Needle, Meet Haystack

Being unaccustomed to receiving much response from anyone about this blog, besides my mom saying “you’re doing great, honey” (thanks, Mom), I was a bit surprised that I had a post featured on Brazen Careerist that garnered some responses.  And there were responses, including a well-written featured post later in the week.

In the time-honored tradition of interweb debates and such, I’ll deal briefly with why I did not mention, as was suggested, “talking to actual live human beings, some of whom you may already know” before we move on to the actual title topic of this post.

I didn’t say anything about networking because it seemed a bit off-topic.  Wait, WHAT?!

Well, look at it this way: it’s about 11 AM and you’re cruising over to indeed.com to see who’s posted a position for an architect.  All of a sudden, your cat knocks over a poorly-placed can of soda onto the keyboard, and you’re without your main job-getting device.  What are the things that you can do that will serve the same function as what you were doing on your computer?

If you’ve followed my advice before (or read through the archives), you’d notice that I’ve already said you should use your whole freakin’ personal network to help you get a job.  I’ve also advocated getting in on job nepotism and offered you body language tips you can use while meeting people, so it’s not like I haven’t mentioned this sort of thing before.

I digress – on to the networking stuff!

Networking is a very well-researched subject, and there have been hundreds of millions of pages on how to do it best.  But you do know what networking really is, right?  It’s the grown-up term for meeting people!  And playground rules still apply.

Remember when you were in grade school, and you would make a new friend just because you both were wearing Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles shirts?  Or how your entire class would be invited to everyone’s birthday parties?*  What happened?

As we got older, we got pickier about our friends, and birthday party attendance and invitation quantities dropped (not to mention that the presents suck more, in a ratio reminiscent of the supply/demand curve).  What did we forget that came so naturally to us as children?  What anxieties set in that make social interaction, from asking someone out on a date to making new friends, seem like an uphill battle?

Well, I couldn’t honestly tell you why.  But here are the only things you really need to know about how to network successfully:

If you can, use social proof. In the show, How I Met Your Mother, two of the male characters pick up women by asking if she has met the other guy.  For example:

BARNEY: Have you met Ted?

TED: Hi, I’m Ted.

WOMAN: Hi, Ted.

Sure, it’s a bit corny, but it underlines the concept of social proof.  If other people see that others are okay with you, vouch for you, or seem interested in you, then they will be more comfortable with you than if you walked up to them randomly.  Think about how many people are your friends because you met through a friend in common.  That’s social proof in action right there.

Find common ground. At an advertising mixer?  Well, then you probably can talk about advertising.  At a birthday party?  You can talk about how you know the birthday boy/girl (a sort of solo social proof method).  New to the office?  Talk to new co-workers about their early experiences.  As long as you can relate on some level, you’ll connect.

Ignore preconceptions. There was a kid in your grade school class who ate paste.  Maybe it was you.  But either way, that kid still had at least a few friends.  Imagine trying to be friends with an adult who eats paste.  See the problem?

There is no reason to ignore or dismiss someone because of some unique/different quality that they have.  Sure, we preach it, but we don’t often do it.  Think about Stephen Hawking – if you didn’t know he was Stephen Hawking, would you attempt to socialize with him?  Put aside whatever first impressions you have of people and just get to know them.  You might be surprised.

Professionalism is overrated. Unless you’re dining with royalty or snooty people, you don’t have to act overly straight-laced and proper.  I’m not advocating stripping down to your underoos, drinking to excess and cursing up a storm, but rather that you don’t need to have a stick up your butt while networking.

Most people are nervous about meeting new people.  If you’re relaxed, friendly and HUMAN, you will get along just fine.  Have you ever made any real friends or connections by being so prim and proper that it would make Miss Manners want to vomit?  I didn’t think so.

Don’t be afraid to be utilitarian. One of my best friends in college became my friend because he had a car and would drive me places to get things.  The rest came later.  One of my oldest friends and I started hanging out because I had a Sega Genesis.  The friendship then evolved.  Notice a pattern?

We use people all the time.  Be it for favors, money, advice or just about anything else.  So why not for a job?  As long as you can offer a convincing reason why they should (show them the benefit!), they will.  We’re all self-interested, so use that to help develop contacts at places where you want to work, in industries you want to know more about, and so on.

So that’s really about it.  If you aren’t quite sure if you get what you’re supposed to do during networking, here’s all you need to know: Be nice, be honest, and make friends.

So why didn’t I mention networking?  Because it’s something you already know how to do.  You learned it in kindergarten.

* This example does not apply to the home-schooled.  Sorry!

So if you’re not following NMH on Twitter but use the site anyway(shame on you!  Follow now! Follow now!), you’re probably familiar with all of the social elements that are involved.  Such as people sharing too much information.  Which, by the way, can be bad for job searching.  Here are a few articles with some suggestions:

People job seekers should follow

People job seekers should follow (part 2)

20 things job seekers shouldn’t say on Twitter

30 ways to lose a job on Twitter

All lists courtesy of the resume-tastic Resume Bear.

Lights, camera, action!  It’s time for another Job That Might Seem Cool But Actually Kinda Sucks…Hollywood Edition!

The job: Film director

You might like this job if: You want to make movies.  Or maybe you just read Robert Rodriguez’s Rebel Without A Crew and got so inspired that you fell in love with the idea of your own film.  Maybe you like making short YouTube videos.  Or you might want to do this if you want to, you know, get rich and famous for directing.

The good: You get to make movies!  And you’re in charge!  Plus, you’ll probably get a ton of money for it, get to hook up with hot actors/actresses if you so choose.  You might win awards, get honorary doctorates, and all of the awesome things that celebrated directors get.  Did I mention the money?

The bad: Long hours, and I mean LONG hours.  Look at it this way: the writer’s job is done when the script is finalized (save for rewrites you or the studio will make), the actors’ jobs are done when shooting wraps, and so on.  You’re stuck to this project from when you sign on until all the editing is finished.  And then you get to do the press tour, by which time you’ve seen the movie over and over so many times you’re completely sick of it.  And speaking of shooting the film, remember that you are the chief coordinator of EVERYTHING, from stunts to special effects to lighting to sound and food and so on.  You will either have to deal with a lot of small problems on a very constant basis, or ignore them all and only deal with big disasters.  And all this doesn’t even account for the possibility that the movie might not do well in the box office, might get bad reviews, or do too well to the point that anything else you do will be compared to it.  Not to mention that it’s hard to establish yourself as a director and get serious studio backing.  It can be done, but it’s tricky and involves a lot of red tape and politics.  Directing is a lot of hard work for a risky payoff and is definitely not for the thin-skinned or impatient.

Summary: Provided you have a big enough ego and the talent to back it up, you could be a good director.  Whether you end up rich and famous is another story entirely.  And that decision is not in your hands.

Rating: Three clap boards out of five

A few years ago, I was sitting at a fancy dinner put together by the Tulsa, Oklahoma Advertising Association at which famed writer, Comcast Must Die creator and Advertising Age columnist Bob Garfield spoke.  I don’t remember much about his speech, though I imagine that it had much to do with the sky falling for advertising and how we’d all need to get our asses in gear if we wanted to make it out alive.  There was a PowerPoint presentation involved.

During the Q&A session, a friend of mine said to him, “I’m about to graduate with a degree in advertising, and you aren’t giving me much hope for the future.”

“Well, dental school is always a good option.”  He replied.

The crowd laughed, and it’s taken me a couple of years to get it.  At first, I thought that he was saying something about needing a backup plan.  Like, as long as people have teeth, the world will need dentists – maybe not advertisers, but definitely dentists.  Then I thought he meant something like, if you’re that unsure about what you’ve chosen to do with life, you probably chose wrong. But what he was really saying (or at least what I now think he was saying) was that you need to stay current and adapt to changes around you.*

Relying on books and learning theory will only take you so far, as will following someone else’s system.  You need to practice, innovate and refine oyur techniques to truly be successful in the job search or in life.

But Andrew, you say.  I work in accounting!  What am I supposed to do, be creative with numbers? To which I reply with a solid no.  But you could work on finding a more efficient method of calculating those numbers, or develop new cost-effective strategies.  Lawyers can work on a new litigation technique.  Math teachers can, um…

Okay, so math teachers are pretty much stuck with what they’ve got.

But the point remains: whether you’re trying to find a job or looking to improve on one you have, innovation and development will help you get to where you want to be.

Unless Bob Garfield was really suggesting dentistry as a career option.  In which case, let’s just pretend that this metaphor is really what he was thinking.

BY THE WAY: Bob Garfield has a new book out for all your fancy reading devices. Or you can get his other book.

* I came to this conclusion because Bob was also talking a bit about how to profit in a down market, when clients are abandoning you.  So the solution seemed to be a metaphorical way of saying “find a profitable area and go with it”.

You’ve probably heard about the Pareto Principle, also known as the 80-20 ratio: that 80% of profits come from 20% of the work, or 80% of people only have 20% of the world’s money, or something like that.  And although that ratio may vary in exactness, it is pretty accurate.

Look at it this way: 80% of your time will be spent on applications, even though only 20% of them will get read.  Does this mean that you should stop applying to 80% of jobs and focus on the 20% you think you can get?  NO!  It just means that you have to work a bit smarter.

In The 4-Hour Workweek, author Timothy Ferriss notes that he cut down his business’ customer list by around 95% to focus on the few clients who made him the most money and caused the least problems.

If you apply this lesson to the job search, it becomes something more like, “cut out the jobs you know you won’t get and focus on the jobs you know you are qualified for or those that you really want.”  I found that by paring down my job search to those jobs, I got more positive responses (and responses in general) while spending less time looking and applying for work I was applying for just for the sake of applying for it.  I also had more time to devote to side projects and volunteer work, and worked more comfortably than I had while feeling bogged down by the job search.

By simplifying your job search with the Pareto Principle, you might find that you get 80% more results for only 20% of the work that you used to do!

A couple of months out of work, during a time I like to call my “wilderness months” (in homage to Anthony Bourdain or whoever coined the term I’m paraphrasing; I’ll assume it was him), I had something of an epiphany.  Or maybe it was more like a moment of madness.

I was walking around up the street from my barely-affordable apartment on a trek to a grocery store to determine the week’s rations.  As I passed by the other shops on the street, a strange realization crept in.  Everyone in every one of those places had a job!

There was a hair salon where they employed hair stylists.  There was a restaurant with cooks and servers.  There was a drug store with cashiers and pharmacists.  EVERYONE EVERYWHERE had a job.

Except for me.

Making it into the grocery store, I noticed the employees at the registers, behind the deli and bakery counters, stocking the shelves, cleaning the floors, making announcements over the PA system, arranging the fruit…my lord, the fruit!  There were growers, pickers, shippers, marketers, sellers and buyers, all of whose jobs led to that one banana lying in front of me among a mountain of other bananas.  The people involved in making a TV dinner or a carton of orange juice boggled my mind.

For the first time in my life, I walked out of a grocery store, knowing I desperately needed groceries, empty-handed.

I was shocked.  Here I was, pouring over every job site I could think of, floundering desperately for work, when there were thousands of opportunities I hadn’t considered!  How many minutes, hours and days had I wasted looking for a job, passing hundreds of thousands of other opportunities by?  I trudged back to the apartment, laid down, and had a small nervous breakdown.

Within a week, I had a new job.

I had reached the point where the job search had become too daunting and life-consuming.  After I reached that point, I took a step back to relax and realized that it would be humanly impossible to apply to all of those jobs.  Instead, I focused on what work I knew I could do, and went after the type of career I wanted with more determination and focus.

So if you feel that the job search is becoming unbearable and that you don’t know what to do, take a few minutes, hours or days to stop and calm down.  And try to avoid the grocery store.

It might be hard to believe, but there was a time when people didn’t have access to job search websites, freelancer boards, Twitter job updates or Craigslist.  And although we’ve thankfully moved past that dark, dark age known as “Any Year Before The 1990s,”  we still run the risk of technological dependency, especially for the job search.

So let’s say your computer/smartphone/Internet breaks.  What do you do?

Besides going to your local library or web cafe to use on of their computers, you can always take a look at the local newspapers, though the classifieds section isn’t what it once was.  Another option is to go through the phone book and call businesses that you are interested in working for to inquire about openings.  You could even write and mail letters to prospective companies (provided you can somehow get their addresses).  And you can also look up headhunters, employment agencies, or temp agencies in the phone book.

So next time you find yourself with a busted laptop because stupid Vista decided to delete your video card drivers for no good reason, remember that there are still some options to keep you busy on the job search.

You may have heard of this body language technique, as it’s one of the most well-known and easiest to use tactics in an effective body language arsenal.  However, it’s also one of the most misused.  Mirroring, if done right, will create a more comfortable environment, fostering a greater trust and deeper connection between two people.  If done incorrectly, however, it can lead to disaster.

Do you remember when you were a kid, and someone would repeat everything you just said?  They would copy you until you yelled, “Quit copying me!” and they would yell back “Quit copying me!” and things would either settle down or someone would wind up being stuck on the monkey bars for the rest of recess.  It was pretty annoying, right?  The copying part, I mean.

That’s exactly how mirroring can go wrong.

The easiest way to mirror (or reflect someone’s movements and vocal tone) is to use it sparingly.  Watch what actions they make when talking passionately, or when showing interest.  Notice what words they put emphasis on, and how their facial features change when talking about different aspects of a topic.  That’s all you need to say back or do in response.  Showing that you are like them while still being your own person is better than appearing to be a parrot.

So remember: pick out the key movements and phrases, and use those.  Because if you use everything, you’ll wind up stuck on the monkey bars for the rest of recess.  And you won’t have a job to show for it.

So I’ve only had this question once at an interview, but it did knock me off my game a little bit.  I answered with the truth about the circumstances of my departure from the organization, but here’s a great tip on another way you can do it.

How to answer “Have you ever been fired?”

What are you up to this weekend?  Playing video games?  Do you wonder if maybe you should turn that hobby into a full-time job?  Wonder no more, because this week, that’s exactly what we’ll be investigating!

The job: Video game tester

You might like this job if: You like video games.  It helps if you’re good at them (since that increases your chances of getting hired).

The good: You get to play video games!  And get paid for it!  And not just any video games, but ones that haven’t been released yet.  Plus, there’s a movie about people who do that for a living (though it wasn’t very good).  But you get paid to play video games!

The bad: Besides carpal tunnel and eye strain, you won’t be testing finished video games.  And you’ll be working more as a debugger than a player, going through to find problem areas, glitches and errors.  You probably will end up never playing a game, except for work.  It’s kind of like when you were a kid and said you could never get sick of pizza, and then after a month of eating just pizza, you couldn’t even look at a pizza or think the word “pizza” without getting sick.

Not to mention that you might end up testing hardware by doing things like seeing how many button presses it takes to break a controller.  Sounds fun, right?  Well, don’t forget that you have to write up a report detailing everything you’ve done down to the most minute detail.

Summary: Good in theory, bad in execution.  Kind of like the first time you tried rocket-jumping in Halo.  Stick to playing games for fun, not profit.

Rating: Three golden coins out of five.

Some parts of this week’s post shamelessly ripped off this article from Cracked.com