested in. Lesson Two teaches you to recognize that MeInc. has the same goals as any company. Lesson Three reminds you that anyone with any sense wants to be in a seller’s market.
If you look for jobs one at a time, you put yourself in a buyer’s market; if you implement my advice in Knock ’em Dead, you can generate multiple job offers (even in a tough economy) and put yourself in a seller’s market. This means making sure MeInc. is ready with a properly packaged product and integrated sales process.
In this first part of the book you will:
• Learn to evaluate market needs and package your professional skills for those needs.
• Discover how to identify every company in your target location that could be in need of your services.
• Get connected to the most influential people in your profession so that you’ll have personal introductions at many prospective companies.
• Implement an integrated job search plan of attack.
While I will cover each of these areas in sequence, I recommend that you mix and match the activities. In other words, when working on your resume starts to drive you nuts, switch to researching your target market or building your professional networks. An hour of one activity followed by an hour of another will keep your mind fresh and your program balanced.