Discover the rockstars' career secrets

By Neil Patrick

Here's a glimpse into the career secrets of today's real life rockstars...and they have value to every one of us.

Last night I had the pleasure of meeting up with Alex Hutchings, an astonishingly talented pro guitarist. Alex is an up and coming star, he writes and records music for the BBC, is a popular presenter of guitar instructional videos and performs regularly with some of the most famous and respected musicians in the world. We’d agreed to meet up to discuss the problems of the music industry and how pro musicians are responding to these challenges.

The term ‘rockstar’ has come to be used to describe people whose status almost effortlessly transcends that of their peers. The reality though is quite different. Real life rockstars have extraordinarily tough careers today and they have just as many if not more hurdles to overcome than the rest of us.

Just think about this:

Music is now expected to be available for free

The old music industry has almost disappeared as digital media has replaced the old physical media. Free or cheap file sharing mean that no-one expects to have to pay for music anymore. And consequently, the giant record labels of old have shriveled to emaciated versions of their previous selves. What’s the value of a product that almost no-one is willing to pay money for?

Sales of recorded music have dwindled, regardless of your talent

These days, having real talent, writing and recording music is simply not enough to secure you a guaranteed career. Bill Haley’s 1954 hit, Rock Around the Clock sold 25 million copies. In 2011, just thirteen titles sold more than one million copies. Ten years previously, in 2001, there were more than one hundred such titles.

You cannot expect to make much revenue, let alone profit, selling your music via the internet

Songs on iTunes sell for 99 cents. But the artist only gets around 10 cents, so to earn just $1000, you need to achieve 10,000 downloads. Even if you can shift a massive 100,000 downloads on iTunes, your cut is just $10,000. But that’s your gross revenue before you deduct all the expenses you incurred in making and promoting the music in the first place.

Pro musicians these days are more or less on their own

Along with the labels, the resources that pro musicians’ could draw upon to support the development of their careers have dried up too. Managers, A&R people, agents, publicists, promoters – they've mostly gone save for a handful who truly serve only a tiny global super elite of artists. Other ‘signed’ artists get minimal support by comparison.

But tours and gigs still make money don’t they?

For most pro musicians, the only way they can make any serious money directly from their music is to have big sold out shows. But without the old industry to help you get there, for new artists, it’s a long hard slog to achieve enough popularity for this to become even a possibility.

So to return to our discussion. Several interesting points emerged.

He follows his passion 

Alex is in love with music. He doesn’t play to become rich or famous. I suspect he’d still do it even if it cost him everything he has. His commitment is total. And to excel at anything, that’s what’s needed.

He realises the value of diversification

Alex earns money in many ways. He tours all over the world. He writes and records music for clients. He acts as an endorser, consultant and developer for equipment manufacturers, and he presents instructional videos. He even appears in ads for an insurance company! This diversified approach ensures that he has more than one source of income. If one part of it dries up for any reason, he’s not dead in the water.

He understands the importance of social media

Building a relationship with your fans is critical for performers, who may not always have new material to offer their fans. Alex uses Facebook to give his fans the opportunity to follow what he is doing and see and hear his latest work and other updates.

He’s modest, approachable and a great networker

In the new music industry, there’s not much room for prima donnas. Despite his talent, Alex is a very down to earth, open and all round nice guy. He also understands that relationships with other people in his business are vital. So he’s always finding new contacts and other top musicians he can he can collaborate with.

He retains a positive outlook whatever happens

He refuses to worry about things, despite the risks of any number of things going wrong on a day to day basis. He always believes things will turn out well. Some call it good Karma. I call it the power of positive thinking.

Whilst you might have a steady job and regular pay check, I think all of us need to take a lesson from Alex’s book. You might not work in the music industry, but I am convinced that the trends unfolding in today’s careers mean that we all need to learn from what real rockstars do to survive in such hostile conditions.

So next time you use the term ‘rockstar’, you might want to remind yourself, what it really means. And remember that these guys are working much harder and smarter than you probably ever give them credit for.

I’d like to thank Alex for his time and the insights he shared. And as a small thank you, here’s a clip from one of his performances, that I’m sure you’ll enjoy.

Forget work-life balance - we're all crazybusy

By David Hunt, PE

It is perfectly understandable in hard economic times that companies ask for more effort from fewer people. But there are numerous, unquantifiable costs to this time-austerity.

I recently had lunch with someone I’ve been trying to meet for months; a C-level executive, he also had an extended period of unemployment and thus was sympathetic to my situation. Not only that but we shared two deep outside-of-work commonalities. The issue was getting onto his schedule.

During that conversation he mentioned this was the third time he had managed to get away from his office for a lunch outside the company… in almost three years of having been there. He said that he routinely is putting in 10-12 hour days, that his employer is running incredibly lean, and that most of the time lunch is eaten while working at his desk.

This months-long pursuit is similar to the dismal results of my other attempts to even have “cups of coffee” with people to create the beginnings of a face-to-face relationship which is so essential in networking. I finally had lunch with the CTO of a local company after half a year of trying. Too busy. I’ve stayed in touch with two people at a local company where I’d actually gone in for a face-to-face interview, only to learn later the position I wanted –and still want! – had been closed without hiring anyone for budget reasons. These two people know of my standing invitation to take them to lunch… and have recently put me off, yet again, until the end of the quarter. Why? Too busy. (Please note that I don’t blame them; work has priority over networking, and when things need doing, they need to be done – I just hope that things settle down enough for them to have time to take me up on my offer even if there is no open position.)

To be fair, I understand that if people indulged all the requests for their time, they’d never get their own jobs done… but my success rate, even with a warm referral from a person known to them, or knowing them already from prior face-to-face conversations, is staggeringly and depressingly low.

The hidden costs of crazybusy

So if you’ll indulge me… it is perfectly understandable in hard economic times that companies ask for more effort from fewer people. But there are several costs associated with this hyper-lean way of doing business that should, in the view of senior managers with perspective, be considered. Here are some of these unquantifiable costs to this time-austerity:

First, health

People need “down time”; between the commute, 10-12 hour days, chores, other obligations (e.g., family), and the need for sleep, working people this hard takes a physical toll. Add to this always being “connected” and the stress 24/7 access can create. Wringing people for more and more hours at work is a short-term payoff only.

Second, work-life balance

Many people, especially as they get older, have families, friends, and outside interests. It’s one thing to have a crisis at work, and need to put in extra hours – no white collar employee I know objects to this. Families understand. But when overtime becomes SOP children wonder why daddy or mommy can’t be there. And I guarantee you that there is not a person who, on their death bed, will think back and wish they’d spent more time at work rather than with their family.

Third, loyalty and retention

The internet is abuzz these days with increasing numbers of articles discussing employee loyalty and retention. One of the fears voiced by many such articles is that as the economy improves, people will seek to jump. Why would they want to jump? Among reasons given, like challenge and career growth, is a better balance between work and a life outside work.

Fourth, hiring

Yes, I said hiring. One of the things I and others have noticed is that job descriptions are getting ever-more-specific. Why? Because running lean means that roles overlap. In order to get things done, people take up responsibilities caused by things needing doing that are not done because of running so lean. This creates aggregate positions for which nobody can prepare, because each position is unique to the company. Along that line, when a person is in a position over time the role becomes customized to their responsibilities and preferences. When they leave, a hiring manager often views this as a need to find a replacement, not a successor. Not a mere semantic different, it means writing a job description based on the person who just left, a person who had grown into and customized that job.

Most peoples’ careers have grown at least semi-organically; the majority of my own changes have been involuntary, not planned. There is no “candidate factory” out there, yet job descriptions are written razor-sharp as though there were. Thus the Goldilocks syndrome is born. No wonder employers can’t find perfect fit employees, and leave jobs open for month after quarter after year – further creating the need for even more overtime. Which causes more stress. Which drives people to want to find a new job. Whose openings after people jump create more openings with Goldilocks job descriptions. And so it goes.

Fifth, most companies expect to grow sooner or later

While there are concessions necessary in hard times, when employees – and especially managers – have time to cultivate relationships with people outside, this reduces the risk factor in hiring by establishing relationships with potential candidates. Managers can thus, over the development of a relationship, vet possible employees over time. By working people so hard they have no time to do this, senior management actually increases the risk of making a bad hire when an opening is created and nobody internally has relationships with suitable people on the outside… because they’ve been too busy.

“What can’t go on forever, won’t.” – Glenn Reynolds

When things improve, company leaders need to make it up to those who sacrificed for the company’s sake – the “employment continuation award” is not sufficient. And one of the things those leaders need to do is to lighten the work load when economics allow it, and to make it clear they intend to do this as soon as feasible.

The harder companies squeeze to wring more productivity out of their people, the more resentment that squeezing will breed. Is this really the emotional state employers want their people in?

Update 3-3-2014: Thanks to Al Quadros, who commented on my essay when I posted it to a group; his post got me to realize there is another cost to crazybusy. Specifically, when one is judged by the hours one spends at the office, there is every incentive to be inefficient, thus generating the need to be at the office more. Aside from the obvious concern ofactivity vs. progress, this creates the habit of being inefficient… and if/when things return to a more normal pace, that habit will remain.

© 2014, 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 real secrets of a killer resume

By Neil Patrick

There’s a simple formula that will improve your resume beyond recognition and get you interviews. It’s not magic, it requires no cheating or lying. It just works. Here it is.

Last week I was asked by a Twitter friend to provide him with a review and recommendations on how to improve his resume. I was happy to do so. As it turned out, he’d been in the same job for the last 18 years. So it’s fair to say, he’d not had much practice at writing a resume. Worse, the last time he had, the world of job applications worked in a completely different way.

And his resume was like so many others I have seen before. I was certain that it wouldn’t get short-listed by any recruiter or HR person.

But the good news is that it was so easy to fix, that I thought I’d share the method we adopted here.

How recruiters look at resumes

The role of your resume isn’t to get you the job, it’s to get you the interview. And it’s got to do that in just a few seconds.

Recruiters and HR folk are very busy people. It’s not at all unusual for them to receive over 200 resumes to sort through when they advertise a position. If you had 400+ pages of resumes in front of you, could you honestly read every word of every resume, let alone make any sort of scientific assessment of the detailed merits of each?

So they do what any sensible person would do faced with this dilemma. Each resume gets a quick scan and is either selected for the short list or rejected there and then. Typical time for this is shown by research to be just 5-10 seconds. Therefore we must give them what they want with just a few seconds scan.

Make it easy for them to choose you

Play them at their own game, scrutinise the job description and extract all the keywords from it. Now figure out how to include all of these in your resume.

Recruiters read the first few lines. Right now, they don’t care about your address or your email address. So don’t put these at the top of the page. Move them to the end.

Next you must have a compelling summary. This should be able to be scan read in around 5 seconds. This should be at the top of the first page. Here’s the first trick. Write a unique summary which is based not just on you, but the job description of the job you are applying for. Show them that you match it. Do not tell lies, but look hard at the job description and then find everything in your past career which shows how you have done these things already.

It may be that some things that are in the job description, you haven’t actually done before. But don’t give up. Think about things which might be similar or require similar skills and capabilities. Use these instead, pointing out how they are similar. Don’t expect a recruiter to understand this automatically – you must spell it out for them.

The language you use here is vital. Use short sentences. Include relevant keywords. Take as many of these as you can from the job description. This also helps if they are using resume scanning software which is increasingly common.

It’s not what you say, it’s how you say it that matters

Producing the best resume is a sales job, not an administrative one.

Most people write their resume as a compilation of their previous job descriptions. This approach condemns you to failure before you even start.

Think about the job you want to get interviewed for. Next think about the type of person they'd want to hire for these jobs. Now give them this in your resume in a really clear way. Do not worry about omitting things which were on your past job descriptions. Think about every single line...does this point make me sound like a fit, or not? If not leave it out.

Do not just think about your hard skills like your knowledge of software or products, work out also what type of personality they ideally want. Most job descriptions include lots of supposed ideals like ‘team player’, ‘goal-focussed’ and ‘good communication skills’. Get smart, decide what is really important to the role. If it’s a collaborative team role, emphasise these parts of your approach and personality. If it’s a results driven role like sales, you’ll do better to talk about things like your success at hitting targets and deadlines.

Don’t just say it, prove it

This next step will transform the reader's perception of you. Present your accomplishments for each job you have held, emphasizing those which correlate with the job description. Bullet point these.

Start every sentence with a strong action verb. eg achieved, transformed, won, beat, excelled, increased, improved etc.

The next trick is to quantify or qualify each statement you are making with evidence to back it up. By doing this you turn what may sound like an idle boast into a powerful description of your ability to make a valuable contribution.

Most people have had targets and assessments of their performance - so select where you did well and talk about these and include the numbers as evidence. Think about your performance appraisals and take the best points from those. Use these as the proof of your accomplishments.

Reorder these bullet points after you have quantified your accomplishments. For example, let's say we were saying something like 'Increased client satisfaction by 20% each year leading to a halving of customer complaints.' That's a big and valuable impact. And therefore it could be the first statement you put at the top of the section.

Even if you worked in a non-target driven environment, you can still use this approach. For example, you probably got a lot better at what you did over time in your current or past job. So you can describe how for example, you managed to double the number of client accounts you worked on, or projects you contributed to.

Show how you made a difference

Recruiters want people that will make a positive difference. It might be that you do this by being a super helpful person and that's great - in fact it's a bonus, but sadly it won't get you an interview. So focus your resume on what you’ve achieved first. How you do it is secondary - if you get an interview, then you can talk about how you achieve things.

Now go back and streamline the whole document

Finally review the whole document again. At this stage:

• Remove every single unnecessary word. If it’s not adding value, take it out.

• Replace any weak verbs with strong ones. For example, instead of saying ‘Became project team member for x’, say, ‘Put myself forward for appointment to project team for x’

• Check that every claim you make is verified with evidence to prove it.

• Spell check as if your life depended on it! Do not rely on Word to do this for you. One particular case that I recall involved a resume which stated, 'I have extensive experience in pubic financing'

• Finally revisit the job description and check that every keyword in it is included in your resume.

And that’s it. It may seem like a fiddly procedure at first, but once you adopt it as your normal process, it gets much easier and quicker. But best of all, you can be confident that your resume will be better than your competition…unless they read this blog too!