Читать книгу Stop Peeing On Your Shoes- Avoiding the 7 Mistakes That Screw Up Your Job Search - Julie JD Bauke - Страница 6

Matt called me three months into his search. Things weren’t going well and he couldn’t figure out why. He had networked with dozens of people and was getting nowhere. In fact, most of his conversations didn’t even lead to introductions to new networking contacts. I asked him to tell me his story. After listening to him for ten minutes, the issues were obvious. He couldn’t even tell me in a coherent way who he was professionally.

No wonder his networking contacts were less than helpful. They had no better idea as to how to help him after talking to him than they did before the conversation. Imagine Matt’s dilemma. He now had to craft his messages and try to convince his contacts to give him another chance.

Oops.

When you find out you’ve lost your job, the temptation to jump into action can be overwhelming. It might be impossible to resist. Regardless of the reason—layoff, plant closing, replacement of the entire leadership team, poor performance—it just doesn’t feel good to be told that your services are no longer required.

When I worked as an outplacement consultant, I often contacted new clients to meet with them and help with the job search. Often, I would get some variation of, “Oh, I don’t think I need your services. I already have a lot of opportunities,” or “I already have a recruiter working for me.” (That second one was a big warning sign that they were clueless. Recruiters don’t work for you. You are not their client. (More on that later in the book) I would cringe when I heard either of these responses. I knew that there were probably a zillion things they were already doing, or were going to do, wrong as they began their search.

And that’s what I call “peeing on your shoes.”

There are two reasons that we gravitate toward this type of unproductive activity. First, it’s human nature that when we are made to feel bad (for instance, when we lose our job), we move toward things that make us feel good. We call all of the people who know us, and will agree that we “most certainly did not deserve to be laid off!” They know as well as we do that the company did not know what it was doing, that they will regret their mistake, and can’t survive without us. And on and on and on. “Oh, and by the way,” we say, “let me know if you hear of any jobs. Is your company hiring?” That scenario is a mistake on so many levels I don’t even know where to start.

The second reason that the newly unemployed jump into the job search too soon is that we confuse action with productivity. Any action is better than no action, right? So we get on the phone, make lots of calls, and proudly tell our spouse that we have applied to 100 jobs online and sent out another 100 resumes, ALL IN ONE WEEK!

All that activity feels so good. Surely, we think, something will hit. After all, look at all the work I’ve been doing. The truth is, it probably won’t help you get a job. That’s the “throw it against the wall and hope something sticks” job search method. It’s basically useless, and I don’t recommend it.

Like all the other parts of our lives, things always go better when we “think, plan, and then act.” Unfortunately, what I see most often is “act, pee on shoes, think, plan.” The worst part about searching this way is that by the time you realize what you are doing wrong, you have already made mistakes with your key contacts, and they may be very hard to repair.

Before you jump into your search, you should have well thought-out, road-tested answers to basic questions that you are going to hear over and over again.