Let’s face it, hunting for a job can be the greatest emotional roller coaster of our working lives, veering through pain, optimism, excitement, envy, greed and fear. It can be extremely time-consuming and can generate excruciating stress. However, handled the right way, it can be an experience that leads to greater understanding of your goals, and to employment more aligned with your values and interests.
Essentially, there are two ways to approach the hunt for a job. The first and more traditional route is via resumes, headhunters and interviews. The second route requires a little bit of a mindshift for many people in the corporate world – taking a somewhat entrepreneurial approach toward crafting one’s career. One thing everyone agrees upon is that you, and nobody else, are in the driver’s seat when it comes to navigating your career. ‘The most fundamental, basic mistake that people make in managing their careers, is that 90 percent of people don’t realize that they are in charge of their careers. Nobody else cares about them,’ says Robert Woodrum of executive recruiters Korn/Ferry International. That essentially means that whatever approach you choose to take, it requires being proactive.
Early start
‘Start thinking about your next job the moment you start your new one,’ is a classic piece of employment advice, and it rings more true with every passing year. Keeping your eyes open is not a sign of disloyalty, notes Nella Barkley of Crystal-Barkley Corporation, which offers training in ‘life/work design’; it is simply practical. ‘You never know when you will be the victim of a merger and no longer be senior in your department,’ she says.
Timing can be of the essence if you learn that your job will be ending. Many people use their severance pay to take a vacation and then begin the job search a month or more later. According to Woodrum, that is a mistake. ‘Your marketability goes down with every passing month you are not working. Your skills and knowledge become stale in the eyes of headhunters and potential employers,’ he says. Some headhunters even acknowledge that they will present no more than one out-of-work professional per search.
Reducing the likelihood of getting stranded means, according to most executive search professionals, always having a resume ready to go. According to Woodrum, it should be in chronological form and contain bullets detailing your accomplishments. In every job, show a way in which you made a difference. For example, did you establish a web site? Did you earn any awards? If you came into a company and only three analysts were covering the company and you increased it to 20, that should be included in the resume. If you are moving from a tangential or unrelated field, make sure to connect the dots.
Carol Ruth, who recently departed Edelman Financial to start The Ruth Group, a New York-based IR consultancy, is doing a lot of hiring these days. She says, ‘Recruiters had better have convincing things to say about why I should see you. Paint a picture of why I am looking at your resume.’ But don’t send your CV everywhere, adds Airdre Taylor of search firm Taylor Bennett. ‘You will devalue your currency.’
Nurturing good relationships with headhunters can be helpful in several ways, writes Smooch Reynolds of Repovich Reynolds Group in the 1999 book Navigating Your Career. It can help candidates gauge the compensation value of various functions, increase awareness of management and world trends, and perhaps even provide a new career strategy. So taking recruiters’ calls, as well as being honest and straightforward about career goals, can be prudent. The person whose call you do not take may be less receptive when you need them.
Networking plays an especially important part in investor relations. As noted by Lou Thompson, president and CEO of Niri, in many cases you are the only person in the company doing investor relations. ‘You need to go outside to deal with peers. Niri conferences and seminars are not just for job hunting, but these relationships are important in doing your job where you are.’
Increasingly, the internet is becoming a place to find job listings. Niri runs a job bank service for its members on its web site (www.niri.org). It is free for companies to post job notices and for members to check it. Internet postings include notices received in the past 90 days, typically about 130 at a time. Most are director and VP level positions with low six figure price tags, says Sue Nunn, Niri’s VP of member services.
Once you do get to the interview stage, though, be sure to do your background research. Many studies show that impressions and decisions are made in the first five minutes, so be prepared. Airdre Taylor notes that while headhunters will brief candidates, ‘we cannot do it for them absolutely. It is up to them to ask the questions.’ Woodrum suggests knowing who the key officers in the company are as well as something about their backgrounds, who the job reports to, what was in the annual report and the 10K, what the company thinks of its prospects, and what Wall Street says about the company. The internet makes this type of research fairly simple, so walking into an interview without having done your homework is bound to be unimpressive.
Smooch Reynolds encourages people to be superior listeners during interviews. ‘Most people’s listening skills are horrible. Listen to what is being said and read between the lines.’ These can be hard skills to acquire, so many people need to practice in order to sharpen them.
Of all the factors involved in the job hunt, Reynolds notes that perhaps the biggest hurdle in the job search is narrowing the field. She advises candidates to pick two to three industries and narrow the range of locations they are willing to work in. Otherwise it can be overwhelming to do a job search in any company, in any industry, anywhere in the country. ‘I get people referred to me who say they are not interested in any particular industry and then I say, How about high-tech? and they say No way. That shows they haven’t spent time in an introspective way.’
As Carol Ruth puts it, the second most important factor in hiring someone after their initial presentation is that they are sure about what they want to do with their life. ‘I can make someone take a finance course if they are smart, but I can’t teach initiative or ambition; these are things the person has to walk into the room with,’ she says.
Honest feedback
Often it is a degree of introspection that provides the key to successful career navigation. ‘The factor that disrupts candidates in searches is self-perception,’ says Reynolds. Many people don’t understand their own strengths and weaknesses which leads their self-perception radically off the mark. She suggests that everyone have two to five trusted people from whom they can receive honest feedback on their strong and weak areas, and with whom they can ‘really put their ego on the bookshelf.’
Nella Barkley takes the introspection process a step further, teaching executives how to assess themselves and their goals and to craft a picture of a desirable job from there. Taking a somewhat unconventional stance, she does not advocate the use of resumes. ‘People first, paper later,’ she says. ‘If you get into the habit of resume chasing interview, interview chasing job, it is a process by which you make yourself a victim of other people.’ The best way to get around this catch-22 is to turn the whole thing round, decide what you want to do, and come up with ideas about things that you can improve. It requires an entrepreneurial mindset, Barkley says. You have to have an idea, do research and put it to work.
Barkley sneers at the typical networking approach – joining the right association and rubbing the right elbows. ‘People run for the hills when they know you are looking for a job,’ she says. She advocates market research as a more sophisticated form of networking. Start with an interest and look for unmet needs by talking to customers. ‘Because your conversations are interest-based, you can discuss these things without appearing like you will jump ship.’ Start by talking to people within your own organization about your ideas, and be sure to have more than one target. The interaction then becomes a meeting of equals, rather than one of supplicant and lord.
