by Donald P. Orlando, MBA, CPRW, JCTC, CCM, CCMC
“Regrettably, some of today’s less informed job seekers believe that the Internet has transformed the job search into a nearly effortless process. They hastily update their resumes and post them on several online databases. These jobseekers then sit back and wait for an employer to call. Most of them wait a long, long time-often in vain. Even in the age of the Internet, a job search still requires hard work. Having a plan, using multiple search methods, and asking for help all increase the chances of success.” (Matthew Mariani, “Job search in the age of the Internet: Six jobseekers in search of employers,” Occupational Outlook Quarterly, Summer 2003, pp. 3)
Clients come in many shapes and sizes, but most have one thing in common: they are looking for a job. And when they arrive they almost invariably think of a job as an opening, in other words a job posting. They can’t be faulted for that mindset. After all, it makes sense: a company needs an employee and tells everyone about it (through a posting) so they can fill the position quickly. What other way is there of finding a job?
One of our first tasks is to introduce our clients to the difference between an opening and an opportunity. An opening is more than a posting. An opening is an opportunity that failed within the company. Let me explain. A manager justifies the need to fill a position that’s vacant or was created to meet a new need. Who are the best people in the world to nominate someone to fill this available spot? Her own employees fit that bill perfectly. They know the operation and they know how the new team member will impact their own work. An opportunity is born when the manager makes her wishes known to other employees. Everybody wins. The manager will get only a few nominations of people who are already vetted. The employees get a chance to work with a known quantity. After all, only a fool recommends an incompetent because such suggestions reflect poorly on him and inflict a useless employee on a group that must now work with (or in this case around) a new obstacle. Finally, think of the time and money saved by not having to advertise, review resumes, and conduct multi-layered interviews. Those burdens in the previous sentence all attach to an “opening.”
Before we leave the concept of an opportunity, let’s dispel yet another part of that pernicious folklore that inundates our clients before they seek our help. I’m talking about the “hidden job market.” That phrase conjures up the image of some beady-eyed guy, hiding in some obscure cave, wearing an eye shade, and clutching a magic list of jobs close to his chest. Nonsense. Opportunities are, by their very definition, usually not hidden at all.
There at least two more articles I could write about finding opportunities. Here, however, I want to limit myself to helping you help your clients recover opportunities from openings. Said another way, what I am going to suggest is a middle ground, a confidence-building maneuver, to help clients use more creative ways to find opportunities. I’m suggesting we educate our clients to help employers who aren’t skilled in writing job announcements. There are lots of managers who fit into that group. Just peruse the job board listings to see what I mean.
The main idea is to look past the arbitrary barriers companies impose in their announcements. Consider the “too-perfect-fit.” Here the company has laid out too many detailed requirements, so many that only one person could possibly fill them: the previous incumbent. What the company has overlooked are the skills others can bring to help them. We career professionals are experts in showing such transferability and should train our clients to do the same in the interview.
What about some requisite minimum years of experience? Adding this requirement is well intentioned, but it often works against the hiring manager. Can he tell the difference between someone with 10 years’ experience and someone with one year ten times? Wouldn’t he want that exceptional worker who performs better than people with a decade of practice even though she’s only been in the business for eight years?
The same trend occurs in education. Today even employers complain about the lowering quality of many college students or the relevance of their degrees. I was working with an employer who wanted to hire a production supervisor. Among the submissions was one from a man who saved his company $125K in the last quarter alone. When the HR representative pointed out that the applicant had only a GED, the CEO’s response was predictable. He said, “So, you want me to pass over someone who has a documented track record of success because he doesn’t have a piece of paper that’s 11 years old? By the way, what we want, they don’t teach in some ivory-tower school. Why, I’d like to see those professors spend just one day on our production floor. . . .” You get the picture. Of course there are some positions where the degree is either required by law or makes perfect sense. But at the end of the day, it’s not education that’s wanted; it’s savvy.
Some companies focus too narrowly on their own industry. “Why,” they say, “Harry here has never been in the widget industry. How can he sell for us?” You, on the other hand, know Harry can sell very well because he has a passion for selling and has mastered many unfamiliar products lines before.
What every employer wants is a good return on his investment for every hiring decision he makes. And he will often make minor sacrifices to get that favorable ROI. And that brings us to deadlines. There has only been one truly inflexible deadline in recent years: the Y2K problem. There was no way to avoid that requirement short of making time stand still. Most companies, on the other hand, set a submission deadline as a convenient guide. Have you ever had a client who told you he needed a resume by tomorrow morning because that was the filing deadline? We can almost always get an extension by going right to the heart of the matter – companies want to hire in confidence. My clients approach the decision maker in the following way. They recognize the deadline and they have an older resume they can submit because they are passionately interested in the job. However, for that same reason, what they really want the decision maker to have is not a piece of paper, but a document that will allow him to hire in confidence. They can provide that document, but such quality takes time. Would the decision maker be willing to trade a little time for a lot of peace of mind? Some won’t; most will.
The last obstacle to resuscitating an opportunity from an opening is a familiar one: the person to whom our clients apply. Unless our client is an HR professional, it doesn’t make sense to limit his application to HR, even if the company asked that it be sent there. We don’t want to do an end run on HR. At the same time, HR professionals will tell you that they aren’t experts in other fields, any more than we can claim we must have years of experience in our clients’ fields before we write their resumes. Help your client track down the decision maker’s name and title. Sometimes that takes effort. But a little careful networking, some judicious telephoning, several well-structured Internet searches, calling on specialists like CMI’s Bob Bronstein-there are many options open to us. And the payoff is worth the price.
Matthew Mariani’s quote at the beginning of this article was right on target, particularly the phrase “…today’s less informed job seekers believe the Internet has transformed the job search into a nearly effortless process.” We know that it does take effort. Your client wins when they can count on your wisdom to make that effort worth the doing.