Many people out of a job assume that they know exactly the best and easy way to go about getting one, without giving the matter much thought. They go to employment agencies and executive recruiters. They talk to their business associates, friends, and lawyers. They insert advertisements. They then think that their prayers will be answered. They rush to people who advertise expert job-securing services. Only last week someone showed me a resume prepared with the help of one of these outfits, which had cost him six hundred dollars. He had proudly mailed it out, but had received not even one job offer for his pains. I have often envied the lifeguard who can shout loudly and clearly, "Stop! Calm down! Use your efforts where they will do the most good!"
Finding a job, or changing one job for another, is a very specialized technique, and I could never understand how a person, completely inexperienced in this field, could assume that he knew a single thing about it. This is too often the case, and it makes it infinitely harder to help him. Sometimes it takes a great deal of energy to persuade a job-seeker to forget the hocus-pocus, and the trite, or the tricky approach.
Recently I came across the following clipping about a man who enclosed with his letter a small envelope containing a spoonful of sugar, hoping to sweeten the reception of his letter.
JOB-HUNTER BAITS TRAP WITH SUGAR
Chicago, Aug. 25 (AP)-Fred L. Marx of suburban Deerfield believes in the novel approach in job hunting. He sent out 100 letters to presidents of Chicago companies, each containing a spoonful of sugar done up in cellophane. The letters say that his wife believes he is slightly crazy, but that he frankly hopes the gift will get him a five-minute interview.
Don't waste your time on gimmicks-you can never go wrong being conservative. There is no one so prone to take advice from one and all as a person who is job-hunting. Every time he gets new advice, he changes his approach and strategy; and just as often he changes his course-goes off the main road, and loses both momentum and time. There is, of course, no reason why you should be reading this book and taking the advice that I am trying to give you. There have been others who did not take it, at first.
I well remember one very bright young man, Robert O., who came back to my office after remaining away a long time and said, "I have wasted several months, and it has cost me nearly five thousand dollars in expenses and lost earnings to prove that 1 was wrong and you were right in your job-getting advice." From then on, he became one of the greatest boosters of my approach to job-hunting.
Realize in Advance That Job-Hunting Is a Hard Task
Job-hunting can become a long, dreary, and lonesome road for the person trying to find a job. One of the best articles written on this subject appeared in an issue of Vortime magazine. The title of it was "How Executives Get Jobs," written by Perrin Stryker. I quote; "Whatever their reasons, nearly all executives anxious to change jobs can expect to find the process a lonely, miserable experience. Indeed, finding a new job is about the most difficult, embarrassing, and patience-exhausting venture an executive can undertake." One of the biggest reasons for this is that-and again I quote from the same article-"Top executives are just as stupid about selling themselves as youngsters trying for their first job." It has been my experience that most executives are hog-tied by inhibition, convention, and fear of what the neighbors and former associates might think.
Printers' Ink of November, 1962, published an article called "Job Hunter: the Diary of a Lost Year." I suggest that you read it, as it presents such a vivid picture of one man's experience. It is written from the depths of his scarred soul. He leads you through his travail, month by month. He had eight weeks before he lost the use of his office, secretary, and telephone. Thereafter, the telephone booth became his office and headquarters. His blood really chilled when he had to register for unemployment compensation and he realized with renewed shock that he was a member of the "Unemployed Society." 1 quote: "Sixth month: this is where the pavement really begins to hurt under your feet; where you run down all the leads; where you write to blind box numbers and get no reply; where you tramp around employment agencies and sit there with teen-age 'gal Fridays' waiting to be processed; where you ride sooty little trains across the miasmic marshes of New Jersey to factories beside smoking slag heaps; where you rise and shave and stuff your brief case full of resumes and take the train to nowhere. And, I might add, the commuting to nowhere costs just as much as the ticket to a paycheck, but you hand it over anyway because today might be the day
When faced with filling out application forms, he says, "Some demand information rarely given to anyone outside our immediate family. Human dignity, I have discovered, is something more than a four-color spread of a sunset and a quote from John Stuart Mill. It's essential element is privacy of your home, your affairs, and your person; that privacy which permits the little legends which help us live with each other. But the list (check one) allows no little legends; it opens up your soul like the front of a doll's house."
After taking psychological and "personality" tests, he says, "I'm afraid they'll kill an opening Fm qualified for and almost as afraid they'll get me hired for the wrong reasons. Also, on a couple of occasions, I've had to take them before I was per-mitted to talk to anyone, only to find the job was completely outside my area. Two more precious days shot."
I have quoted at length from the Printers Ink article because I wanted you to share the experience of this man so you might get an idea of the possible long and painful road that may lie ahead of you if you take the wrong turn. To show you that the above is not unusual, here are two paragraphs from a letter I received today:
In the past five months I sent out 367 resumes in a direct mail campaign with a 42% reply and 3 interviews, answered 99 advertisements with one interview, registered with seven employment agencies with interview, and registered with all executive recruiters with no interviews. One of the five interviews progressed to the point where the VP wanted to hire me but he was overruled by the President who favored maintaining the status quo until after their peak season.
I would appreciate being allowed to attend your "Thursday Night Club" or any other counseling sessions where I might find what is wrong with my present program and find new and more productive methods of job-hunting.
If you think that these experiences are exceptions, let me give you a jolt and tell you that I have known of hundreds of job-getting experiences that are worse. I have had men come in to see me who have been out of a job for two years and more. In most of these cases, after working with my group for only a few weeks, they were trying to find not just a job but a better one; a job not only with more money but with a better title, I would like to save you as much time, money, and heartache as is possible by starting you off immediately on the right track and keeping you on it.
Like the lifeguard, I would like to stop you from floundering in all directions. These are the immediate moves you should not make:
- Do not run at once to your friends and business associates, or big-name contacts. You can see them later when you are ready for them.
- Do not place an advertisement in the job-wanted columns of your favorite paper or trade magazine. In fact, do not place any ad until you have studied more productive ways.
- Do not rush to management consultants, executive recruiters, to the so-called head-hunters. They prefer to come to you; you have no glamour for them when you are an unemployed person.
- Do not go to the professional resume writers. Only you can write your resume; it must come out of your own personal experience.
- Steer clear of the advice of people who claim that they can get you a job, unless you can afford to waste several hundred or several thousand dollars for their services.
- Do not go away on a vacation, no matter how morbid you feel. The best therapy consists of getting busy on your job campaign and coming to grips with your personal problems. I have yet to find a man or woman who did not later regret having taken a vacation. You cannot help but lose momentum.
- Do not dwell on the politics or frictions that caused you to leave your last job. Get them completely out of your mind, or they will interfere with your concentrating on this ex citing new venture.
- Beware of the "Tin Cup" or the "Brother, can you spare a dime" approach. Do not go to your friends and ask if they know of a job lead. Do not go from employer to employer asking if he has an opening.
- Do not contemplate a job change out of your present specialty unless you are prepared to take a lower salary or face the possibility of being out of a job much longer. The greener pasture is too often a mirage-when you get to it, you will find it has the same problems and troubles. Use the very special experience of your present job and apply it to get into a new industry or company. You can work toward a higher position, or in a different direction, when you are in the new job; that is the time to take every opportunity to take on more responsibility whenever it is available, espe cially when you are given a chance to broaden or change your direction. It is much easier to sell your past experience because with it you have definite acceptance.
- Do not get caught in the vicious circle of courtesy inter views through the kindness of friends. No one wants to be unkind to a person looking for work, so you will hear, "Sorry, we haven't a thing right now; if you had only come a month ago we could have made a place for you; but I will give you letters of introduction to friends of mine who might use you." This will often embark you on a merry-go-round. I know of one man who was given five letters of introduction by an officer of a large bank. This man kept a record of his interviews. His first contact snowballed into more than a hundred courtesy interviews. Each person wanted either to be helpful or to get rid of the man, and so passed him on happily to the next. Of course, nothing came of any of the interviews, and the man suffered both in loss of time and in loss of morale.
When I show job-hunters examples of the things others have done in job campaigns, I invariably get the reaction, ''Oh, that may be all right for him, but, you see, I am different. I could not do anything like that." My answer has been the same, thousands of times; "Sure, you are different-thank God you are-and if you weren't, we might all be gunning for the same job. If you were not different, your future employer could simply put all the names of the applicants in a hat, have a grand drawing, and the person whose name was drawn first would get the job. This would be much simpler than trying to cull one out of a hundred-or even a thousand."
I was recently told by one of my men that he knew of a case where there were sixteen hundred applicants who applied for a fairly high-level job in response to an advertisement. Only ten were selected to be interviewed. This dwindled down to three. The man who was chosen got the job because he is different from all the rest.
You too can be different; indeed, you must be different. You must make yourself into the one person in a hundred-you can even be the one person in a thousand. You can do this providing you use plain common sense and follow the instructions outlined in the following chapters.
Alake Your Job Campaign a Full-Time Job
Do not make unnecessary hurdles for yourself; do not listen to every Tom, Dick, and Harry who is ready with advice and encouragement, which all too often turns into discouragement. They are always eager to tell you what you should, or should not, do. At least one will say, "Why did you ever quit your last job?" or "Didn't you know it is much easier to get a job while you are employed?"
I differ vehemently with this belief. It has been my experience that it is much harder to find or change a job when you are in one. For one reason, it is almost impossible to take out the required time to look for a job when you are working. Holding down a position and conducting a job campaign are each full-time jobs in themselves; neither is done easily or well on a part-time basis.
Exactly how would you go about looking for a job if you were still working? Would you try to sandwich an interview into your lunch hour? Surely you could never have a relaxed interview if you were watching the clock. When would you arrange your interviews-after or during working hours? I am afraid that such maneuvers would affect not only your thinking but your attitude toward your present job as well, and would be very hard to conceal. Furthermore, if your boss found out that you were looking around; you might be asked to resign. It would be foolhardy to expect a promotion or a raise in salary. Then, suppose that you were having an interview in the forenoon or afternoon and the interviewer asked, 'Are you employed?" You would have to respond in the affirmative. The next probable questions might be, "Does your employer know that you are looking around? Did he or she give you the time off for this interview?" Obviously, you are now in a dilemma: if you don't have permission, you are stealing the time from your employer, and whatever the answer now is, the brutal fact is obvious-you cannot en gender much confidence with the interviewer.
How are you going to look for a job when you are in a job? Do you dare to go to employment agencies, or answer blind newspaper advertisements? Again, you may risk being fired. Do you think that you could possibly do a real job of trying to better yourself when you are inhibited by the fear of "being caught'*? Don't let anyone persuade you that you should look for a new job from a firmly entrenched position. After twenty-five years of experience, I find that you are just as acceptable when unemployed. Whether you are employed or not seems to count not at all with prospective employers; they are interested only in what you can do for them.
As you start out on your job campaign you will run into many discouraging interviews. You will be told at various times that you are too old or are too young; that they are looking for a person with more (or less) background and experience. As you study the job descriptions and want ads, you will find that they are looking for a young person, in the middle twenties, who have been to graduate school but who has had from five to ten years of heavy experience. It would be utterly impossible for someone of that age to have had that much experience. You will be told that you are "too big" a person for a certain job and that someone with your valuable experience will have no trouble in making an important connection. You will encounter many more brush-offs. It is hard to understand why employers resort to such flimsy, cruel pretexts. I am of the opinion that they are hiding behind these defensive answers and do not want to tell you the real reason for your turndown.
It is most important that you do not let these things affect your equilibrium or your morale. Realize at the beginning that you are going to get a few knocks, and learn to expect them. You are not going to click with everyone, any more than everyone is going to click with you. You, like most others, will end up with not only one good job but you will probably have several to choose from. This may not be obvious to you in the beginning. The uncertainty of the unknown or of what may be ahead will be your greatest concern.
Let me assure you that you really need not worry. You are embarking on one of the most valuable and exhilarating experiences of your life. Your start of the job campaign is much more important than all the other aspects of your search for a job. That is why I wish I could be like the lifeguard and save you from all the false starts and wasteful motions, the heart aches, and headaches, and embarrassments which follow the wrong initial move. Of equal importance, I would like to save you both time and money. Remember that when your income stops, everything that you or the family do, every telephone call, all correspondence and postage, all transportation costs, come out of your capital funds, your savings, or loans. If you wish to experiment, remember that the cost will come out of your own pocket.
For twenty-five years I have observed hundreds of men and women and have noted the results of their experiences. I have watched them fumble and experiment. Twenty-five years ago I fumbled along with them, and the things I relate in the following chapters are the refinement of methods that have been tried and have been found to work. These are not theories on how to get a job; these are methods that have worked hundreds and hundreds of times. You can learn to meet an interviewer as an equal and go into the interview with dignity; you do not have to go in with your tail between your legs, or with a tin cup in your hand. Start on the high road and stay out of the "Slough of Despond." Benjamin Franklin once wrote: "Experience keeps a dear school, but fools will learn in no other."
Your very first move is to prepare your resume. Stay with it until you feel a glow of satisfaction come over you. I well remember one woman who had tramped the streets for months before she came to see me. After she had fashioned her resume as I suggested she told me that at last she began walking with her head in the air; for the first time since being out of work she felt that she was somebody. Your resume should describe you as a useful and saleable commodity. It will take you out of the "unemployed or surplus group" and put you into the "demand or premium product" category. In the market place, it is always the premium product that commands the higher price.
Let us now start to convert you into a product that can beat out the competition. Let us make you so different that you will be that one person in a thousand. You are you; there is no other person quite like you; you are truly different. Somewhere out there is an employer who wants and needs you and is willing to pay your price. As Stanley Marcus was once told by his father when he started in business, "Remember, there is no piece of merchandise that someone doesn't want." You are now that piece of merchandise,
I use the word "resume" reluctantly, because it is used so much in the job market and turns out too often to be merely a passive recital of functions which may do more harm than good. When I speak of "resume," I mean an inventory of your achievements. Read the next chapter on how to accomplish this.
