He went on to explain why. 'Most of them, at least nine out of ten, haven't the faintest idea of what efficient networking is all about. The calls they've made will almost certainly have been completely mismanaged and, since they will have rung their best contacts first, they will have wasted their potentially most valuable leads.' He spread his hands in a gesture of resignation. 'You don't get a second bite at the cherry.'
Sad though it is, the situation described by Chris Cawcutt is not altogether surprising. It is extremely common, and quite understandable, for people who are seeking jobs, particularly those who have recently been thrust out of work, to become consumed by the need to get on with the task, to be doing something. Nor is it entirely unexpected that they should be unfamiliar with relatively new and widely misunderstood techniques such as networking, and consequently do more harm than good when they attempt to use them.
What is absolutely staggering, on the other hand, is the manner in which the majority of executives go about organizing and managing their whole job search campaign. Men and women who have presumably, to judge by their achievements, been highly competent in managing projects for their employers seem to go completely to pieces when it comes to managing their own careers. Even cobblers' children are well shod by comparison!
Whoever first came up with the saying that finding a job is a job in itself was a lot wiser than he or she probably realized. Most people who glibly repeat the cliché take it to mean no more than the fact that seeking a job involves a lot of effort, perhaps so much that it actually becomes a full-time job in itself. In reality there is far more to it than that.
Like any major project, the job search can be handled with varying degrees of efficiency - or inefficiency. And, again like any project you might undertake in the course of your employment as a manager, the most common causes of failure stem from diving in feet first without having done the groundwork. Clarifying the problem, analyzing the situation and setting clear objectives ought to be second nature to any competent executive, but they all too often get ignored when managers are dealing with their own careers, rather than with a problem at work.
The situation was neatly summed up by John Woodger, Vice President, International, of Right Associates, one of the world's largest outplacement firms. 'Most executives', John commented wryly, 'do more research on their annual holiday than they do on their career. Having no strategic goal, they base their job moves on expediency, substituting panic for logic. It's like boarding the first bus that comes along -- it may be going to the wrong destination, but they hop on anyway.'
It is precisely because so many people get it wrong that this is where you get your first, and arguably greatest, chance to get ahead of the competition. Reining in your enthusiasm, and going through a detailed research and analysis exercise before you even start chasing specific positions or contacts may seem frustrating. That is probably why so many job seekers skip it. In the long run, though, it will provide a far less tedious, more efficient and much faster route to the achievement of your objective.
Speaking of which, what is your objective? A better job? Your ideal job? Any job at all, so long as it pays the bills?
If you answered in any of these terms, it is time you thought again. Time you took a further step ahead by putting yourself in the other person's shoes. Time you got one thing straight: no one is interested in giving you a job. What employers are interested in is how you can benefit their organization. That is not just quibbling with words. It is a completely different way of looking at things. Forget about your job search; start thinking about your marketing campaign.
The marketing concept
Sales and marketing are two words which produce an instinctive negative reaction in the vast majority of executives who are not themselves engaged in these areas - and even in some who are. The words conjure up images of door-to-door double glazing salespeople and of television commercials so nauseating that you instantly reach for the remote control. To suggest that you treat yourself as a product to be hawked around a largely uninterested market place seems like the ultimate indignity.
But there is another kind of selling which has next to nothing in common with pushy doorstep salespeople or with ghastly TV ads. It is the kind of approach used by businesses like law and accountancy practices, and firms of management consultants. Because their services are professional, they have to adopt a professional approach to marketing and selling -- and so must you. What is the next to nothing in common? Well, both approaches are, in fact, based on the same fundamental principle: the basic concept of marketing. This quite simply states that you are far more likely to sell something if you understand whether and why potential purchasers might want it in the first place.
If that seems too obvious to be worth spending your time on, just stop and ask yourself whether you have been basing your whole job search on this fundamental concept. The odds are that you have not and that, as a result, you have probably been wasting an awful lot of time and effort. What you need to do now is to stop wasting time and start investing it -- and the first investment you have to make is in learning a little about the professional approach to marketing.
How to become a marketing pro
Any sales and marketing people who are tempted to skip this part of the article had better think again -- which may at least give some comfort to those trained in other disciplines. Just as managers seem unable to manage their own job campaigns, so sales and marketing people seem to be no better than anyone else at identifying likely buyers of their services or at closing the sale. Cobblers' children ride again!
Confirmation comes from someone who certainly ought to know. Neil Cameron, managing director of marketing recruitment specialists The Lloyd Group, states quite categorically, 'I see no more evidence of the use of proven marketing techniques being applied to the job search by marketing people than by anyone else.'
But what are these techniques? And can you really market a person the way commercial businesses market their products and services?
Neil Cameron likened the process not so much to the promotion of a new product or service, as to what marketing people call the 'repositioning' of an existing one. You cannot start your career all over again from scratch, so even if there may, for example, be a crying need for brain surgeons that is not going to help you if you have spent the whole 20 years of your working life in retail management. What you can do, on the other hand, is find new markets for your existing skills and experience; to add new skills through training and additional experience by, for example, undertaking consultancy work; and to 'repackage' yourself by improving your application letters and CV, your image and your interview technique.
Neil then went on to point out, 'You can't reposition until you know what you've got to begin with. You need to carry out an audit of what you currently have to offer to prospective employers, and then you can look at how their perception of you can be broadened and improved.'
'Like any marketing professional', Neil explained, *you have to go through the structured process of market research, product development and the distribution process. 'The starting point', he emphasized, 'is market research.'
Know thyself
All of this assumes that you already know what sort of job you are aiming for. However, if you or your employers had worked out several thousand pounds on an outplacement program, the first task you would be set, before looking either at your skills and experience or at the market for them, would be to undertake a comprehensive self-appraisal, concentrating on what you enjoy doing, what you are suited to doing and how these factors relate to the rest of your life -- family, leisure etc.
This is not just a way for the outplacement firms to justify their fees. Given the risible career advice most people got when they completed full-time education and the haphazard way sub-sequent moves so often take place (e.g. if someone is a good salesperson, researcher or whatever, promote them to manager of the department, regardless of whether they have managerial ability or not), a significant number of people end up in jobs they are neither suited to nor enjoy. They would be much happier, and consequently more successful, if at an earlier stage they had sat down and given some serious thought to the kinds of questions raised in the self-appraisal process.
This whole procedure is, moreover, an essential preparation for all the subsequent stages of the job search, from accurately targeting yourself at the kind of role for which you are likely to be the number one candidate to answering interview questions like 'How have you developed as an individual in the course of your career?': 'Where do you see your career going over the next five years?': and 'In what ways can you add value to our company?'.
Try it for yourself. Take a sheet of paper and write down:
- What you like (d) about your present/most recent job
- What you dislike(d)
- The actual work
- The organization
- The people -- especially your boss
- How far you identify with what the business does -- its products or services
- Where the job is based (city center, rural environment, industrial estate etc.)
- The length, and difficulty, of the journey to and from work
- The hours you work and their effect on the rest of your life
- Travel involved in the job -- frequency, duration and destinations
- Fringe benefits
- Promotion prospects
- How do you think you are seen by your
- boss?
- peers? Staff?
- And how about people outside work, such as your
- spouse/partner?
- children?
- parents?
- friends?
Stay in the domestic area for a moment. Putting your job to one side, ask yourself:
- What do you find satisfying about your current way of life?
- What do you dislike about it?
- What do you do well?
- What do you do badly?
- What do you like about yourself?
- What are you proud of having overcome?
- What would you still like to overcome or to change?
- What are your most important values?
- What are your most cherished aspirations?
But, you may ask, what about the financial considerations? When do we get on to them?
The answer is, 'Not yet'. While it is perfectly natural that money should be the first thought on your mind, especially if you are out of a job, professional career counselors do not bring that into the equation until after they have got you to look at what you like doing and why, at what you have to offer in terms of skills, experience and qualifications, and at who might want to buy your services. The reason is that taking these factors into consideration first vastly increases the options open to you, whereas starting off with the financial considerations closes options down.
The 'money first' mentality is reinforced by the conditioning that comes from thinking of advertisements as the main source of job vacancies. Most advertisements have a price tag on them which rules you either in or out. Hidden approaches which, do not forget, account for far more career opportunities than adverts operate in a completely different manner. When you make a networking contact or a speculative application, you do not even have to consider money. You start off by finding -- or creating --opportunities. By the time money comes into the frame, you already have someone interested in employing you and that puts things in a very different perspective.
The Creative Job Campaign
While some job seekers initially take a bit of convincing about the value of undertaking a comprehensive self-appraisal, it is the mechanics that causes problems for others. It can be particularly difficult if you are still trying to come to grips with having recently found yourself out of a job, perhaps for the first time in your life. As Siobhan Hamilton-Phillips, chief executive of the Vocational Guidance Association, explained, 'When people are worried about what to do next, their mind shuts down rather than opening up.'
It is, furthermore, difficult to be truly objective about yourself. Enlisting the aid of your spouse or partner, or of a relative, friend or colleague may help, in that they may see things that you do not and may be able to challenge your in-built assumptions. On the other hand, it may be that they know you too well to be truly objective. Furthermore, you may find it difficult to bare your soul to people with whom you are so closely involved. Often it is easier to talk to a stranger.
Outplacement gives you precisely that. A trained stranger with relevant experience -- your counselor -- leads you through the self-appraisal, often with the aid of a battery of questionnaires and tests. But outplacement is expensive. Typically, it costs several thousand pounds. Unless your employer is willing to cough up, you are probably going to think twice about doing so out of your own pocket.
Fortunately, it is possible to buy bits of the outplacement service if you cannot afford the whole and, in addition to career counselors and CV writers, there are firms which offer help with this initial stage of the job search process. For a fee in the hundreds, rather than thousands, of pounds organizations like the Vocational Guidance Association and Career Analysts Ltd will provide a combination of tests and counseling aimed first at ensuring that you consider all of the options open to you, and then at guiding you in the most appropriate, and realistic, direction.
Like John Woodger of Right Associates. Career Analysts Ltd's MD Peter Forsyth insists on the need to take a holistic approach, looking at the whole person. In order to get this complete picture, he and his counselors, all of whom are chartered psychologists, would look at the following:
- Interests: What you enjoy doing is usually what you do best. Do you prefer working with numbers, with words or with people? Are you more creative or more practical?
- Attitudes: What do you look for in terms of organizational culture, relationships with other people, remuneration and career progression?
- Attainments: What have you achieved at work and, where relevant, elsewhere?
- Aptitudes: Various kinds of reasoning ability (verbal, numerical, abstract, spatial, mechanical and perceptual), and your attention to detail are tested to assess your flexibility, resourcefulness and potential to develop new skills.
- Physical Factors: How well do your appearance, manner and speech suit you to different kinds of job?
- Personality: A personality profile assesses how you are likely to react to different problems and situations. It looks at such questions as whether you are independent or conformist, guided by your instincts or by hard facts, outgoing or self-contained, and whether you are a worrier or not.
- Circumstances: To what extent are your choices limited by financial, personal and family commitments?
**You have got to smack someone right between the eyes with whatever it is that makes you just right for them."
