3 Reasons Why Your Network Contact is Not Calling You Back!
You're speaking with another executive in your network or recruiter whom has promised to circulate your resume throughout his network. He even goes as far as to say he knows of a vacant position that you would be perfect for...He promises to touch base with his contacts and be back with you in short order! Two weeks have since passed, and your ol friend has vanished! You've left a few messages, but at this point you might be wondering if he's still breathing. Just a week ago he was fervently excited to help, and now; MIA! How could this be?????
Here's What Went Wrong
Mistake Number 1. No Quid Pro Quo!
You did not take the time to understand what his needs are...Did you ask him how things are going in his career? Has he thought about something bigger and better for himself? Did you suggest a few people that you might refer him to? If you are part of The Browning Associates network, you could have said, "I know of a huge network in your industry and I'm glad to connect you with some excellent high level contacts...Either way, if you spoke for 10 minutes, 8 of those minutes should have been about your network contacts and what you can do to help him...Every 200k executive on the planet is always looking for something bigger; make it about them; no excuses, no exceptions! You will use your remaining 2 minutes to ask that they do the same for you...Consequently, the (Quid pro quo) has been birthed in to action!
Mistake Number 2. No Accountability No Call to Action!
Before you finish your conversation, there are two things that must happen. 1. Make it very clear what you are going to do for your networking contact and 2. Schedule a time for follow up. As far as they can see, you are scheduling a follow up call so as to be sure you are able to come back to them with the promised referrals etc... Remember; never give them all you've got until they come forth with their promise as well...Always keep them wanting more!
Mistake Number 3. You appear Needy or as if you're selling something!
Remember who you are! You are a solution provider! If people do not see value in connecting with you or clearly are not respecting your time, move on! Of course we always remain professionally aggressive, but we never come across as if we are needy or selling... When I speak with somebody in our network on your behalf, I say it like this: "My guy/gal is a busy senior executive...Upon my review of your resume and background, it would be in your best interest to get to know this lady/gent asap...H/she will land a new role soon, at which point the window of opportunity to get to Him/er will slam shut! Your call...Let me know... Just like that; no more no less...You should promote yourself exactly the same way...People want what they cant have...
"We look forward to assisting you with reaching all of your career goals! "
Don’t Take Maybe for an Answer
I am incessantly astounded by the number of execs I speak with that will take the time to painstakingly develop a stellar résumé, submit it to the company of their dreams and rather than initiating an aggressive follow up call; they are typically insulted when nobody calls them back!
Your job search cannot endure without a daily measure of NO’s
If you are presently unemployed and your earning potential is $200k annually; it is costing you $769.00 in lost wages per work-day to conduct your search… Therefore, if you scrutinize your job search strictly from a business perspective, each day of unemployment is sinking your biz to the tune of $4,000.00 per week or $16,000.00 per month!
GOT NO’s?
The length of your job search is not determined by market conditions, salary requirements, geography preferences or restrictions and/or by your specific skill set! No; the time it takes to generate the perfect job offer is only determined by the number of “NO’s” you receive per day.
Before you proceed to understand what qualifies as a NO, let’s look at what a “NO” is not.
These MAYBES don’t count!
You apply to a company, receive a polite form letter or email saying “thanks we’ll let ya know!” They are saying “know”, not No!
You honor your follow up commitment as stated in your introductory letter by means of actually mustering the audacity to place a follow up call (a damn follow up email doesn’t count)…The admin says your contact is too busy right now; you plan on calling back and you usually don’t! This is another one for the maybe file! Remedy: Place 3-5 more follow up calls, ask for a YES or a NO and call me in the morning!
You submit the perfect resume for the perfect job which you are perfectly qualified for and to your absolute amazement; they don’t call you back... You scratch your head, let go of another precious hunk of your all so necessary self-confidence and return to the black hole (Web) in search of another place that will tell you MAYBE! And so on and so forth…
You amass the bravery to call an old friend presently employed at XYZ Company. He doesn’t call you back, or worse, he sees you at your kid’s soccer game and ducks into a nearby alleyway... If your dim voicemail said you were looking for a job and he doesn’t have one, he’ll hide because he has no job for you today…..Asking for industry advice or to converse with another thought leader on your level as a means of simple networking is the key; asking for a job is a one way ticket to the HR MAYBE machine…
You attend an amazing 5 hour interview with the company of your dreams. HR calls the next day and says “we will be in touch before next Friday.” Next Friday comes and goes and they don’t call… You assume the worst, wait two weeks and place a halfhearted call to HR leaving a halfhearted jail mail (voicemail)….Or worse, because you think you have this one in the bag, you do nothing and nothing happens and it was all for nothing and you are now another 4 weeks ( $16,000.00) deeper in lost wages!
The recruiter is frothing at the mouth on Monday and by Tuesday the FBI couldn’t find him;
you go away peacefully!
You sent your resume, you have left 5 VM’s and your call has not been returned… you go away peacefully!
Now, go back and make a list of all the companies that have shunned you with a big fat Maybe. smile, dial, and move those MAYBES to your NO file. The sooner you do, the sooner you will find the ever illusive YES!
Here is what you job search needs to look like:
NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO
NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO
NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO YES
Edward E. Lawler III, John Stumpf has stepped down as CEO and chairman of Wells Fargo amid public pressure. Rarely is someone at the top of an organization held accountable for the sins perpetrated by those below – even if they directly or implicitly encouraged them. Will a change at the top be enough to salvage the bank’s reputation and customer relations? More importantly, will the change in leadership to another insider – Timothy J. Sloan, its previous president and chief operating officer steps into the role vacated by Stumpf ‑‑ put an end to the corporate culture that ran amok at Wells Fargo? Congress, for one, doesn’t have much faith that it will. Within hours of the bank’s anointment of Sloan, who held a senior post at Wells Fargo throughout the scandal, Rep. Maxine Waters, a California Democrat, issued an official statement declaring her concern that Sloan was also culpable in the recent scandal. To think about this question, let’s take a look at how and why the unethical culture Mr. Sloan will inherit actually happened.
It has been said that the Wells Fargo culture Mr. Sloan is inheriting is the wrong kind of culture. However, if you look at all the verbiage produced by the company on who they are and what they stand for, it comes off sounding like a wonderful culture, dominated by courtesy and customer care. “Everything we do is built on trust. It doesn’t happen with one transaction, in one day on the job or in one quarter. It’s earned relationship by relationship,” John Stumpf – who spent 34 years of his career at the bank – wrote in Wells Fargo’s Vison and Values Statement.
But carefully-crafted mission statements don’t tell what the real culture is. What we know about culture is that it is determined by top management and supervisory behavior, not words. And clearly one of the key corporate behaviors that determines culture is what people see being rewarded and what they see being punished. What management says is much less important than what management rewards – and when what is said conflicts with what is rewarded, what is rewarded tells everyone what management genuinely believes, values, and wants.
We have spent our careers studying financial rewards in organizations and how they and other management practices affect employees and their organizations. Here is some of what we have learned about using financial rewards as an incentive: When excessively high or difficult goals are set, individuals either do not try to reach them or try to achieve them by beating the system.
I am coming to the harsh realization that I might have to look for a new job.
I liked my job for the first two years but the past year has been difficult. Our manager Marcia quit and the General Manager of our location took over our department rather than hire someone new to manage us.
I never hit it off with the GM, Jack, and now that he’s my direct supervisor, it’s very difficult.
For the past year I haven’t made any suggestions although for the previous two years I made several recommendations for ways to improve our processes, and Marcia approved them all.
I’m not going to say I was her right-hand man but I knew I was a valued member of the department, and I don’t feel that way anymore. Jack has never asked my opinion about anything. In a year, we’ve only met twice one-on-one and the entire meeting each time was just a recap of my progress on my projects.
Jack basically ignores me. I don’t know what I might have to done to offend him (apart from having a great relationship with Marcia, who also never got along with Jack, which is why she left her job).
I haven’t done anything in the past year that I can add to my resume, but even worse than that is how discouraged I feel. It’s hard to come to work when your boss doesn’t seem to care whether you’re on his team or not.
Jack is friendly with most of our teammates, but not me. Several people have asked me “How did you get on Jack’s bad side?” and I have to say “I don’t know.”
Successful people come from all walks of life, yet they all have one thing in common: where others see impenetrable barriers, they see challenges to embrace and obstacles to overcome.
Their confidence in the face of hardship is driven by their ability to let go of the negativity that holds so many otherwise sensible people back.
Obstacles do not block the path; they are the path.
This perspective helps successful people to think differently to everyone else, which is important, because if you think like everyone else, no matter how smart or experienced you are, you’ll hit the same ceiling. By thinking outside the box and going against the grain, successful people rise above their limitations.
And it all starts with their morning routines. Here’s how ultra-successful people utilize the first hours of the day:
1. They drink lemon water.
Drinking lemon water as soon as you wake up spikes your energy levels physically and mentally. By improving nutrient absorption in your stomach, it gives you a steady, natural energy buzz that lasts the length of the day. You need to drink it first thing in the morning (on an empty stomach) to ensure full absorption. You should also wait 15-30 minutes after drinking it before eating (perfect time to squeeze in some exercise). Lemons are chock full of nutrients, such as potassium, vitamin C, and antioxidants. If you weigh less than 150 pounds, drink the juice of half a lemon (a full lemon if you’re over 150 pounds). Don’t drink the juice without water because it’s hard on your teeth.
2. They exercise.
Richard Branson, Tim Cook, and Disney’s Bob Iger all wake up well before 6:00 a.m. to get their bodies moving. While their ungodly wake-up hours and exercise routines may seem crazy, research supports the extra effort. A study conducted at the Eastern Ontario Research Institute found that people who exercised twice a week for 10 weeks felt more competent socially, academically, and athletically. A second study conducted by researchers at the University of Bristol found that people who exercised daily had more energy and a more positive outlook, which are both critical for getting things done. Getting your body moving for as little as 10 minutes releases GABA, a neurotransmitter that makes your brain feel soothed and keeps you in control of your impulses. Exercising first thing in the morning ensures that you’ll have the time for it, and it improves your self-control and energy levels over the course of the entire day.
3. They disconnect.
Howard Schultz starts his day with a motivational e-mail to his employees, after this, he disconnects and dedicates his time to exercise and family. When you wake up and dive straight into e-mails, texts, and Facebook, you are far more likely to lose focus, and your morning succumbs to the wants and needs of other people. It’s much healthier to take those precious first moments of the day to do something relaxing, which sets a calm, positive tone for your day.
4. They eat a healthy breakfast.
Eating anything at all for breakfast puts you ahead of a lot of people. People who eat breakfast are less likely to be obese, they have more stable blood-sugar levels, and they tend to be less hungry over the course of the day. And these are just the statistics for people who eat any breakfast. When you eat a healthy breakfast, the doors to a productive day swing wide open. A healthy breakfast gives you energy, improves your short-term memory, and helps you to concentrate more intensely and for longer periods.
5. They practice mindfulness.
Mindfulness meditation has become increasingly popular among highly successful CEOs. Its growth in the business world is largely due to the huge dividends it pays in productivity and overall well-being. Research shows that mindfulness fights off stress by reversing the fight-or-flight response, improves your ability to focus, boosts creativity, and increases your emotional intelligence.
6. They set goals for the day.
Benjamin Franklin was obsessive about planning his days. Each morning, he would wake up at 4:00 a.m. and meticulously piece together a schedule. There’s a clear message to take from Franklin’s habit: prudent goal setting pays dividends. When you plan out your day as carefully as possible, your chances of successfully accomplishing your goals skyrocket. I like to set my daily goals after my mindfulness practice, because the added calm and clarity help me to set effective, specific goals.
7. They say no.
No is a powerful word, which will protect your precious mornings. When it’s time to say no, avoid phrases such as “I don’t think I can” or “I’m not certain.” Saying no to a new commitment honors your existing commitments, and your morning time is an important commitment. Research conducted at the University of California in San Francisco showed that the more difficulty that you have saying no, the more likely you are to experience stress, burnout, and even depression.
Bringing It All Together
While the above strategies are tried and true, you should build upon them with other activities that work for you.
How do you like to spend your mornings? Please share your thoughts in the comments section, as I learn just as much from you as you do from me.
Should bosses try to hold on to their star performers?
For most of corporate America, the question might seem like nonsense. Star performers are seen as so valuable that managers should pull out all the stops to keep them—or else see their companies take a big hit in productivity.
Yet some of the best managers not only allow their top performers to leave, but actively encourage it.
I’ve spent the past 10 years studying the world’s greatest bosses across 18 industries, luminaries such as Ralph Lauren in fashion, Julian Robertson in hedge funds, Norman Brinker in casual restaurants, Larry Ellison in technology, Michael Miles in packaged food, Jay Chiat in advertising and Tommy Frist Jr. in hospitals, to name a few. As I was surprised to discover, these extraordinary leaders achieved outstanding results in large part because they abandoned conventional thinking about keeping the best employees.
They weren’t afraid to lose their best people. On the contrary, most willingly unleashed their top performers onto the world, going out of their way to help them land outside opportunities. The leaders I studied built iconic businesses, transformed entire industries and in a number of instances became billionaires not by hoarding great people for themselves, but by mastering the flow of talent through their organizations.
Doing so will make an organization far more resilient, sustainable and successful over the long term. The talent-flow strategy is also better tailored to many of today’s abiding business realities, including volatile markets that demand more dynamic workforces; a generation of millennials less inclined to stick around for loyalty’s sake; and an entrepreneurial, gig economy that encourages frequent shifts in employment over the course of an individual’s career.
Not joined forever
The stories of these bosses reveal a crucial shared belief: You’re better off having the best people for a short time than average people forever.
The bosses were uncompromising when it came to recruiting. They didn’t want average; they wanted mind-blowing. They searched high and low for unusually talented individuals, often experimenting with nontraditional hires (and tolerating higher levels of churn when some of these hires didn’t work out).
But once unusually talented people were inside the organizations, the bosses accepted that some would leave. Top employees, the bosses realized, were almost always on a rapid growth trajectory. They were ultra-ambitious, perpetually angling for the next big opportunity, and it stood to reason that at least some of them would eventually need to leave the company to keep their careers moving ahead.
One leader told me that it was “normal” for people to want to pursue their own interests after a while: “We let these people go on an individual basis, and they left with their heads high and with great feelings toward us. It was probably the most successful thing we ever did.”
Another said: “You can’t keep good people down, and if they get a really good opportunity that you can’t match, it’s inevitable you’re going to lose them. But that’s the price you pay for having really outstanding people.”
Unlike most corporate chiefs, the bosses I studied were quite willing to pay that price. Exceptional talent, they thought, is well worth dealing with greater turnover. After all, these bosses were certainly not oblivious to the price of losing top talent.
As these bosses also understood, such turnover isn’t nearly as destructive as most managers think. When a stream of top performers go on to better things, the departures usually hasten the flow of more top talent into the company. Outstanding bosses who let their top talent leave developed reputations as launchpads; their companies were places to go to supercharge a career.
Working with the best
High-potential prospects began flocking to these bosses and not their competitors, eager for a chance to train with the best, build their résumé and partake of the bosses’ magic. Talented young people were so excited to work for these bosses that they even accepted below-market pay. Bosses such as Messrs. Chiat, Ellison and Lucas became widely known as “the guy” to work for in their industries because of all the prominent people who had come through their organizations and gone on to spectacular careers.
If the notion of being a talent magnet seems abstract compared with the tangible loss when a great person leaves, try a thought experiment. Imagine you have outstanding young people, each smarter and more creative and ambitious then the last, knocking on your door every day.
In that context, saying goodbye to some of your best people doesn’t seem especially risky, does it? On the contrary, it becomes desirable, since it makes room for more up-and-comers eager for their chance. In this scenario, your goal in managing talent is not to keep any one person, but to do what it takes to establish a strong talent flow, and to remove any impediments to that flow.
The bosses I studied also took advantage of a wonderful paradox: When you stop hoarding your people and focus on creating a talent flow, you find that more of your top people actually do wind up staying. Most people who worked for bosses like Messrs. Chiat, Brinker or Frist didn’t want to work for anybody else. Why would they? From the employee’s perspective, the environments these bosses created offered unique opportunities for excitement, innovation and advancement. It also offered the prestige of working at a top brand-name employer in the industry.
Alumni network
Another paradox was equally important: Top performers keep delivering benefits when they stop working for you. Great bosses get the most out of their talent flows by building networks of former employees. Although these networks help alumni build their careers, bosses also rely on them for business opportunities, information, vendor relationships and new recruits.
The very existence of these networks has value because it further cements the boss’s reputation as someone who can help foster a career, thus heightening the “talent magnet” effect. So, it’s no surprise that many of the bosses I studied helped their best people move on. As they intuitively understood, every star who left made the alumni network that much more powerful.
Consider one health-care star who left to found his own company. He told me that senior leaders at his company weren’t particularly upset or anxious about his decision. “They were all excited for me. They had a party the day we closed the deal.” That went for the top boss, too. He “was right there every step of the way, and he invested in the company. Without his support and guidance, I never could have made this happen.”
The star-turned-entrepreneur became an important part of his former boss’s network, and as his business grew, the former boss’s equity share grew as well.
Throughout his long career, in fact, that boss helped many protégés start their own businesses, sometimes investing in them or providing advice, other times arranging to buy products and services from them. Partly as a result, his company’s hometown is now the headquarters of hundreds of health-care firms, with the boss having some influence over, or a direct role in, the majority of them.
As an alumnus of that company told me, the company’s network remains vibrant, built on strong personal connections: “The social community around here, the arts, the various things that we do to support human-services organizations here…we all show up at the same places, and we all associate with each other.”
***
The next time your top performer talks about leaving, what will you do? I suggest you follow the lead of the world’s greatest bosses and welcome it. Our people are our greatest assets, but not in the way we usually think. To win big, we can no longer afford to keep our best talent to ourselves. We have to be willing to lose it. Our talent will be better off, and so will we.
Dr. Finkelstein is the Steven Roth professor of management and director of the Tuck Center for Leadership at Dartmouth College, and the author of “Superbosses: How Exceptional Leaders Master the Flow of Talent.” He can be reached at reports@wsj.com.
John Seraichyk - Executive Jobs Guy - Executive Career Search consultant drills deep to match a client with a new job. John Seraichyk's Beginnings In the Executive Career Search Business 1990 - 2016
In 1990 I was laid off. I showed up at work one day and my boss called me into his office and said, “Today’s your last day.”
We had just bought a new house, I had one child and another on the way. I was unable to find a job in computer programming. One morning I had an epiphany — I was going to help college graduates find jobs. I placed a $19 ad in The Providence Journal. It was, about, three lines. The next day my phone rang off the hook.
I didn’t exactly know how I was going to help them find their first job. Maybe it was just going to be a resumé. The first young man showed up at my house. We sat at my dining room table. He said, “What are you going to do for me?” and I said, “I don’t know, but you and me are going to do this. We’re going to work this thing.” I charged him $25 and he ended up at Amica. He’s still there today.
It really took off.
If I could do this with college kids — people with no experience — imagine what I could do for someone with a resumé, with credentials. So the demographic I work with today is the mid- to high-level executive — 250k plus. But I still love to offer advice to the college grad when he calls.
I never get the easy job searches. Most of my clients are accomplished people who know how to get things done and they’re not always ready to reach out for help. They look at their credentials and say, “I don’t need to hire anyone.” By the time they come to me, they’re in a bit of a quandary.
Some people start their job search six months into an eight-month severance package. That person should come to me on day one. The minute the employment history on your resumé no longer reads “present,” your market value begins to decline. So who has the upper hand when you’re sitting there with a potential employer?
I tell people to expect the process to take three to five months, but we often make it happen in less time. Or it might be an even longer road to success, with lots of ups and downs. The problem with many folks at the high end of compensation — like multimillion — is that they often don’t really need to work. They need to work emotionally but not monetarily. They’re not living paycheck to paycheck. It’s hard to focus them, to make them stay on track. “It’s not right for me — I need to hold out for something better.” The seven-figure client can be pretty selective.
Is it easier to work with someone who is desperate? Absolutely. The more they need new employment, the more focused they are in getting from A to B, and they know they need to get there sooner rather than later. They need to replace that 200k now. Their lifestyle reflects that salary.
I try to look at my client through the eyes of an employer: What does the employer see? We need to identify the liabilities. Maybe you’ve been out of work for five months. That’s a liability. How are we going to handle that? I’ll bring you through a series of mock interviews to identify those liabilities, ask questions about strengths and weaknesses, open-ended questions about areas of expertise. I really drill deep. If it ain’t broke, we don’t fix it, but if there are things that need work, we confront them. I call it verbal judo.
I won’t take on more than three clients at any given time. A client has my cell-phone number, and I’m available seven days a week. When we pull the trigger on this job search, we go, and we don’t stop until we’re done.
Our definition of success is our ability to clearly define what your career goals are, what your job search criteria are, then bring you together with a potential employer for an interview. That’s all we can guarantee. We can’t guarantee a job. We can’t guarantee the outcome of those interviews. But we can guarantee that you will be meeting with companies in the right geography, talking about the right compensation. My job is to get you there.
The only good time to look for a job is when you still have one. And the day you take a new job, that’s when you start updating your resumé all over again. You always need to be looking. Keep the resumé at the ready and always be thinking about change. The unemployment rate is 9 percent. That means the employment rate is 91 percent — 91 percent of the people who want jobs in this country have jobs. And you just need one.
Ye
almighty job hunter, Lay down your resume and take up your seed... 2015 years
ago, Jesus of Nazareth told his
disciples the preponderance of the seed they sow would fall on rocky or
thorny ground. Therefore, the precious seedlings of change would either wither
instantaneously or take early root only to later dissipate and be swept away by
the wind... The Lesson He taught His disciples, applies to the modern day
job seeker now more so than ever.
When
you begin your job search/network activities, it is imperative that you begin
sowing your VPS (Value Proposition Seedlings) in good rich soil RIGHT NOW. The
rich soils I speak of are those people who know and love you. Those who have
been blessed throughout their temporal journey here on earth to call you
friend, relative, co-worker, or acquaintance. In other words, if they recognize
your name, they are the rich soil Jesus speaks of. Sounds logical right?
Yet many of you say to me, hey Seraichyk, I’ll leave the sowing to the
unemployed sect who have nothing but time to mingle with the network socialites
of the jobless.I eat what I kill john,
and today I will take up my sword, march valiantly in to the jungle (the
internet) and slay me a job...
Well,
guys and gals, unfortunately I am unable to find a single thesaurus that will
confirm a synonym for “internet” to be, “vacant desert”, “dry bones”,or
“mirage...” Unfortunately beloved,
the internet, headhunters, and the like, are just that. It doesn't
matter how
piercing your sword, how formidable your rifle, how good your aim. When
you are
firing at a mirage, you will soon deplete your ammunition and find
yourself so
far out in the internet jungle, there is no way home. Meanwhile, back at
the
ranch, you’ve sown no seed and consequently there are no crops to bear.
Your
children remain hungry, you remain frustrated, bewildered and now a
failure as
you cannot even provide food for your family. Yes, you say, I must sow
seed, I
must get to work to network to get work! Now I see it!!! But 6 months
have
passed since you began your hunting expedition, winter has set in, the
soil is hard, you are distraught and the idea of sowing is even
more daunting now than it was when you began. Now What???
This
email sent from John Seraichyk, President Browning Associates -
"Redefining
my network as Browning Associates has instructed is a real
eye-opener... I never realized how many people I've known. Initially, I
was resistant, but now I am blown away! Everything they instructed me on
regarding "the" network is coming to fruition!!!
I am excited
to begin a strategic and coordinated outreach as a means of
resurrecting, fortifying, and creating new and existing relationships...
I am Even more excited about utilizing the new skills
I've acquired to leverage "the" network in such a way whereas I will be
so busy, I will soon need another admin to help with the influx...
Any
referral is a great referral. I am not making the critical mistake of
removing names from my potential contact lists!!! Employed or
unemployed, it doesn't matter! People know people who know people and my
best leads have come from places I never would have expected!
It
typically takes less than a minute to make a call to a potential
contact and maybe another 3-5 minutes to determine whether or not we
might be helpful to each other - I never strip names from any contact
list!!! One unpredicted benefit, is that some
of these guys and gals are actually job seeking themselves... Therefore,
they seem all the more motivated to help me...Once these ladies and
gentlemen decide on their next executive appointment, I will make sure
they remember me for my passion, vigor and want to help them any way I
can!
Also, just being able to get on the phone by way
of a personal introduction from Browning with many $200k++ executives is
leaps and bounds ahead of what I was doing prior...
I'm
talking with people, promoting my brand, sharpening my message and
filling up my calendar with highly productive dialog exactly as
instructed by Browning Associates. Old habits are hard to break, and
most of this was foreign to me at first, but I now know I am in control
of my own destiny. This keeps me highly motivated; it certainly beats
chasing Internet jobs or sending letters cold to various companies...I
am interfacing with people not websites!!!
Just as I've done in all of my executive successes in corporate America, I am now using a team to get it done right!!!!!
Browning is always there for me!"
If
you are an active client of Browning Associates and this does not
describe what's transpiring in your career search, I challenge you to
contact me direct today!
Where Do You Want To Be And When Do You Want To Be There?
If You Wait For Perfect Conditions, You Will Never Get Anything Done. ECCLESIASTES 11.4
Whether
employed, underemployed or unemployed, the longer you wait to engage a
professional non-traditional search endeavor, the more leverage you will
lose with regard to where you work geographically, who you work for,
and what you earn.
As expert executive career search
and employment consultants, our most monumental obstacle and frustration
is the ominous actuality that most executive job seekers or career
changers do not contact us until they are 2-6 months or more in to their
job search or are currently well employed, but for more reasons than we
can explain here, they drudge onward! The later phenomenon can carry on
for years; leading to stagnation, frustration, lost wages et cetera.
For
those employed, many have been thinking about a change or know there is
about to be a reduction in work force, but they wait months or even
years to take action! This always makes our work more difficult.
For those who are unemployed
Most
have forwarded dozens of credential submissions, posted their résumés
on Internet web sites, job boards et cetera. Again, we have to work
longer and harder.
Whether
Employed or Unemployed, waiting to an implement an aggressive
professional search transition for any reason, is always a costly
mistake! Here are just a few of the potential problems you will be faced
with when you don’t take immediate action:
Once you
close a door by either sending the wrong resume to the wrong person or
vice versa, it makes it that much more difficult or impossible for us to
re-open that door.
Once you plaster the Internet with
your resume, you have most-likely discredited your brand, oversold
yourself to recruiters and furthered potential personal frustration with
the entire search process.
Conducting a self-directed
traditional executive search via corporate instilled protocols and
bureaucracy mazes will always stall your professional mission!
If
you are marketing yourself using self-directed traditional job search
strategies, chances are you are penetrating less than 30% of your
potential market, and like so many others, you will be forced to settle!
Thus, thwarting your ability to join the right company, in the right
geography for maximum compensation. The dreaded unemployment-gap
continues to lengthen.
Many employed executives are
afraid to move! Even in the direct line of ongoing RIF’s (Reduction in
Work Force), many hang on until it’s too late. Others may have reached
the proverbial glass ceiling and are afraid to move due to economic
conditions or other improbable uncertainties. This may go on for years.
It is much easier to transition at 45 than it is at 55 and so on at 55
than it is at 60 years of age. We see this all the time! Furthermore,
although many will never do anything except continue to internally
strategize a move. While others may write a resume, send it out, receive
little or no responses and be thankful that they have the job they’ve
got! When in reality, sending out a few resumes in to the abyss is about
as effective as playing the lottery.
If you are ready to take control of your professional mission and career satisfaction, Contact Us Today!
Is it worthwhile to network with people who are also looking for new employment?
Most
people think they should only talk with other people who are presently
employed in a specific capacity within a specific industry within a
specific company who might have a specific job for them. This is job
search futility and fatality.
When
an exec is between jobs, it's the perfect time to get to know him/her.
That person will land soon and will remember you when s/he does.
In
fact, it's more effective to network with people who are also looking
for new employment. When these people are between jobs, they are
accessible; once they land a new gig, you might never get to speak with
them. It's too late. S/he's off and running on a new career venture and
much too busy to be bothered.
Alternatively,
if you connect with him beforehand, you better believe he'll speak with
you. His Rolodex® will be wide open. Moreover, if you can point him to
one good contact in your network, he will never forget you. When he's
running his next company, he will pay your favor forward.
Additionally,
once an executive has left, he is more likely to give you contacts from
his last company as he does not have the same confidentiality
concern. Also, don't forget to look at other companies he has worked
for and ask for contacts there as well. Furthermore, because he has
been searching and talking to other execs and recruiters, he is more
likely to be aware of recent opportunities that might be better for you
than for him.
Ye
almighty job hunter, Lay down your resume and take up your seed... 2014 years
ago, Jesus of Nazareth told his
disciples that the preponderance of the seed they sow would fall on rocky or
thorny ground. Therefore, the precious seeds of change would either wither
instantaneously or take early root only to later dissipate and be swept away by
the wind... The Lesson He taught His disciples, applies to the modern day
job seeker now more so than ever.
When
you begin your job search/network activities, it is imperative that you begin
sowing your VPS (Value Proposition Seedlings) in good rich soil RIGHT NOW. The
rich soils I speak of are those people who know and love you. Those who have
been blessed throughout their temporal journey here on earth to call you
friend, relative, co-worker, or acquaintance. In other words, if they recognize
your name, they are the rich soil Jesus speaks of. Sounds logical right?
Yet many of you say to me, hey Seraichyk, I’ll leave the sowing to the
unemployed sect who have nothing but time to mingle with the network socialites
of the jobless.I eat what I kill john,
and today I will take up my sword, march valiantly in to the jungle (the
internet) and slay me a job...
Well,
guys and gals, unfortunately I am unable to find a single thesaurus that will
confirm a synonym for “internet” to be, “vacant desert”, “dry bones”,or “mirage...” Unfortunately beloved,
the internet, headhunters, and the like, are just that. It doesn't matter how
piercing your sword, how formidable your rifle, how good your aim. When you are
firing at a mirage, you will soon deplete your ammunition and find yourself so
far out in the internet jungle, there is no way home. Meanwhile, back at the
ranch, you’ve sown no seed and consequently there are no crops to bear. Your
children remain hungry, you remain frustrated, bewildered and now a failure as
you cannot even provide food for your family. Yes, you say, I must sow seed, I
must get to work to network to get work! Now I see it!!! But 6 months have
passed since you began your hunting expedition, winter has set in, the soil is hard, you are distraught and the idea of sowing is even
more daunting now than it was when you began. Now What???
This
email sent from John Seraichyk, President Browning Associates -
Anything and everything you ever wanted to know about finding an executive job. Ask here and Executive Jobs Guys will feature your question and a genius response typically within 48 hours.
Our Founder
John's entire professional career has been dedicated to assisting professionals and executives with career transition, employment search and career consulting. Offering over 20 years of career search and consulting experience, John has earned a reputation for engaging with 200k + professionals and executives in a successful effort to advance their professional career status. Mr. Seraichyk has built multiple management teams for his organizations and teamed with them to provide unprecedented growth. John’s professional mission has been clearly established, with the mandate of providing the highest quality career management services to his clients while always striving to optimize their success.
