There are No Shortcuts in Job Hunting...

There are no shortcuts in job hunting...

This is something that you can argue all day.

"It's who you know!"

"It's what you know!"

"It's how you interview!"

Here's the rub; it's ALL of those things.

Hear me out, the solution to finding a position is to do all the things. You need to build your network, your skills, and your interview persona all at the same time while juggling the rest of what life throws at you.

This is not easy.

It's not meant to be, especially if you want to perform at a high level job or at your dream company.

Taking the Best...

Recently we had Brenden Kumarasamy on the show (Episode 19) and he's quite the accomplished guy; works for IBM, has a decent sized Youtube Channel, lasted through an 8 month interview process, and he's a super smart guy to boot... wow.

We aren't all Brendens and that's because we all have different things that we rock at.

However, you can look at the skills that he has, and that I your humble host have, and you can apply them to our own lives. I know I picked a few things up from Brenden myself. There's literally career hunting GOLD in that episode

And because we had Brenden as a guest, we have the luxury of the following mantra; "Take the Best, and Leave the Rest".

Job Hunting Tips from the '70s?

"Take the Best, and Leave the Rest." Sure it rhymes nicely but what does it mean and where did it come from?

Years ago, one of my mentors for salesmanship was a wonderful woman by the name of Karol.

She was old school and had been in sales all her life.

In between her stories of working for the yellow pages in the 1970s, she gave me a great one liner when it came to helping me develop my unique sales style and process; "Take the Best, and Leave the Rest."

She meant by this that there are many different ways to sell someone on a product. You need to find the best ones, and incorporate them into your own style to be successful. Her other piece of advice was to pick only the things that worked the highest amount of the time, if they didn't stack up, they were part of the "rest" and to be discarded.

So she told me to get these great techniques and then what, I'd just be good at sales, right?

WRONG.

The other thing she told me was that you need to put in the reps with the top tier techniques in order to be able to use them to their full effect.

There was no short cut.

Putting in Your Reps

For a job seeker, what does this mean?

Does it mean that we just have to apply to a bunch of jobs and we'll be good at it?

That's like... 30% correct.

It means that when applying for jobs we can't just go onto a site like Ziprecruiter and bang on the "1-click apply" button for 7 minutes for every job that looks remotely interesting in our area code.

Those aren't reps, and you're both robbing yourself of precious time and opportunities if you're job hunting that way.

Reps in this case means applying for the job with more work. Getting that cover letter set, customizing that resume with the relevant experiences, pulling the right letters of recommendation or licenses along with your application and then there's so much more.

If we go to what Brenden taught us in episode 19, we need to practice interviewing, we need to practice with friends who will give us honest, hard hitting feedback.

There are No Shortcuts in Job Hunting

If you want the position that is a dream job for you, you need to be willing to work to get it.

Clicking things one by one on some app isn't going to cut it.

Take the road less traveled. Grab your toolbox from others where you've taken the best and left the rest. And most importantly, go with friends.

An old African Proverb reads "If you want to go fast, go alone; if you want to go far, go together."

Put in the reps, find the people who can help you go farther, and get hired.

It's not simple.

It's not easy.

If it was, no one would be lacking a job.

~RH