Tag Archives: your job search

Are you buying a hirer’s attention?

Posted on August 2, 2021 | Leave a comment

Google is one of the most outrageously priced stocks in the market today. They give away services that competitors charge an arm and a leg for, and they make a profit. Google is the best company in the world that is in the attention business. If you are looking for a job or a promotion, you are in the attention business too.

Google started out as a search engine. It was a simple catalog. Then the owners started selling simple ads, but in a different way. That difference changed the internet. Macbook, Laptop, Google, Display, Screen

Go out and Google “jobs”. Everything you see on that first page is a response to your attention. There are a few ads at the top and to the right of your results. The results you see on the first page were also paid for by savvy marketers. Your interest and attention to “jobs” is a valuable commodity. Google is in the business of finding out what you will pay attention to, and serving it up with the least fuss and the most profitability. Google finds out what interests you and then shows you ads you really want to see. Their ads solve your problems. 

Now the scary part. Can anyone find you? My query about “jobs” produced 5,320,000,000 hits this morning. Even Google is selective about the information they present to me. They sell more by presenting less information. That’s why there is a first page of Google.

Let’s cut down the competition. Google “biomechanical engineer” in quotes and you get 69,600 hits, and a lot of the ads disappear. Google your name inside quote marks. I got 18,800 hits on “Bryan Dilts” because I am a blogger and businessman. Can anyone find you? Google is expert at finding what interests me and presenting the most important information in the first page. People can find me, can they find you?.

This is why you are in the attention business. To get a job, you have to get a hiring manager’s attention. You have to be at the top of his employee search. There is a huge amount of competition for his attention. He has to stop and look at you as a person. He has to call you, bring you in for an interview, and introduce you to the team. Then he has to decide to stake his career on hiring you. He has to pay a lot of attention to you. Are you doing what is necessary to be at the top of his search?

The next few days are about getting the attention of people who will hire you. Google is going to play a big part in the discussion, so go out and have some fun with it.

Something to do today

Cut a paragraph or phrase out of your resume and Google it. Do the same with a job ad. Have some fun.

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Posted in Career choice, Finding jobs, Interviews, References, Resumes, Selling

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Measure and beat your competition to the job

Posted on July 14, 2021 | Leave a comment

James Bond, 007, has the best enemies. They are ruthless, evil and totally bad. When he “accidentally” kills one, you cheer. 

In your job search you don’t have to kill or destroy your opponents. All you have to do is get rid of them. It is a very simple process. The people competing against you must be known, measured, and either beaten, eliminated or enticed elsewhere.

Fight, Fight Club, Boxing, Sport, Punch
  • Known

Who else is applying for the job you want? Is it college graduates, high school kids or guys who have been in that industry for 20 years? You have to know how they are like you and how they are different. If you are exactly like everyone else, you won’t be noticed. If you don’t fit in at all, they probably won’t hire you either. If you don’t know who is applying, call up the company or recruiter and ask.

  • Measured

I call and ask why the people applying for a job are not getting hired. I ask HR and hiring managers exactly what skills and traits they are having trouble finding. You can certainly call HR or a recruiter and ask. They can’t fire you. You don’t even work there yet. You can also see if you can find old ads for the same job. Look at what has changed from the old ad. They are probably emphasizing the hardest to find traits in newer ads. Another possibility is to just think a bit. What are the hardest to find skills they are asking for? Do you have any of those skills?

  • Beaten

Since you know and have measured your competition, beat them flat out if you can. Emphasize your strongest qualifications. Tell them how well you can do the job. Prove you have done similar things in the past. Say what is different about you. Mention in passing how you have all the traits every other applicant has, but do something to stand out.

  • Eliminated

I prefer to eliminate the competition entirely. The best way to do that is to have someone tell the manager to call you without even presenting a resume. Okay, you may have to give them a resume to hand to the boss. Either way you can eliminate the competition by leapfrogging the qualification process. Get in front of the hiring manager before he sees anyone else. He may decide it isn’t worth his time to look any farther than you. 

  • Enticed elsewhere

Some jobs and companies are so wonderful everyone is applying for them. If you know you can’t beat the great masses of people, you are going to have to go somewhere else. Look for a job where the masses of people are not applying. It may be in a very small company. Ask everyone you know, “Who needs someone with [my skill]? The masses are enticed elsewhere. They see high profile jobs. You will be looking for the less obvious openings. Become an expert in locating companies that could use your skills, but aren’t widely known.

Your competition is easier to get rid of once they are known and measured. Then they can either be beaten, eliminated or enticed elsewhere.

Something To Do Today

Write in your job journal about what is unique that you’ve accomplished in the past. It needs to sound exceptional. 

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Posted in Career choice, Finding jobs, Interviews

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3 reasons to procrastinate in your job search

Posted on November 4, 2013 | Leave a comment

Procrastination isn’t the problem, it’s the solution.  So procrastinate now, don’t put it off. (Ellen DeGeneres)

What to learn from procrastinators

My son and daughter put off doing their summer homework.  When they only had 3 weeks to get it done there were more problems.  They also had band camp taking up 10+ hours a day. After they procrastinated the hard part of summer that long I was telling them…..

“Procrastinating can be a good thing.

“First of all, I hope you procrastinated to get important things done.  If you did, then you used your time wisely. Use this experience to learn to do first things first.  (That is very important for job hunting.)

“Second, you should be letting less important things stay undone now that you are up against a nearby deadline. Learning to NOT do good but less important things is just as important as doing “first things first.”  (Job hunters often do repetitive, less productive, easy tasks. Stop it. You don’t have to do them.)

“Third, your quality should be high now, and you should pay attention to what works and doesn’t work for shortcuts.  Now is when you learn how much research is essential, and what research is just being done to avoid the hard work. Now is when you find out you really can do a quality job in 8 concentrated hours rather than 4 full leisurely days.”  (Job hunters often research a company for hours when all they need to know is that it is in the same industry.  They do heavy research so they can make less phone calls and send less resumes, which is more painful than surfing the internet.)

Think about all the schoolwork, studying, and commercial work you have procrastinated and gotten done at the last minute.  How much time did you save by having your back to the wall?  How many tasks that were more important have you gotten done?  What tasks just disappeared with time?

Now apply those lessons to job hunting.  Give yourself tight deadlines to get tasks done.  Instead of procrastinating, give yourself too little time to get tasks done, then fit them in the time you have given yourself.  Learn from the times you procrastinated.

Something To Do Today

Be your own boss.  Set a goal for how many companies you will call today.  That is a high priority job search activity.  How many resumes will you send out on ads?  How many resumes to companies in your industry or geography?

Learn from your prior procrastination.

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Later:                   More procrastination

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Posted in Accomplishments, Focus, Followup, Perseverance

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Rules of war for gutsy job seekers

Posted on May 28, 2013 | Leave a comment

Here are your rules if you have the guts to declare war on your job search.  They are not for cowards.  This is how a real proactive job search can be done.

Check it out here.  It is on LinkedIn.  If you aren’t on LinkedIn yet, then link to me bryan @ dilts.us

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Posted in Finding jobs, Perseverance, Time management

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How you can accidentally make job search success impossible

Posted on March 27, 2013 | Leave a comment

This story relates directly to your job search, phone calls, interviews, writing your resume, and getting a job offer.

Complete panic, worry, and unhealthy fear were created by my 17 year old daughter as she graduated from high school. In an hour she was going to get her wisdom teeth removed. She’d kill me if I use her name, so let’s call her Gina.

Gina and a friend spent a few days swapping stories about cowardice in the face of needles. They talked about it often enough to amplify their concerns. So Gina was panicked about getting the IV before they put her under. The thought of getting near a needle is horrible to her now. Her friend was bragging about cowering against a wall while she was restrained two years ago to get an inoculation. Gina was fantasizing about how badly she would react when the needle gets close.

Gina came back from the oral surgeon alive.  She had tears streaming down her face before the needle even touched her. She had three holes in her arm because they didn’t get it right. I think part of the problem was hers. Competent nurses became incompetent when faced with her dread and complete lack of faith.

People who need to leave their job are often the same way. They focus on visions of starvation and divorce for months and years before they leave.  All the horrors stories they have ever heard play through their mind over and over.  The will to better themselves is frozen and then shattered by fear.

Even worse than mere fear, you can attract all your worst dreams to you.  As you concentrate on horrible possibilities, you will be drawn to those situations.  The characteristics you concentrate on, will be in your new company.

I don’t know the exact mechanism, but most people get the job they think about the most.  If they concentrate on finding a great job, they usually find at least a good one.  If they concentrate on avoiding horrible, mean spirited, lying, deceitful people in their new company, the usually join below average or horrible companies.  They get the coworkers they dreaded. They are trapped in job after job in companies of despair.

Instead of spending your time talking to someone unemployed who lost their job in November of 2011, talk to someone who just got a new job. Talk to people who have made great job choices. Reminisce with folks who did things right.

Look for a job while you are still employed.  Find out about the company you are moving to.  Talk to your new coworkers before you take the job.  There is a lot less danger than you have been worrying about.

If you concentrate on the positive, you will find the good in every experience.  If you concentrate on the negative, you won’t have a good experience, no matter how good the experience is. You can make good things possible or impossible.

Something to do today

Make a list of the people who tell horrible war stories about job changes.  Stay away from them.  Stay away from everyone who teaches you fear and panic.

Buy The New Psycho-Cybernetics by Maxwell Maltz, or Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill.  Read it. Absorb it.

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Later: The rubber band solution for nervousness

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Posted in Attitude, Focus, Interviews, Negotiating, Networking, Resumes

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