Authors: Stephen M. Pollan,Mark Levine
Tags: #Psychology, #Self Help, #Business
Fire Your Boss (16 page)
This was how Sandra Lustick landed a very lucrative position with a software firm in the 1980s. Sandra had gone to college with one of my daughters. I had helped her purchase an apartment and negotiate a raise with the software firm for which she worked. A couple of years later Sandra came to me with an idea for a new business. We discussed it and realized that there was already a company that could provide the product and service Sandra envisioned. Rather than starting from scratch, I coached Sandra to approach this firm. She put together an excellent proposal about how it could slightly alter one of its products and then potentially take advantage of a huge untapped market. The president of the company was so impressed that he hired Sandra on the spot, excited both by the prospect of a new revenue stream, and by the prospect of stealing a star salesperson away from a competitor.
There were also times these private openings were created through the personal whim of an executive. Maybe the CFO’s nephew had just graduated college and hadn’t yet found a job. His mother turned to her brother at a weekend barbecue and said something like, “You’re a big-shot CFO at Acme Inc. After all I’ve done for you and your kids over the years, why can’t you get my son a job?” The CFO then went to the human resources director the subsequent Monday morning, presented his nephew’s résumé, and “asked” if there were any jobs for this dazzling young man. Depending on the clout of the CFO, and yes, the merit of the young man in question, the HR director might have created or forced a place for him.
My client Sara Ciannesco had to make a hire in just these kinds of circumstances. Sara owns two very successful high-end women’s clothing stores in Manhattan. One of the well-known designers whose work the store featured heard Sara was looking for a new salesperson for her downtown store. The designer said he had just the person for the job: a young woman who was trying to crack into the world of fashion modeling. It just so happened she was also dating the designer. Sara, needing to remain on good terms with the designer, hired the young lady. While she didn’t become a stellar employee, she became adequate, and actually lasted longer as a clothing salesperson than she did as the designer’s girlfriend.
As more and more people recognized there was a backdoor job market, as well as the more public job market represented by the help wanted ads, people developed a new job-search approach. Answering ads was no longer enough. You had to network.
The principle behind networking is that the best jobs are filled, not by answering ads, but by making business connections. The idea is to develop a mutually supporting network of individuals with whom you have business relationships. These could be people you worked with, worked for, competed against, partnered with, sold to, or bought from. You meet these people informally, let’s say for lunch, and talk about what you are doing and what they are doing. The idea is to create sources of information about those private job openings. The more you network, the more of an insider you become. The quid pro quo is that you too are ready, willing, and able to help others find those private jobs.
Along with their own contacts, ambitious networkers go to events, meetings, conventions, and trade shows, and meet people who might know about some private job openings, or meet people who know other people who know about some private job openings. Even if no immediate private job opening appears, they press the flesh, hand out their business cards, and subtly make it clear that they are in the market for any such openings that might one day appear. Sometimes these networks revolve around industries, other times around professions. Perhaps all the dental hygienists in a city gather regularly for a meeting at which they hear a manufacturer’s representative talk about a new piece of equipment, have dinner, complain about dentists, and share inside information on private job openings.
Renatta Kahn was one of my clients who actually turned networking from a job-search technique into a lifestyle. I helped Renatta when, as a young attorney specializing in entertainment law, she negotiated her contract as an in-house counsel for a large, multifaceted media corporation. Renatta was a single, attractive woman in her midthirties with an incredible drive to succeed. Renatta had breakfast with the same three other entertainment lawyers every morning at a café in a small boutique hotel. Over coffee and juice in this discreet location they traded inside information and gossip. After work, Renatta’s schedule was filled with meetings of a bar association committee on Mondays, drinks at a television industry gathering on Tuesdays, a publishing industry roundtable and dinner on Wednesdays, and a standing dinner date with her boss on Thursdays. She spent almost every weekend with a handful of business guests at a house she owned on the eastern end of Long Island. The only time Renatta didn’t seem to be networking was when she jogged, which she did religiously first thing every morning — though I’m sure if she could have found an entertainment industry runners’ group, she would have joined.
As networking became more widespread, and as people began to look to move beyond their own industry or profession, a variation developed. This is what I called Rolodex renting, and it involves the use of informational interviews.
You may want to shift to a job in the widget industry. Unfortunately, you know only one person in widgets. Rather than relying on social gatherings and your own limited set of contacts, you ask your contacts for help in finding people who might be able help you “learn if the widget industry is right for you.” In effect, you rent other people’s Rolodexes, asking them to introduce you to any of their own contacts in the widget business. In this way you exponentially increase the reach of an existing network.
Once you get a name, you call, write, or e-mail the individual, asking for an informational interview, dropping the name of the person who referred you. Outwardly you are simply asking to pick the interviewer’s brains about the widget business, since it’s something you find interesting. Actually you are trying to get him or her to hire you, but saying so would limit the number of people willing to speak with you.
At these informational interviews you do everything you can to impress the heck out of the interviewer and get him or her to give you a job. If that doesn’t happen, you simply ask for the names of other people who might be helpful in your fascinating voyage of discovery in the land of widgets. You then call these new names and repeat the process, dropping the name of the person who made the referral.
The interviewers are not necessarily motivated by your being able to help them get a job, since they are probably much higher on the corporate ladder than you; instead, they want to be able to refer their own contacts to the person who referred you. Instead of it being a direct quid pro quo — “I’ll help you if you help me” — it is second-degree quid pro quo — “I’ll help the person you send me if you help the person I send you.”
This process of working your own network, renting other people’s Rolodexes, and then going on a series of informational interviews is the method of choice for most people looking for good-paying, mid- to upper-level, white-collar work. Sure, the want ads are still there and actually got a boost from the Internet, but they aren’t seen as being either as effective or as sophisticated as the informational interview circuit.
HOW TO ATTRACT HEADHUNTERS
Because corporate executives are pretty much obsessed with filling upper-level jobs only by employee-jacking, and human resources departments have effectively put an end to informational interviews, headhunters will remain the only route to the upper levels of a company. How do you show up on their radar screens?
Make sure you’re still working. No matter what they may say, headhunters are hired in order to poach employees from competitors.
Forget about contacting them and presenting yourself as a potential candidate. The headhunter motto is “Don’t call us, we’ll call you.” Remember, they’re not looking to find jobs for people, they’re looking to find people for jobs.
Instead, become an informant for them. Tell them you’re interested in developing a relationship and then offer up everything you know about your company. Give them enough names, titles, phone numbers, and e-mail addresses to compile an organizational chart and directory of your company. Headhunters believe in a quid pro quo, but want their quid up front.
But in the past couple of years this circuit has run out of power. Since the bursting of the Internet bubble, the terrorist attacks of September 11, and the subsequent recession, it has been getting more and more difficult for people to find anyone willing to give them an informational interview. I have to admit I’ve stopped giving them myself. That’s because it’s obvious to everyone now that these are nothing more than job interviews in disguise. With so many people requesting informational interviews, and with so few actual job openings, it has become time-consuming and ultimately fruitless to give these interviews.
Human resources departments have successfully fought against filling positions through networking. All those behind-the-scenes interviews and meetings threatened their existence. Why have a personnel department if you weren’t going to use it to find and screen candidates? In order to provide the secrecy many executives sought, the HR people took to hiring headhunters (often former HR people themselves) to do the screening of potential candidates. (See the box on page 133: How to Attract Headhunters.)
One of the themes I keep coming back to in this book is that merit isn’t enough to succeed at work anymore. It’s also not enough to get a foot in the door these days. I hate to say it, but in today’s job market it’s not what you know, but who you know. To get the multiple job offers you’re looking for in your job-fishing efforts, you’ll need to draw on personal relationships.
Let’s say there’s a job opening in your department. Your sister has been out of work for about six months, relying on her husband’s income and help from your parents to make ends meet. She’s qualified for the job…but so are the two dozen people represented by the file folder of résumés sitting on your desk. Do you tell your sister about the job and also do everything you can to help her get it, or do you simply treat her like every other candidate? Of course you bend over backward to help your sister get the job.
It’s human nature to give preference to those closest to you. That’s just accentuated when times are hard, as they are in the job market today. The people making the decisions on whom to meet with, whom to interview, and whom to hire naturally give preference to individuals with whom they have personal relationships. For example, during one of the last major economic downturns in New York a good friend of mine who was a part-time professor and actor was having a hard time making ends meet. I needed help in my office with general office chores and deliveries. Rather than hiring someone with experience, I offered the job to my out-of-work friend. I chose to hire based on personal connection rather than competence. I don’t think that’s unusual. That’s why I think the key to getting jobs in today’s work environment is to expand your personal network rather than your business network, and use the former not the latter to generate job leads.
Some of my clients balk when I first tell them to expand their personal network and use it to generate job leads. “That’s terribly cynical,” they say. “At least when you do business networking the quid pro quo is overt. Developing friendships just for business reasons seems dishonest.” They’re partly right. Developing friendships for business reasons is amoral, if not immoral. But that’s not what I’m suggesting at all.
I don’t think you should choose your personal relationships with an eye toward their business potential. In fact, I’d suggest you avoid that. Instead, I think you should pursue your true interests. (See the box on page 136: Inventory Your Interests.) Join clubs focusing on a pastime you enjoy, not one that has lots of CEOs as members. Pursue hobbies that will bring you joy, not those you think will bring you affluent chums. Become friendly with people whose company you enjoy, who share your values, who make you laugh. If your efforts at expanding your personal networks are phony you’ll get neither personal satisfaction nor job leads. That’s because you’ll never actually make the kind of personal ties you need. If you’re just showing up at the chess club simply because you think you’ll get job leads there, your ploy will soon be obvious to everyone. Join the chess club because you love chess, and let the job leads develop naturally.
INVENTORY YOUR INTERESTS
If you’re at a loss for how to develop or expand a personal network, do an inventory of your interests.
What do you like to read? Check with your local bookstores and libraries to see if there’s a reading group that caters to that type of book. Do an online search for your favorite authors or genres and see if you can find local or regional fan groups.
What type of entertainment do you like? If you love the movies, check to see if there’s a film forum or film society in your community. Fans of popular music should explore the local music scene for folk, rock, jazz, and blues clubs. Classical music aficionados should check for orchestras, chamber groups, or opera companies.
Do you have a talent? Singers should investigate community choirs. Dancers should look for classes or troupes, as well as clubs that have regular events. Artists should go to nearby galleries and art-supply stores and check the bulletin boards. Photographers should go to camera stores, musicians to music stores, and crafters to craft stores. Writers should check bookstores for information on writers groups.
Are you a sports fan? Look for fan clubs online or at the facility where the team plays. Like to play a sport? Look at the bulletin boards in sporting-good shops and check at facilities catering to the sport.
Do you have a hobby? There are lots of hobbyist organizations which that sponsor local chapters. Check online, at hobby shops, or in special-interest magazines. If you haven’t pursued a hobby for years, consider picking up one you abandoned when you were younger.
Interested in a particular issue or cause? Get involved in the local political committee of a party of your choice. Volunteer at an organization or institution whose mission you support.
Attend religious services or meeting at the house of worship of your choice. If you’re nervous about meeting strangers, religious services are an excellent way to break the ice. People will go out of their way to be welcoming.