Category Archives: Finding a Job

This is not what I was going to do this morning, but yesterday I had the privilege of participating in a meeting that caused me to halt in my tracks and think about young people and what they need.  I believe the most important graduation gift you can give to yourself is a plan.

If you are a student about to leave the academic world, there are lots of opinions on whose job it is to get you a job.  Let’s start right here—it is your own responsibility to sort through advice, make mistakes, make good friends who you trust and who will help you, master the use of reliable basic tools, and above all to care about, think through, and reflect on your decisions along the way.  You are accountable for yourself and all of your actions.

But how do you begin to organize yourself so that you can evaluate your own performance?  First, you have to create a plan; your plan has to be written.  It is not real if it is not written. As you know by now, documents are easily revised, so plans can be changed, but you do have to have one and it has to be real.   Until you have a plan (and a plan is much more than a job objective), you are a bit anchorless and untethered, and that’s how you are going to look to others.

Your plan reflects your career strategy.  A strategy is simply what you want to do with yourself and your resources.  A career strategy, however, has to be integrated into your other plans and other things that you want for your life.  A career strategy speaks to how you will fund your life and your purpose, whatever it is. Career is your professional, commercial, or economic platform.

Supporting  that platform are your professional or commercial competencies and skills, political competencies and skills, social competencies and skills, and your resource management competencies and skills.  When you go to school, much of what you learn in the classroom and via planned learning experiences is in the commercial arena.  But the other platform support areas are just as important, and at times even more important.  Career management and job acquisition depend heavily on social, political, and resource management competencies, which are far less likely to be taught, designed, or structured for you in the course of your formal education.   If you don’t have an adequate supply, acquiring the right competencies should be one of your plan objectives.  This is your plan: put into it what you believe is important.

The strategy part of your plan should answer three questions:

• Where do you want to go?
• What is on the road ahead?
• How will you get there?

Not easy questions, I agree.  And you may change your mind tomorrow; no argument from me.  But you have to have a distinct career identity and some clarity around your values in order to convince others to support you on your journey; “I don’t know” is not as good as “I believe” or  “I think” or “I like” when the subject is what you want.

The rest of your plan should include:

• An appraisal of where you are right now; this is your starting point.
• Acknowledgment that the past is past; you’ve let the past go in specific ways.
• An inventory of your personal resources, assets, and attributes.
• A list of your allies and advocates.
• A description of your purpose and your values: what you will and won’t do.
• Your strengths and weaknesses as you understand them.
• Obstacles in your path or in your head.
• Three things that you absolutely must do to be successful.
• Long and short term goals.
• Performance measures and a timeline.

Notice that your resume is not on this list.  There’s a reason.  Resumes send our vision backwards, and tend to make us want to cling to our past accomplishments. You will need a resume, most certainly.  But the best resumes are accompanied by forward-thinking and forward-looking cover letters that tee up the resume contents by pointing out what they mean for the future.  You can’t do that very well until you know where you are planning to take yourself, and how, and why.

The most important part of the career development process is the plan; the plan leads you to an understanding of yourself.  You can’t shortcut the plan, it’s like leaving the directions behind when you head for a place you have never been.

Does this look like a lot of work?  It is.  And most of you want to mention that no one you know has such a plan and they are getting exactly what they want (or exactly what you want).  Now is exactly when you should turn off the Friend-O-Meter that makes you look around to see what everyone else got that you didn’t. It simply doesn’t matter, it isn’t a race, and you don’t have to run.  What you do have to do is be prepared when your own opportunities pop up, and that is the function of a good, solid, well thought out plan that is all your own.

If I told you that in order to develop a useful career plan or job search strategy, you would have to do some research, what picture might show up in your mind’s eye?  A visit to several databases, a trip to the bookstore or library, a day with a search engine?  Research is how you get answers to your questions, so you need the questions first.  Your questions might be big and fact-oriented (What is the size of ABC’s primary market?), or simple and relationship-based (Would I like working at XYZ?).  Either way, asking questions and finding out the answers keeps you from misleading yourself by making wrong assumptions.

You can research from at least two directions:  1.) What are characteristics of/facts about the company I’m considering, and 2.) What are characteristics of/facts about me that would affect my job or career there?

Questions about the company to which you might want answers:

What business is the company in? Looks simple and straightforward, but isn’t.  I once worked for a medical device company, but not that many of the folks I interviewed for jobs there knew a.) what that was, and b.) why it was important.  Do you?  Many industries are regulated, and that limits their choices about marketing, sales, and accounting, among other things.  Your interview performance may depend on knowing why this company does things the way it does.

Is the company a division or subsidiary of a larger company?  If so, where are the headquarters and what is the operating strategy? Your day to day life is heavily influenced by this piece of info.  If you were the top accounting dog at your last company and this looks like that job but at the division level, you might check into that.  Matrix structures. . . .reporting relationships. . . . all give new meaning to who really provides your performance feedback, if any.  And, your interviewer will be looking to see how your past reporting relationships will fit into their structure.

What constitutes financial health for this company? I keep hearing, for example,  that many new entrants into the unemployed or soon to be unemployed ranks declare that they are ready to “give back” and put their for-profit skills to work in the nonprofit arena.  I can assure you that nonprofit companies are complex, under-resourced, and on most days,  competitive places to work.  “No margin, no mission” is both overused and underapplied.  And, a lot of nonprofits are government contractors in disguise, with important regulatory obligations, thin contract margins, and a scary amount of direct responsibility for human lives.  How your target company earns its organizational living, in detail, is not a small matter.  Who pays for the product or service is material to the organization’s well-being.

What is it like to work there? This is one that I should have asked, more than once.  And, it’s the one I always told the candidates the truth about (especially those about to plunge into a difficult or crisis situation).  If you get different answers from different sources, find out why.  If universally, your sources say exactly the same thing, check the web site for the source of the Kool-Aid they drank, or the spin.  If there is spontaneity and joy in the source, press for the reasons.

Those are questions about the company.  What about you?  What do you need to know–not just affirm–about yourself?

Who are you? Just like a company has a brand, a leader, and a plan to deliver a product or service, so should you.  Know your value and be specific about what you really want in return for your efforts.  What is important to you will come through your interactions and priorities every day; plan for a good fit, not a forced march.

What do you want to do each and every day? Jobs have to give something back at regular intervals, not once every few months or so.  The hours you spend on the job have to provide you with some kind of satisfaction.  It’s one thing to be a teacher, another to actually get to teach every day.  If you don’t like negotiating, don’t go into human resources.  It’s all those folks really do (IMHO, sorry, friends, it’s just the way I see it).  If airports, cars and hotels aren’t your favorite hangout, don’t ignore the fact that the job is 75% travel–that’s three full weeks a month.

How much feedback do you need and want? Do you want other people to like and admire you or are you more about results. . . and do you realize that the two might be mutually exclusive?  If you are hungry for recognition, you might be more short term oriented, as an example of the importance of the question.  Do not fool yourself into thinking that this is not material.  Your expectations around rewards and recognition are powerful forces in your work life.

What makes you happy? For some people, this might be as simple as summers off with the kids not in school.  For others, it’s as complex as saving a corner of the world, a life, or a million dollars to spend on a cool retirement.  Whatever it is for you, be sure that whatever you do is going to get you there–if not now, then somewhere along the line.

Research–like everything else–can’t live just in your head.  Document your questions, and add the answers or working hypotheses as you come upon them.  You won’t be tempted to gloss over a truth just because you wish it weren’t true, if you pursue the answers to your questions in an objective way.  Building a plan for a good career or getting a good job is not a matter of luck; it’s a process of learning, growing, and strengthening your value.

Next time:  Research Methods

Regardless of your age, capacity for remembering important details, or improvisational skills, there are cardinal rules for career plan organization and  management.  They are:

1.  Your written and detailed strategic career plan must have at least two homes: a digital home (on your hard drive, with back ups, a cd, a zip drive, or an online venue of your choice) and a paper version, in a binder or organizer file.  You will need access at times when you are not plugged in, I promise you.  You can ask someone whose name you can’t quite connect to the right opportunity or company to wait while you reach for the binder and turn to the right page, but you cannot ask someone to wait while your Office 2007 fires up and runs the antivirus software you have set to automatic.

2.  Date and time stamp everything you do.  I mean that figuratively, of course, but you can do it with electronic and digital media and you should do it with the notes you write by hand while on the phone or in a meeting.  Write the date and time on everything, or attach something with the date and time on it if you don’t want to violate or make a mark on an original document.

3.  Do not play with your computer or other digital or electronic stuff while talking to anyone about anything.  It’s tempting to take notes while interviewing or networking.  It’s fine to write them longhand.  But tapping on your keyboard, while it may seem efficient to you, is very different from an open pad and pencil or pen on the table.  For one thing, your guest can’t reach for it and say, here, let me write down a few names and phone numbers for you, or let me sketch that out, or here’s the map.   Second, it’s not clear what you are doing and it has an unpleasantly isolating effect.  If you are both tapping, it’s just weird.

4.  Just like you pay your bills on the same day of the month, or review your budget, or call your family, or go to yoga class, you have to make time for your goals and to do lists.  You can’t do the audit checklist once and walk away.  Even if you don’t have time to revise, even if you just want time to think through a passing encounter with an ambiguity or anomaly you just thought of, you have to go there.  Make a note.

5.  You must have an organized workspace in your home.  If your home is 300 square feet and you share it, you still have to have a few square feet—it might do double duty—where you store, review, and update your plan, and ponder the possibilities.  Place is a powerful and important trigger for ideas, thoughts, and feelings.

6.  Don’t bring your career plan to work.  I’m pretty sure this requires no explanation or elaboration, but here it is anyhow.  Sharply separate, physically and administratively, your present circumstances and your future prospects, simply because it is the right thing to do.   But, you say, the recruiter (my friend, my mentor, the names sourcer, the president of the company I really want to work for) called me (or emailed me) at work.  No—you happened to be at work when they called you.  You may now say, “What is a good time for us to reschedule this conversation?”  It is never ever appropriate to take yourself and your cell phone or Blackberry outside and return the call from the sidewalk.  Please. The same principle applies to texting or emailing from work or a work-related activity.  It is not done that way.

7.  Do not fib or lie, about anything.  It is not worth it.  It sticks to you and makes you feel bad.  Then, it makes you look stupid, which is almost as bad.

8.  Thank people a lot, much, much more than you think is enough.

9.  Remember things.  Especially little things about other people.  That’s why we write them down.

10.  Take time off from thinking about and acting on your career.  Go away from it, take your focus elsewhere for a time—scheduled by you, for as long as you feel you need.  But write a goal on that subject and schedule your timely return, and resume your progress.

Remember–whatever it is, it isn’t real unless it is written somewhere.  The things that live their whole lives in your head are just dreams.

The June issue of Inc. magazine contains a great article by Jason Fried, co-founder of 37 Signals and co-author of Rework.  Fried and the hiring managers at 37 Signals ignore resumes, maintaining that “Resumes reduce people to bullet points, and most people look pretty good as bullet points.”  I’d add that most bullet points look alike, since there’s a limited supply of action verbs that can be used on a resume, and only so many relevant things in a job or a company that you could have done by yourself. You’d be surprised at how obsolete those things look after a few short years, too.

But, says Fried, “Cover letters say it all.  They immediately tell you if someone wants this job or just any job.” Yes, I say, yes!   And therein lies the magic of career planning.  It helps you identify and intelligently and confidently communicate what you want, why you want it, and what you offer in return for the opportunity you seek.

If you don’t know anything about a company, you can’t write a cohesive letter explaining why you want to join it.  And as for the sadly shallow advice to parrot the bullet points in a job posting with your own bullet-pointed section illustrating you’ve “been there, done that,” how many of those letters do you think might be sitting in that file?

A career planner doesn’t wait for the posting. If you know what you want, why wait passively for some sort of perverse permission to ask for it?  If you don’t know what you want, how can you make a good case for yourself as the best candidate for anything?

Fried doesn’t hire people when 37 Signals doesn’t have a need to fill, and 37 Signals doesn’t go looking for new needs in order to justify a hire.  But clearly when it’s time to hire, they think through the offering that shows who has been readying himself or herself for such a career opportunity.