Job Seekers: Is A Naked Man Offering You His Shirt?

Beware The Naked Man Who Offers You His Shirt. It's a book by Harvey MacKay but, more importantly, it's a way to say don't follow the advice of people who can't offer the advice you need.

A so-called employment expert who can't show you how and why to use Linkedin is a naked man offering his shirt.

You wouldn't take French lessons from somebody who doesn't speak French or guitar lessons from somebody who doesn't play guitar, so why would you take career advice from somebody who isn't on Linkedin and can't show you how to use the most important job search tool there is?

Savvy HR people, recruiters and headhunters use Linkedin to network their way to job candidates they'd like to hire so if you ask for employment help from somebody who isn't on Linkedin, doesn't know how to use Linkedin, doesn't know why people should use Linkedin and can't show you how to use Linkedin, a naked man is offering you his shirt.

Learn how HR managers, recruiters and headhunters use Linkedin to network their way to the job candidates they want. If you learn that, you can learn how to use Linkedin to network your way to employers faster.

If you live in or near St. Albans, WV and you need to learn  how to use Linkedin, call me for a free tutorial. (304)550-6710 or JosephHigginbotham@gmail.com.
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For more straight talk on finding a job, go to my archive (at right)  and read my previous 3 posts.
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Higginbotham At Large will not PUBLISH your anonymous or pseudonymous comments. If you submit a comment that doesn't clearly tell readers who you are, your comment will die in the moderation queue where I will read it but will not publish it.

Top Ten Reasons Blind Employment Ads Are Fishing Expeditions And You Shouldn't Bite

10. Blind ads are only seen by a small segment of the workforce, e.g., "active" job seekers.


9. Blind ads are not seen by "passive" job candidates, e.g., people who are currently working, are relatively happy in their current jobs, and aren't actively seeking new employment.


8. Smart job seekers won't answer blind ads since they can't know who is behind the ad and what that person may do with the information received from respondents.


7. This leaves stupid job seekers, therefore, the employer ends up with resumes from verifiably stupid people.


6. Top employers wouldn't knowingly hire stupid people.


5. Employers stupid enough to hire demonstrably stupid people are probably employers you wouldn't want to work for.


4. The smart employers who don't hire people stupid enough to answer blind ads know there are better ways to find great employees.


3. Smart employers know that using headhunters brings candidates who would never see an employment ad.


2. Smart employers who are proud of their brands know that running branded employment ads helps overall recruitment while running blind, unbranded ads does nothing to build the brand.


1. Smart employers have Linkedin accounts and know how to use Linkedin advanced search to generate lists of passive candidates by geography, by experience, by skills and by education.


For more on blind employment ads read my archived 17 Feb 2010 post.




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The Company Men: The Star-Studded Downsizing Film You'll Want To Watch With Your Unemployed Friends

Despite it's star-studded cast - Ben Affleck, Kevin Costner, Chris Cooper, Tommy Lee Jones, Maria Bello, Craig T. Nelson  - the most honest film I've ever seen about the resetting of America's job market, was a box office flop - perhaps because its natural market (unemployed people) can no longer afford to see movies. That's too bad, because The Company Men deserves to be seen by every right-sized, downsized, unemployed and underemployed American so I hope my unemployed and underemployed readers will rent it as I did last week.

The Company Men's main character, Ben Affleck, is a $150k per year account executive at a ship-building company until he is fired along with thousands of his co-workers by CEO (Craig T. Nelson) and the HR director (Maria Bello). The Company Men realistically follows Affleck as he goes to company-paid "outplacement", sells his upscale house, sells his Porsche, moves back in with his parents, deals unsuccessfully with headhunters, loses job opening after job opening to younger MBAs willing to work for less than half what he used to make, lets his wife go back to work (she's a nurse so she can work any time she wants)  and eventually takes a manual labor job carrying building supplies to the skilled laborers at his brother-in-law's (Kevin Costner) construction firm.

My regular readers will understand why I especially liked the advice Affleck got from the outplacement firm: they told him and his fellow outplaced workers to make a list of everybody they know - friends, relatives, former co-workers, former bosses, former clients - anybody who might help them find their next job.

The Company Men is honest about ageism. One of Affleck's co-workers (Chris Cooper) commits suicide when he discovers that no matter how much he amends his resume and dyes his hair, he's just too damn old to get a job. When Affleck's old company loses a major account and starts a second round of firings, workers over age 50 are fired in disproportionately high numbers but company attorneys insist they can get away with it.

The Company Men is honest about what I call the "low percentage game" of sending resumes and going to interviews. If you've sent thousands of resumes and gone to dozens of interviews that didn't lead to job offers, you may be tempted to think there's something wrong with your resume or your interview skills - and there are plenty of people who are more than willing to take advantage of your insecurities and charge you hundreds of dollars to write you a killer resume or thousands of dollars to coach you how to interview. My readers know that the truth: its not better resumes or better interview skills but better relationships that will get you the job. The candidate with a great resume is no match for the candidate who is introduced to the hiring manager by a mutual friend. I call this mutual friend the "social co-signer". (Read more in my Feb 28 thru March 5 posts).

The Company Men is honest about where your next job is likely to come from: somebody you already know. Affleck finally escapes manual labor with his brother-in-law and gets back into a "more suitable" job when one of his fellow fired executives (Tommy Lee Jones) uses the profits from his stock options to start his own company and hire a few of the down-sized workers.

Kudos to John Wells for writing and directing the most honest film I've ever seen on job search in modern America. Kudos to The Weinstein Group for getting this realistic, almost instructional film out on DVD. Rent it today. Watch it with a few of your job seeking friends.
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Higginbotham At Large is not affiliated with anonymously or pseudonymously published websites - even sites that quote from or link to my blog. See my March 12 & 13 2011 posts for details.

Higginbotham At Large does not publish anonymous or pseudonymous comments. 

Play The High Percentage Job Search Game of Getting Mentioned By A Social Co-Signer, Not The Low Percentage Game Of Sending Resumes And Interviewing

Can you spot the obvious, common flaws in these tweets by people who purport to be job search experts?

“Is your Resume getting thrown in the Trash?”

“Can you describe your "personal brand" in less then 3 sentences during a job interview?”

“Do you know how to give great phone during a job interview?”

“Do you have a "two minute pitch" for your next job interview?”

These questions were tweeted by people who use the question to tell you something they hope will give them the chance to sell you something. These questions are examples of a kind of social media push polling.

But have you spotted the common flaw in these push polls yet? If you are a regular reader of Higginbotham At Large you already know the answer: The advice that these so-called job search experts want to sell you starts at a point way too late in the job search process to be of help to you.

If you’re a regular reader of Higginbotham At Large, you already know that sending out resumes and going to interviews is a low percentage game. Your chances of getting a job as a result of sending a resume and walking down the runway in the swimsuit competition of the interview process are just slightly above zero.

Higginbotham At Large wants you to play the high percentage game of getting your existing and future network of friends and colleagues to say your name to headhunters and employers. The goal is to get people to say your name. Getting people to say your name is the holy grail of job search or business development. Getting people to say your name instantly puts you in the running for jobs that haven’t been advertised anywhere, jobs that are casually mentioned over coffee, at church, on the golf course or by a headhunter who calls and asks one of your friends or colleagues “Who do you know who has expertise with X?”

As I’ve said before, yes, it’s possible that you might get a job because you have a better resume or give good phone the real goal of every job seeker should be to trade the low percentage game of resume-sending and interviewing for the high percentage game of getting recommended. I don’t care of you’re a plumber who wants new business or if you’re a job seeker who wants a new job, the shortest distance to what you want is to get recommended by somebody.

And the reason you won’t see push poll tweets about how to get recommended is because the push pollers can’t figure out how to make any money off the truth that sending resumes and waiting for interviews is a low percentage game. While you’re waiting for a window-dressing interview with a guy who’s never heard of you, the successful candidate is across the street at Starbucks getting introduced to his new boss over a latte by their mutual friend. The guy at Starbucks didn’t send a resume and didn’t have to glide down the runway in the swimsuit competition we call the interview process. He moved to the head of the line for that job when his “social co-signer” said his name.

How do you get people to say your name?

Well, it starts with making sure your social co-signers know what you do. As I write this blog post, a headhunter is asking a guy “Who do you know who has expertise at X?” and the guy he’s asking can’t say your name because he doesn’t know you have expertise at X. As I write this post, a boss is confiding to a mutual friend that he is going to fire his X and find a replacement. Your mutual friend doesn’t mention your name because, despite being your friend, he doesn’t really know what you do.

First, let’s get organized: I want you to take out a legal pad and make a list of all your neighbors (if you’re friendly with them). The guy across the cul de sac, the lady next door.

Then I want you to make a list of all the people you know at social orgs or clubs you belong to.

You get the idea. Make a list.

Include the social circle of your significant other.

Now go to your Linkedin account and your Facebook account and your Twitter followers and make a list of contacts who like you and respect you and would be good social co-signers for you.

After you’ve completed your list, I want you to systematically start educating or coaching these social co-signers on just exactly what it is you do. Where possible, do this face-to-face. Yes, you can send tweets and emails and Linkedin messages, but also try to have a phone or face-to-face conversation.

Tell each of your social co-signers what you do and how to recognize opportunities to recommend you.

Some of my readers - like Jeff Foster of Lexington, KY, with whom I worked at Lexmark - have jobs that are hard to describe. For instance, if Jeff told you he is a "business analyst" at Lexmark would you have any idea what he does? probably not. People like Jeff have more work to do than people with simple, easy-to-understand titles. I challenged Jeff to come up with a 15-second or 3-sentence speech with which to describe his work at Lexmark. Here's what he gave me: "I work with people in different countries to develop a standardized process for a set of tasks, document all aspects of the process, develop training materials and then transition the tasks to a low cost country."

Jeff, advise your social co-signers to listen for words like "offshoring" and "outsourcing" because that's also what your work facilitates.

And , Jeff, your elevator speech is timely. Have you seen what Seth Godin and Daniel Pink have written about turning autonomous, creative, heuristic jobs into "algorithmic", repetitive jobs?

And, Jeff, you may not have thought of this but what you do is, in many ways, related to franchising. When a franchisor sells you a turn-key franchise, he is selling you more than a well-known business name, he is selling you his methods of turning operations and jobs into "algorithmic", robotic , repetitive jobs that might be better matched to low-wage, low-intelligence workers than to, say, people with high IQs who are used to making good money. So, Jeff, tell your social co-signers to listen for the word "franchising" when a headhunter calls.

And tell them to look at the Linkedin recommendation I wrote for you.

"Follow up the oral communication with an email that contains some carefully selected verbiage about what you do and what you want to do. The goal is to help your social co-signers recognize a referral opportunity when they hear one. Each time you tell somebody how to recognize an opportunity to recommend you to a headhunter or boss, you’ll get better at it and by the time you send the email follow-up, you’ll have a great 3-sentence or 15-second “elevator speech”.

See why nobody’s tweeting about this? Push polling tweeters can charge you $100 dollars for writing your resume or $500 for giving you classes on how to interview but the truth is free and it’s unmonetized. The truth is, if somebody mentions your name to a headhunter or to a boss, you move to the front of the line – without a resume and without an interview.

When a social co-signer mentions your name, you might become the first and last candidate for that job. It’s happened to me on several occasions.

If I’m right – and in your heart you know this is how it really works in the real world – what good does it do to pay people to write you a better resume or coach you on how to interview if the jobs are being filled through referrals and recommendations?

Sending resumes and waiting for interviews is for suckers. Yes, jobs are occasionally filled that way but the overwhelming majority of jobs are filled through an informal, nearly invisible process.

Even when you see a job advertized online or in the newspaper, it doesn’t mean the job hasn’t already been filled through that informal, invisible means. Employers maintain a façade of transparent, “meritocratic” hiring. Advertising job openings is window dressing to keep the appearance of a meritocratic, transparent hiring process.

Sometimes my readers ask me why they aren’t getting calls from headhunters. I tell them there are two reasons: First, nobody is mentioning their name. At its core, headhunting is just calling and calling and calling until somebody says “Yeah, I know somebody who can do X.”

Second, if you’re not getting calls from headhunters it means your name isn’t turning up in Linkedin searches. Headhunters plug the pertinent search terms into Linkedin and start calling people whose names appear in the resulting list. If you don’t have a Linkedin profile that is replete with buzz words you won’t show up in search results.

If you don’t have a network ( Linkedin group memberships, Linkedin 1^st level connections ) you’re invisible.

To get hired, get mentioned by a social co-signer. It’s the way more than 90% of white collar and high-paying jobs are filled.

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Do I Really Need A Cover Letter? Inc's Jason Fried Says You Need It More Than You Need A Resume

After I blog about job search strategy I get emails asking me if cover letters really matter, if anybody really reads them.

This time I’m going to answer that question by referring job seekers to Jason Fried’s “Never Read Another Resume” in this month’s Inc. magazine. Fried says, “cover letters say it all.”

Now before I give you the link and send you off to read why Fried says cover letters are far more revelatory than resumes – which Fried says are full of exaggerations and lies anyway – I should warn you that Fried’s philosophy simply won’t work at companies where candidates’ submissions are scanned for keywords by recruiters who don’t even know what the buzzwords mean. But if you’re looking for a job in a smaller firm like Fried’s you’re going to find Fried’s remarks very important.

Here’s the link:

http://www.inc.com/magazine/20100601/never-read-another-resume.html