Annually review your career progress relative to your career plan. Are you where you wanted to be when you wanted to be there? If not, there are three possible sources of the problem, short of a worldwide depression: your industry, your company, or you. If you decide that you are the reason for your slower-than-desired career progression, and your goal and objectives are therefore overly optimistic, the solution is to either select a more realistic goal and objectives or to work harder and smarter. On the other hand, if you decide that the source of your problem is an unhealthy industry or company environment, then it is time to begin a new job search.
Such a new job search will be easier this time than last you have learned the system and used it successfully. You know it worked for you once and will work again. He who is best prepared for job hunting has the advantage, regardless of experience, skills, and education. Research your options. Research the company. Research the interviewer. Research yourself.
Self-Confidence Is Vital
Self-confidence is a result of preparation and practice, the knowledge that you have done your homework well, and that you are using a logical system to change jobs, and the system works. If you can get one job lead, you can get a hundred. If you can arrange one interview, you can arrange fifty. If you can get one job offer, you can get a dozen. If you successfully changed jobs once, you can do it again and again. Remember to project that self-confidence, but not arrogance, to the decision makers.
Avoid Resumes
Resumes are ineffective. Although they are a temptingly easy tool to use for job hunting, they are an even easier tool for a company to use to disqualify you without giving you the opportunity of a personal interview. Since hiring decisions depend primarily on the personal chemistry that is created within the interview rather than on the impersonal data on the resume, always should be avoided in favor of personal contact. Additionally, the use of a resume encourages a passive approach to job hunting when an aggressive approach is much more effective. So, throw away your resume.
Avoid Personnel Departments
Personnel departments are usually a dead-end for job hunters as one of the primary responsibilities of these departments is to weed out job seekers. Personnel departments do not make hiring decisions; they only make "no-hire" decisions. The hiring decision is made by the supervisor of the open position based on his or her preferences, evaluation, and the personal chemistry established with the job hunter. Therefore, any other person's opinions and judgments, such as those of someone in the Personnel Department, are irrelevant, and unfortunately, potentially damning. Skip the personnel department and go directly to the decision maker. Jobs are often open and then filled before the personnel department knows about them.
The Interview is Vital Key!
The personal interview with the supervisor can make or break you. If you are the least qualified candidate for the position in terms of skills and experience, you can still get the job offer if you handle the interview well by doing your homework and projecting self-confidence and enthusiasm. Even if you are the best qualified candidate, you can disqualify yourself if you handle the interview poorly by being unprepared, unenthusiastic, and uninterested. The impression you create in the interview is the chief factor in the hiring decision of the supervisor. Therefore, concentrate your energies on interviewing as often and as well as possible.
Your personal appearance creates an immediate, distinct, and lasting impression in the mind of the interviewer. Your manner of dress automatically elicits certain expectations and stereotypes. If you are well dressed in a correct business manner, you will be perceived as more successful and worthy of hire than the individual who pays less attention to such details. Successful people dress well because they have acquired the appreciation of what their image can do for them. People who yearn for success can speed the process by dressing well and generating that image in the eye of others. A true, although some might say unfortunate, axiom of life is that style can be sometimes more effective than substance.
"No is Not a Dirty Word"
Rejection is not enjoyable. The more important the quest, such as in courtship or job hunting, the more disappointing the rejection. However, when the respective goal is so very attractive, it becomes all the more important to overcome that disappointment, and it is the pervasive strength of your goal that makes it so easy to handle the rejection. If you want something badly enough and you know that sooner or later someone who say yes to you, how many times are you willing to first hear the word no? One hundred? One thousand?. If you know you will be successful ultimately, it doesn't matter how many times you first hear the word no. So no is not a dirty word, it is just a temporary inconvenience on the way to a yes.
In conclusion, remember the words of Thomas Wolfe in The Web and the Rock:
If a man has a talent and cannot use it, he has failed. If he has a talent and uses only half of it, he has partly failed. If he has a talent and learns somehow to use the whole of it, he has gloriously succeeded, and won a satisfaction and a triumph few men ever know.
