Priorities and time management for an effective job search

By Neil Patrick

The myth we can have everything continues to delude us

There’s an explosion of self-help books, podcasts, webinars, forums. It’s become a multi-billion dollar industry. People spend their money AND time so they can change something about themselves they are not happy with.

People think they want to start a business. They think they want to lose weight. They think they want to become an expert musician. But they don’t REALLY want it. What they fall in love with is the pure attractiveness of the thought. And the myth that we can have everything.

People become enamoured with the idea of their goals rather than the reality of the commitment that’s required to achieve them.

They want to have it all.

Well we cannot. Not you, not I, not anyone.

Everything in life costs time or money or both

Everyone who is a true star at something has a talent for sure, but also dedicates themselves to it.

The idea we can have everything sets us up to fail from the start. But we persist in the belief that we can always have more, we just have to find a bit more time to get it.

So one thing that everyone seems to want more of is time. Including jobseekers.

Tim Ferriss, spotted this emerging market early and made I am sure a very good return on his bestselling book “The Four-Hour Work Week”.

Who wouldn’t like to work just four hours a week and spend the rest of their time doing…well whatever they felt like?

It’s a very seductive idea of course. And the many thousands who bought that book prove this. But it's the idea, not the reality involved in achieving this nirvana which seduces us.

Our number one excuse is time

We deceive ourselves that our lives would be so much better if we had almost infinite freedom to do just about whatever we wanted.

Being too busy is the most tempting excuse. We kid ourselves that if we had more time we’d achieve more.

Well we can’t. And we won’t. Time is finite. Everyone has the same amount every single day.

The only choice we really have is how we spend those hours.

And we still waste that time every day

A while ago I was facilitating a workshop with a group of senior managers. It was about project management. I asked them how much time they spent on their A tasks…the things that they needed to do to achieve their personal objectives that they would be appraised on.

I thought this was a fair way to get them to focus on the most important things they needed to do every day.

And almost all of them said they spent the first couple of hours every day reading and replying to emails. Whilst I am sure many of them worked more than 8 hours a day, that’s still around 25% of their available time spent on admin.

Moreover it was their best time...the time when they were most alert and able to be productive.

Next I asked them what were the biggest organisational problems they faced? The number one answer was communication. Huh?

The urgent stuff was stopping them doing the important stuff

Or what they thought was the urgent stuff.

And the reason they had a communication problem was that no-one actually talked enough to their colleagues. They were all too busy reading and replying to their emails.

What really mattered was communicating the important things and doing it fast. And the fastest way I know to communicate with someone isn’t to send them an email. It’s to speak to them.

How can that be you say? An email is instant. Except it usually isn’t. It’s usually a chain of back and forth commentary and remarks which often spreads out over days. And how long does it take you to write an email? Unless you’re an expert touch typist, I bet it’s much longer than it is to actually say it…

A person to person live conversation is two way and simultaneous. It allows you to reach a conclusion. Not next week, but NOW.

That’s where we fail. We let the things which are most demanding of our attention get it. Even if we know that it’s not really the most important or valuable thing we have to do that day.

The trouble is that we feel so much better when we know we’ve answered all those emails. We think that our team isn’t kept waiting for our decision. Our boss has the information he needs for his report. Our peers won’t accuse us of holding them up or being uncooperative.

That’s a good feeling right? Yes it is. But it also means we have sacrificed one of our most important assets - time - just to get that good feeling.

“I cannot do x because I’m just too busy”.

Bullshit. You either want to do something or you don’t. We often like the idea of doing something, but when it comes down to it, we don’t actually really want to do it.

This isn’t just time management, it’s success or failure

But here’s the problem. Just about every professional person I know that has a job is money rich and time poor. And just about every unemployed person I know is money poor and time rich.

Except they are not. Their time is simply gobbled up by the non-productive tasks in their job search.

Or what they tell themselves is their job search activity.

I’m networking. I’m searching for vacancies. I’m polishing my resume. I applied to 20 jobs this week alone! I’m so busy!

That’s the danger. Letting the most at hand tasks get in the way of the most important ones.

And if you are jobseeking that needs to be the activities which are most likely to lead you to getting hired fast.

Why this is even more critical when you’re job seeking

You may think I am talking nonsense. That I don’t understand just how demanding a schedule you have set yourself. And how hard you are working.

So ask yourself this question:

How do you rank the priorities and most value-producing activities involved in your job search?

If you cannot answer this question, then you have your answer…you need to know what they are.

I cannot make that list for you. But I can suggest some likely candidates for it.

Some things that I think should be at the bottom (or not even on) the list are:

• Searching job boards
• Browsing newspaper and magazine job ads
• Uploading your resume to online databases
• Emailing people asking if they know of any vacancies
• Calling up recruitment firms
• Improving your resume
• Getting more qualifications

Some things which probably should be towards the top of the list are: 

• Creating a search optimised Linkedin profile
• Setting up newsfeeds for organisations in your sector
• Improving your social media profiles
• Following relevant people and organisations on social media
• Sharing and commenting on the content of relevant thought leaders
• Talking to people in your network who already work in your target sector
• Growing your network of connections in your industry
• Making appointments to talk with people that may be able to help you

And last but not least, getting off your computer and talking to as many relevant people as you can face to face. At every opportunity.

You may not agree with my lists. That’s fine. But I am sure that somewhere in your daily schedule is something that you know is robbing you of time. And if you’re really honest with yourself you already know what it is…

How recruiters use LinkedIn to headhunt

By Neil Patrick

What goes on inside the head of a headhunter?

Last week I met up with a recruiter who is an old friend of mine. He’s been a recruiter for over ten years and for once we had time to just chat. That’s a rare situation, so I took the opportunity to quiz him about how he and his colleagues use LinkedIn to search for job candidates.

Here’s what I found out:

Recruiters use LinkedIn all the time to find the candidates they seek

If you want to be recruited, you need to be on LinkedIn. But that’s simply not enough. You need to be an active rather than a passive user.

According to a survey carried out by Bullhorn, 48% of recruiters ONLY use LinkedIn for candidate searching vs. 1% that use Twitter and Facebook.

So it’s clear which social media platform job seekers should prioritise.

What’s more, on average, recruiters add 18.5 new LinkedIn connections every week. And you want to be one of them.

ACTION: If you’re not already on LinkedIn, set it up now. If you already have a LinkedIn profile, the following tips will tell you what to do to become more visible and impressive to recruiters.

So how do you go about this?

LinkedIn isn't everything, but it is more or less universally used by recruiters. Recruiters often have several thousand first degree connections, which expands to an immense network of people at the second and third degree.

ACTION: You need to have your relevant recruiters in your LinkedIn network. I know that’s harder to do than say, so I have provided a cunning strategy to help you do this here.

Recruiters use keyword searching by geographic location

Recruiters use LinkedIn's Advanced People Search function to find people within a certain geographic radius who possess the skills, education or experiences they are seeking for their clients’ roles.

Now if you perform a search yourself using keywords, your results will be different to a recruiter’s because the LinkedIn Search algorithm customizes your search results to you based on your network.

A partial solution to this is find a friend that doesn't have your in their LinkedIn network, but is a member of LinkedIn and ask them to search the keywords relevant to your area and find out where you come in their search results.

Next look at the top half a dozen results and see what their profiles, group membership and postings look like. These will give you a template to apply to your own profile and activities.

What matters is that within a radius of say 50 miles, you rank on the first page of Linkedin results when someone carries out a search for your key skills.

ACTION: Don’t just fill your profile with keywords. Instead, incorporate them into the bullet points that describe who you are, what you've done and how you have achieved it. Monitor your rank position, and aim to get to page one. If you are on page one, already aim to get as close to top as you can.

Recruiters join industry and skill-based LinkedIn Groups, and monitor the discussions

They use this tactic to quietly observe what leaders are talking about, and who else contributes to the discussion. This way they can see who really has the knowledge and the skills that they seek. Moreover, they can see who is actively sharing it.

ACTION: Join LinkedIn groups relevant to your skill set and industry to keep up with what is going on, and make constructive contributions to the discussions.

Recruiters follow thought leaders and key influencers

A significant part of a headhunter's value is knowing "who's who" in a particular field.

My friend freely admitted that his biggest personal asset was his huge network of contacts. But he doesn’t just build contacts randomly. He targets people that he can see are the thought leaders and biggest contributors to specialist insights.

So recruiters collect contacts and this is a key reason that you should always aim to nurture your relationship with a recruiter, even if you have an experience which doesn’t initially result in you getting hired.

ACTION: Follow the people whose status and specialism will reflect well on you. Don’t worry if you are not a thought-leader yourself…yet. Your association with those that are will build your profile and make you more visible to recruiters.

Recruiters follow their connections' LinkedIn behavior

Part of the headhunter’s art is understanding the timing of what is going on in people's lives, and the signals they give off which demonstrate that they are open to an approach.

Recruiters are alert to people's LinkedIn behavior patterns to determine when someone is about to begin a job search. Sometimes, a tip-off is obvious, like when a person checks out a recruiter’s profile… or, when someone who has been quiet suddenly starts making frequent status updates.

ACTION: Often people are nervous about letting their current employer or others know that they are in the market for a new job, for good reason. Get smart. You don’t have to proclaim “ I am looking for a new job” to put the right signals out to just the people that matter.

Not all recruiters ignore those who are currently unemployed

Yes it’s true that many recruiters are only interested in those that currently have jobs. It’s unfair and it’s not the best decision in my view. But it’s a fact.

But not all recruiters think like this, especially in the wake of the recession, when so many talented people found themselves unemployed through no fault of their own.

ACTION: Whatever your situation might be, focus on the positive. Demonstrate your knowledge, and your leadership. Capitalize on the fact that you probably now have more time than usual to invest in some powerful personal brand building. 

You can use the latest features of Linkedn to upload presentations and videos that showcase your skills and insight. These can really set you apart, so use them.

Present yourself as a professional (who happens to be currently unemployed), rather than as a person who used to be whatever and is now out of work.

Recruiters don't want to guess

Don't make recruiters have to guess about who you are and what you have to offer. You know exactly who you are but they don’t. And they don’t have time to solve riddles. But avoid the temptation to try and present yourself as someone you are not. Sooner or later you will get found out and you’ll be wasting everyone’s time including your own.

ACTION: Be completely clear about who you are and even more clear about what value you can deliver in your LinkedIn profile. Keep your profile up to date and build long-lasting relationships with quality recruiters.

I have written a post which reveals some secret strategies for using social media to build valuable relationships with recruiters here. Just remember that everything you do online is key to building better professional relationships in the real world.

See it as nurturing your career asset rather than just solving today’s problem and you’ll not only land your next job faster, you’ll be creating a long term career asset which will pay you back over the long term too.

Are you self-employed or self-unemployed?

By Neil Patrick

As the economy improves, so too are the prospects for self-employment

The government has been making bold announcements about the fall in unemployment lately.

On the surface, the latest UK figures are very good news. Employment is up, unemployment and youth joblessness is down.

Almost a quarter of a million jobs were created in the three months to February a rate of growth which is easily outpacing the US, still the world's biggest economy.

UK self-employment has risen by more than 600,000 since the 2008 crisis to 4.5m. Some argue that this is a sign of entrepreneurship. This may be true in some cases. But my experience suggests something else.

I call it ‘self-unemployment’

There’s a whole army of professionals in the UK, who for years enjoyed well-paid secure jobs. Their skills meant they could be confident about long and rewarding careers. Then, in 2008 the tsunami hit.

That was almost six years ago.

In the ensuing collapse, hundreds of thousands of established career professionals watched helplessly as not just their jobs, but often their employers and even whole industry sectors were swept away.

If you are one of these people and if you’ve been largely unemployed for that period, even if you’ve called yourself ‘self-employed’, your chances of getting hired into a new job again haven’t improved much.

For a start you are six years older. And six years is the total career history of many of your younger, more up to date competitors for jobs. Whilst they have been growing their skills and experience and keeping up to date, what have you been doing?

I know dozens of formerly employed people who have lost their often well paid jobs in the recession. They are nothing like the traditional long-term employed, low on education, skills and motivation. They are used to getting up and going to work. And they have valuable skills.

They don’t like the stigma of being labelled ‘unemployed’. But they haven’t been able to find jobs. So they have turned to self-employment, usually trying to apply and sell the skills they have acquired during their career.


The reality of self-employment

When they did this they experienced a rude awaking. They discovered that earning a living in this way is much harder than they ever thought possible.

There are many reasons for this. The fact is that being highly skilled in your profession as an employee, doesn’t automatically equip you with all the skills you’ll need to do a similar type of work as a self-employed person.

For a start, some jobs just do not lend themselves to self-employed variations of what you did when you were employed.

Secondly the work will not come to you. You have to hunt it down, grow your network and opportunities. This work which of course is always unpaid, consumes a large part of your available time.

Third, when you find an opportunity, you need a whole set of sales and marketing skills to turn that opportunity into an income stream.

And you need to keep the work coming month in month out, just like your bills.

Overcoming these obstacles is a skillset all on its own.

But things are set to improve

Right now, the economic recovery is still fragile and organisations are cautious about any expenditure, often preferring instead to try and solve problems with their existing resources. However, assuming the economy continues to improve, this caution will ease, particularly in the private sector, creating a greater willingness for businesses to spend again.

Hiring extra full-time staff can be a big step for firms. Plenty of skilled work needs to be done which may not warrant a full time position, but which can be ideally carried out by a part time contractor, who is flexible on the hours they work and carries no overhead or legal and contractual obligations for the client.

Second, as employment levels rise, the available pool of talent will shrink, forcing businesses to look around more widely for the skills they need.

My feeling is that in the UK, the prospects for the self-employed are likely to slowly but steadily improve over the coming months.

So if you are currently self-unemployed, my view is that you should stay the course. The jobs market may be improving, but you will not be at the front of the queue when the hiring decisions are being made.

Play to your strengths, recognise the economic environment is changing and set out to capitalise on it. You may have been self-unemployed, but right now the prospects for being self-employed are looking better than they have for years.

Recognise this is happening and prepare for it. Revisit your contact list and prospects. Review and update your marketing. Attend more networking events. Step up your social media activity.

You’ve got this far and the tide is turning.

If you recognise any of these things happening in your business, do please post your experience and observations below.

If you’re highly qualified, how come you can’t get a job?

By Neil Patrick

How can it be that so many highly skilled people are unemployed, while employers claim they cannot find people with the right skills?

Over the weekend I was reading The Third Industrial Revolution by Jeremy Rifkin. Although this book is about the economic, environmental, technological and social issues we face today, within its covers there is an explanation of this apparent contradiction.

And understanding this is of critical importance to anyone who wishes to prosper in their career over the long term.

We’re on the cusp of a new industrial era

Jeremy Rifkin has identified that industrial epochs are characterized by two determining factors. These are the dominant energy source and communication media.

So, the first industrial era was powered by coal and the prevailing communication medium was the printed word. Society organised itself around these…coal powered transport and industry and provided heat and light to homes and businesses. Print communicated everything from newspapers and novels to instruction manuals and bibles. All were committed to print.

The second industrial era is now in its death throes. This was driven by oil and the dominant communication mediums were radio, television and the telephone. In case you've not noticed, the oil is running out fast and TV and radio have ceased to be the dominant media they were in the last 60 or 70 years. Oh and it seems telephone landlines are becoming less and less popular too.

Rifkin believes that the third industrial era will be based on green energy and the internet. This change will have massive implications for the types of jobs we all do. The effects of the transformation will impact every one of us, not just those working in energy, communications and media. And there is clear evidence in many of the events that have unfolded over the last few years that he is right.

Rifkin even argues convincingly that the current financial crisis was a symptom of the end of the second industrial era, rather than the cause of it.

We’re all potential victims of accelerated obsolescence

So not only are we currently undergoing a transformation of society itself, the technologies which will define our society in the 21st century are undergoing a revolution too.

And because the pace of technological change is accelerating, very few people can assume that their skills will be current for much more than 10 years or so.

Google didn’t exist in 1995. Back then I would search the internet using a long forgotten search engine called Dogpile. Today, if a business doesn’t rank high on Google searches, it’s increasingly invisible and rightly or wrongly judged as second rate.

The credit industry was dominated by credit cards until 2008 and the financial collapse. Try finding a job today if you’re a credit card professional. Despite the credit crunch starting almost 6 years ago, one of the biggest UK credit card issuers, MBNA has been contracting now for years. It currently employs around 3,000 staff, down from 4,224 in 2011.

Yellow Pages was a huge global business for decades. But despite trying to shift its business online, it’s facing an inexorable decline in its relevancy. Not only that, it fails on environmental grounds too. The Product Stewardship Institute claims local governments spend $54 million a year to dispose of unwanted phone books and $9 million to recycle them. Phone books use low grade glues and are therefore difficult to recycle, and they often clog recycling machinery.

There’s no job security in established businesses either

Of course the decline in the fortunes of businesses is nothing new. What is new is that the speed at which a firm can move from established business and secure employer to contraction or even obsolescence. And if your career is tied up with one of them, your skills can become worthless very quickly.

The U.S. Postal Service suffered 30,000 layoffs in March 2010. Sears/K-Mart layed off 50,000 in January 1993. IBM layed off 60,000 in July 1993. And General Motors layed off 47,000 in February 2009. And these are just some of the biggest. For every one like this, there are hundreds of smaller less well reported downsizings and closures.

Organisations are very good at disguising their difficulties right up until the last moment. Are you really tuned in to the real situation at your employer? You need to be.

So if you are planning to work until you are 65 or beyond, you can fully expect that you’ll need to completely reinvent yourself at least 4 or 5 times over during your career. Note that I say ‘reinvent yourself’ not just change jobs…

Peter Weddle makes this comment on the ASQ blog. This is his take on it:

"Today’s turbulent economic environment has changed the way employers fill their vacant positions. Instead of using their traditional approach — hiring a person who is qualified for a job -they have turned to a new strategy that is best described as “talent staffing.” As a result, tens of millions of decent, dedicated and capable people — men and women who have successfully worked their entire lives — are now unemployed, unsuccessful in their search for a new job and unable to figure out why. No one has told them that the rules of the game have changed".

Do not confuse this with the economic downturn

It’s tempting to think that our recent woes are because of the recession. And that if and when things recover, we’ll all be much more secure in our jobs. Think again.

This isn’t a temporary state of affairs, it’s a paradigm shift which will continue to accelerate over the coming years and decades. It is this speed of change which means that often, skills which were cutting edge as recently as four or five years ago, can be obsolete today.

So you need to keep not just your skills but your TALENT up to date. And that’s the crux. If you are employed, you can fully expect that your employer isn’t going to react very enthusiastically to a request for a couple of weeks off work.  You're asking them to pay for you to learn some new stuff that may very well not be relevant to the job you are doing today, but which may be critical to the job you’ll need in say three or four years’ time…

If you are looking for work, you need to understand that employers will only hire individuals who have all of the skills to do a job and the state-of-the-art knowledge required to use those skills effectively on-the-job. They seek better-than-qualified persons to do a job, and they expect superior performance from them and from their first day of work.

This means they expect you to be the custodian of your talent value. That’s down to you not them.

What is talent?

Ironically, even though millions of people in Europe and the US are now unemployed and looking for work, a large percentage of employers believe there is a shortage of individuals with talent. They are quite wrong to think this of course. But perception is reality whether it is right or wrong.

Peter Weddle defines talent thus:

In practice, employers have defined a person of talent to be someone who has one or both of two attributes:

They have a skill that is critical to organizational success and a track record which demonstrates their ability to use that skill effectively on-the-job.

and/or

They perform at a superior level on-the-job which sets a standard that encourages their co-workers to upgrade the calibre of their work, as well.

The tragic irony is that employers do little or nothing to help their employees develop and hone their skills and talents for the future. So the moment you get hired is the moment your talent value starts to slowly but inexorably erode. You can be sure that your employers will only invest in you if they perceive a more or less immediate return on that investment.

What can you do about this?

Employers want to hire all-stars. Not just people who are good at what they do, but people who are clearly the best at that task. And the only way you can be such an all-star is if you are working with your talent.

First, make sure you know where your talent lies. Talent is not skill. Talent is an inherent capability, a natural capacity for excellence at a particular type of work. Talent is as individual as you are. But it cannot be universally used. No talent is compatible with all work, but every talent can be expressed in more than one career field. It can be developed to perform in one environment today and another tomorrow. But before you can do that, you have to understand precisely what you are talented at.

Second, make sure you are working in a career field and for an employer that enables you to express your talent. Employers aren’t hiring your skill, they’re hiring what they think will be your total contribution to their organisation. And right now if you have a job and your work isn’t allowing you to demonstrate your true talent, then it’s time to be looking elsewhere, even if you think your current job is OK.

Thirdly if you’ve identified your talent then you must do everything possible to nurture it, especially if you are not able to do this in your normal job. Because this isn’t something you can achieve in a few weeks or months, doing this while you are employed is vital.

Finally, you must step back and take the long view. The prospects for your firm and industry affect you. Directly. Whilst it’s easy to think that when Lehman Brothers collapsed in September 2008, it was an unpredictable event, the truth is that there were signs at least one year earlier that the firm was in financial difficulties. Moreover, five years earlier, in 2003, it had suffered an $80 million penalty from the SEC for using its researchers to unduly influence market prices.

Yes, it’s unfair that the rules of the game have changed. And yes, it’s even more unfair that employers never bothered to tell anyone about it. But if you step back and understand what is going on, you’ll be better equipped to deal with the reality. And if you fully embrace the reality, you’ll seek and find and the work you really love and build a sustainable career with it.

Small Job Search Tips That Make You Stand Out Big Time

By Amanda Augustine

Catch your interviewer's eye with these surprisingly simple tips and reel in your next job.

In today's competitive job search, you could be battling 100 other qualified candidates for a position. (At least! -Ed) The only way to get the job is to catch the eye of the interviewers. Here are seven ways you can distinguish yourself from the pack during your job search.

Like it or not - you are in competition

Keep your story consistent
Make sure your online story - in the form of professional profiles, memberships, and so forth - aligns with your job goals and resume. It's important for a recruiter or hiring manager to find the same person online they met face-to-face or on paper.

Develop your tagline
Think about what makes you unique, taking into account your career goals, interests and passions, and what strengths you bring to the table. Use this information to develop the tagline to your elevator pitch. It should be short, memorable and adaptable to any audience.

Recommend a friend
If a recruiter reaches out with a position that isn't a great fit, don't ignore the message. Instead, look through your network to see if you know someone who would be a better fit for the position. This puts you in the recruiter's good graces and gives you a chance to clarify your professional brand and job goals.

Voice your opinion
Join and actively participate in online discussions with networking groups related to your target field of work. Engage in the conversation and share your knowledge. Recruiters are notorious for trolling these groups to scout potential candidates - by starting and contributing to conversations related to your industry, you're setting yourself apart from the other members.

FedEx it
Reserve this tactic for the job for which you're a perfect fit and incredibly interested in. In addition to submitting your application through the company's online application system, FedEx a copy of your resume and cover letter to the hiring manager. FedEx packages are typically opened by the actual recipient, thus bypassing the gatekeeper and ensuring your application makes it to a key decision maker.

Come prepared
It's appalling how many professionals show up to an interview unprepared. Before you enter the room, make sure you've done your research. Set up Google Alerts on the company to stay abreast of any news related to your target employer. Research the company so you have a good sense of their business and standing in the marketplace. Practice responding to the interview questions that make you uneasy (i.e. "Tell me about yourself") and prepare questions for each interviewer that demonstrate you've done your homework and are genuinely interested in the role.

Say thank you
A study by TheLadders found that only 67 percent of those polled send a thank-you note after every interview. By sending a thank-you message to each interviewer within 24 hours of the interview, you differentiate yourself from other candidates and can help advance your candidacy to the next round.



Amanda Augustine is the Job Search Expert for TheLadders. She provides job search and career guidance for professionals looking to make their next career move. Have a question for Amanda? Follow her at @JobSearchAmanda on Twitter and "Like" her on Facebook for up-to-the-minute job-search advice.

This post originally appeared here:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/amanda-augustine/small-jobsearch-steps-tha_b_4296058.html?utm_hp_ref=college

What to say to employers to get hired into the hidden jobs market

By Neil Patrick

If you are looking for a job, how many times have you called a company to ask if they have any job openings and the response has been something like, ‘Not right now, but please send us your resume and we’ll keep it on file and let you know if something comes up’?

I don’t think I can say it’s never happened, but I have never heard of anyone being called back after their resume has been sent in to a firm and put ‘on file’.

It might as well be filed in the bin. Sometimes, I am sure it is.

To avoid this happening to you, you need totally different tactics.

As I talked about in this post here on the hidden job market, the secret is not to ask people if they have any job vacancies. It’s to become a detective and use research to discover firms that have a problem that you can help them solve.

As with so many aspects of successful job searching, the key to your success is in working smarter, not harder. And thinking of yourself not as a job seeker, but a solution to other people’s problems. Find the problems and you’re half way there.

If you want to know how you can do this, how to find the right organisations to approach and exactly what to say to them, this great clip from sales expert Jill Konrath, spells it all out for you.

An MBA Trashes The Degree’s Value

by John A. Byrne

Mariana Zanetti had been working as a product manager for Shell in Buenos Aires when her husband got a promotion to a new job in Madrid. One of her colleagues, a Harvard Business School graduate, suggested that the Argentine native go to business school for her MBA while in Spain.

She took his advice, enrolling in the one-year MBA program at Instituto de Empresa (IE) Business School In Madrid. Zanetti borrowed money from her family to pay for the degree. And when she graduated in 2003, it took her a full year before landing a job as a product manager for a Spanish version of Home Depot at exactly the same salary she was earning three years earlier without the MBA.

For years, Zanetti says, she wanted to write the just published book but didn’t for fear that it would hurt her professional career which included stints as a product manager for Saint-Gobain and ResMed, a medical supplier. Now that she has left the corporate world, Zanetti says, she can tell the truth about the MBA degree.

THE AUTHOR ADVISES APPLYING AND GETTING ACCEPTED AND THEN DECLINING THE OFFER

Her take, in a self-published book called The MBA Bubble: It’s just not worth the investment. “There is an education bubble around these kind of degrees,” she says. “I don’t think they have much impact on people’s careers. There are exceptions of course in management consulting and investment banking where the MBA is always valued. But for the rest, it’s a nice-to-have degree. It’s not that it harmful to you, but every market expert I interviewed for the book says that what is needed today is specialized knowledge and skills and an MBA is generalist training.”

Zanetti, now 40 and living in France, says it’s not like the degree had no value. “I met wonderful people. I met brilliant professors. I learned some interesting business concepts that gave me a global vision about business. It just wasn’t worth the cost in time and money. I could have had both those things by staying in the marketplace. I had the same salary as everybody else doing the same job, working the same endless hours. MBAs get high salaries but the degree has nothing to do with it. I was hired because of my previous work experience at Shell.”

She is even advising people to apply to a top school, get an acceptance and then decline to go. Put the fact on your resume and Zanetti thinks it will have nearly the same value as going to an MBA program for two years. “It’s like being an Academy Award nominee instead of an Academy Award winner,” she writes. “But the difference between the two is mortgaging our future and accepting the risk of getting stuck with a monumental student loan.” When an employer asks why you didn’t go to Kellogg or Yale for your MBA, she advises, just tell them, “I preferred to use that time and money to develop strategic skills to benefit my employers’ competitive advantage…”

‘FEW MBAS CRITICIZE THE DEGREE BECAUSE IT MAKES NO SENSE TO SAY ANYTHING BAD AGAINST THEIR BRANDS’
Of course, Zanetti’s complaint about the MBA is hardly new. It falls neatly into the growing genre of anti-higher education tirades that decry the rising costs of education and the lack of any guarantees. But what makes her MBA bashing somewhat different is that she has the degree from a prominent European business school and has decided to write a 232-page book trying to convince others to pass on the MBA, which has been the most successful degree in education in the last 60 to 70 years.

She believes that other business graduates would fess up to the same conclusion, if not for the fact that their views would endanger their careers. “There are few people criticizing MBA programs because it makes no sense to say anything bad against their brands,” Zanetti says. “I will not make a lot of friends with this book, but I won’t make enemies, either. People need to have this opinion.”

Her initial mistake, she says, was to blindly follow the advice of her Harvard MBA colleague instead of just getting a job when she moved to Europe with her husband. “I didn’t ask myself the right questions. Everyone was getting an MBA. Unfortunately, many people take the same position.”

EXTRAPOLATING FROM HER OWN EXPERIENCE TO MAKE BROAD STATEMENTS AGAINST THE DEGREE?

Asked if she thinks her opinion would apply to MBAs from Harvard, Stanford and other elite business schools, Zanetti has no doubt. “The same would apply to Harvard or whatever school because Harvard is three times more expensive,” she insists. “The benefits would have cost much more. The arguments I make are against all business schools. The improvement is marginal. It breaks a tie if you’re competing with someone who doesn’t have the degree, but people who have scarce skills an employer needs will get the job over you.”

Zanetti says she harbored these doubts and concerns about the degree, especially after being unemployed for a year after graduation. But she largely kept them to herself until leaving the corporate world a little more than a year ago. “I always wanted to have my own business and to teach,” she adds. “I didn’t intend to write this book.”

Then, she knocked out an article published in France about her ideas. The opinion piece seemed to resonate with a lot of people so she wrote The MBA Bubble, which will be published in France next year and was self-published in English this week. She has built a nice-looking website to promote the book, though for some odd reason she does not openly identify herself as an IE MBA. ”My school is not a secret,” says Zanetti, who lists her diploma on her LinkedIn profile.

Her primary arguments against the degree? It is oversold by the business schools with slick marketing campaigns. Most people enter MBA programs without really understanding the limits of the degree. The education costs too much and delivers too little value. And often times graduates are saddled with so much debt that it limits their ability to follow their true passions. They take jobs they don’t want simply to pay off their student loans. Even the value of the network a graduate acquires with the degree is exaggerated and hardly worth it.

’GET OUF OF HERE YOU SCUM!’

She’s unimpressed, if downright skeptical of data that shows MBAs get average increases over their pre-MBA base salaries of between 120% to 46% (see The MBA Bump: How Much To Expect?). And those averages are for all business schools, not just the prestige brand name places. Zanetti is also skeptical of surveys that show widespread satisfaction with the degree. One recent survey, based on the opinions of 4,135 MBA alumni, including 963 members of the Class of 2011, found that three out of four alumni of the class of 2011 with jobs reported that they could not have obtained their job without their graduate management education.

“Everybody is doing it and everybody still goes,” Zanetti sighs. “They take for granted that it is a good investment. Business schools manipulate the statistics and they are doing (unethical) things to market the degree. In France, one school hired a company to make fake (positive) comments in Internet forums. These schools have this university halo around them and talk about the labor market as if they are impartial but they are not. They are favoring their businesses. They continue selling things that do not have value because it has profit.”

Oftentimes, she says, her experience at IE was less than satisfying. “Business schools don’t treat you as a customer,” she says. “Applicants should not forget that they are customers and are buying something. We were even insulted. One day we were in a meeting room and the professional career director said to us, ‘Get out of here you scum.’ It was funny to him. I told him, ‘What’s so funny? I am paying your salary. I didn’t find it funny.”

‘YOU REALLY HAVE TO FIGHT TO CHANGE INDUSTRIES’

She says that IE’s director of career management also told students it was really hard to change industries with an MBA. “Yet they use it as a marketing claim,” she points out. But it is really not true. You really have to fight to change industries. I did change industry but in the same job function.”

Zanetti estimates that she uses no more than 20% to 30% of what she learned in her one-year MBA program. As for networking, she shrugs. “You spend time with great people, but you can spend time with great people in many places, It is not unique. The network is really overrated because you meet wonderful people everywhere. It’s just one way to meet people. You can build your own brand in less time than it would take to pay back your loans.”

This post originally appeared here:

http://poetsandquants.com/2013/11/07/an-mba-trashes-the-degree/2/

One man’s quest to make the best career consulting open to all

By Neil Patrick

Since I started this blog, I have just kept on meeting more and more really amazing people in the area of careers and jobs. HR heroes, star recruiters, resume writers, Linkedin experts, social media stars, bloggers, coaches…the list goes on and on. But then every so often, I meet someone extraordinary who doesn't neatly fit into just one of these categories.

I have made it part of my mission to find and connect with the most important and influential people in these fields. It’s a simple and obvious objective really. By finding all these people, I can provide readers of this blog with the best contacts possible. Despite being in different specialisms, these people all share one thing…a passion for helping people with their careers.

If you’re a bit of a cynic, that’s OK - I’m the same, but I’ll tell you right now that this post is a free plug! But I am only doing it because I think this is something that deserves spreading the word about and it’s a fascinating story…

Meet Fernando Ratkoczy

I first encountered Fernando Ratkoczy a few months ago on Twitter. He had a much bigger following than I do - over 35,000 - so I figured, he was someone I’d like to have in my Linkedin network.

Fernando Ratkoczy

When I checked him out on Linkedin I was astonished to find he had no less than 102 recommendations from people he’d helped. The average is just 2 from what I can discover.

And the glowing endorsements about him convinced me that he was much more than just a normal career coach. I knew I had to talk to this guy.

We exchanged a couple of emails and agreed we’d speak on the phone as he was temporarily in Europe instead of his normal home in California.

He’s helped over 10,000 people already

We managed to schedule a phone chat which ended up being four hours long!

As we started talking about his career, I quickly became fascinated. He had spent 20 years of his life as a career coach working with professionals who were facing redundancy. And it turned out that he’d helped over 10,000 people land great new jobs. That’s an astonishing number.

Being the slightly sceptical person I am, I did the maths. That’s 500 people a year, or about a dozen a week. Fernando explained to me that that was his normal caseload when he was a corporate career coach. He provided job finding consultancy and coaching to people who were typically being laid off by large organisations. His job was to ensure his clients found and landed new jobs as fast as possible.

I wanted to know firstly, why he thought successful professionals needed any help at all with their job search? He was quite unequivocal:

‘Today, being good at your job is no longer enough to get you hired for your next job. Getting hired is a specialized skill all on its own. And most people know far less about it than they think they do. Only a fool would attempt to represent themselves in court. You hire a professional. Finding and getting the right job is no different.’

Fernando went on to tell me that to minimise the negative PR, his clients’ former employers would pay up to $10,000 per person to ensure they were helped as quickly as possible after redundancy into a new job. Since many people were not adequately equipped to easily do this themselves, their ex-employers were willing to pay for this assistance as part of their redundancy package.

Which is how he became an expert at finding people great jobs. Or rather helping them to do it for themselves. And his success at helping people achieve this was why so many people had shown their appreciation of his help and guidance on Linkedin.

Why is it so expensive?

I asked him next why this coaching was so expensive?

‘The one to one coaching process is very time consuming. It takes many hours of meetings and discussions. And the firms that provide it typically carry big overheads. Most people don’t know what the steps to success are. They wrongly assume that you search for job vacancies that fit your experience, send off your application and resume, and hope you get an interview. It just doesn’t work like that anymore and if you use that method, you’ll most likely be in for a very long period of unemployment’.

Over many years, Fernando developed his coaching into a slick machine. He wasn’t in the business of just sitting there and giving tips. That was far too uncertain. What was needed was a proven process, which if followed would ensure success for everyone. At every level from the most junior to VPs and Executives. Over 20 years, his process just got better and better, until it was about as robust as it could possibly be.

How Hollywood comes into the story

As the chat progressed, he told me an amazing story about his own career. Before spending 20 years as a career coach, as a young man, Fernando had sought to develop his career in Hollywood. He had spent years in the film industry learning the art of film production. He’d actually acted in films and directed several too, before deciding to become a career consultant with one of the biggest global career consulting firms.

But that wasn’t the most interesting part of his story. He decided a few years ago to leave the world of corporate career consulting and combine his two areas of expertise; helping people find and land great jobs and film production.

He set out with a simple but hugely ambitious goal. He would produce the most comprehensive set of coaching films ever made, dedicated to revealing to people all the best practices and secrets of job search success he’d learned in 20 years of career consulting.

But these wouldn’t be just interviews and tips. Instead he set out to create a comprehensive programme which would film every step of the process he had refined over 20 years from start to finish, using the full production resource that would be applied to a movie production. Every scene would be properly scripted. Every shot would be professionally directed, lit and acted. The material would be edited, organised and packaged so that anyone could easily follow the step by step process.

This cost him over $1m dollars!

I’m still amazed at the ambitiousness of this project. Even after all the editing and organising, the full film programme runs for 7 hours! And I wasn’t in the least surprised when Fernando told me that it had cost him over $1m and 3 years to complete.

I wanted to know how the final result had been received. ‘The programme was finally finished last year and I’ve been delighted at the reception it’s been given by large organisations and the career coaching community. It’s great to get the endorsement of other recruitment and HR professionals. They tell me that the programme provides a really attractive alternative to the slow and expensive process of face to face coaching. And I’m relieved that they are buying it too… I need to recover my investment!’

I wanted to see the outcome of all this work and investment for myself and so Fernando gave me a free pass to view all the materials. I spent several hours going through the resources he has set up at the Successful Job Search Center - SJSC.

The materials there are impressive in their quantity and quality. Not just the film material, which is superbly well structured and presented; there are 400 resume templates for every role imaginable. Over 20 cover letter templates. A user forum. Progress tests. And a database of every employer in every state in the USA. It’s a very complete resource package.

Fernando has also provided me with this short series of excerpts so you can view some extracts for yourself.




I think he has succeeded in his goal beyond any expectation. The resources and process he has created distill all the best practices into a simple process that anyone can follow to achieve success.

I’d like to thank Fernando for the time he’s given me to talk about his life and work and I wish him every success with the Successful Job Search Center.

If you’d like to know more about the SJSC programme, just follow this link:

http://www.findrightjobfast.com/special-offer/

If you’d like to connect with Fernando or view his Linkedin profile, here’s the link:

www.linkedin.com/in/fernandoratkoczy/

7 seconds - why that's all you may have to succeed or fail at interview

By David Hunt, PE

Two animals meet – in a diorama played out countless times across hundreds of millions of years. Within seconds, each must size the other up. Is this a friend or foe, predator or prey? And if of the same species, an ally, a rival, or a potential mate? Each animal must make an instinctive judgment about the other based on sight, sound, and smell with three drivers that are axiomatic:

1. Speed of decision. When an animal meets another for whom they might be on the menu, they need to decide quickly whether it’s “fight or flight”. Similarly, an animal looking for a meal needs to decide quickly to pounce before the other reacts. In either case, animals that take their time risk being lunch, or missing it.

2. Even if of the same species, while cannibalism is exceedingly rare in most cases, strangers are often rivals – for food or for mates, likely both; never mind other possible same-species threats. Again, this drives the need for a speedy judgment about the other to evaluate them against multiple possibilities, the majority of which aren’t good.

3. A bias towards fear and dislike. Any animal that gives another the benefit of the doubt risks not living to pass its genes along.

So making snap judgments about another is hardwired into us with a bias towards being distrusting. This is backed up by research – most communication is non-verbal as is routinely cited in innumerable places. How we appear, how we move, and sound, and smell. Many people in the job search business coach that a good first impression is the key to a successful interview, and in my own efforts to help others I tell people that most interviews are over in the first few minutes, with the remainder of the time being dedicated to the interviewer looking for things to justify the decision they made.

By pure coincidence several articles have come across my computer’s screen right as I was writing this article.

The first, Why Qualified Candidates Don’t Get Hired, cites several factors that can make or break a good first impression, to wit: your clothing, your handshake, your breath, your general enthusiasm. He cites William Knegendorf, who is a consultant, speaker, and author on hiring strategies for individuals and organizations:

While surveying 327 Hiring Mangers on how long it takes (on average) for them to decide NO to hiring an applicant after the beginning of an interview, [Knegendorf’s] data showed an average time to rejection of 4 to less than 10 seconds. And what did the hiring managers he surveyed say was the cause of their rush to judgment? “I didn’t like them.” Skills or talent was never mentioned.

Reread that quotation and mull it over a little. Less than ten seconds and the interview might be over. The door is still open, or it has closed in the time that you, the job seeker, have smiled, shaken their hand, and said “So nice to meet you.”

The second article, 7 seconds to a stronger first impression, seconds this fleetingly-fast time. Pulling from research done at New York University’s Stern Graduate School of Business, the article states that people make decisions about others in seven seconds. The article then goes on to highlight things to do to improve how others perceive you in those critical first moments.

Yet another article, Dressing to Impress and How That Can Have a Huge Impact on Your Professional Career, discusses research from the University of Oregon:

Dr. Frank Bernieri, an associate professor of psychology at Oregon State University, recently conducted just such a study in which he probed employers about the traits they deem most favorable of prospective applicants. Conservative, polished dress and a well groomed appearance was at the top of the list. Dr. Bernieri also found most employers make a decision in an interview about an applicant’s rightness for the job within 10-30 seconds of a first meeting.

The article goes on to state that appearance has been found to be so critical in interviews that the University of Illinois Extension has a mini-course and series of online tutorials about the importance of appearance, style, grooming, etc.

As skilled professionals, however, let alone as sentient beings we should rightfully take umbrage at the idea that it is on superficial aspects like how we dress, how we groom, etc., that take precedence in an interview over what we know and what problems we can solve. After all, a great American man once said “I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.”

Yet we will be so judged – on innumerable things having absolutely nothing to do with our ability to do the work.

Weight and how you move / carry yourself will be used as a proxy for your energy level, drive, health, and stamina. (I again will take the liberty to brag about the fact I’ve lost almost 50 pounds after reading the book Why We Get Fat by Gary Taubes and taking his recommendations… with, hopefully, another 20 to go.)

Appearance – clothing, accessories, grooming, tattoos, and piercings – will be taken as a proxies for your attention to detail, respect for the positions of the people you are meeting, and your judgment in thinking about the long-term consequences of your decisions.

Body and breath odor will be taken as a proxy, again, for your attention to detail, your physical health, as well as your consideration for others.

And so on. Body language is a strange thing. Some aspects of reading and using body language can be taught, and I’ve found the book How to Make People Like You in 90 Seconds or Less quite helpful. Another book I’ve read is Contact: The First Four Minutes, and while this is more intended for those courting a mate, many of the principles apply.

A good friend of mine, Greg Chenevert (side plug: check out his dog treats and other pet/animal related products) once gave a very interesting and informative seminar on the psychology of interviewing and decision-making. Anyone who knows Greg will smile and nod in total agreement if told Greg is so persuasive he can talk a hungry dog off a meat truck. He knows his stuff. (In full disclosure, I’ve written a recommendation for him on LinkedIn, and vice versa.)

'WOW - I want THAT one!'

In his seminar I learned just how emotional decision-making really is. Most people, per his seminar, make decisions emotionally – and then seek out facts and information to rationalize this emotional decision. Having been in the automotive industry, specifically,Ford Motor Company and its components-and-subsystems spinoff Visteon Corporation, the adage is that “style sells cars.” Yes, things like impact resistance, gas mileage, etc., are all important – but what’s critical is the WOW! factor. Companies want people to walk into the showroom and go WOW I want that one! Gas mileage, safety, etc., will be used to rationalize the emotional WOW! decision after-the-fact; things that don’t meet the predetermined desires will be rationalized away. (As an example, I cite automotive lighting in which I spent four years of my career. Lights with the optics in the lens, as opposed to in the reflector, are significantly cheaper to make. But clear lenses showing shiny, reflective light interiors are much more glitzy and attractive. The WOW! factor of clear lenses trumps the added cost… something accounted for in their on-going use.)

Personal experience verifies this. My wife and I own a minivan – brand-spanking new. Why? Because my wife felt instantly comfortable in it. Looking at used ones, as was the original plan for cost purposes? Never happened. My wife – then mid-way through her pregnancy – felt comfortable and safe. That settled it.

So is this seven-seconds-to-judgment fair? No.

But fair or not, it is what it is. This is reality: making snap judgments about others as people meet is hardwired into us as a survival trait, a trait selected-for over millions upon millions of years. And while effort and time can overcome an initial bad impression, you as a job seeker may not be given the chance. Making decisions emotionally based on sight, sound, and smell is hardwired into the limbic system, the seat of emotion and memory in our brain – and probably the oldest structure in the brain (I’d like to definitively say the oldest, but apparently this is the subject of some debate these days).

So what can people do?

The first thing is to know what’s costing you that good first impression. Sit your friends and family down for a real, honest feedback session. Solicit trusted networking contacts the same way. Tell them you want them to pull no punches. You need to know. You’re unemployed. And if you are a skilled professional – and odds are you are one! – you are watching the calendar tick over day after week after month with, if you’re lucky, interviews. But still no offers.

So get that feedback. Read up on how to polish your first impression, and then reinforce it with non-verbal communication like body language. One article I just found comes from Britain: First impressions count: how can you overcome interviewer bias?

And then take action. Skills, knowledge, a good resume, references… all will help get you in the door to meet people. But your next job depends on the visceral, instinctive reaction you provoke in your potential new boss in the first few seconds of your introduction. The sooner you truly grasp that, the sooner you’ll land.

(c) 2013, David Hunt, PE

David Hunt is a Mechanical Design Engineer in southern New Hampshire looking for his "next opportunity" that allows him to design new products and shepherd them to stable production. His LinkedIn profile is: www.linkedin.com/in/davidhuntmecheng/; he blogs at davidhuntpe.wordpress.com and tweets at @davidhuntpe.

Unemployed Boomers Need Help NOW

By Alinda Tugend

I WAS recently talking to a friend at a party whose husband - in his 60s - has been unemployed for more than two years. While there are many challenges, she said, one of the hardest things is trying to balance hope with reality.

She wonders how to support him in his continued quest to find a job in his field of marketing and financial services while at the same time encouraging him to think about what his life would be like if he never worked in that field or had a full-time job again.

“I wanted to move to what I thought was a healthier place. I wanted to turn the page,” said my friend, who asked to be identified by her middle name, Shelley, since she didn’t want to publicize her family’s situation. “He saw it as vote of no confidence.”

For those over 50 and unemployed, the statistics are grim. While unemployment rates for Americans nearing retirement are lower than for young people who are recently out of school, once out of a job, older workers have a much harder time finding work. Over the last year, according to the Labor Department, the average duration of unemployment for older people was 53 weeks, compared with 19 weeks for teenagers.

There are numerous reasons - older workers have been hit both by the recession and globalization. They’re more likely to have been laid off from industries that are downsizing, and since their salaries tend to be higher than those of younger workers, they’re attractive targets if layoffs are needed.

Even as they do all the things they’re told to do- network, improve those computer skills, find a new passion and turn it into a job - many struggle with the question of whether their working life as they once knew it is essentially over.

This is something professionals who work with and research the older unemployed say needs to be addressed better than it is now. Helping people figure out how to cope with a future that may not include work, while at the same time encouraging them in their job searches, is a difficult balance, said Nadya Fouad, a professor of educational psychology at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.

Psychologists and others who counsel this cohort need to help them face the grief of losing a job, and also to understand that jobs and job-hunting are far different now from how they used to be.

“The contract used to be, ‘I am a loyal employee and you are a loyal employer. I promise to work for you my entire career and you train, promote, give benefits and a pension when I retire.’ Now you can’t count on any of that,” she said. “The onus is all on the employee to have a portfolio of skills that can be transferable.”

People in their 20s and 30s know that they need to market themselves and always be on the lookout for better opportunities, she said, something that may seem foreign to those in their 50s and 60s.

If a counselor or psychologist “doesn’t understand how the world of work has changed, they’re not helping at all,” she said. “You can’t just talk about how it feels.”

In response to this concern, Professor Fouad and her colleagues have drawn up guidelines for the American Psychological Association to help psychotherapists better assist their clients with workplace issues and unemployment. It is wending its way through the association’s committees.

Of course, not everyone who is unemployed and over 50 is equal. For some, the reality is that they need to find another job - any job - to survive. Others have resources that can allow them to spend more time looking for a job that might have the salary or status of their former position.

In the first case, Professor Fouad said, “You need to decide what is the minimum amount of money you can make and how to go about finding it.” In the second case, she said, it’s necessary to examine what work means to you and how that may have to change.

Is it the high social status? The identity? The relationship with co-workers? It is important to examine these areas, perhaps with the help of a professional counselor, Professor Fouad said, to discover how to find such meaning or relationships in other areas of life.

Sometimes simply changing the way you look at your situation can help. My friend Shelley’s husband, Neal, who also asked that I use his middle name, said the best advice he received from a friend was “don’t tell people you’re unemployed. Tell them you’re semiretired. It changed my self-identity. I still look for jobs, but I feel better about myself.”

He also has friends facing the same issues, who understand his situation. Such support groups, whether formal or informal, are very helpful, said Jane Goodman, past president of the American Counseling Association and professor emerita of counseling at Oakland University in Rochester, Mich.

“Legitimizing the fact that this stinks also helps,” she said. “I find that when I say this, clients are so relieved. They thought I was going to say, ‘buck up.’ ”

And even more, “they should know the problem is not with them but with a system that has treated them like a commodity that can be discarded,” said David L. Blustein, a professor of counseling, developmental and educational psychology at the Lynch School of Education at Boston College, who works with the older unemployed in suburb of Boston. “I try to help clients get in touch with their anger about that. They shouldn’t blame themselves.”

Which, of course, is easy to say and hard to do.

“I know not to take it personally,” Neal said, “but sure, I wonder at times, what’s wrong with me? Is there something I should be doing differently?”

It is too easy to sink into endless rumination, to wonder if he is somehow standing in his own way, like a cancer patient who is told that her attitude is her problem, he said.

Susan Sipprelle, producer of the Web site overfiftyandoutofwork.com and the documentary “Set for Life” about the older jobless, said she stopped posting articles like “Five Easy Steps to get a New Job.”

“People are so frustrated,” she said. “They don’t want to hear, ‘Get a new wardrobe, get on LinkedIn.’ ”

As one commenter on the Facebook page for Over Fifty and Out of Work said, “I’ve been told to redo my résumé twice now. The first ‘expert’ tells me to do it one way, the next ‘expert’ tells me to put it back the way I had it.”

Some do land a coveted position in their old fields or turn a hobby into a business. Neal, although he believes he’ll never make as much money as in the past, recently has reason to be optimistic about some consulting jobs.

But the reality is that the problem of the older unemployed “was acute during the Great Recession, and is now chronic,” Ms. Sipprelle said. “People’s lives have been upended by the great forces of history in a way that’s never happened before, and there’s no other example for older workers to look at. Some can’t recoup, though not through their own fault. They’re the wrong age at the wrong time. It’s cold comfort, but better than suggesting that if you just dye your hair, you’ll get that job.”


http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/27/your-money/unemployed-and-older-and-facing-a-jobless-future.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

The Lazlo Emergency Commission Report

By David Hunt, PE

I love science fiction. Being an engineer I love reading about the technology / science dreamed up to solve problems like interstellar travel, disease, creative aliens, etc. But I also – contrary to many engineers – enjoy the human elements of the stories too. (Side sci-fi plug: Frank Herbert’s Dune is, IMHO, the greatest sci-fi novel of all time. I read it, didn’t understand most of it, and the moment I finished the last page flipped back and started it again. I read it annually, and still find new things in it that I hadn’t seen, or new insights into human nature that I, now older and hopefully wiser, hadn’t grasped before. That’s the beauty of truly great literature.)

So what’s sci-fi got to do with things? Life imitates art.

In the novel The Forever War (link has spoiler!) mankind is engaged in a life-or-death battle with a race called the “Taurans.” And after the war has gone on for centuries, humanity decides to genetically engineer soldiers into someone’s idea of a perfect soldier – and I’m going from memory here as I can’t find my copy of the book: A combination of the Praetorian Guard, the Nazi SS, the Russian Spetznaz, etc. These soldiers were vicious, incredible athletes, worked together seamlessly, placed no emphasis on individualism or their own survival… and they got cut to ribbons costing humanity many critical battles.

Today’s employers use personality profiling on candidates to search for people who most closely match their particular vision of an ideal <fill in position here> in order to create perfect teams who will minimize interpersonal conflicts. As I wrote on my old blog in a post Diversity of What?:

Just think about how insidious this is. Companies are screening out people based on the ability or inability to show the proper personality for a given position. Just imagine – a group of Accountants who all think alike tasked with developing a new way to achieve a faster end-of-quarter closing. A team of Engineers who all think alike assigned to brainstorm, create, test, and launch an innovative new product. And so on.

More terrible, the hidden implication is that by hiring a person to be the “perfect engineer” (or whatever) a company is hiring to fill that slot with little-to-no consideration of the person’s future potential. Sure, companies have a need for an engineer, but one of the roles of Personnel (note, I used the right word this time) is to work to bring on board people who can grow and develop in the organization in addition to helping fill the immediate needs.

(Sidebar note: My essay in the New Hampshire Business Review reprises some of the points from the above blog post regarding the need for “fresh eyes” to drive innovation.)

So the first point that I’d like to make is that people are not robots. Every person has arrived at today via a unique path, and to think that there is some factory “out there” creating perfect fits for a position is folly. We also have unique personalities, and even if two persons have similar backgrounds and career paths – even tested personality types – personalities and egos can nevertheless result in clashes.

The second point, though, is more significant, and goes back to Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs.

While many people are dedicated to their jobs, employers, and careers, most people work to live, not live to work. Unless a person is a “company man” of a kind rarely seen in this era of rapid job shifts – the average longevity of a person in a company these days being on the order of three years – they place more value on their personal life than their company life. More importantly, they place their ability to sustain that life above any loyalty they might feel when the news is filled with stories of entire departments being slashed, and kept around only long enough to train their overseas replacements.

Which brings me back to the Lazlo Emergency Commission Report, cited in the novel. Despite having created teams of ideal soldiers, the effort was a failure that almost cost humanity its survival (I won’t truly spoil the novel’s conclusion – it’s a good read). The conclusion was that we won battles when we had soldiers who were well-trained, well-equipped, and who fought like hell for their own individual survival. The program of engineering idealized soldiers was abandoned.

Teamwork is good, and people need to subsume some of their individual goals for the good of the team. Most people can, and do. Further, teams can be very useful for generating ideas and alternatives and considering multiple viewpoints, analyzing failures, etc. But, given Maslow, great leaders recognize that people are ultimately at work for their own individual survival. Pay games, personality tests for idealized profiles, relative rankings of employees against other employees – all can result in a perception that the employer is pitting employee against employee. Even when this perception is mild, often there is the implicit message that if a person does well, they will only get the “employment continuation award”; the hidden threat is that they might be on the edge and thus better strive even harder to continue getting that award.

When all is said and done, people value their ability to meet their life goals above their ability to meet their employer’s goals. The key to organizational success is to lead with a vision to inspire, not threaten, people. I remember a key line from the classic epic Lord of the Rings by JRR Tolkien, in which an orc in charge of a military unit opines “Where there’s a whip, there’s a will.” I still remember thinking, even in my tender years when I first read that line, that the only inspiration this provides is to do the minimum needed to avoid being whipped. (And it has the second disadvantage of creating resentment of the one doing the whipping.)

We herd sheep, we drive cattle, we lead people. Lead me, follow me, or get out of my way. – General George S. Patton

Only by inspiring people to see their self-interest as being aligned towards a higher goal do great leaders motivate people, as highlighted by this short anecdote:

A man was touring the construction site of a medieval cathedral. He saw a young man roughing out a stone and asked what he was doing. “I’m carving a stone,” was the answer.

He then saw a somewhat older man carving a bas relief on a stone and asked the same question. “I’m helping build a cathedral,” the second man replied.

Then he saw a man taking these intricately-carved stones and fitting them together and once more asked his question. “I’m glorifying G-d,” said the oldest of the three.

So, a few conclusions.

1. Trying to screen candidates to form a perfectly-functioning team built to an idealized vision and that works together with minimal conflict will, in the long run, backfire. (IMHO conflict is where the best innovation arises!)

2. People arrive at the present through unique paths; there is no such thing as an ideal candidate. (Ironically, companies tout diversity while using personality profiles to eliminate it.)

3. People may work in teams, but for the vast majority of people their own survival takes precedence over the organization’s goals. Only when they’re not worried about lower-levels of Maslow’s hierarchy (like their employer’s control over their ability to put food on the table) can they truly focus on the higher ones (like work goals).

4. A good leader will use fear only sparingly, but will instead inspire and find ways to – on a person-by-person basis – align the team’s goals with the self interest of each team member. (Note – I am by no means saying this is easy!)

With shameless self-reference, check out the quote on this image which I posted earlier.

I am dedicating this essay to David Hildreth, my first boss when I joined Ford Motor Company. Of all the people for whom I’ve worked, he is the only one who – if he called me tomorrow and asked me to come work for him again (which would require relocation to a place I’d rather not live) – I’d seriously consider it… because it was he who asked. He inspired me to be a better engineer, and set me on the path to being a better person to boot.

Would your subordinates – past or present – say that about you?

(c) 2013, David Hunt, PE

David Hunt is a Mechanical Design Engineer in southern New Hampshire looking for his "next opportunity" that allows him to design new products and shepherd them to stable production. His LinkedIn profile is: www.linkedin.com/in/davidhuntmecheng/; he blogs at davidhuntpe.wordpress.com and tweets at @davidhuntpe.

The perfect fit, isn't: the imperfect fit may be the perfect choice

By David Hunt, P.E.

Hiring "the perfect fit." It's the fantasy of every employer. The problem is, this fantasy hurts companies because it increases employee turnover, increases downtime, and promotes corporate complacency.

Perfect frustration
As an engineer currently "in transition", I've been quite fortunate during my job search. Unlike lots of people, I get interviews. But, agonizingly, I don't get many employment offers. My problem? I'm not a perfect fit. Since my credentials and accomplishments are very good, I've taken to wondering what a perfect fit is -- and whether companies are deluding themselves that perfect fits are the best hires.

The feedback I get is positive. I interview well. I have excellent qualifications and I am articulate, sincere, and results-driven. My engineering experience is solid and includes significant accomplishments in product design, cost reduction, and process improvements. I've even got two patents -- plus masters-level degrees in both Engineering and Management.

I've met quite a lot of imperfect fits like me who share my frustration. The consensus is two-fold. First, companies fear hiring a poor performer or someone who will leave soon. Second, they want someone who has done the job already and can drop into the position and be effective with no learning curve.

The pigeon problem
On the face of it, given the seemingly large pool of available talent, the desire for a perfect fit seems smart. After all, a perfect fit (assuming one really exists) can hit the ground running. But ironically, the closer to a perfect fit a candidate is, the more likely that person is to leave soon because the narrow job definition is likely to create dissatisfaction. In other words, I think people take new jobs for new experiences and the chance to learn new things -- not to get pigeonholed.

I pursued a Masters in Engineering to break out of a specialty into which I'd been pigeonholed. But the only position I found after receiving my degree was doing it again -- I was a perfect fit. No wonder I left within a year. That same danger applies to everyone taking a position identical to one they've done before. Employers should bank on the fact that most will keep looking because few employees want a stagnant career. Pigeons leave and the job is once again left undone.

Analysis paralysis
The cost of leaving a position unfilled can be significant, not only because work is left undone and schedules slip, but because other functions that depend on the empty position are affected, too. The question is, does it cost more to leave a job undone, or to hire a worker who needs a bit of a learning curve?

In his book Winning, Jack Welch addressed the debate about hiring someone who can hit the ground running versus someone capable of growth. He'd choose the latter. Additionally, he acknowledges the risk of making imperfect hires and considers it preferable. After 30-plus years of hiring, he says he got it right only 80% of the time. Any hiring is risky and there are no guarantees. Ultimately, dithering and delaying in hiring produces "analysis paralysis." Hoping to avoid unavoidable risks, jobs are left unfilled, the employer's needs are left unmet and customers are left unhappy.

But there is another danger to discounting imperfect fits. While hiring a perfect fit is a good tactical move, it can be a strategic error in an economy that is increasingly dependent on rapid innovation and revolutionary, not evolutionary, thinking.

Do the job or solve the problem?
Companies make a strategic error when they hire people who are easily pigeonholed. Pigeons will peck away at a task because they've done it before. The imperfect hire asks, "Why?" Imperfect fits see opportunities that aren't obvious. For example, I worked in automotive lighting, and then transferred to climate control. My "outsider's" lighting experience led to an unusual idea with the potential to save my company over $750,000 annually. Insiders doubted it would work, but the idea was completely validated -- ironically, just weeks before I was laid off.

In another case, my imperfect attitude led me to question why the company was scrapping so many parts purchased from a certain supplier. The parts were failing our test procedures. Rather than focusing on the part itself, I asked whether our tests were unnecessarily stringent. It turned out the parts functioned just fine -- the problem was with the testing process, not our parts vendor. Suddenly, expensive parts were no longer being scrapped and our productivity improved. The experts were doing the job the way it was always done. They made assumptions and blamed the supplier. It took a fresh-eyes perspective to see the reality and to solve the problem.

The perfect choice
Nobody has a lock on all the best practices. Few problems are new or unique to any one industry. New solutions come from a fresh look at problems. That's why it's dangerous to hire narrowly. Imperfect fits bring new perspectives and experience to a company. Continuous innovation and growing, enthusiastic employees are critical. In learning the industry and in bringing outside experiences, imperfect fits will find innovations that just might be hiding in plain sight. Further, growth opportunities actually reduce the risk that an employee will leave since they are not repeating stale tasks that have been done the same way for years.

Innovation means new products, new solutions, and money saved. Employees who are free to meet challenges in new ways enjoy career growth -- and that means long-term retention for employers. In other words, the imperfect fit may very well be the perfect choice.

http://www.asktheheadhunter.com/gv060106.htm

David Hunt is a Mechanical Design Engineer in southern New Hampshire looking for his "next opportunity" that allows him to design new products and shepherd them to stable production. His LinkedIn profile is: www.linkedin.com/in/davidhuntmecheng/; he blogs at davidhuntpe.wordpress.com and tweets at @davidhuntpe.