“You don’t get paid by the hour. You get paid for what you put in an hour.” -Jim Rohn
“You have to convince an employer that what they are looking for is exactly who you are.” -L
Many of the best career opportunities are never advertised. That may sound ridiculous, but I’ll talk you into it if you give me the time. This may go against the grain of your thinking, but it will make sense in a moment.
Let’s say you were a Fortune 500 company looking for a Vice President to run their international shipping operations for one of their divisions, here’s why you probably won’t advertise the position.
- You would be tipping your competitors that you are possibly expanding.
- You may be trying to attract a key employee from the competition.
- It might raise the question of what is going to happen to the company employee who is currently in that position.
- An ad could overload your hiring manager with unqualified candidates and possibly miss the right candidate.
- That’s not the way big companies do things.
One way a company might find a key employee is to contact a Headhunter, someone who specializes in finding high-powered executives. In simple terms, the Headhunter spends thousands of hours talking to executives who are not at the level they would like to be and are
open to a possible move. Over months and years, the Headhunter builds a list of qualified people and then, on the other side of the coin, calls Fortune 500 companies to ask if they would be interested in interviewing a particular candidate. The company may say no, but Headhunter expects a response like: “If you come across someone who is experienced in foreign exchange, speaks Spanish fluently, is not averse to moving, and has at least ten years of experience in the field of geology, come back to me.
Bingo! The Headhunter did not sell a prospect that he had in mind, but instead got a lead to find a particular candidate for a company. This game comes and goes every day with hundreds of Headhunters and companies. There are jobs, great jobs, and careers, but you’ll never see an ad in the classifieds section.
As a financial adviser to several Wall Street firms, I regularly received a call to see if I was interested in making a move. Most executives have received a call from a headhunter in their current position, and many have accepted the offer to proceed to the interview stage or move to a new company.
Keep in mind that companies are always interested in people who can join their company and fatten up the bottom line, meaning if you can make money for a company, someone else can use it.
In my youth I worked for a staffing firm in San Diego. This is how it would work. Many small ads were placed in the Sunday classifieds section of local newspapers with a job description and usually a starting salary or the well-known, earn up to $$$$ a year verbosity.
The reaction was always the same. On Monday morning all the lines rang non-stop. Whoever answered the phone would screen the caller with a few questions and either invite them for an interview or tell them that a more qualified candidate is needed, but please inquire to see if this caller might fit another job description before hanging up .
Another part of the business was calling companies to ask if they were looking for employees and, if so, what qualities the candidate would need for the position. Of course, there would be a fee, sometimes paid by the company looking to hire, sometimes by the job applicant to be hired, or split between the two.
Of course, not every candidate is a perfect fit for the job description, but our job was to convince both parties that you would be a perfect fit. Fees were always negotiable, as long as the company was making money, and the rep was happy with the commission and the company or candidate was willing to pay, which was my first introduction to really creative ways to finance items. . Pawning jewelry, refinancing a car, in-house financing, and borrowing money from parents who want the child to move out and work, and credit cards, of course.
Having a Headhunter is a great advantage if you are high up in the food chain. If you’re on the low end, staffing agencies can be helpful. If you are not afraid of rejection, you should go after what you want. This would include those with sales skills, recent graduates, and people in a regular job who want more.
I don’t know what kind of job or career you’re looking for, but I don’t have to. I will give you ways to approach the job or career you really want. I’ll have to cover some basics, maybe things you already know, but I’ll share my stories with you and my experience to avoid some false starts and get you closer to your ideal income situation.
Let’s start with what I can’t stress enough and that is that you have to decide what you want to do with your life. You also need to realize that it may take a couple or a few, or a few dozen steps to get there.
How do you decide what you want to do with your life? The short answer is that you give it serious thought. This is about what your you want to do with your life, not what your parents want you to do with your life, or what your friends think you should do with your life. Is about your!
If you are married or have a family, there are other considerations, but you should focus on an area where you can make a living, enjoy yourself, and have the potential to increase your earnings over time.
If you are currently paid by the hour, you will never get rich in that job. If you are salaried, there are also limitations. A salaried employee is someone who has agreed to work overtime without additional pay.
You don’t have to agree with me, but hear me out. I speak from experience. When you’re in the job market and you tell everyone you meet that you’re willing to do anything because you just need a job, don’t expect a flood of offers.
When an employer hears that you just need a job, they know in advance that you won’t stay once something better comes along and the employer really has to weigh the advantages of training you. Who wants to train someone on a job and after six months of the learning curve and the cost of mistakes they move on to something else because of a fifty cent an hour pay raise?
Never tell anyone that you are willing to do anything just to get a paycheck. However, don’t be afraid to tell an employer that he is willing to join the company in any capacity to join the company of your dreams. Please read that again so that you have a clear understanding of the difference. He’s not going to beg for a job for a paycheck, but he’ll do whatever task he’s asked just for the chance to show that he would be a valuable employee and would benefit the company.
Companies have no problem training good people if they know the person is in it for the long haul. Once it is trained, it has value and adds value to the results of the company and, as I said before; Companies can use people who make them money.
The more skills you can bring to the table, the more valuable you are. Don’t be surprised if you hear the phrase “you really are overqualified for this position.” I’ve heard it a couple of times in my life. You just have to be ready with a great response in a respectful manner: “I know from looking at my resume that I appear to be overqualified for this position, but I am willing to accept this position so I can join this one.” company and grow with it. I know it won’t be immediate, but I am confident that the company will be able to use my full potential. In the meantime, I would familiarize myself with the different aspects of the company and the employees. and be ready to move to a higher position should a vacancy open due to promotion, dropout, or transfer. When can I join the team? Who else do I need to talk to to make my intentions known? I’m ready to go to work right now?”
Don’t let an interview crush you like a fly. Sometimes they are just testing to see if you really want to work for the company and also fishing to see if they can get an overqualified employee like you at a discounted price. The worst they can say is no and you can reapply in thirty days, or sixty days, and so on.
You have to be willing to commit to the job or career you are pursuing. If you’re not committed to the task at hand, it just won’t work. Keep in mind that you should have a strong commitment to each company you approach, and don’t be afraid to approach a few companies at the same time. Just because Company A doesn’t have an opening right now, doesn’t mean that in three weeks some guy from Company A will accept a job at Company B and create an opportunity for you.
Stay in contact. If a company says they just filled a position you’d be ideal for, don’t hesitate to tell them that if the new hire doesn’t work out, you’ll be happy to talk to the company in the future. Most companies have some kind of trial period and not all of them make it.
That trial period can be a big plus for you, especially if they find out if the candidate they hired is lying about employment, criminal record, driver’s license status, previous experience, etc. Be prepared, be courteous, and don’t be afraid to keep doing it.
I will share this story with you. I was working for SmithBarney in Beverly Hills, Ca. as a financial consultant, but after a decade in the industry, my heart wasn’t in it. wanted to go out
What did I do? I did what I have recommended. I thought long and hard about what I really wanted to do at that point in my life and came to a decision. I have always loved broadcasting since elementary school when I heard my voice played from a tape recorder. I listened to disc jockeys, reverends, commercial announcers, and radio drama and just dreamed of how cool it would be to be on the air.
I set my sights high. I stayed away from sports, because it seemed to me that everyone wanted to be a sportscaster. My background was in finance, so I decided to look into business news.
I began my job search in February of 1991 and applied to every major television and radio network. There were a lot of rejections and a lot of embarrassment. My friends and family thought I was crazy to even try to get into broadcasting, but I was determined.
One by one I was discarded and I became increasingly aggressive with the remaining rejection prospects. I reassessed my efforts and concluded that I had a true broadcasting talent with years of experience, was more qualified than many of the broadcasters in the business, and had a passion for the airwaves.
At the time I was frustrated and consumed by my desire. I almost threw in the towel, but after nine months I was hired by CBS, rising to Business Editor in Los Angeles and also doing TV and radio shows for two other CBS stations in Los Angeles.
Being offered to work for CBS as long as I wanted was a fair reward for my efforts, and a news offer from Bloomberg was a nice coup, but after ten years, I was ready to move on to more adventurous projects.
If you really want it, go after it, because even if you don’t get it, it may lead you to something you enjoy that you hadn’t even thought of, or leave satisfied, knowing you gave it your all.
“Nothing in this world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; genius without reward is almost a proverb. Education will not it will; the world is full of educated bums. Persistence and determination are omnipotent.” -Calvin Coolidge
