If you’re looking for work and your looking isn’t working, get back to basics. For example…
Get off your duff. That’s right, get off the couch, the recliner, or where ever else you choose to occupy too many hours of your job search day. What’s that? You’re working hard, looking for a job on the internet, cutting out ads, writing letters, organizing files, and bolstering your self confidence by reading self help books and motivational magazines? You’re doing lots of good stuff but not the kind of stuff that gets you in front of the people who make hiring decisions. Get out there and make your case.
Did I hear you correctly? You don’t want to call those people because they’re busy and you could offend them and they might get angry at you? I’m not suggesting that you call strangers or strange people. I’m suggesting that you contact people you know and respect, people with whom you share common interests or experience; people who know people who make business decisions (Yes, you do know these people. You sit next to them at church and football games. You know them from your old high school, your neighborhood, PTA, and where you volunteer) and ask for 20 minutes of their time. Why? Because you can benefit from their perspective and if you present yourself well enough, from their contacts.
Just don’t call the meeting an ‘informational interview’. That’s code for “I’m out of work and you aren’t” and a non- starter. You want a meeting with an outcome; you want the people sitting across from you to brainstorm options with you, even make calls on your behalf to other decision-makers. And they’ll be willing to do all this because they respect you and the people who referred you, on this one condition: that you can make your case. You have to describe, in living color, what you do best and how your best has made a difference in the past and will make a difference to the company that hires you.
If you can’t or won’t, the daisy chain of referral is broken and the game’s over.
Whoa. I see hesitation in your eyes. Yes, I know you were laid off. You and plenty of dedicated, hard working people, smart people were laid off and that doesn’t make you less effective, less successful, or less accomplished than your competition. It does make you savvy to vagaries of world economies and realistic about the need to get out there and make something happen.
So yes, it’s up to you. Finding a good job that’s a good fit is hard work. You’ll have to network again and again and if you run out of friends and friends of friends and instead of getting referrals you’re getting blank stares, or worse, cold shoulders, you’re making some mistakes.
The likely culprits are how you look, what you say, and how you say it. Bottom line, if you sound down (even if you think you don’t), act down, and look like last week’s laundry, the person you’re talking to doesn’t want to go down with you.
Do a daily sound check. Here’s how: Call your answering machine, leave the same message you’d leave a prospective employer, then listen to it. If you sound gloomy, punch it up. If you sound hyped up, level out. If you sound tinny and tense, do some deep breathing. If you sound toneless and boring, add some expression. Exercise. Watch your weight. Employers hire applicants who look good and sound better because they want to work alongside people who are energetic and have a positive attitude. When you make your case, make sure, absolutely sure, that you look and sound like you mean it.
