Category Archives: Time management

5 Weeks – How to find a job in 5 weeks

Posted on November 18, 2015 | Leave a comment

Do you need a job now?  Then use the best job search plan ever created.

Come on!  How could it possibly be the best EVER created? Because it was created for only one person.  You.

I have seen it happen over and over.

One guy is out of work for less than a month, and he gets a job offer with a raise.

free from a bad job

Find a job in 5 weeks – that is freedom

It takes 6 months to get a job for the guy who sat next to him.  This poor guy was doing exactly the same job, got better performance ratings, and would get rehired first if the job was re-opened. To make things worse, the guy who took six months accepts a huge pay cut.

          It isn’t fair, but it happens every day.

It isn’t luck.  The guy who finds a job quickly did things differently.  He may have instinctively done the few most critical steps within the first days of losing his job.  He may also have mapped out a strategy and executed it.  Either way, he got the critical steps executed.  He got the job.

The critical steps most often screwed up by the guys who take 6 months to find a job.

For 22 years I’ve been watching people get jobs in days, or wait a year to find a job.  The steps most often screwed up are:

  • The resume stunk, and he never found out.
  • He burned his best leads before he was prepared.
  • Monster became his momma.
  • HR (Human Resources Department) was his master.
  • He never expanded his network, but he talked to a zillion people.
  • Interviews never seemed to go right.
  • He waited for a phone call back.
  • He thought recruiters were his friends

Give me a call or research these topics on my blog.

If you want to have the shortest job search possible.  Fill out the survey at this link and then contact me.  bryan@dilts.us or call Bryan Dilts at 717-975-9001.

No, I don’t guarantee that you will get a job offer in 5 weeks.  But I will put 22 years of experience behind your job search.

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Posted in Accomplishments, Attitude, Finding jobs, Followup, Interviews, Job Boards, Networking, Recruiters, Resumes, Time management

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Making milk and getting the raise you deserve

Posted on September 17, 2015 | Leave a comment

Is there something you do that is critical? How many are there? Do you get credit for them? A raise?  When the kids were all home, I wrote this.

I make the milk

With up to 9 kids (we have 10) and 2 adults at home, we drink a lot of milk. There isn’t enough room in our 2 refrigerators to keep enough fresh milk.  We use powdered milk instead.

Where the milk comes from

Me, in the morning, getting ready to make the milk.

Every morning I get up early and write.  When I am done I make breakfast for myself.  The milk is usually gone.  Sometimes I grumble a little.  Why is it always me?  Everyone uses it.  Can’t they make it too?  Then I go ahead and make the milk.  Occasionally  I remind my wife that I made the milk.  She can’t leave me for another man. He might not make the milk in the morning. (Truth be told: she makes it more than I do, but I can’t have her believing I am totally useless.)

Do you “make the milk” at work?  Are there indispensable chores you do?  Then you need to remind your boss of them every week or at least quarterly.  Put them in your weekly, monthly or quarterly reports to your boss. He needs to be reminded.

Since you are reporting what you do as routine every week, you’d better add what the extra things are that you do every week. Write how you saved money, speeded things up, or made a customer happy.  Don’t forget to include training you gave or received.

There is no way that your boss can possibly know all the important things you do.  He has his own job.  Giving him a weekly, monthly and quarterly report reminds him.  It also gives him a weekly opportunity to think of new projects to give you.  It forces him to think of your career.

Make the milk. Then make sure you get the credit.   It really will help your career.

Something To Do Today

In your job journal make a list of the things you do every day, week and month.  What do you take care of so your boss doesn’t have to worry?  Keep adding to the list.  Friday, write up the list and give it to your boss.  You may just surprise him with how much you did this week.

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Tomorrow:     Guerilla gardening

Great ideas are…

Forgetting

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Posted in Accomplishments, Attitude, Raises, Time management

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The trick to working less hours and getting promoted

Posted on August 4, 2015 | Leave a comment

You don’t double your productivity by doubling your hours. Working lots and lots of hours may get you a promotion and a raise.  It may also get you burned out and fired.

A coupla months in the laboratory can save a coupla hours in the library. (Westheimer’s Discovery)

What you really need to do is double your productivity. Here is how to do it.

A friend sold me a chainsaw cheap.  She was doing me a favor.  She admitted that it ran, but it did not cut well at all.  I took the chainsaw home and reversed the chain.  It works great now. I could have just run the chainsaw more and eventually cut through any log (maybe). A little while ago my son decided to cut some monstrous tree roots with the chainsaw.  Suddenly it wouldn’t cut anymore.  The dirt on the roots had horribly dulled the chain.  I took it into my basement and spent half an hour sharpening it.  Now it cuts again.  But, I could have just worked a lot more hours cutting logs with a dull chainsaw.

The career trash heap is littered with the bodies of people who thought 20 MORE hours a week at work would get them promoted. While they were slaving away, someone else reversed the chain or sharpened the saw.  The thinker and planner got promoted.

You need to do your basic job well.  Other than your basic job, what will set you apart?  What will make you the best?  What will make you the natural leader?

How for YOU to get a promotion or raise

Your boss wants to look good and get a raise and promotion.  What can you do to help him? Is your working more hours the only thing that will make him look better?

Your company wants to make more money, spend less, and keep the customers happier.  Can you do something a little better while you are doing your basic job? Can you get involved in highly visible projects?  How can you set yourself apart?

In addition to being better, you have to get noticed, respected, and appreciated. Give your boss a weekly, monthly and quarterly report of exactly what you did better.  Then in your next annual review, you have ammunition.  And if you go job hunting, you have proof.

Take a careful look at your job.  Can you reverse the chainsaw chain somewhere?  Can you just sharpen the saw?  What do you need to do that will move you forward the fastest?  Is just putting in more hours really the most important thing you can do?

Ask your boss how HE is evaluated.  Now ask yourself how can you help HIM get a better evaluation?  Sharpen your chainsaw, don’t just work more hours.

Something To Do Today

Ask your boss how HE is evaluated.  How can you help him get a better evaluation?

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Tomorrow:    Confronting your boss

Later:              How to leave your job

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Posted in Accomplishments, Attitude, Focus, Raises, Time management

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Make your job search 50% more effective

Posted on February 23, 2015 | Leave a comment

The first step to making your job search 50% more effective, is to really know what is happening.  Yes, get a job in half the time. Let me give you an example that changed my life that applies to your job search.

I was overspending by 20% every month. I had an absolutely fixed income.  So I bought a notepad and kept track of every expense.  In one week it was obvious where the money went.  In a month it was unavoidable.  The truth? 20% of my very limited income was going for lemonade from cozy little shops in Murcia, Spain.

Your time is very limited.  You only get 24 hours a day.  You can’t buy more time. Do you really know how you use it?

Learning to ignore things is one of the great paths to inner peace. (Sawyer)

Buy a small notebook.  Exert incredible discipline for one day each month.  Every time you shift tasks, write it down.  A phone call is a shifted task.  An internet link can be a shifted task.  Write it down.

It may help to create 15 minute intervals on the paper and write down what you did for each 15 minute period.

Now get out the chainsaw.  What was really REALLY productive?  Do you spend 2 hours daily trying to avoid offending people by chatting amiably or reading their useless emails.  Cut out the unproductive stuff.

Make sure you do what is important.  Education is essential. Networking is critical.  Talk about the NCAA tournament with Larry—don’t kid yourself.  That email of funny things kids do—delete it.

I tried it. I found I was spending hours each day with candidate email that wouldn’t do any good.  I did a 2 month experiment.  I took all my job openings off the internet. Instead I started calling up people.  In the recruiting business that is taking a chainsaw to your daily schedule.  Nothing neat and clean, I just cut 25% of my time wasted.  I have since added back some job ads, but not where everyone else advertises.  Now I get better candidates and less time wasters.

Create the log.  Keep it for a day or a week.  Get your chainsaw out.  Cut off the termite riddled, least productive part of the log.  Use the time you save to get the most useful things possible done.

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Something To Do Today

Create a time log.  Use it for your job or your job hunting.  Keep it. Analyze it.  Chainsaw it.

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Next:      Unbelievable networking facts.

Later:               Take unfair advantage of those networking facts.

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Posted in Accomplishments, Finding jobs, Focus, management, Perseverance, Time management

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Are you job hunting? or working hard?

Posted on January 22, 2015 | Leave a comment

Useful work or administrivia?

One of my managers told me, “Bryan, you don’t work hard enough.  I put in 60 or 70 hours a week. Even if I’m just in here filing stuff, I’m getting more done than you.”  I couldn’t answer him.  I was too amazed.  He took my silence for the deep pondering of a well taught student and left. I am grateful he could not read my mind.

The hardest working people I know are paid about the same as others who work steadily and put in 40 to 45 hours a week.  Both the 70 hour week and 45 hour week people are VP’s and directors. They are paid the same.

The people working seventy hours a week focus on the 3 do’s differently.  They focus on working efficiently or hard.  They want to get a lot of work done. At the end of the day they point to the fact that they did the work of 3 people in only 70 hours.

The 3 do’s

  • Do it.
  • Do it right
  • Do it right now

 

The people working 40 to 45 hours a week also focus on the 3 do’s.  But they first prioritize.  They try to avoid adminstrivia, the things we are asked to do that don’t really help.

One director I worked for said, “When my boss asks for a new report, I faithfully send it to him for 3 weeks.  It is always a masterpiece.  The fourth week I prepare it for him and don’t send it.  If he calls and asks for it I apologize and he has it in his hands in minutes. Most of the time he never asks for it.  I prepare it for a couple of more weeks just in case, then I stop entirely.”   He was one of the most highly rated directors in that company.

Now lets get something straight.  45 or 90 hours of wasted time will get you nowhere.  Solitaire, internet poker and reading the news don’t count as well spent time.  You have to be doing what’s most important for 40 hours each week to beat out the person working 70 hours.

In your job search or your job this lesson applies.  Are you only putting in the time or are you focusing?  Are you doing the hard things that will have the biggest impact, or are you spending your time in the same online job boards praying for miracles?

Do it.  Do it right.  Do it right now.  Don’t get distracted.  Focus on what is most important.  Then take some time off with your friends and family.  They’re important too.

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Something To Do Today

It is time to figure out what you are doing.   Really.  Make a list of the things you do at work or in your job search each day and each week.  Think about it.  Are you consistently working on the most important stuff, or are you merely focusing on activity?

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Posted in Finding jobs, Focus, Time management

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Your choice: Inferior or vastly superior job

Posted on January 21, 2015 | Leave a comment

Kids always made fun of the way I dressed.  I had two shirts and two pairs of jeans for the whole school year.  That’s all.  I had cheap shoes.  For dinner our family had beans every night, literally.  We drank powdered milk.  I brought peanut butter sandwiches to school every day with homemade quince jam.  I was different.

We were paying a price.  It was worth it.  My friends had nice stuff while we saved and scrimped for every penny.  We did something they never did.  Each summer we went traveling in our VW Camper Bus.  We visited most of the USA, Canada, Mexico, Alaska, Hawaii, Europe and Africa.  Most summers we left school two weeks early and got back into school two weeks late.

Being different is not being inferior.  It can be a distinct advantage.  Be different in a way that can make you superior.

How can you be different?  What can you do to dramatically improve over the long run?  I know two guys who never walk anywhere in the office without having a manual in their hands to read as they walk.  They are both considered a little odd, but they are both the undisputed technical experts in their field.  They are paid well for it.

Your goal should be to out-prepare and out-perform everyone else in critical areas.

Critical areas to stand out in are the most visible areas that: 

  1. Earn money
  2. Save money
  3. Improve customer service.

Here’s how you find the critical areas for your next promotion, raise, or job:  Ask.

Your boss wants you to be more valuable, he’ll help you.  The people you look up to at work will want to help.  Go ask them what you should excel at.

Then do it.  Do it in your own way. Eccentric flair or plodding dullness does not matter.  Just excel IN A WAY THAT MATTERS.  It will change your life, not just your pay and job title.

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Posted in Accomplishments, Attitude, Focus, Promotions, Raises, Time management, Training

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Cockroach resumes, paper resumes, and carpet bombing

Posted on November 13, 2014 | Leave a comment

An 18 inch cockroach is the best resume I’ve seen. A friend of mine was applying for a job as a programmer of railroad simulators. He knew that many programmers could do the technical part.  He also knew that the artistic part was just as important. Drawing is difficult, but sculpture is even tougher.  He sent a giant cockroach sculpted in great detail as his resume. He got a call back, the interview and the job.

A good resume gets you an interview. Electronic, paper, CD, metal, cloth, or clay.  If it gets you an interview, it is a success.

Sometimes I hate success.  Every time I get a paper resume I like, I have to ask for an electronic one.  I hate it.  Those few paper resumes are successes.  They get a call from me.  I hate those successes. The candidates love them because they work.

Should you send out paper resumes?  That depends.  Some places automatically trash paper resumes. At those companies paper is a waste.  How about a multimedia CD?  I get the resume off and then throw them away.  I don’t like those either.  But that isn’t the criteria.  Does it get you an interview?  If it does, it is a great resume.  And notice I said I get the resume off the CD’s. That means I had to browse them.

I suggest you send paper or CD resumes out in small quantities only.  Target your recipient. Follow up closely in case they require a different format.

Some people strongly disagree.  They will ask you to pay them a few thousand dollars to send out a huge postal or email blast of resumes for you.  I just heard sending out thousands of resumes called “carpet bombing.”  Some services carpet bomb recruiters.  Others carpet bomb companies. I receive carpet bomb resumes every day.  I’ve never made a placement from one, but I will admit I at least glance at them whether they are paper, faxed, or by email.

I do think ResumeRabbit is a good way to get your resume on a lot of internet job boards, if you really want broad exposure and know the downside. There is no other carpet bombing/resume blasting service in paper, electronic or fax media that I recommend.  Before I would spend money on that, I’d spend it on getting another certification to help my job search.  But I’m not you.  Just be careful with your money.

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Something To Do Today

Go through the list of companies you sent a resume to.  Are there some that really should have contacted you but didn’t?  Can you do anything to your resume to get a call back from them?

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Next:     Certifications – gold and lead

Later:              Recruiter motivation

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Posted in Finding jobs, Job Boards, Recruiters, Resumes, Time management

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sTumbling towards happiness

Posted on August 25, 2014 | Leave a comment

Where will you be in 5 years?  What if you don’t really know?  What if you don’t care?

Here is an interesting link that may get you thinking about what you really want in 5 years.

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Posted in Focus, Time management

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Fixing your career and job search: As intense as possible is more

Posted on June 20, 2014 | Leave a comment

The harder I work on me, the better my life gets.  But I can only improve a little each day.  So I focus intensely on one or two things that I want to be better at. That makes my career much better with the least effort for the reward.  It also improves your job search.

Light is very intense in a laser.  Laser pointers are under 1/200th of a watt.  Focus that pointer laser’s beam to the size of a period and you can burn paper.

Intensity at one small spot is the secret of lasers.  Intensity at one spot can also be the secret to advancement in your career.

Some examples:

  1. Some programmers study 20 different programming languages.  As a recruiter, it is almost impossible for me to find a job for someone who has only worked a month or two in 20 different programming languages. It is easy for me to find a job for someone who has studied and worked in one programming language for two years.
  2. In accounting it is easier for us to find a top paying job for an internal audit specialist CPA, than a job for an uncertified general accountant.  Finding a high paying job for a legal secretary is easier than finding a high paying job for a regular secretary.

You cannot get better at everything at once.  An hour a day carefully spent studying a single skill that is in high demand will turn you into an expert in a few months. An hour a day studying new subjects each day won’t help your career nearly as fast..  Now is the time to start narrowing your field and increasing your intensity.

I had learnt to seek intensity – more of life, a concentrated sense of life.  (Berberova)

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Something To Do Today

What is the hottest skill in your profession?  What is the most important bit of that skill?  Study it an hour a day for a month. You will be an expert.

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Next week:  When I ask what time it is, how can someone look at their watch and give me the wrong answer?

Later:  Put your feet up on his desk.

Sunshine collecting

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Posted in Finding jobs, Focus, Resumes, talent, Time management, Training

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Job and job search help I saw at the library

Posted on June 5, 2014 | Leave a comment

My email signature is, “The harder I work on me, the better my life gets.”  There is only one person I can control.  There is only one person I can manipulate into changing.  Me.

Years ago I decided I can work on “me” an extra 30-45 minutes a day.  I converted brain dead commuting time into learning time.

My local library is as large as an average two bedroom house.  Small.  So, I decided to go to a much larger library 10 miles away.  I expected to go in and find a few dozen books on tape.  That’s not what I found.

The library had thousands of books on tape and CD.  There were courses in physics, history, philosophy, music, foreign languages and a hundred other subjects.  Novels, biographies and non-fiction books that have been bestsellers filled bookcase after bookcase. I can even order them by inter-library loan from our little library.

Invest in yourself.  Your mind is the only thing the government can’t take from you.

I listened to a book on how to think.  What makes a genius like Leonardo Da Vinci a genius, different, and great?  Another series of books was on Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, Ulysses S. Grant, Napoleon, and others.  I listened to Freakonomics.  I’m learning.

“If you want to be truly successful invest in yourself to get the knowledge you need to find your unique factor.  When you find it and focus on it and persevere your success will blossom.” (Sidney Madwed)

I’ve got the next 30 years figured out.  I’m learning something. I’m going to invest in myself.

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Something To Do Today

What is your dead time?  How can you most easily transform your dead time into head time?

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Posted in talent, Time management, Training

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