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I’ve been watching the news and listening to the debate since the Occupy Wall Street protests started.
For all the press and commotion — things haven’t changed much .
Today’s job market is still a living nightmare.
The average time to find a job is now 40 weeks – that’s 10 MONTHS — according to data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
And if it takes you 40 weeks to find work, you won’t be cashing 40 weekly paychecks.
That money is gone forever.
Can you afford that?
… Add in a mortgage, car payments, health care, and it only gets worse.
That’s the real cost of unemployment.
Now, suppose you could wave a magic wand — and make employers call you. [Note: I’m being sarcastic about the Magic Wand bit … this isn’t possible in the real world…]
Imagine … getting the job you want, doing work you love … bringing home the salary you deserve … taking your family out to dinner to celebrate at your favorite restaurant … telling your friends and neighbors, “I got a great new job!”
Wouldn’t it be nice to get your life back?
Well, you can in 30-45 days – many other people are. But you can only do it if you’re willing to pay the Price for Success .
What do I mean by paying the price of success?
I am talking about you investing time and real effort in finding a career you love and a job you’ll excel at!
NOT by accident but ON PURPOSE!
Despite everything you or your friends may have read or heard about the “Secret” and the “law of attraction”.
HOPE AND DESIRE ARE NOT A STRATEGY!!!!!!!!!!!
In the real world no one is going to pull-up in front of your home. Send you on vacation and fix your life while you’re at Disneyland. That just doesn’t happen.
The labor market has changed. We’re not going back to the “good old Days”. Job search success only comes with hard work!
You need a plan. A detailed plan!
Now look out your front window. If there’s a bus and a camera crew on your front lawn I apologize. You just got lucky!!! Disregard everything I just said..
No bus?
Hunker down… make your own luck with.
Paying the price of success really only requires you to
shift your thinking.
unleash your creativity
maximize all your personal assets
transform from just another job seeker into one who stands-out.
In essence become a Special Forces Guerrilla who’s ready to experience victory.
Career Combat has 5- steps you need to take to get a job and get your career on track. you must take each step in order if you want to turn your job search into – a job found. Skip a step and you fail.
Ready – Set – Go!
- know what to do;
- have the desire to do it;
- are willing to do it;
- are able to do it; and
- Finally, you get out and do it.
Sounds simple enough – Right
It’s not!
Life is conspiring against you. On that note the Occupy Wall Street Protestors are correct.
You’re actually not paranoid — the system is designed to keep you right where you are – to smash your hopes and dreams AND make you think that’s normal.
You have a right to be angry and frustrated. Society has begun to accept, and expect, under performance. And that’s killing your job search.
Let me explain exactly what I mean.
Today we live in an era of “participation awards”
Sports. Schools. Your work place — they all reward participation versus real achievement. Trophies are handed out to every member of the team instead of honoring top performers – that sucks.
Everyone gets the same minimal raise every year whether they deserve it or not. And most don’t.
Society rewards mediocrity. In the real world just showing up isn’t a cause for celebration. It’s a crock. In the real world you only get a super bowl ring for winning.
With job hunting either you get the job OR you don’t. It’s all about wining and the preparation and practice that goes into that 45 minutes of game time called the interview. There’s nothing for the second place candidate. Nothing. They go home and wait for their “next chance”.
Wait? Who has time to wait!!! You need to take action.
Reading Guerrilla Marketing for Job Hunters 3.0 isn’t a panacea for job-hunting. Don’t misunderstand what I’m saying. The book is great – the experts who share their advice are the best in the business BUT….
And it’s a big BUT
You actually have to do the work.
Unfortunately this is where most people fail. I know just a ton of people who’ve read the book and still don’t have a job AND it’s always because they read it AND DiDn’t apply any of it.
Still interested in the truth? Willing to risk a little sweat equity in yourself?
Yes?
Then follow along
1. know what to do
You can’t win the game if you don’t know the rules. To be successful you’ve got to know what you’re doing. Well the rules have changed. In spite of the fact that baby-boomers are retiring in record numbers, employers are even pickier about who they hire and are taking even longer to make hiring decisions. If you don’t understand how to make an effective networking call, develop your marketing materials, or incent a hiring manager to make a decision — you’d better find out.
On our end, we’re going to show you how to: pick a career and a job that’s right for you; write a great cover letter; craft a stop them in their tracks resume; harness the power of the force-multiplier effect; unleash a personal marketing tsunami; interview with confidence; and close a great offer. We spell out exactly what you need to do.
2. have the desire to do it.
Here’s where the train comes off the tracks for most people. You have to actually want to do the work. Many people know exactly what to do, and exactly how to do it. Yet they simply choose not to. It’s easier to do nothing and whine about it. People get stuck in that state until doing nothing because it becomes more painful than fixing it. It’s like having a broken window in your house – it’s not really a problem until winter comes along — then it’s less painful to fix it than ignore it.
It always surprises me to see how many job hunters start their day with NO plan… except perhaps a vague notion of what’s for lunch. I guess that’s why we admire superstars. Because they are in the minority… they always get the job done, no matter what. The average person knows very well they should plan for the next day before leaving for the day. But there’s always a reason it’s more important to walk out the door at 5 p.m. today than to plan to be successful for the next.
The diet industry knows this and makes billions every year… people say they want to be healthy YET many still eat junk and sit around playing video games instead of going to the gym — unwilling to execute what we know to be true by eating healthy and working out.
Many want to believe you can take a pill and get thin. It’s like surfing web sites and emailing your resume… the results are predictable… But it’s easier to do that than make a networking call or customize a letter. And their bottom grows larger by the day
Indeed, fat people stay fat until they change their behavior — but only when staying fat is more painful than dieting.
There’s no quick fix
for
career success.
Unfortunately, the cost of failure in life is much bigger than whether or not you look fit in your suit. When you fail to achieve career success, it affects not only you, but your kids, your spouse, and your friends. If you choose not to pay the price of success, you fail, and it can quickly become a habit. Repeated over and over, dreams become distant prayers and your true potential never materializes. A lot of things can happen along with habitual failure, none of it good.
3. are willing to do it.
The book, The Secret has turned millions of people into do nothings. I’m telling you now it isn’t enough to just say you want to succeed. You need to learn everything there is to know. You need to be a student of success and learn everything you can about job hunting so you can be more successful. And then you have to actually do it. And this starts by defining success, setting goals and getting leverage.
Before you can succeed, you need to define exactly what that means to you. At the beginning of your job search you need to write your personal goal cards.
- What are you going to get out of this new job?
- What’s in it for you?
- Money, power, prestige?
- Why are you doing this?
Failing to write down what the goal is and why you want to achieve it will doom you from the get-go. Remember, success cannot be defined by a manager, your wife, or your buddies. That is up to you, and you alone.
Personal leverage is powerful.
It’s a public admission that you’re going to do something, knowing that if you fail you’ll be humiliated. Leverage may be the best way to overcome psychological barriers that prevent you from staying focused. There are many different ways you can create leverage. Start by defining your motivation for achieving your goals: if you can define the reason to achieve a goal, you will be much more committed to it. You need to know what’s driving you to make it happen.
4. are able to do it.
When you have the right guidance. The right insider knowledge. The right tools. The power is in your court. You have no excuse for failure but your own lack of ambition.
- pick a career and a job that’s right for you;
- write a great cover letter;
- craft a stop them in their tracks resume;
- harness the power of the force-multiplier effect;
- unleash a personal marketing tsunami;
- interview with confidence; and
- close a great offer.
5. finally, you get out and do it.
When you don’t accept failure as a possibility, you can’t lose.
This is a powerful rule to live by. Napoleon Bonaparte used this to his advantage. When sending his soldiers into war, he instructed them to burn their ships on shore. There was only one way home — straight through the enemy lines. Apply this to your life and you will be amazed. When failure is not an option, people will do whatever it takes to succeed.
The difference between a life well lived and a life half lived is as simple as a decision. Whether or not you choose to pay the price of success can determine whether at the end of the day you look back on your life with joy or regret.
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Compliments of David E Perry and Kevin Donlin. For more creative job search tactics, go to the Guerrilla Marketing for job hunters blog and download the free audio CD.
Top 10 Reasons Occupy Wall Street Protestors Can’t Find a Job
# 10 – You’re Gullible
# 9 – You’re Invisible
# 8 – You’re Irrelevant
# 7 – You Network Like a Girl!
# 6 – Your Resume is Ugly
# 5 – Your Cover Letter is Boring…
#4 – You Don’t Know What to do When a Recruiter Calls
Reason # 3 You Inc. – Top 10 Reasons Occupy Wall Street Protestors Can’t Find a Job
Reason # 2 You’re NOT leveraging the Internet – Top 10 Reasons Occupy Wall Street Protestors Can’t Find a Job
Wish I had kept a couple of copies of the book myself. I went looking for a used copy of “Guerrilla Marketing for Job Hunters: 400 Unconventional Tips, Tricks, and Tactics for Landing Your Dream Job” and found one for sale on Amazon.com for $425.00. Maybe it’s signed?
It is gratifying to know though that of the 50,000+ copies sold, less than 50 are available used… guess people are keeping them or passing them down to their friends.
As an author you don’t want to see your books ever hit the ‘bargain bin’ or have thousands of used copies available for sale.
You’re NOT Leveraging Technology
The secret to finding a suitable job today lies in mastering the digital search environment used by employers.
Employers Don’t Advertise any More
A rapid transformation in hiring practices has gone unnoticed by most job hunters looking for work. The market has changed — no one advertises anymore. America is in a revolutionary new era, defined by digital employer searches”. Employers are using radical new search techniques to 
find their candidates, and if you don’t know how to show up on their radar, you will be looking for a job forever.
The Times They Are a Changing
Approximately, 50-million jobs are filled in the United States every year — almost all without a job posting.
Shocking – but true! This is happening because employers can’t deal with the avalanche of resumes they’re getting. Today, employers are relying on a brand new digital suite of tools and tactics to find the handful of “most qualified” recruits that they want to interview. Your first interview is often conducted online WITHOUT you. That’s right – a recruiter decides your fate often without ever talking to you.
You need to learn to leverage online resources like ZoomInfo, LinkedIn, and Facebook, to take advantage of “the secret lives of top corporate recruiters”. You need to take control of your life and this means ownership of the means of employment – to control your destiny.
Take Control of Your Life
Taking control of your employment is especially important in today’s demographic because so many people are looking for new kinds of work – work that has meaning. Our population is getting older – for the first time, there will be more people over 65 than under 5 — and older people are more reflective: they want to know they are doing something meaningful. Some 87% of the 140-million working Americans want a different job.
Gallup research shows that in the U.S., more than half of employees are not engaged at work – and 20% are actively disengaged. This costs the country trillions of dollars in foregone productivity.
The cost of all this disengagement in lost productivity is about $300-billion a year. This can only 
be solved at the fine-grained level; each individual has to find his or her own specific road to job satisfaction — and that requires individual ownership of the means of employment!
At the same time, the nature of work is also changing, as people seek control. A new business model for the 21st century is arising. Enjoyment-based motivation, namely how creative a person feels when working on the project, is the strongest and most pervasive drive for workers today. When you are in control of your work you experience the pure joy of creating.
As the economy moves toward more right-brain, conceptual work the motivators need to change as well: to those stressing self-satisfaction and self-motivation. That requires freedom – freedom of choice.
Freedom of Choice
The ability to work on projects at companies that value your contribution starts when you begin to take control.
Freedom to Choose
Freedom to choose begins with mastering the following digital tools:
ZoomInfo – the most effortless ZoomInfo is the research tool I use the most. Can’t live with out it. Are you in it? You should be! And listing yourself or checking your profile is free. If you’ve ever given a speech, being quoted in the press or are on a corporate web site – then ZoomInfo knows about you. But are there two people with your same name? Check. Make certain the profile information they have on file is accurate. Register and Create a ZoomInfo Web Summary and Be Found and then you can Let Opportunities Find You. This is THE career accelerator you can’t live without. It’s your “job search commando”.
LinkedIn – if you’re not already there, that’s where you start. For a great article on all the spy vs 
spy opportunities for smart job hunters, see this ComputerWorld article by Stacey Collette which details the finer points on how to use Year in Review and Slide Share to name but a few apps – to get FOUND by recruiters and hiring managers everywhere.
About.me – have more than one digital presence on the net? You’re not the alone. Trouble is you may not want recruiters or employers to see what you’ve posted on every one of them — enter About.me which allows you to manage ALL your online profiles. Now you can control who sees what AND do it all from one central location on the web.
Branchout.com – Facebook is rapidly gaining popularity with recruiters and employers. If you don’t feel like creating and updating a LinkedIn profile [you really should you know] then at least leverage Facebook to find a job OR make it easier for a job to find you. Branchout.com allows you to expand your career network to include absolutely everyone you know on Facebook. Every time a Facebook friend joins Branchout you see where they used to work, where they work now, and where their friends work. Very good way to connect with the Newly Departed and build your know ledge base before approaching an employer on your top 10 list.
Google local – If the geographic location of your potential employer is very important to you for reasons of the commute distance, or maybe because you’re relocating to a new city, you may want to consider limiting your search to a specific location. There are ways to get local with Google. From http://local.google.com you can conduct a search for employers and businesses in your vicinity. Simply enter the name of an industry or business category in the “What” box on the left hand side, and enter your street address including the city and state, or just enter a city name or even a postal code in the “Where” box to. Go try it.
Hidden Jobs App. – want to know what’s going on at more organizations than you could visit in a month of surfing? Get the app. Actually just Google Chris Russell and subscribe to all the different properties he owns that help job hunters. You will be amazed.. 
Message Tag – Everybody loves email. It’s cheap, easy and instant. But how many times do you find yourself wondering what happened to your messages? You send an email out into the Internet, then wait patiently for a reply. But will it get there? Will they read it? When will they read it? And will it be too late? Where’s the reply? Are they still checking that account? Are they on holiday? Should you just wait a little longer? What’s the story? — don’t let the technology derail your job search. Get Message tag and know when to follow up.
My Fax – OK, you’ve just culled a hot lead from ZoomInfo – Googled the exec’s background – rooted out their hot buttons and crafted a compelling resume – - – now what? Thanks to e-mail’s ubiquity, it might seem like the perfect resource for sending resumes. Unfortunately, the “spam blockers” that organizations use to fight unsolicited messages can stop your e-mail dead in its tracks. Sadly, you’re not even likely to know if your masterfully crafted message reached its target. So what does a Guerrilla Job Hunter do? Tunnel inside the company using technology the employer does still trust and can’t block – FAX.
NatsJobs.com - With employees are getting laid off via e-mail and SMS messages on their phones, job security is a thing of the past. No one is immune to cutbacks, downsizing or off-shoring. In fact, you now need to be “looking” all the time to insure continuous employment but let’s face it tracking all those job leads is tedious and time consuming. This is a free site which allows you to manage a serious job search. Get it while it’s still free.
Recognize these Jewels
Now you have to realize that if I’m recommending these, it’s because the most successful executive recruiters use these every day. So take the hint: good tools lighten your load and speed your job search.
There are also a vast number of services you can subscribe to for free that will bring information on hot new companies straight to your desktop every morning. JustSell.com for example delivers a list of all the companies in America that were newly funded and categorized by state or province, complete with the contact numbers for their executives.
Nearly every newspaper that’s available on the web has a “News Alert” function, and you should subscribe to as many as you need to cover your interests.
Ask the people whom you know which free publications they subscribe to on the Internet and keep ahead of your job-hunting competitors. Heck if you Tweet you can start your own Daily with Paper.li and become the oracle of your industry…. Then recruiters will be tripping over you.
7 of the Top 50+ sources for leads
The following are all covered in Guerrilla Marketing for Job Hunters 3.0
America’s Career InfoNet – Their research tools for industry and occupations are second to none AND it’s free. There are several pages devoted to using it in Guerrilla Marketing for Job Hunters. Check it out for yourself.
Just Sell – will email you a description of every company which has received new funding each week. The free report is divided by state or province and includes a description of the company and the purpose for the round of funding, and often includes the email addresses of the senior executives.
The Money Tree Survey – is a quarterly study of venture capital investment activity in the United States. It’s collaboration between PricewaterhouseCoopers, Thomson Venture Economics and the National Venture Capital Association. It’s excellent and it’s the only industry-endorsed research of its kind.
Venture Capital Journal – is free and I have daily updates delivered to my email box bright and early each day. PE Week is the only industry publication that tracks and researches private equity deals for the entire venture capital market. The weekly newsletter and daily website give you in-depth news on industry trends, companies seeking investors, deals at all stages, participating firms, deal conditions, proceeds and pricing. It’s been a valuable resource for me.
Dow Jones Venture Capital - Tech, Life Sciences, HealthCare [which is huge beyond] – Dow Jones Venture Capital tracks it and reports on it. Their conferences are second to none.
Vault – their industry career guides are world famous. The thousands of career opportunities on the site are a nice bonus. If your just graduating you have to check the site out and then go over to
Google Alerts are email updates delivered to your email address once a day based on information you tell Google to watch for. For example the announcement of new executives or news stories on companies of interest to you. I use Google Alerts to find leads on companies who have hired new VPs of Sales because these executives might need my services to help staff their teams.
Job Hunting Doesn’t Have to Suck
Lastly you need to know that on the surface everyone acknowledges that rejection is a fact of life when you’re job-hunting. That it pushes all the wrong buttons – not once – but sometimes hundreds of times. Sometimes it’s not even the rejection letters; it’s the dead silence – the lack of acknowledgement that you even exist. The fundamental truths of job hunting are not pleasant. It’s all about being rejected and ignored. Eventually the stress gets to everyone. 
So …. you need to feed your opportunity funnel like a salesperson feeds their sales funnel and the previously mentioned services will accelerate your search. All the previously mentioned sites will help you to leverage Technology and be FOUND.
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Compliments of David E Perry and Kevin Donlin. For more creative job search tactics, go to the Guerrilla Marketing for job hunters blog and download the free audio CD.
# 8 You’re Irrelevant
It doesn’t matter one iota that you need a job. That you want to work. Or that times are tuff.
Employers don’t care
Why would they! Nor should you expect them to. Times are tuff for employers too. Most are fighting to stay alive. To stave off falling demand, cheap imports and consumer demand for lower and lower every day prices. Margins are thin. Competition is fierce and they’re looking for solutions to their own problems so they don’t become another statistic.
It’s not that employers don’t hear you. It’s that can’t understand you. The language you use is foreign to them. “I want..” “I need..” “Me, me ,me”
It’s not about you
Let me say that again. It’s not about you. It’s about them!
As much as you’re looking for work – employers are looking for solutions to the problems that plague them – be that poor sales, slow demand, bottlenecks in production… whatever. Employers don’t hire because they have extra money kicking around and they want to feel good about themselves in the morning – they hire to solve problems – their problems.
Be relevant
You want to be heard and get hired? Learn how to be relevant to an employer.
When the economy is humming employers are interested in 3 things and that’s it.
- Can you make me money?
- Can you save me money?
- Can you increase my efficiency? {Which is really a subset of the first two}.
When the economy is in the toilet they’re even more demanding. They have to be. One client put it to me this way when I presenting a potential candidate for them to interview, “David, honestly should I hire this woman for $65,000 or invest it in new equipment“. In the end, they invested in the new equipment because solving that production line problem had more immediate value, than hiring the candidate.
Employers Shop Too
When employers hire [go shopping] they want the best deal. The best price. The best bang for their buck. The best “value” for their money. Just like you do.
Before the recession, when money was a plenty, you probably didn’t care that the local book store might go out of business and have to lay off their staff, because you could get a lower price somewhere else – possibly on-line. No, you cared about your needs and acted accordingly. It’s human nature right. Everyone is like that. You know — getting the best deal.
It wasn’t that long ago that America had a vibrant textile and clothing industry. It wasn’t unusual to have a relationship with a tailor or seamstress at a local store, someone who knew your size and style and might even give you a call to alert you to the new Fall line.
That’s gone. It’s been off-shored by consumers demanding lower prices and share holders demanding competitive returns.
Seeing a genuine “Made in America” sticker on a piece of clothing is about as rare as spotting a bald eagle. Diane Sawyer said that if every American spent just $64 (more than normal) on USA made items this year, it would create something like 200,000 new jobs. That’s 17 ½ cents. Imagine, for $1.70 a day you can create 2 million jobs. It’s nice to think people will step up and do the right thing, but seriously – what’s in it for them.
Your future is in your hands.
What Employers Want
They want a deal. And I don’t mean just large employers – I mean ALL employers. Every one of them views hiring as an acquisition. You are human capital, and capital when must add value or be replaced. Today most businesses that are growing are small businesses and they need to ensure they get excellent “value’ for any money they invest.
Speak their language
Learn to talk to employers in the language they use. Talk “value”. From now on, always coach your experience in terms of Your value add. Whether it’s on paper or during a conversation explain your contribution in terms of the $$$ you saved or $$$ you generated.
They don’t care about you. They don’t even know who you are. They have their own issues to deal with. They don’t have time to try and decipher what you’re talking about. You need to clearly understand and articulate your value:
- What special skills, qualifications, and qualities do you bring to the table?
- What do their customers want and how can you help them?
- What value do you bring?
Do the thinking for the Employer 
Learn to think like the person who is going to make the hiring decision – the employer. This simple fact is ignored in most job-hunting books and by the majority of career coaches who have backgrounds in HR. But it is an absolutely essential part of marketing yourself in to a new job.
If you do nothing else but begin every employment conversation with words that effectively convey,
“Here’s what’s in it for you… ”
You will generate interviews and offers faster than a politician can preach “new job creation” before Election Day. The difference though is yours will be real and in America.
Stop and think
Now tell me the truth, did you just have one of those “duh” moments? You know when you say to yourself, “yeah! I knew that, or why didn’t I think of that?” Be honest. Most people understand this intellectually but fail to act on it because on the surface it’s seems too simple an explanation.
When you realize that the basic aim of every company is to stay in business, you can begin to position yourself as a solution to their need to create and serve the customers who keep them in business, rather than focusing on your need for a job. Understanding this helps you position yourself as a solution to their needs instead of just another job-hunter.
Let’s go a little further
“Solution selling” is in vogue all across America for a very good reason – it works. In solution selling you begin by understanding your customer’s business and therefore the need for your product’s solution. Solution sales people focus on the benefits of their product, not the features. The benefits they emphasize are the ones they know the buyer needs. They know what the buyer needs because they’ve researched the company to discover what its “pain points” are.
When sales people focus on solution selling, they increase the value of their products and services, because their product is not viewed as just another “list of features” like those of every competitor. As a job-hunter, you increase your value exponentially when you focus on the employer’s needs.
For example:
Two equally qualified job-seekers apply for a job in the accounting department of a growing company.
- Job-hunter “A” researches the company and discovers the company plans to do an initial public offering. In his cover letter and resume he emphasizes his experience with publicly traded companies.
- Job-hunter “B” who is equally qualified does not. She sends in a standard cover letter and resume.
Job-hunter “A” gets the call and in the interview discusses the company’s needs against the backdrop of his experience. The results are predictable – job-hunter “A” gets hired and job-hunter “B” is never even considered.
Job-hunting can actually be that simple, yet all too many job-hunters, even those adept at marketing people, focus on their needs and not the employer’s. You need to think about what you have to offer the company in light of its ability to serve its customers and grow.
Bottom Line
Be relevant. Tap into your future employer’s timeless fixations with vanity and self-fulfillment. Show them that — by hiring you — they’ll become the corporate hero and score the corner office! Guerrilla Job Hunters are doing this every day and scoring jobs.
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For more creative job search tactics, go to the Guerrilla Marketing for Job Hunters blog and download the free audio CD.
During the financial crisis, my well-paying Sales & Marketing position within the automotive industry in Southeast Michigan was eliminated. Living in one of the worst job markets, how does one beat the odds by finding, not only employment, but advance my career?
Fortunately, I had taken many steps of a Guerrilla Job Hunter. I built my network through involvement with industry groups, attending workshops and participating in on-line forum discussions. I expanded my Linkedin contacts (www.linkedin.com/in/mccausland) and also constructed an online presence through a personal website (www.billmccausland.com). All of these steps combined resulted in interviews.