You’ve gotten this far somehow. Think back, how did each job come your way? How did you connect to that volunteer or entrepreneurial opportunity? Is there a pattern?
It’s surprising how many ways opportunities come our way. If you are in the position of looking for a job, now is a good time to be open and to show up engaged in every part of life. Don’t judge or over analyze what will work and won’t work. Just take the steps. And, who knows, you may stumble upon possibilities that you never entertained before that will be right for you.
Episode 40 – Show Notes
- Pamela Slim – Escape Cubicle Nation and Body of Work
- What Color is Your Parachute
Episode 40 Transcript
This is Rebecca Clark. Episode 40 Hired Finding the Job This podcast is for anyone that knows they haven’t yet found and offered up their best work but are compelled to seek it out and do it. Are you ready to move your desk? Once upon a time, I was in graduate school, and it was a very hands on program, which I loved at George Mason University. And part of that experience included lots of projects working with a client on a project through a grant and creating prototypes. And ultimately we had to have a personal portfolio online where we showcased our work. And it was intended to be a spot where we put all of our Simon TS, but also with the hope that when we graduated, it would become a portfolio that we would clean up and share with those that were seeking people with skills like ours. So I had my portfolio out there with my resume on it, and when I graduated, I secured a temporary position and knew that I would have to keep looking for a job. And so I started looking for a job, and in the process of doing that I got a phone call and the woman said, I know you haven’t applied toe work with us But I was doing a search online and came across a teacher resume site and right below the link to it was your graduate portfolio. Now the reason my portfolio came up right after it, I think is because in my portfolio I mentioned the company a few times that I had worked for. And so it came up in the Web search at that time. And so she said, I looked at the resume in this portfolio and saw that not only did you have the skill sets we needed, but you were also local where you come. In an interview, I came in and interviewed, and it was totally different from the environment I was in. But yet something within me said, This is the right opportunity for you at this time because I love the team. I love that the work would teach me some things in the field, and I would also be working with a client every day. In fact, I was sitting on the client location every single day, which then led me into my next job later, But I have shared in some of the prior episodes how I have gotten some of my jobs, and when I look at them, there’s no pattern, really. And how I got each of my jobs now, Why is this important? Well, some of us know a lot of people that are not employed right now, people that have skills and experience but just can’t seem to make it. And when they make it to a job, something doesn’t work out there, Not there long. And they’re out on the street looking for a job again. Are you talked about that in the hired? I mean no, not the hired. This is the hired episode in the fired episode. Some thoughts about that. But I know some people right now that have been employed a very long time in some places and have been let go laid off because of corporate decisions, and they find themselves looking for work, and some of them are just hitting buttons on Lincoln and submitting resumes all day long. Others are trying to do a little networking, and still others air incapacitated and spend massive amounts of time analyzing whether they should even applied anything. Now, Having been on the other end of that, I would say Don’t analyze any of it because the computers air making the first choice is like you are basically deciding someone doesn’t want you before they’ve, you know, a chance to know you exist. When you over, analyze and don’t even try. And an electronic world you can try first, many as you want. If anything, it should be more of a practice of saying Let me focus down to what I am going to apply for instead of spraying the world with my personal contact information and some cases. So for those of you that are incapacitated or over, analyze whether you should apply or not send your resume if you even meet 1/4 of the criteria. Or maybe I would say more than half the criteria personally. But send it. They can’t analyze you if you’re not in the mix, and I’m assuming you don’t have time to waste and finding another role. But all of this to say I wanted to share a few experiences that I’ve had, and others have had that show that you never know how the job is going to come to you, and it’s important to be showing up in as many parts of life as we can during a period of looking for work because we never know what avenue that next opportunity will come from. And the first story I want to share is a story happened in the last couple of years where my brother was with someone going to visit a person that needed help. And as they were visiting the person that needed help, they found out that he needed to find work. The person my brother was with started talking to the guy about an opportunity where he worked, and this opportunity was for an oil company. And you really have to know somebody to get into the oil companies in any capacity. And he said, Hey, you know, maybe you can start out at the bottom, but there’s this really quick ramp up if you get trained and learn and you can really step upto higher levels quickly in this oil field business. And after they’re done talking to him, they left and my brother said to his friend, Hey, you were talking to the guy we’re visiting about a job, but I’m looking for a job, and I’m interested in hearing more about what you’re talking about. And so they started talking and he had a chance to be introduced to people, the company in various situations and ultimately ended up working for that organization. But the person they were trying to help did not. So what’s interesting to me about that situation is they were going intending to help someone. But in the process, my brother found out some information that was valuable for him, and he was able to act upon it and threw a reference from his friend. Be able to work for that organization. And so this kind of falls into a category of eavesdropping in a way, right? Being aware of conversations around you and inserting yourself and saying, Hey, I know you’re trying to share this with someone else, but I have a need and I’m interested. Tell me more. I would like to know more about this job. Now we all hear that personal recommendations and who you know are very important when we’re looking for new work, and I’ve seen this to be the case quite a few times in life. In fact, I even know when I was graduating from college and realizing that I was not going to be a secondary school teacher for a living. I had a couple of friends that were working at the jail and because I had the psychology teaching minor, they were able to recommend me for that job, and I was able to come and be a treatment specialist with them, and that was all word of mouth, and I happened to have one little thing in common, and that was my minor. They were all majoring in something with psychology or social work or something, and I had this minor and it was who you know. I never knew that jail even existed before they recommended me to it. But there’s also things that happen along the path of us thinking. We want to work in a certain place. Some people find the right job for them, even though their focus is in a completely different direction. And that’s the case with Harry Palace. He shared with me this experience that he was very set on a job with the Foreign Service for the State Department, and he had aced the entrance exam and had an oral interview arranged. But it’s a lengthy hiring process, and I know that I have many friends that work for it. And this was around the time of September 11. And so he realized he needed to keep his options open because lots of things were delayed at that time. So he attended a job fair, BYU looking for a C I A or FBI recruiter who were supposed to be there, but he couldn’t find them. And so he just went walking around to check out some things. And there was this guy in a uniform he didn’t recognized. But because the hiring process was easy online and he had an entrance exam and passed a physical and did a great job with the Oral Review Board, he was offered a job. So he was supposed to start that job at the same time that he was barely going to have the oral interview for the State Department. So he decided to go with the for sure job, and he’s been working in that field ever since, so that completely changed the trajectory. At that moment, the FBI and CIA not showing up at the job fair actually worked for his benefit, right? It took away these other options. It introduced him to something else, and it’s apparently worked for him because it’s been 17 18 years from that point. And that’s the amazing thing about this search. We think we’re searching for one thing, but who knows? Maybe there’s a different opportunity that we could be open Thio that would take us in a completely different trajectory. I know that I’ve shared a few times that I’ve been hired twice into organizations because the people hiring me had good experiences with teachers, even though the jobs had nothing to do with teaching. But because I had some teaching on my resume, combined with other experiences, they gave me a chance. In fact, one of those was from a job here I went to and I went with a friend and he got an interview right at the job fair and they acted really interested to him and nothing happened. They acted not at all interested in me, but later, when they took the resume back to someone at the organization, is when that person highly valued teachers and they gave me a call and that job. I actually I didn’t have any skill sets for because I was benefits. I didn’t have any skill sets, but they said, You’ve been a teacher. You also worked at Ernst and Young. That’s good enough for me. Let’s try it out. And in some organizations, they don’t allow that. But others they do, because they’re looking for the capabilities is of someone to learn something that’s working hard and that understands working at certain size organizations. I often hear from people that they do not fit all the requirements for the job posting, and what’s really fascinating is being on the other end. When these job postings are created. Note that the people creating them are putting in their what they hope the person has. But they don’t realize that they’re putting into that a whole bunch of stuff that they currently expect a whole bunch of people to accomplish that it does not reside all in one person, and so it becomes kind of the kitchen sink like, Oh, you need to be a great leader. You need agree. A great follower, you need to lead a project. You need to be an individual contributor you have to have knowledge of every possible thing in the world. So my thought around this is if you meet like I said before, even half the criteria apply because they’re throwing so many things in there, and some of them don’t even make sense together. I’ve seen these things where they expect you to be the business developer but also create the project plans and write the documents and be the help desk at the same time. And like folks, anyone that’s worked in organizations and different roles No, that that doesn’t all happen with one person. And if anyone claims they can do that all at once, they’ve been a one man band at a very small organization, Right? Whenever I see that, like, Oh, yeah, I can make the videos, I can answer all the questions. I can go out there and do the business development. I can lead the team like Okay, yeah, I know all of us can do that if we have one or two little projects. The problem is, is when you have to sustain growth when you have to scale, then you never have the same person doing all of that there’s not enough hours in a day to do that. And there’s different level of skill skates required that you can get by on with Some projects for others require a sustained effort. Or they need an assembly line approach because people will be going on and off task too much. So that is a side note. And one of the reasons I feel strongly about this resume thing about meeting at least half the requirements is because very early in life I’ve shared before. I got a paper out when I was nine years old. The requirement was to be 12 but they needed someone desperately, and my parents were supportive and I wanted to do it and it was right around my house, and so they decided to get special permission and take a chance. Now think about it. How many times has that happened to you with work? I can think of a couple times where they’ve had special permission and given me a chance, and every time they’re giving me a chance, all right, it’s always a risk to hire a new person. One experience I loved that was shared by one of my brothers is that years ago my father commuted with a guy for a while and they had lots of discussions and, of course, brought up their kids names and everything. And then a few years after that, that same guy needed a product or something. And so my brother was a sales rep and sold him that and went through that customer relationship management process you do after someone buys a product from you. And so he took care of him in that process. And then years after that, that man needed to hire someone on his own organization to be part of sales. And so my brother was able to go and work with them. And so that showed how building relationships over a long period of time and different capacities made the person think of him at a later date for a particular position. It’s a great reminder to always strive to be on our best behavior in whatever setting, because we don’t know if we’re going to be in a position to help the other person were engaged with at that moment, or if they’re gonna pee in a position to need us or help us in a later time. I wanted to just share these thoughts today to remind those that are looking to find a new job, that we cannot underestimate the options for finding a new job, that it can come from people we know. It can come from a straight conversation with someone. It can come from a piece of work that you already have out there. It can come from interactions you had with someone along time ago and to not put ourselves into a box on how we’re going to get the next position, that it may not come from something that we apply for now. That’s not to say to stop applying to things. I think every action we take we can take from the place is saying, Hey, I’m just going to share, interact with people, apply to jobs and understand that I may not know the way that it’s really going to come to me. It could come from something we’re volunteering at right now. It could come in the process of us helping someone with a different problem. A part of this is also not being so prideful that we decide to hide and not tell people that Hey, we are looking, and so let me know if there’s anything out there and being open to the possibilities of something different that we may not be able to see as a step forward right now, but may help us find what we should actually be doing in our life. And maybe this interim job would give us more skills or round out some of our understanding of how something works and will prepare us for the next opportunity. And that’s something I’m finding really fascinating nowadays is that it’s not the same kind of ladder to success that we may have thought of in the past. We may not go from intern to contributor to manager to director to VP, for example, as we might have in the past. Or you might not go from teacher to principal to administrator like there’s ah, whole different path. Now it’s not a ladder, but it might feel like a meandering river with Box Bos and waterfalls and different experiences along the way that if you look at it on Lee, from the standpoint of someone that’s thinking success in a corporation or a job on Lee goes a certain way that Maybe success is stepping out of a leadership role in going off and being an individual. That research is something differently or helps with one specific part of an organization, and maybe that’s okay. And you can provide tremendous value in that capacity for the same amount of money or maybe even less sometimes. And maybe that’s okay. And I’ve seen those of us that have been in the hiring situations be a little bit more forgiving if that’s the right word with people’s experience and not completely judging the trajectory as much as what is tthe e entire set of skills and capacity that this person has built from their different experiences. And I hope that that continues with those that are hiring for jobs, because we’re entering a time frame where there’s been an assumption for a while that we all need these technology skills. But the technology only does so much. There has to be a certain amount of decision making and analysis and social awareness and understanding to apply to the technology to make it be useful, and that all comes from people that have had different experiences and may not have followed a very clear path up one particular ladder. So some things to think about. I would recommend taking time to look at your past job and volunteer experiences and remind yourself how those came about, because I’m assuming that some of those will have been some word of mouth or some happy incidents or encounters that brought about an opportunity to know about and some things that came about because of a relationship or a product from the past that somehow resurfaced and made someone aware of you. And the beauty of this is realizing it could come in anyway. So just keep working at it and be open to the possibilities around you that you might not have been aware of before because they’re there and they’re there for your taking, talking. Thanks for listening to the show today. If you enjoyed it, I’d love if you’d write a review and share the show with your friends, sign up for a weekly nudge at. Move your desk dot com. See you next Monday
