Tips for Getting Back to Work Quickly
⢠Establish a work habit that is comfortable to you, e.g., continuing to dress in business clothes while researching and preparing, and setting aside a specific area of the house as your office.
⢠Set up a second phone line or use your cellphone as the sole contact number. Make sure the line has voice mail.
⢠Use your email-based network of friends and colleagues to get the word out that you're looking.
⢠Put bitterness and thoughts of unjust treatment aside. Keep moving forward.
⢠Remember that luck favors the well prepared.
⢠Avoid inertia and lethargy during the day. Keep occupied on worthwhile tasks.
⢠However, avoid also turning the work of finding work into an 18-hour-a-day effort. Keep your evenings and weekends for yourself and your family.
⢠Make a point of lunching/networking with people who have also been through transition and are now employed again. Learn what worked for them.
Exercise, too, delivers these same intellectual benefits. It's another example of positive stress (
eustress
) influencing the body and delivering oxygen-rich blood to the brain. It's blue-skying just when you need it the most. Yet I have encountered numerous people who see exercise as a privilege of employed people only. That's ironic, really, given that most employed people seldom have the time to exercise on a regular basis. People who are unemployed feel that any time they spend away from the active search for new employment is wasteful self-indulgence. Of course, nothing could be further from the truth. Countless studies have shown that in addition to blood pressure and cardiovascular benefits, exercise does much to elevate mood, to rebalance emotions, and to generate an aura of vibrancy and optimism that can't help but rub off on other people. It's an essential part of your overall job-hunting kit, along with your résumé, your interview skills, your active listening skills, and your visual grooming and presentation.
Remember the principles behind image and first impressions described in Chapter 7? How the emotional side of the brain delivers its signals faster than the rational side? Whether right or wrong, people can't help but make judgments about your appearance, judgments that force their way into an overall assessment. Consider, then, what exercise can do in addition to the cardiovascular and blue-skying opportunities mentioned earlier:
⢠Your eyes will be brighter and will look less tired and stressed.
⢠Your posture will be better. Physical exercise helps tone all types of muscles, not just biceps and quads. People who are fit stand straighter and hold their head higher.
⢠Your clothes will fit better. Improved tone in skin and muscle will make your business clothes look like they were tailor-made.
⢠Improved breathing ability will help pace conversation flow and deepen vocal tone.
⢠Exercise also helps bring on top-quality sleep, which ensures top performance the next day.
Here's a hard pill to swallow: Many career transition and human resource experts will say that an unemployed professional can expect to be out of work one month for every $10,000 they earn, or expect to earn annually. That means that someone with a $120,000 a year job can reasonably expect to spend a year looking for her next position. This fact may come as a shock to those who have never heard it before and a double-shock to someone already coping with unemployment. But after the initial jolt wears off, this knowledge helps clear away some of the fog caused by confusion and anxiety, and then actually helps set a pace and a style of job hunting that is more appropriate. Once you know it takes time to land a job that fits, it becomes easier to slow down and do it properly.
People who accept the first job offer that comes their way after having been terminated may strike it lucky with a perfect position, sure, but I would bet that has more to do with a well-nurtured network than pure chance. The trouble with accepting the first job that comes along is that it's usually a poor fit, and it makes a person unavailable for the right job, which eventually will come along either through network connections or invention.
For people who still have a job, being aware of this one-month-per- $10,000 ratio helps give greater incentive to
cool down
and invest some time in their future. For, on the one hand, a well-prepared network of contacts and mentors might shorten the time spent in transition. On the other, this knowledge might provide an incentive to prepare financially for a more comfortable transition period. A year of unemployment can be a wonderful thing if money worries do not intervene; it then becomes more like a sabbatical. Those who are too busy to think about the prospects of unemployment may not be able to adjust their spending and saving habits so as to be better prepared for this type of event.
AVOIDING LETHARGY AND DEPRESSION
A key negative development for people not used to looking for work is the sudden cessation of the rat race. Just last week the schedule was full, probably overloaded. There were meetings, deadlines, and activity. Now there is nothing. This change is hard to take for many and can lead to a dangerous spiral of lethargy and depression. Fortunately, there is a solution, and it's the same one that I've been suggesting for all of the other areas of life that this book covers: You must
cool down
enough to see how best to get where you want to go.
In terms of transition,
cooling down
means avoiding these two extremes:
⢠It means avoiding racing out into the employment marketplace, résumé in hand, ready to accept the first offer that comes along; this smells of desperation.
⢠It means avoiding burrowing into the sofa, turning on the TV, and coming to a dead stop.
The better route, the saner route, requires that you think through the situation and create a plan, a plan that generates vision, releases energy, and helps you get back on your feet. A transition plan uses the project management principle of thorough planning to recognize that far from there being nothing to do, there is actually a lot to do. You will be as busy during the transition period as you were, and soon will be, back at the office. The types of tasks that need to be done during transition include:
⢠Drafting a résumé
⢠Proofing and finalizing the résumé
⢠Researching companies to target
⢠Researching their competitors
⢠Drafting a custom pitch letter
⢠Proofing the custom pitch letter
⢠Contacting people in your network
⢠Scheduling lunches with key contacts
⢠Attending lunches with key contacts
⢠Following up after lunches with key contacts
⢠Identifying networking opportunities
⢠Attending networking opportunities
⢠Following up after networking opportunities
⢠Attending meetings with career counselors
⢠Reviewing online job sources such as professional association websites
⢠Exercising
⢠Blue-skying/Gazebo building
⢠Taking courses/getting more education
⢠Volunteer work
⢠Having interviews
⢠Organizing a home office
Even this is an incomplete list. There are 21 items on it, many of which need to be done more than once per week. Let's assume that each task takes two hours. Before you start repeating any of these activities, you already have a 42-hour transition week. That's busy!
People who slow down enough to plan rather than accept the swirl of confusion in their head are generally delighted to discover that their transition calendar is full, not empty. The work of finding work is a job unto itself. There's no time for boredom or depression. The energy expended, far from being fatiguing, actually revitalizes the body, translating all of the positive stress used in rebuilding and channeling it outwards to become the part of the upbeat body language and vibe that makes a positive impression on interviewers and network contacts. And there are further dividends. The people you meet, the education you receive, and the good habits you perfect during the transition period are all transferable to your next position. This period is truly an investment in your future.
THE BUSINESS OF LOOKING FOR WORK
Whether you are currently in, or are facing transition, it will soon come time to dust off the old résumé and see what jobs are on offer, both online and in the paper. Typically, those who think too fast and react too fast are the ones who condemn themselves to extra work and increased hardship during this exercise. For although it is a good idea to ensure your résumé is up to date, it is not the primary tool for getting a good job.
You
are.
It is much more enjoyable and far more productive to do lunch than it is to lick envelopes. I mentioned the value of lunch in terms of networking for the still-employed in the previous chapter, and I mention it again now for the not-currently-employed. Unlike his desk-bound colleagues, a person in transition can actually have two lunches in a day, and a coffee conversation, too. It's not necessary, of course, to eat two lunches' worth of food a dayâa salad will do, but an early lunch from 11:30 to 12:30 followed by a later lunch appointment from 12:45 to 1:30, followed by a coffee meeting from 2:00 to 2:30 allows the shrewd networker access to three key superconnectors in a single day.
That's how he'll get the word out. What makes for a shrewd networker?
⢠He takes the time to choose the right people to have lunch with.
⢠He makes no bones about his current situation, since there's no stigma to being in transitionâit's part of the reality of life.
⢠He takes the time to schedule these appointments so there is plenty of travel and preparation time between each.
⢠He takes the time to remember the importance of active listening and then practices it during the conversation.
⢠He takes the time to remember to talk peer to peer, as equals, remembering that being in transition in no way erases the wisdom, experience, and interest within himself.
⢠He takes the time to ensure his key messageâthe type of work or contacts he's looking forâis conveyed effectively to his lunch companion.
⢠He takes the time to ask his lunch companion what he can do for her. How can he help her business thrive. He keeps the focus on active, outward helping rather than directly asking for help for himself. This is not done with any mercenary intent. He simply asks the same questions he would if he were not in transition: the
cool
questions that a savvy networker would use; the questions that connect with the person he's talking to.
⢠He takes the time after each meeting to schedule any follow-up activities or calls he has promised to make, including any leads his guest has already given him.
⢠He takes the time to send a thank-you note to each of his lunch and coffee guests.
Bob Burg, in his book,
Endless Referrals
, reinforces the idea that each person you know knows on average 250 other people.
1
To connect live with one individual is to empower that person to be able to speak on your behalf through the power of personal experience to all of these other people. Having seen you, having interacted with you, having made emotional contact, and having made positive emotional judgments about you, they are in a better position to sell you than a two-page résumé could ever do.
So, stop waiting for your desired position to be posted or advertised, and go out and get it instead. The best jobs are seldom advertised. In fact, many companies looking for qualified staff approach the search in precisely the opposite way than you would expect.
⢠First, they'll search from within their own ranks, looking for an internal resource.
⢠Next, they'll seek out recommendations from internal people (once again proving the value of lifelong networking).
⢠If that turns up nothing, they'll turn to professionals such as recruiters to find suitable candidates.
Only when these methods fail will they post positions in the Careers section of a newspaper, or on Internet-based career sites. These publications are their last resort. It is up to you, then, to take the time to get to a senior decision maker in that company and tell her about yourself. The job you're looking for may not even exist at present; it may have to be created. But that's not necessarily a problem. If a senior officer sees value in having you aboard, then she will make sure the position is created. The company may not even know that they need you until you tell them. Jeffrey J. Fox, in his wonderful book,
Don't Send a Résumé and Other Contrarian Rules to Help Land a Great Job
, puts it this way:
Each decision influencer and decision-maker has different needs and concerns. Your job is to determine those needs and prove you can satisfy those needs. There is only one reason people hire someone, and that is to solve a problem, calculate the cost to the organization of not solving the problem, and demonstrate that you are the solution.
2
Time provides the perfect platform upon which to frame that demonstration, and the Internet delivers the material with which to work. You can dig up the dirt on the company, its competitors, the state of the market, upcoming trendsâall kinds of things that are publicly available through online sources. This material allows you to identify possible sources of a company's “pain”âthe types of things that keep a top executive officer awake at nightâwhich can then be formatted into a well-crafted, one-page pitch letter, or perhaps the agenda of a 15-minute phone call or, better yet, a meeting.