The following is reprinted with permission from Cracking The Hidden Job Market: How to Find Opportunity in Any Economy. Copyright © 2011 by Donald Asher, Ten Speed Press, an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group, Berkeley, CA. I LOVED this book and the publishers were kind enough to allow me to share this with you.
My brother, a really smart guy, told me that he was looking for work and he was following all my advice. “Great,” I said. “How many face-to-face meetings did you have last week, and how many applications do you have active right now?”
“Face-to-face meetings?” he asked. “Active applications?”
“Yeah,” I said. “How many people did you look in the eye and shake hands with this week, and how many recent applications do you have where you’ve applied and they have not yet dinged you?”
“Well, I didn’t meet anyone this week,” he admitted. “No one’s called me for an interview yet. And I applied for eight jobs so far, I think.”
“Then you’re profoundly not following my advice,” I said. “What did you do on the afternoon of the first day of your job search? You could apply for eight jobs in about an hour and a half. You need to restructure your whole approach, or you’re going to go broke, you’ll lose your house, your new Porsche will be repossessed, your wife will leave you, your kid will call someone else ‘Daddy,’ and you’ll end up living on my couch. I can’t allow that last thing to happen, so let’s replan this whole process.” Well, I didn’t say it exactly that way, but that’s pretty close. And he did have a new Porsche, and not a nickel of savings. And I don’t care how much he protests; I did catch him glancing a little too fondly at my couch.
How do you know you’re doing a good job in your job search? Raw activity is not enough. You can be really busy in a job search while nothing is really happening. If your computer talks to some corporation’s computer, that’s nothing. That counts for nothing.
The most important thing to measure is actual interviews for jobs. Everything else is secondary. If you get interviews, you’ll get a job. If you don’t, you won’t. It’s that simple.
I once watched a guy who didn’t speak a word of English get a job in half an hour. He was walking down Polk Street in San Francisco. He went into each shop and restaurant and approached the best-dressed person in each. He’d stick out his hand and say, “Excuse me, mister. Do you have a job?” He even picked out people on the sidewalk. “Excuse me, mister. Do you have a job?” How do I know he didn’t speak English? He used the same words with women, “Excuse me, mister. Do you have a job?”
He got a job in half an hour, while with all your privileges it may take you months. But his technique had one wonderful effect: he was getting an interview every few minutes! You need to follow his example and get out there and stick out your hand and ask people, “Excuse me, mister. Do you have a job?”
You need face time to get a job. Interviewing for possible jobs is the most important activity in a job search, but any kind of face time will lead you to your goal, even if you don’t speak English or you have a greasy mullet from 1989.
Remember, you’re going to look for work forty hours a week, all day Monday through Thursday, a half day on Friday, and a half day on Sunday. Every Sunday you should evaluate the prior week’s efforts, and plan the coming week’s activities. Here’s what to measure:
New people you’ve met face to face. That’s the number of new people each week you look in the eyeball and ask for help in your search. Three is a minimum. You have to get out of the house. Keep meetings to coffee, so you don’t have to buy anyone’s lunch or dinner. A lot of these meetings will amount to nothing, but it keeps your conversational skills sharp. You’ll stay fluent in presenting what you’re looking for and what skills you have to offer.
New people you’ve met online. Five is a minimum. If you can’t meet five new people online in a week, you’re not trying at all. People you know will introduce you to people you don’t, and it’s easy. “Friending” and “linking” and spamming don’t count, but trading emails with a sentient human being does. If you write to someone and she creates a unique, thought-out response just for you, that counts as “meeting someone” online.
New posted openings you’ve applied for. In spite of the fact that this has a low return on effort, of course you will apply for posted openings that you find that match your interests! Ten brand-new applications per week is a minimum. As I’ve mentioned, posted openings are actually a great place to get career ideas. If one company is advertising a job you find attractive, find all the other companies like that one and approach them all about that type of position.
New organizations you’ve found that “might” harbor a job you want. Finding ten brand-new companies every single week that might be able to hire you is a minimum. You’ll be doing research on an ongoing basis to keep this quantity up. Once you decide on the type of job you’re after (previous chapter), you’ll be building lists of organizations that hire people to do that type of job (next chapter). Ten might not seem like many, but once a company is on your list, you’ll be approaching it over and over and in myriad ways, so the work will snowball over time for each company on your active lists.
Interviews for information. This is a key hidden job market search technique. You’ll need two informational interviews a week to run an effective campaign. The technique is described in detail in chapter 10, Engaging Possible Employers, beginning on page 127.
Screening interviews with a real possible employer. A screening interview is a 5- to 10- minute interview by phone or in person to see if you are a viable candidate for a position. A “real possible employer” is someone who has responded to your application for a posted opening, or someone who has agreed to speak with you about employing you with her organization. Screening interviews are hard to count, because sometimes an employer will start screening you and then turn the call or visit into a real interview. Other times calls that start out as networking attempts slip subtly into screening interviews. Finally, you may advance to an extended, face-to-face interview without ever having endured a screening interview. Nevertheless, try to identify and count screening interviews, in part so you can calculate conversion rates (more on that in just a moment).
First interviews for a “possible” job. This includes interviews for posted openings, and interviews with an organization that doesn’t have a posted opening but has agreed to meet with you about employing you. This is the step that counts! All your other effort is designed to create more first interviews. This is how you get a job! This is the metric that matters! Do you get it, or do I need to use more exclamation points?! Okay, you get it. If you’re running a good search, you should be able to get two of these per month, minimum. Depending on the field and the level of the job, this will be easy or difficult, but for pretty much everybody, two first interviews per month for a possible job is required to eventually find success.
Conversions. You should convert about half of your screening interviews into an extended job interview. Likewise, you should be able to convert about half of your first interviews into continuing interviews. This is important for you to keep track of. If you have lots of interviews for real possible jobs but you never get any callbacks or offers, you may have an interviewing problem.
Follow-up interviews. Almost no one hires on a first interview, so you may have second and third, all the way up to six interviews to land an offer. Success in staying alive and continuing to get callbacks is a critical part of running a job search, as employers take months to hire, and different people want to meet you. The search requisition itself may evolve, as well, so lots of meetings are a common part of the job market now. Count all your follow-up interviews for a possible job; it will help you keep track of which possible employers you need to give more attention to as time passes.
Active items, aka open items. This is everyone you owe a phone call to, everyone you agreed to “check back in with” by a certain date, every job you’ve applied to where they have not yet sent you a ding letter, everyone who said, “Why don’t you give us a call at the first of the month,” everyone who said, “We’ll let you know when we’re ready to start interviewing,” and so on. In any active job search you will and should have dozens of these. Count them, also.
Dings. Those are “possible jobs” for which you are rejected, plus open items that you now realize are dead. You should count your dings just so you can see progress. Every time you get interviewed for a real possible job is a success story in a job search, whether you get a job offer or a ding letter. So count them and celebrate them. Ironically, they prove that you are doing many things right.
Offers. Yes, if you do this right, you’ll start to get job offers. Some of them won’t be right for you, and you’ll decline them. Job offers are sweet, even those you decline, so count them, too. Since most employers look at three finalists for every hire, average applicants should get an offer about one-third of the time they’re interviewed for a possible job.
Self-assessment and goals for the coming week. Of course you will want to assess whether you have met your objectives for the week past, and you’ll want to set goals for job search activity for the coming week.
Finally, you may want to consider if you have any systemic performance problems. Ask yourself, How am I stopping myself from succeeding and how can I overcome that blockage? Everyone has habits, legacies from his family and upbringing, and parts of her self-image that are counterproductive to performance in a job search. Frankly, no one is immune from this, even highly successful people. It is helpful to name these problems, and identify for yourself ways to combat these negative habits and scripts. Taking a few minutes once a week to identify and plan to combat these issues is well worth the introspection.
All in all, the most important basic metric to track is “new people met face to face.” If that number is consistently high, you’re going to get a job. Take some time every week to review your prior week’s search efforts, and plan the coming week’s activities. Do it the same time every week. I suggest Sunday afternoon. Here’s what to count in your job search:
Sunday Night Scorecard
Over the past week. . .
- New people met face to face: (3 per week minimum)
- New people met online: (5 per week minimum)
- New posted openings applied for: (10 per week minimum)
- New organizations found: (10 per week minimum)
- Interviews for information: (2 per week minimum)
- Screening interviews for a possible job (phone or in person): (no specific minimum)
- First-time interviews for a possible job: (2 per month minimum)
- Conversion ratio of follow-up interviews: (should be more than 50%)
- Total number of active items, aka open items: (should be dozens)
- Dings: (no specific minimum)
- Offers: (accepted, rejected, or pending)
- Self-assessment of my performance for the week:
- Goals for the coming week:
- How am I stopping myself from succeeding?
- How can I overcome that blockage?
Tracking Open Items
Even with a modest goal for new contacts per week, you’ll soon have hundreds of details to manage in your job search. You’ll need to keep track of when to call or email people, when to tickle employers about applications that have stalled, when to inquire about second interviews, and so on. The date of your next contact is the key information item to track.
This fellow is telling people things they don't want to hear. That impresses me.
Rob
Posted by: Rob Bennett | March 01, 2011 at 05:57 PM
I disagree with the point that author makes about job hunting being a 40 hour per week job. I think that might be a bit unsustainable. Most careers become somewhat specialized, so there won't be an endless amount of companies to target. I think it would also be important to spend a lot of time exercising, learning new skills, doing recreation activities, etc. instead of just job hunting all the time.
Posted by: Bogey | March 01, 2011 at 11:00 PM
Only 2 comments?!
Guys, this is it! Kick-ass advice. Thanks for sharing, FMF!
Posted by: Concojones | March 04, 2011 at 05:04 PM
Agree with #2. I'm going to start walking into offices nearby my house after looking at thier website. Give em my dang resume! And be pleasantly and professionally hot doing it
Posted by: marilyn | March 09, 2011 at 07:11 PM