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4 Ways to Date to Get a Job

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date to get a jobDate to get a job?

Sometimes you have to date to get a job.

I have written before about how the dating process is very synonymous to the job search process. Sometimes to get the job you want, you need to be creative and ask for the date.

I have worked with four very experienced professionals on their job searches. Each was approached by employers about positions but… the employer was not quite ready to make that all-important hiring decision. Whether it was budget, cultural fit, or they were just nervous about expanding, a lot of employers drag their feet in pulling the trigger.

Sound familiar?

How about asking for a date to get a job?

Let me recount four different scenarios that have happened in the last couple of years.

Client #1

Client #1 interviewed with a small firm that is rapidly expanding. They were very impressed with the client’s skills and, more importantly, the client’s background with a particular channel partner. Client #1 proposed a multi-step strategy during the interview process that the hiring manager really liked.  They were not ready to hire though! They put the process on hold.

Client #1 proposed instead a 20-hour per week contract to develop the first two steps of the plan. They liked the idea and asked for more details.

We put together a Statement of Work (SOW) with a rate that was appropriate for the work ($100/hour) and defined the length of the engagement at 13 weeks at 20 hours per week.

The company now had a budget. They accepted.

After the 3 months were up, the company extended the contract to 40 hours per week. After one year, the company hired my client full time.

Rather than going away Client #1 asked for a date to get a job!

Client #2

Client #2 interviewed with a technology consulting firm. They knew they needed someone with the client’s skill set for a newly created position. But they were not sure how this newly created position would fit in the organization. They again put this position on hold.

Client #2 proposed a 90-day contract to get the ball moving. Think of this like asking for a date.

After the 1st of the year, the company accepted. Like Client #1 they knew the rate and length of engagement and therefore, could budget an appropriate amount.

When the 90 days were up client #2 decided to walk away. He/She did not want to work there and had a better competing offer. Client #2 did not stop looking during the contract period.

Rather than walking away Client #2 asked for a date to get a job but eventually rejected the offer.

Client #3

Client #3 interviewed for a marketing position with a growing engineering firm. They have never hired a full-time marketing person. Client #3 realized what they really need first is a marketing plan and told them that during the interview.

In the meantime, a critical person was fired from the engineering firm and the marketing position was put on hold while they filled the other critical position.

Client #3 proposed to come in as a consultant to write the marketing plan. Client #3’s proposal was accepted and he spent the next 3 months developing the marketing plan.

Soon after the project was completed the company hired client #3 as their head of marketing.

Rather than walking away Client #3 asked for a date to get a job.

Client #4

Client #4 was a very experienced business development professional. He had experience in a very niche but growing market and had twice taken companies from inception to $20M. Therefore, we were looking for startup companies in this niche market space.

Client #4 met an interesting startup venture at a Meetup. A couple of months of meeting ensued before they decided to bring client #4 on as a business development consultant. This allowed my client to list the startup venture on his LinkedIn profile.

After 6 months of dating, both sides agreed to part amicably but having the startup venture on his LinkedIn profile was invaluable. It gave my client recent experience and street cred in this market.

Client #4 was able to easily acquire his next position and now is a full-time employee because he had been a business development consultant for the startup.

Dating the startup made him more attractive to other suiters and it paid off.

Dating and Marriage

I am pretty confident that if any of the companies accept the offer to date, the client will get the job, if he or she decides, ultimately, to take it. This is a two-way engagement. The client can and sometimes will walk away after they find out what it is really like to work there.

This is like dating and marriage, you both have to agree that it is the right thing to do.

I have seen a lot of positions being put on hold because the companies are not sure if they know exactly what they want or if the expense is worth the potential reward.

Be willing to be creative and make an offer to date to see if making the hire is worthwhile. It also gives you the opportunity to see if this is someplace you want to work.

Give it a try! Ask for a date to get a job!

Marc Miller  

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Mailbag – Teachers, Resumes, and Competing Against Internal Candidates [Podcast]

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Episode 34 – Marc and Elizabeth answer some of your career questions about teachers transitioning, resumes, and competing against internal candidates!

Description:Mailbag - Teachers, Resumes, and Competing Against Internal Candidates

In this episode, Marc answers questions with his trusty sidekick, Elizabeth Rabaey. You can learn about her career pivots in Episode 020. Listen in for ideas on exploring the job market, transitioning from teaching, the relevance of resumes, and tips for competing against internal candidates!

Key Takeaways:

[2:14] Elizabeth shares her story, and how Marc has helped guide her to her latest pivot, which has worked out well. Elizabeth invites listeners to listen to Episode 20, and connect with her on LinkedIn to share experiences.
[3:25] Q1: I am 57 and have recently retired from teaching H.S. science. I am seeking a freelance, travel freelance, or consulting job. I love to write, but not for a corporation. I love to travel and compare educational systems to create learning activities. I tried to start an early-learning school, but did not get enough students. Can you help me?

Download Link | iTunes | Stitcher Radio | Google Play

[4:22] A1: Marc talks about teaching H.S. math. He said teachers live a very isolated life, and are disconnected from the world. Marc wants this former teacher to explore. Travel blogging is one choice. Marc challenges him to focus on exactly what his writing emphasis will be. Marc can share resources for travel blogging if you contact him.
[6:35] Marc says to do homework, and find the opportunities. Teachers sometimes suffer from ‘MSU,’ because they don’t have the background. By the way, there is a huge cohort of teachers about to retire. Marc says it will take a lot of exploration for teachers to choose a direction and follow it. It won’t be easy.
[7:16] Q2: I am looking for a resume writer. I have seen prices from $200 to $5,000. Man! Why such a difference? Am I wasting money if I’m paying ‘crazy expensive?’ What do you think?
[7:40] A2: The resume is not nearly as important as it used to be. It is a good idea for new graduates, spend a little for help with your resume. For high income executives, it might make sense to spend $5,000 for a resume. For most in the second half of life, the resume is not what gets us the job; it’s the personal connections. Marc suggests a book.
[8:44] The huge range of resume costs reflects the amount of work needed for it. If you’ve got a decent resume to start, you can do it yourself, or get someone to clean it up. If you have no resume, it’s probably worth spending $500 to $1,000 with a decent resume writer. Marc offers low-end and a high-end suggestions for resume writers.
[12:17] Elizabeth wonders about switching career fields. Marc advises job shifters to reframe their experience for the particular job they are pursuing. He recommends Jobscan.co as a reframing resource. Also, the Modernize Your Resume book. But making a transition requires working your network connections, more than your resume.
[14:31] Marc talks about a client who has recruiters reaching out to her through her LinkedIn profile, regardless of her resume. If you get past the recruiter, you are fine.
[15:24] Q3: I am interviewing for a position where I know I am up against three internal candidates. Do you have any advice for how to compete for a position when the competition are coming from the inside of the company?
[15:40] A3: Understand that when you are going up against internal candidates, you are going to lose a significant portion of the time. The hiring manager will make the safe choice. They know what they are getting. Marc says, go for it. Why are they interviewing you against these internal candidates? That’s what you’ve got to find out.
[17:17] What is the real problem? If they have three internal candidate, and one external candidate, they are looking to the external candidate for some reason. They may be looking for different ideas. Look on LinkedIn and find out as much about that department and their recent hiring, as you can. Have they been hiring externally?
[18:10] Marc gives the example of Nation Instruments, who hire mainly college graduates, who either stay, 7-10 years, or their entire career. They rarely hire externally. Marc says: go for it, be aggressive, ask good questions, find out why they are looking at an external candidate, and don’t get your hopes way up. Marc cites Jim Camp.
[20:18] You have nothing to lose. Really do your homework, and ask great questions. “If I poke you here, does it hurt?” What you’re trying to do is get them to spill the beans, as Jim Camp says in his negotiating book, Start With No. Then you have a way to position yourself. When you don’t get a job, always get on LinkedIn afterwards and see who did.
[22:03] Next episode will be with Richard Eisenberg, Managing Editor of Next Avenue, talking about the origins of Next Avenue, and where it’s going.

Mentioned in This Episode:

Careerpivot.com
Contact Marc, and ask questions at: Careerpivot.com/contact-me

Episode 020 Elizabeth Rabaey

Elizabeth Rabaey on LInkedIn

The Smart Passive Income Online Business and Blogging Podcast

Modernize Your Resume: Get Noticed … Get Hired, by Wendy Enelow
and Louise Kursmark

Xavier Cano, The Resume WhizTM

Resumes That Stand Out!: Tips for College Students and Recent Grads for Writing a Superior Resume and Securing an Interview, by L. Xavier Cano

Chameleon Resumes by Lisa Rangel

Jobscan.co

National Instruments

Start with NO…The Negotiating Tools that the Pros Don’t Want You to Know,
by Jim Camp

Next Avenue

CareerPivot.com Episode34

Take a moment — go to iTunes, Stitcher, or Google Play. Give this podcast a review and subscribe! If you’re not sure how to leave a review, please go to CareerPivot.com/review, and read the detailed instructions there.

Marc Miller  

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Repurpose Your Career - A Practical Guide for the 2nd Half of Life

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Surviving Creative Destruction in the 2nd Half of Life

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Creative Destruction?

creative destruction
Copyright: vicnt / 123RF Stock Photo

According to Wikipedia – Creative destruction describes the “process of industrial mutation that incessantly revolutionizes the economic structure from within, incessantly destroying the old one, incessantly creating a new one.”

Creative destruction is nothing new.

I was listening to the Freakonomics Radio podcast called How Safe is Your Job? (Rebroadcast) and they were discussing that in 1905 there were 400,000 pianos made in America. If you wanted music in your house you learned to play the piano.

The phonograph was created in 1877 but it was not until 1915, did phonograph sales start to take off. Later came the radio. Pianos did not go away but today there are about 30,000 pianos made each year or 8% of the number made in 1905.

The piano industry was changed forever by technology.

For More: Has Your Job Been SMACed? If not Yet, It Will!

Creative Destruction and Kodak

Kodak was another classic example of creative destruction.

Kodak created the digital camera in 1975. Yes, 1975! It was not commercially viable but Kodak’s management team could not see the future. That future would destroy how Kodak made money … chemical film.

In 2001, Kodak had the #2 digital camera on the market but lost $60 on every sale. Fast forward to 2012 and Kodak declared bankruptcy.

In both these cases, creative destruction took 20, 30 or 40 years to destroy an industry.

Now that pace is accelerating.

For More: Living in a “Career Disaster Area” at the Age of 65

The Destruction of the Brick and Mortar Store by Amazon

Amazon.com was found in 1994 and initially just sold books. In 2015, Amazon passed Walmart to be the most valuable retailer in the world by market capitalization.

With almost every major brick and mortar retailer with the exception of Walmart are in trouble, Amazon and other online retailers are wreaking creative destruction on the retail industry.

Even Walmart is feeling the heat as they acquired Jet.com in August of 2016. Jet.com was created by the founder of Diapers.com which was acquired by Amazon in 2011. The original idea behind Jet.com was the only source of income would come from the $50 annual membership fee. All products would be sold at cost.

It did not work out that way but you can see the creative business models that are possible online that are not possible in a traditional brick and mortar store.

I recently had a discussion with a board member of my breakfast club about the large number of realtors that attended our meetings. The gentleman I was speaking with said: “the breakfast club was a great place for anyone who owned a brick and mortar business to network”.

My response was ” the only brick and mortar establishments I go to are grocery stores and restaurants”. That is a bit of an exaggeration but not by much.

Creative destruction is wreaking havoc in the retail industry.

The Apple iPhone

The Apple iPhone turns 10 years old this month.

What do I get from my iPhone 6S that I did not 10 years ago?

  • The weather report from the Weather Channel app
  • Manage my social media (LinkedIn and Twitter) I removed the Facebook app after the last Presidential election
  • Take pictures
  • View pictures
  • Edit files in Google Drive or Dropbox
  • Communicate with clients over Skype
  • Check scores on the ESPN app
  • Find my keys using the Tile app
  • Listen to podcasts and audio books as I no longer listen to the radio
  • Find the new coffee shop via Google and Apple Maps
  • Enter the YMCA by swiping the bar code in the YMCA app
  • Manage multiple credit cards and bank accounts
  • Show the police officer my proof of insurance via the State Farm app
  • Check airline schedules to see if my son’s flight home is on time
  • Search google to answer the question my wife just asked me
  • Watch International House Hunters on the HGTV channel via the Sling TV app

The list goes on and on and on.

How many industries, jobs, and careers have been touched? LOTS!

The Apple iPhone started a revolution of creative destruction that will do nothing but accelerate as more industries figure out how to leverage the technology.

For More: Beware Automation and Robots Will Sabotage Your Career

What Should You Do?

You can survive creative destruction. You should always be looking for new opportunities. As I wrote in my post last week, you must Create Opportunities and Stop Reacting to Opportunities.

All of this creative destruction creates opportunities.

There are many more opportunities created every single day. These opportunities do not look like the safe choices we expected earlier in our career. Remember playing it safe is now the new risky.

I live in Austin Texas where the unemployment rate for those 18-49 years of age is 3.2%. However, the unemployment rate for those 50 and over is 12.2%.

You can no longer sit back and expect nothing to change. If you want to be viable and continue to earn an income after 50 you must be nimble.

What opportunities are your going to create?

Marc Miller  

Be sure to check out the Career Pivot Client Testimonials Page

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Subscribe

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Repurpose Your Career - A Practical Guide for the 2nd Half of Life

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BoomerJobTips Update-Free Version of LinkedIn is Dead. May It Rest in Peace.

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BoomerJobTips Update

boomerjobtips

Welcome to the BoomerJobTips Update and the central point to get current career information for the Baby Boomer Generation!

Check BoomerJobTips Daily for the latest curated career content. Content is curated from hundreds of the leading career websites with a focus on baby boomer career issues.

This week’s popular post is Free Version of LinkedIn is Dead. May It Rest in Peace. This is a great post about the life of LinkedIn after its Acquisition. As LinkedIn strives to grow their revenue, they will begin to starve off the free version of LinkedIn. This post describes what that will look like.

Most Popular

Podcast

  • Marc as a Guest on Think, Believe, and Manifest! [Podcast] – Career Pivot http://bit.ly/2tJXLUK
  • Special Episode: Marc Miller and CareerPivot Anniversary [Podcast] – Career Pivot http://bit.ly/2l4sGr7
  • Late in Life Graduate Degree Questions [Podcast] – Career Pivot http://bit.ly/2qoYv3y
  • A Career Change from Account Manager to Organizing Entrepreneur. With Kay McManus. [Podcast] – Career Pivot http://bit.ly/2sYwWg7
  • A New Career Change, Years in the Making with Elizabeth Rabaey [Podcast] – Career Pivot http://bit.ly/2mMgHhT
  • From Corporate Layoffs to Consulting Payoffs with Vicki McCullough [Podcast] – Career Pivot http://bit.ly/2jGQBwg

Baby Boomer

Social Media

Career

Job Search

Another way to look at the same links AND MORE from BoomerJobTips.

Join us on the BoomerJobTips LinkedIn Group

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Check out the Repurpose Your Career Podcast

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Repurpose Your Career - A Practical Guide for the 2nd Half of Life

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Why Should you Avoid These Career Mistakes [Guest Post]

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Career Mistakes

career mistakes
Copyright: sifotography / 123RF Stock Photo

Everyone makes mistakes. We can learn from them a lot and prepare ourselves better for future challenges. Or, some people prefer to stay within the comfort zone and never get out in order to minimize the risk of committing something that’ll hurt their career.

When it comes to careers, mistakes can be devastating. Equally harmful is staying within a comfort zone because it means zero progress and professional development.

Let’s take a better path and review popular career mistakes to avoid committing them in the future.

Mistake #1: Staying on the quest to find a true “passion”

Wouldn’t it be nice if everyone was doing something they really like? Of course, it would. However, we don’t live in a perfect world! In our fast-changing and competitive business world, the quest to find one true calling can be crushing.

Instead, try to focus on small projects to determine what’s interesting for you.

Mistake #2: Prioritizing compensation over learning

This mistake is often committed by those on early stages of the professional career. They focus on getting jobs with the highest compensation and forget about education. However, the right thing to do is to enable the job to help with further advancement.

Don’t prioritize money over knowledge early in your career. Learn first, earn second!

Mistake #3: Thinking you’ve missed your chance

Do you know a successful company founded by a 22-year-old? The truth is, it takes time to reach success and build something great. If you think that you’ve missed your chance because you haven’t started your business or earned a million, you’re making a huge mistake!

Mistake #4: Not keeping your skills updated

Employers want the most skilled employees who know how to reach the goals in modern highly-competitive markets. That’s why learning new skills is a critical requirement now. If you prefer to look for a job with outdated skills, your search will not yield desired results.

Keep up with technology to continue your personal development and prevent your career from lagging.

Mistake #5: Not believing in yourself

If everyone gives up on you, the only person who is going to keep believing is you. Only you and nobody else. Self-doubt is a dangerous thing because if you don’t believe in yourself, your colleagues and your boss won’t either.

Mistake #6: Saying “yes” to everything

You may want to impress your boss and handle everything that comes your way. However, this is not a good strategy because you have to know your limits. You can quickly become overwhelmed and stressed out because of overload -because managers could easily use an employee who says “yes” to everything.

As the result, you will nee time to rest plus you will be puzzled with what prioritizes to manage.

Mistake #7: Burning bridges

Networking and word-of-mouth recommendations are powerful in the business world. That’s why you should do your best to avoid having conflicts with colleagues and bosses. You never know who you will run into in your future job. If that’s a person who you had a conflict with in the past, it’s very likely you’ll be ignored.

Be gracious regardless of how angry you might feel toward some of your colleagues and bosses. Remember, the reputation may be a key to getting a job in the future.

Mistake #8: Rushing into the first job you get

This mistake is also done by many young people who are anxious to get their first job. By failing to research the company and the job, they are often heading for a big disappointment. A person will be happy and successful only in the right environment, so finding out if a company has it is critical.

If it does not, rushing there is a bad idea. You will be quite unhappy.

Mistake #9: Working a job you don’t like

Many people think they should stay on the jobs they don’t like because they pay well. Obviously, for them money is more important than being satisfied with a job. What about you? Do you want to spend your life doing something you can’t stand?

If you don’t like your job, then quit. You will find another one. Don’t waste your time because your productivity, and therefore, compensation will increase if you will be doing something you really like.

Mistake #10: Lying about qualifications

If the information about your skills on your resume is incorrect, you are very lucky if you don’t get hired. Why? A misinterpretation of qualifications will translate into significant problem when the company finds out you can’t perform your duties. Moreover, you will spend every day worrying about someone discovering your lie.

In order to avoid being let go and experiencing a lot of unnecessary stress, do not misinterpret your qualifications in an interview or on your resume.

Tom JagerThis post was written by Tom Jager. Tom is professional blogger, works at Proessaywriting and has degree in Law and English literature. Tom has written numerous articles/online journals. You can reach him at G+ or Facebook.

Be sure to check out the Career Pivot Client Testimonials Page

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Repurpose Your Career - A Practical Guide for the 2nd Half of Life

————————————————

Check out the BoomerJobTips Page for the latest curated content relating to baby boomers or join us on the BoomerJobTips LinkedIn Group

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FROM OUR BLOG

4 Ways to Date to Get a Job

Date to get a job? Sometimes you have to date to get a job. I have written before about how the dating process is very synonymous to the job search process. Sometimes to get the job you want, you need to be creative and ask for the date. I have worked with … [Read More...]

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