Here It Is, The Big Secret

Last week I promised I’d give you the core secret from my upcoming book, The Job Replacement Guide. It absolutely cracked me up how many of you actuallybelieved me! Then I realized that the same number of you would absolutely lynch me if I didn’t make good, so I decided to go ahead and spill the beans.

I need to set this up a little bit, because it’s so simple you’re not going to believe me. After I wrote the previous post, I told four or five people what the secret was and not one of them “got it”. They either said “Huh” or they did that thing where you tilt your head and kind of scrunch your nose like you’re either squinting at something or you smell something bad. Giving a more detailed explanation didn’t help, but fortunately demonstrating the application of the idea did help several people.

So I’m gonna tell you the secret, and it’s going to sound dumb. But stay with me, okay? Because I’m going to demonstrate a completely unexpected application of it and it’s going to be awesome.

Ready? Okay. The big secret to my jobhunting success is this:

It’s not about you. It’s all about them.

Or, if you prefer,

Don’t make it about you. Make it all about them.

Pretty simple, right? And kind of stupid?

Yep. That Was Dumb.

I know, I know, but wait! Stick around. Let’s talk about this for a minute! This really will change the way you get leads and write resumes and conduct interviews.

See, the thing is, you’re thinking about persuasion, or communication, right? Or maybe you’ve had a little sales training, and you know that it is much more effective to appeal to another person’s self-interest than to their sympathy.

But you’ve got it all wrong. Well, actually you’re totally right, but you’re still missing my point. This is the “weird trick” that I figured out on accident, and have been able to jobhunt successfully ever since. It’s not about persuasion, or communication, or even another person’s self-interest. The specific application of this concept is, paradoxically, all about you.

It’s All About Being Unstoppable

It’s all about power. When you are interested in another person, you sort of become unstoppable. You can’t stop thinking about how things look from their perspective, or of reasons to talk to them, or things to do for them, or ways to help them. And they can’t stop you, either. You have all the power. When you make it about them, you control the beginning and the end of the interaction, and if you want another interaction, and another and another, as long as you are genuinely making it about them, they’ll not only let you, they’ll eagerly welcome you.

When you make it about you, they might give you some sympathy or try to find a way to help you, but either way, you have given them control over the interaction. In the absolute best case, they give you some great help–and now that they’ve helped you, they’re done. They end the interaction. It’s not intentionally harmful; in fact it’s often done with the most noble of intentions. But it’s still death to your jobsearch effort.

This really is one of the trickiest ideas I’ve tried to pull out of the warped recesses of my mind, so I hope I’m making sense here: when you make it all about them, they can’t stop you. If something doesn’t work, you find another avenue of approach. You never get shut down. You keep all the power.

Let’s talk through some examples just to make it clear. As we go through them, pay attention to who is in control of your energy and your efforts.

What A Powerless Jobsearch Looks Like

A powerless jobsearch follows all of the rules you were taught in Career Ed in high school: Dress neatly, go in and fill out an application, and hope you get picked. Format your resume to exactly two pages with an Objective, Education, and Experience section; mail off ten copies a day and hope you get picked. Arrive at the interview 5 minutes early, dressed one step nicer than the average employee; be eager–but not too eager–and make sure you follow up any negative answer with a positive statement so you don’t look bad. Then go home and hope you get picked.

I’m hammering it home with no subtlety at all here: the dominant theme of a typical jobsearch is hoping you get picked. By which I mean sitting quietly, waiting politely, for your turn. And maybe your job.

You call a friend and ask who’s hiring. He says he doesn’t know off the top of his head, but if he hears anything he’ll let you know. You walk up to the receptionist and inquire about employment, and she says they’re not hiring, but you can drop off your resume. You reach the end of the interview and the interviewer asks if you have any questions for her.

The last one is subtle, but all of these are bad situations. And you got into them because you made it all about you, and you let them have your power.

A powerless jobsearch is a numbers game. It looks like this: you do everything right, and you do it as hard as you can, and you hope you eventually get lucky. You send out 1,000 resumes and get 10 interviews. You go to 10 interviews and get 3 callbacks. You go to 3 callbacks and get 1 job offer.

I sure hope it was at the company you wanted to work at.

What An Empowered Jobsearch Looks Like

An empowered jobsearch feels very different. For one thing, it doesn’t really feel like a jobsearch. It feels more like… well, talking to people and listening to them. And then getting offered a job.

You call your friend, and instead of asking him who’s hiring, you ask him who’s working in Ruby. You ask him what companies are doing financial processing. You ask him who sponsors the local Ruby meetup. Your friend is more than happy to oblige, and disgorges a long list of companies. He even knows people at those companies that you could talk to, and he’d be happy to introduce you. “I’m not sure they’re hiring, though,” he warns. You smile. “That’s fine, I just want to find out what they’re doing.”

Your friend introduces you to a programmer doing health insurance work at InterestingCorp. You hit it off, and you joke and say “I bet you’re having fun with the new HIPPA stuff….” “I know!” he replies. “You wouldn’t believe the stuff they have us doing!” You invite him to lunch sometime to chat about financial processing. He says sure.

A week later you’re having lunch with the programmer. You ask him about what kinds of financial processing stuff, they do, and he happily launches into the cooler things they’re doing. He asks you what you’re up to, and you mention that you’re between jobs, but you used to do financial processing. You notice one of the cool things InterestingCorp does solves a very hard problem. “So how did you get around the problem with…” At the end of lunch, he says “You should apply at InterestingCorp. We just finished a round of hiring, but we could really use you.” “That sounds like fun, who should I talk to?”

Your friend gushes to the hiring manager, and then introduces you via email. You ask her some questions about team dynamics in a financial processing environment. You speak on the phone and ask some piercing questions about how the team works and the trickier bits of financial processing. She says “you know what, you should stop by and meet some of the other programmers. Do you have a resume you could email me?”

During this time you’ve met half a dozen other programmers and talked to them about their companies and their problems. None of their companies are hiring, but all of them are interested in talking to you more. And of course, InterestingCorp isn’t hiring either. But that’s just a decision some manager made, and decisions get unmade when the right reason comes along.

That’s you, by the way.

You meet with the team and hit it off. Afterwards, you have a private interview with the hiring manager. She tells you about the company benefits and the atmosphere and the dress code and why it’s awesome to work at InterestingCorp. There’s a manila envelope on her desk, and that’s when it hits you: she’s sellingyou on coming to work for them. And not only do you realize that the envelope contain your offer letter, but that the letter was on her desk before you came in to meet the team. Of course she’d have pretended it never existed if the team hadn’t liked you. But when they did… well, there’s no sense wasting time, is there?

Empowered Jobsearches Feel Totally Natural

Empowered jobsearches feel totally natural. In fact, I’d almost say they feel unconscious, or kind of accidental. You don’t really feel like you’re jobhunting. You’re just stumbling on great jobs. That’s why it took me so long to realize that I was actually doing something to cause it to happen: for years I thought I was just extraordinarily lucky. Here are some of the conditions under which I have landed jobs:

• I called an ex-coworker and told him I was quitting my job, and he excitedly told me his brother-in-law had just called him to beg him to quit and come work for him, he didn’t want to go, but he’d be happy to introduce me.
• I was using a piece of software, and it crashed. I called the company that made it. “I’m calling to report a bug, but I’d like to talk to the programmer because I actually know exactly which version of which compiler you’re using to write this software, and which setting you need to change to fix it.” One week later I was the other programmer working on the product.
• I wrote a CMS for webcomics and managed the web hosting for Schlock Mercenary for several years. The cartoonist, Howard Tayler, was a manager at Novell. I asked him for leads (“who do you know that’s doing web programming work?”) and he introduced me to his friend, who told me about his brother, who was a huge fan of Howard’s comic and worked at a company that did websites. As the Executive Vice President. Getting an interview wasn’t a problem.
• I turned the entire interview process into a foregone conclusion at one company by finding out that the CEO was an old friend of mine. I got a call from the hiring manager, who began the call by saying “So, um, the CEO of my company asked me to call you…” Mind you, I still had to make friends with the team, which included smoothing the feathers of the hiring manager that I had just pulled rank on. But once I showed them my sincerity and interest in their technical challenges, they realized I wasn’t the CEO’s crony and that they actually wanted me on board.

If I look at any one of those jobs, I could blame it on luck. I could almost say that I don’t really have a system at all… except for the fact that I know I’m going to get lucky every single time I go looking. Because I’ve learned to make it all about them, and yes, this helps me persuade them and yes, it appeals to their self-interest. But mostly it keeps me from ever letting anybody or anything stop me.

Except an offer letter, that is. When you make it all about them, they make sure you stick around.

I’m Writing A Book About This

If you want to keep your power in the jobhunting process, The Job Replacement Guide is a collection of techniques I’ve learned over the years to apply this mindset to every phase of the jobhunting process. From getting people to give you leads to calming your nerves in an interview to negotiating a better salary, knowing why–and exactly how–to apply the “make it all about them” principle is the secret to “accidentally getting lucky” every single time you jobhunt.

If you would like updates on the book’s progress, including advance content from the book and extra content that won’t be making the final cut, sign up for the mailing list. You’ll be the first to know when it’s published, and I’ll throw in a discount for those of you who were with me all the way from the beginning.

See? All about you.