What Color Is Your Parachute?

something like this:

Many If Not Most Employers Hunt for Job-Hunters in the Exact Opposite Way from How Most Job- Hunters Hunt for Them

Now comes the twist: during good times, when employers are having difficulty in filling a vacancy, they will typically adapt to the job-hunter’s preferences, and search for employees in ways that job-hunters prefer: that is, they will post their vacancies on the Internet, and they will take the trouble to look at, and read, job-hunters’ resumes. And we, the unemployed, are close to job-hunting heaven.

What we are not prepared for, is that during hard times, when employers are finding it much easier to fill a vacancy, as currently, they will revert to their original preferences (in the diagram, choosing red #1, then #2, etc.). And when that happens, we can search the Internet or send out resumes until we’re blue in the face, yet turn up nothing. Because during hard times employers mostly aren’t using the job-hunters’ favorite methods anymore, to broadcast their vacancies. Employers have gone back to their default position. And we, accustomed to job-hunting in good times, suddenly find that nothing is working.

Yet, it isn’t for want of trying. We work like a dog, we send out resumes week after week, we search all the Internet job boards day after day, we turn to our Facebook, and LinkedIn, and Twitter pages for help, we network like crazy, we attend job-hunters’ support groups week after week, but…. But, nothing happens. Everything that used to work, doesn’t work anymore. For us, the unemployed, that is baffling, and if it goes on for many months, it is absolute hell. It is like turning the key in our faithful car, but for the first time in ten years, the motor won’t start.

We conclude, of course, that there just aren’t any jobs out there. Oh, but there are. As we saw at the beginning of this chapter. We just can no longer find them. So, what are we to do?

We have a remedy, fortunately. We can, in such times as these, start thinking like an employer, learn how employers prefer to look for employees, and figure out how to change our own job-hunting strategies so as to conform to that. In other words, adapt to the employer’s preferences.

VISITING THE FOREIGN COUNTRY CALLED “THE WORLD OF THE EMPLOYER”

This was an idea from the authors of a book called No One Is Unemployable.[11] They suggested that when you approach the world of business for the first time, you should think of it as like going to visit a foreign country; you know you’re going to have to learn a whole new language, culture, and customs, there. Same with the job-market. So, let’s take a look at that world:

1. When it comes right down to it, there is no such thing as “employers.” Employers are a rainbow, not just, say, blue. Not just any one color. They span a wide range of attitudes, wildly different ideas about how to hire, a wide range of ways to conduct hiring interviews, and as many different attitudes toward handicaps as you can possibly think of. Job-hunters’ generalizations, like “Employers don’t want someone with my background,” are just not true. Some employers do want you. Your job is to find them.

2. There is a big difference between large employers (those with hundreds or thousands of employees) and small employers (alternately defined as those with 25 or fewer employees, those with 50 or fewer employees, or—the most common definition—those with 100 or fewer employees). The chief difference is that large employers are harder to reach, especially if the-person-who-has-the-power-to-hire-you (for the job you want) is in some deep inner chamber of that company, and the company’s phone has a voice menu with eighteen layers.

3. There is a big difference between new companies or enterprises, and those that have been around for some time, as far as hiring is concerned. A study reported in Time magazine found that newer small companies (100 or fewer employees here) that were less than six years old created 4.7 million jobs in 2005, while older small firms created only 3.2 million jobs.[12] So when hiring is tight, you will want to concentrate on small firms, and newer small firms, at that.

4. Employers have the power in this whole hiring game; and this explains why parts of the whole job- hunting system in this country will drive you nuts. It wasn’t built for you or me. It was built by and for them. And they live in a world different from yours and mine, in their head. (I said foreign country!) This results in the following six contrasts:

a. You want the job-market to be a hiring game. But the employer regards it as an elimination game—until the very last phase. They’re looking at that huge stack of resumes on their desk, with a view—first of all—to finding out who they can eliminate. Eventually they want to get it down to the “last person standing.”

b. You want the employer to be taking lots of initiative toward finding you, and when they are desperate they will. HR departments can spend hours and days combing the Internet looking for the right person. But generally speaking the employer prefers that it be you who takes the initiative, toward finding them.

c. In being considered for a job, you want your solid past performance—summarized on your written resume—to be all that gets weighed, but the employer weighs your whole behavior as they glimpse it from their first interaction with you, to the last. Employers operate intuitively on the principle of microcosm equals macrocosm. They believe that what you do in some small “universe” reveals how you will act in a larger “universe.” Small “universes,” in the hiring interview, are such things as: Are you late for the appointment? Do you let the interviewer talk half the time, or not? Do you treat everyone with respect and courtesy there, or not? Do you write a thank-you note after the interview—not only to them, but to the receptionist, secretary, and whoever else you interacted with, there—by name—or not? They watch you carefully in these particulars, during and after the interview, because they assume that each of these reveals, in microcosm, how you would act in a larger “universe,” like: the job you are applying for! They scrutinize your past, as in your resume, for the same reason: microcosm (behavior in the past) reveals macrocosm (behavior in the future).

d. You want the employer to acknowledge receipt of your resume—particularly if you post it right on their website, but the employer generally feels too swamped with other things, to have time to do that, so only 45 percent do. A majority, 55 percent, do not. Don’t take it personally.

e. You want to go into the interview with the employer curious to know more about you, but the employer is first of all curious about what you know about them. Employers don’t like blind dates.

f. You want employers to save your job-hunt by increasing their hiring, and you want the government to give them incentives to do so. Unhappily, employers tend to wait to hire until they see an increased demand for their products or services. In the meantime, most do not much care for government incentives to hire, because they know such incentives always have a time limit, and once they expire, that employer will be on the hook to continue the subsidy out of their own pocket. What all this adds up to is that employers won’t come to save you. The success of your job-hunt depends on you—with a little help from your friends. You must be in charge of it. You must plan it. You must direct it. You must know what works and what doesn’t work. Your job-hunt is by its very nature a “self- directed search.”

With this background concerning the differences between your world and the employers’ world, we are ready to understand not only what are the five worst or five best ways for discovering those vacancies that are out there, but also why they are the worst or the best. (Here comes a generalization.) In general, it is risk that determines which job-hunting methods “employers” prefer. Most employers prize low risk in hiring— they prefer that they or someone they respect has actually seen the job-hunter perform, and can testify from their experience that this job-hunter would be a good hire. In-house promotion is their absolute preference. But referrals, particularly in-house referrals, are a gold standard. So is recommendation by some fellow employer or colleague whose opinions they trust.

Because of their fear of risk, employers tend to be much more focused on a job-hunter’s