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America's employment system is broken. It doesn't work. If it
did, you'd be able to find a new job without too much trouble.
Unfortunately, nowadays it's common to hear job hunting horror
stories. There's the fellow who paid a Kansas firm to mass-mail
his resume to 3,000 different companies. He's still wondering
why he hasn't gotten one reply. Another poor soul has been
getting turned down everywhere -- employers tell her she's
overqualified because they're afraid she'll leave for a better
job when one comes along. Then there's the insurance executive
who has been on over a dozen interviews. His goal is three
interviews per week. Not one offer yet.
Pretty dismal, isn't it? But look closer. These people all have
something in common, something they share with most job hunters.
They're following the traditional approach to job hunting.
They're playing the numbers. Even the most aggressive of these,
the insurance executive who is bulldozing his way into
corporations for interviews, is really just gambling. He
believes he has to have
lots
of interviews before anyone will hire him, as though there's a
magic number he has not yet discovered.
There is only one job description: Produce profit.
America's Employment System is failing at its mission because
American business is focused, more than ever, on
work
as opposed to traditional jobs. Meanwhile, the Employment System
continues to choke itself on the traditional job -- spitting out
millions of classified ad pages every week, and right behind
them the millions of rejected applicants whom they encourage to
participate in this insensate feeding frenzy.
Is corporate America's hunger for workers satisfied? Is it done
hiring? Many companies in fact aren't looking to fill empty
jobs. They are leaving lots of positions unfilled -- attrition
-- in an effort to reduce costs.
But don't confuse these "traditional jobs" with work. At the
same time that companies are reducing their headcount they are
hiring more consultants and more part time workers, and they are
farming more work out to subcontractors who operate from home.
What companies care about nowadays is getting the
work
done
profitably,
whether that means hiring full time workers or using robots.
Understand what managers need.
Managers want one kind of worker: the person who can solve
problems and have a positive impact on the bottom line. Managers
have less to spend on the resources they need, and they are
increasingly measured on how successfully they (a) reduce costs,
and (b) increase profits. Is it any wonder managers expect a lot
from job candidates? They need workers who can help them address
these two problems.
As a job hunter, is it possible to step up to this challenge?
Certainly, but you can't offer the value employers need by
sending them a cookie-cutter resume that focuses on your
history. What a manager needs to know is how you're going to
tackle the specific work
he
(or she) needs to have done. Job hunters on the whole do a
terrible job of offering solutions to hiring managers. The most
sophisticated workers, who ordinarily produce powerful solutions
to problems they face every day on the job, present potential
employers with a lame collection of jargon-filled historical
data about themselves rather than with real help. Then they
puzzle over why a particular manager hasn't extracted from their
resumes the justification to hire them.
Personnel jockeys have brainwashed you.
But job hunters aren't all to blame for their zombie-like
foraging for work. So-called "human resources experts" and
corporate personnel departments spend billions of overhead
dollars annually to promote a useless system of attracting,
evaluating, and hiring people. They run want ads, solicit
resumes, conduct endless man-hours' worth of screening
interviews, and pretty much control a company's interaction with
its professional community. These personnel jockeys have
structured a system that encourages you -- the job hunter -- to
keep your eye on the wrong ball. At a time in your life when you
should be focused on showing an employer how your considerable
talents can profit his company, personnel jockeys guide you into
a maze of paper and meaningless interaction with everyone
but
the person who needs to hire you.
What does this mean to the job hunter? It means you're dancing
to the tune of the wrong piper. Forget everything the personnel
jockeys have drilled into your brain about job hunting. Ignore
the "rules".
They don't work.
(If they did, companies wouldn't turn to expensive headhunters
for help filling jobs.) Stop wasting stamps mailing out resumes.
Ignore the want ads and the weekly federal jobless claims
statistics. Don't go on lots of interviews. Refuse to talk with
humps whose job is to tag and file you. Refuse to answer
questions like, "So, where do you see yourself in five years?"
from clerks who represent companies that don't
keep
workers for five years.
When you start searching for a new job, place a renewed emphasis
on your work and your ability to do it.
That's
what yields a job offer -- not your resume or clever answers to
the Top Ten Stupid Interview Questions.
It's the work, Stupid.
Machiavelli once suggested that the way to succeed in any
endeavor is to rely only on those resources over which you have
control, and not to count on those over which you don't have
control. When you send out 100 resumes, you have no control over
who actually reads them (if anyone), who you will eventually
meet (if anyone), or about what. That essentially random first
step starts you down the road to your own interview funeral.
So what does a serious job hunter do? Start your job search the
same way you start your work day: with an assessment of what
work (the prospective employer's) needs to be done and with a
decision about how best to apply your considerable skills and
talents to getting it done profitably.
You win a job the way you do a job: by applying your work
skills.
The personnel expert vs. The Headhunter
Most advice that's available to job hunters comes from so-called
"human resources experts" and "career counselors". Their advice
is academic; they have never earned a nickel that was contingent
on winning a job offer for anyone. Whether you win a job offer
or not, they collect their counseling fee, and in most cases a
salary from their corporate human resources job.
Headhunters earn their fees only when they have successfully won
a job offer for the candidate they have presented to the client,
and after the candidate accepts the position and starts work.
Headhunters' methods must work; if they don't, headhunters don't
eat. It's as simple as that.
Time to enter the forest primeval. Whose advice would you rather
have along?
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