“They don’t pay you by the hour. They pay you for what you invest 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. It may sound ridiculous, but I’ll convince you of that if you give me the time. This may go against your thinking, but it will make sense in a moment.
Suppose you are a Fortune 500 company and you are looking for a vice president to lead your international shipping operations for one of your divisions, so you will probably not advertise the position.
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You would be leaning your hand towards your possibly expanding competitors.
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You may be trying to attract a key competitor employee.
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It might raise the question of what is going to happen to the company employee who is currently in that position.
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An advertisement could overload your hiring manager with unqualified applicants and possibly overlook the correct applicant.
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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 who are. open to a possible move. Over months and years, the Headhunter builds a list of qualified individuals and then, on the other side of the coin, makes calls to 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 with international currency experience, they speak Spanish fluently, they are not averse to moving, and they have at least ten years of experience in the field of geology. , come back to me.
Bingo! The Headhunter did not sell a prospect he had in mind, but he did get a clue 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 will never see an ad in the classifieds section.
As a financial consultant to several Wall Street firms, he regularly received a call to see if he was interested when making a move. Most executives have received a call from a Headhunter in their current position and many have accepted the offer to move 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 the bottom line, that is, if you can make money for a company, someone can use it.
In my youth I worked for a personnel company in San Diego. This is how it would work. Many small ads ran in the Sunday classifieds section of local newspapers with a job description and usually a starting salary or the acquaintance, make up up to $$$$ annually verbosity.
The reaction was always the same. By Monday morning all the lines were ringing non-stop. Whoever answered the phone would screen the caller with a few questions and invite them for an interview or tell them that a more qualified candidate is needed, but check to see if this caller could 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 job candidate would need. Of course, there would be a fee, sometimes paid by the company you are looking to hire, sometimes by the job seeker who would be hired, or divided between the two.
Of course, not all candidates fit the job description perfectly, but our job was to convince both parties that you would be a perfect fit. The fees always had room for negotiation, as long as the company made money and the rep was satisfied with the commission and the company and / or job candidate were willing to pay, which was my first introduction to really creative ways of financing. articles. . Pawn jewelry, refinance a car, internal financing, and borrow money from parents who want the child to get out of the house and work, and credit cards, of course.
Having a Headhunter is a great advantage if you are at the top of the food chain. If you’re on the lower 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 a few basics, maybe things you already know, but I’ll share my stories with you and my experience to save you 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 it is that you want to do with your life. You should also 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 seriously think about it. This is about what you 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 you!
If you are married or married to a family, there are other considerations, but you should focus on an area in which you can earn a living, enjoy, and have the potential to increase your income as time goes on.
If you are currently paid by the hour, you will never get rich from 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 listen to me. I speak from experience. When you are in the job market and you tell everyone you meet that you are willing to do anything, because you just need a job, don’t expect a flood of offers.
When an employer finds out that you only need one job, they know in advance that you won’t stick around 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 cost of mistakes, move on to something else because of a fifty-cent-an-hour pay increase?
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 you are willing to join the company in any capacity to join the company of your dreams. Read it again so that you clearly understand the difference. You are not going to ask for a job for the sake of a paycheck, but you will do whatever task is asked of you just to get a chance to show that you would be a valuable employee and benefit the company.
Companies have no problem in training good people if they know that the person will participate in the long term. Once you are trained, you have value and add value to the results of the company and, as I have said before; Businesses can use people to make them money.
The more skills you can contribute, the more valuable you will be. Don’t be surprised if you hear the phrase “you are really overqualified for this position.” I’ve heard it a few times in my life. You just have to be ready with a great response in a respectful way, “I know looking at my resume I seem to be overqualified for this position, but I am willing to accept this position so that I can join this company and grow with it. I know it will not 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 take a higher position in case one is opened due to a promotion, attrition or transfer. When can I join the team? Who else do I need to talk to to make my intentions known? Right now? “
Don’t let an interviewer squash you like a fly. Sometimes they are just testing to see if you really want to work for the company and they are 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 are not committed to the task at hand, it just won’t work. Keep in mind that you need to have a strong commitment to each company that you approach and don’t be afraid to approach a few companies at the same time. Just because Company A does not have a vacancy at this time, it does not mean that in three weeks a man 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 that you would be ideal for, feel free to tell them that if the new hire doesn’t work out, they will be happy to talk to the company in the future. Most companies have some kind of trial period and not all of them comply with it.
That probationary period can be a huge advantage to you, especially if they find out if the candidate they hired lied about employment, criminal history, driver’s license status, past experience, etc. Be prepared, be courteous, and don’t be afraid to keep doing it.
I will share this story with you. I worked for SmithBarney in Beverly Hills, California, as a financial consultant, but after about a decade in the industry, my heart just wasn’t in it. I wanted to leave.
What did I do? I did what I recommended. I thought a lot about what I really wanted to do at that point in my life and made a decision. I have always loved broadcasting since elementary school, when I heard my voice playing from a tape recorder. I listened to DJs, Reverend, commercial announcers and radio theater and dreamed of how great it would be to be on the air.
I put my gaze high. I avoided sports, because it seemed to me that everyone wanted to be a sportscaster. My background was financial, so I decided to look for trading news.
I started my job search in February 1991 and applied to work in radio and television on all the major networks. There were a lot of rejection sheets and a lot of embarrassment. Friends and family thought he was crazy for even trying to get into broadcasting, but he was determined.
One by one they discarded me and with each rejection I became more aggressive with the remaining prospects. I reevaluated my efforts and came to the conclusion that I had a real talent for broadcasting with years of experience, was more qualified than many of the broadcasters in business, and had a passion for the airwaves.
At the time I was frustrated and consumed by my desire. I was about to throw in the towel, but after nine months I was hired by CBS, rising to the position of Business Editor in Los Angeles and also working in television and radio for two other CBS stations in Los Angeles.
Being offered to work for CBS for as long as I wanted was a fair reward for my efforts, and an offer from Bloomberg News 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, you can be led to something you enjoy and didn’t even think about, or walk away satisfied knowing that you gave it your all.
“Nothing in this world can replace perseverance. Talent will not; nothing is more common than talented failed men. Genius will not; genius without reward is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated vagabonds. Persistence and determination are omnipotent. ” – Calvin Coolidge
