Use Every Tool At Your Disposal

I scrolled through my contacts and my emails going back years to find these connections and was only mildly surprised at the number that popped up. No matter how tenuous, some form of connection is better than making a cold call on your own. Finding such connections is fairly easy in the days of emails and social media. You really do meet an awful lot of people as you grow up, go to school, attend college, and go to work. If you follow someone on one social media forum, you should follow that person on all forums. Of course, not all are meant for professional networking, but carefully curating this natural network is incredibly important in your journey. Yes, ranking my connections was also a lot of work. But the aim was to transform a system built to work against me into a mechanism that could work for me. Otherwise, I believed, I would just be sending résumé after résumé to some huge, blank fortress built to work against me. I did indeed reach out to every single contact on my list. And the contact I found in the end was an executive in one of my top three companies. The man had coached junior varsity hockey with my father.

Let Everything Happen To You

I got lucky and made the varsity team as a freshman, only to ride the pine most of the year. In going through all my social media, I identified that the guy had coached alongside my father, and when my father confirmed the connection, I reached out to him in what I worked hard to make a strong and strategic introductory email. He responded by phoning me. He was actually impressed! He remembered my dad with great affection, was thrilled that I wanted to come work for the company he had dedicated his entire career to, and proceeded to put the right word in the right ear. I got the job, a 60 percent raise, and, when I was lured back to the bank nine months later, managed another raise of more than 50 percent. So the bottom line of my admittedly laborious process to find the right connection in the right place for the right move had an enormous impact on my career overall. I benefit from it to this day. Another plus for this formidable site. Everybody around me was in their midthirties or forties. I had none of the experience the job posting claimed was essential. Zero! You can get the job you want. I don’t mean the word in the sense of creeping up on.

Do It Now

Rather, I mean keeping track of everything the company is doing. If you like the way a company operates or love the products it makes, why not keep up with everything about it just in case you someday want to become a part of it? What I’m advocating is for you to find your way to upend the process to your advantage. Change the way you brand yourself. Use the information you gather about companies you like to identify the many pathways that can take you there. Use every tool at your disposal, many of which are close at hand. For example, get in touch with local business and civic leaders. Of necessity, they have their fingers on the pulse of the economy. They know its premier business organizations, and they are easy to connect with because connecting is their job. Bankers serve the big businesses in an area and know which of their clients are thriving and hiring. Retailers have their finger on the pulse of what’s selling and what’s not. Lawyers are into everything and know all the main players. Keep tabs also on what’s going on in nearby universities and community colleges when it comes to job fairs and recruiting.

You Don't Control Your Thoughts

They are likely to work with most of the big businesses in the area. Get to know every recruiter you can find, and identify any and all industry events in your area. Recruiters know which positions in which companies need to be filled, and decision makers routinely attend industry events. And nobody is more attuned to what’s going on than journalists. To find out what they know, you often need to tell them something you know that they don’t. It is usually worth the swap. If you have strings to pull, pull them! Of course you need a job interview strategy. But you should begin to prepare for a job interview before you even apply for the job. The corporate hiring process is geared to eliminate a full 90 percent of applicants right off the bat, so you need a strategy to get past the gatekeepers at companies where you want to work. It begins with deep research into companies where you may want to apply. Obsessed with titles? They don’t really mean a thing. They’re another tool the company can use to engage your loyalty at almost no cost. Your brand is what differentiates you. Your résumé and cover letter constitute a core statement of who you are as a person and as a candidate for the job in question. ocuments should be aligned with the values of companies where you want to work. Grasp what you read here and execute what it puts forward, and you are on your way to the restart you seek and a career that will pay endless dividends. It all comes down to selling. It can all be mind boggling, exhausting, and too much to deal with. The fact is that every second of every day you are selling and being sold to. With what you wear, in every conversation, in every experience, you are putting forward who you are and are simultaneously receiving sales presentations from the people, places, and activities you deal with. In a grocery store, you are being sold to the moment you walk in the door, starting with whatever the social scientists and polling experts determined was the best kind of signage for getting your attention without annoying you.