IDENTIFYING  AND  GETTING  THE  EMPLOYMENT  YOU WANT

From Bolles, What Color Is Your Parachute?
There are 1 million vacancies a week in the U.S., and there are 4-5 million unemployed people.  But, the employer and the job seeker face the complicating realities of:

• Geography (can be overcome)
• Occupational specificity (can be overcome, within limits)
• Experience requirements (can be overcome)
• Identifying one another (can be overcome)
• Vetting one another (can be overcome)

How do most of us look for a job?
How do you plan to go about looking for a job?
How do people who need an employee look for good potential employees?

Employers want reliable information about the skills, capabilities, work attributes of an employee, before hiring.  How can they obtain that?

1. Observe the employee directly
2. Rely on someone else within the organization to have observed the employee
3. Rely on a close colleague (or relative, or academic advisor), with whom the employer has repeated interaction.  This way, the employer has calibrated the way the colleague or relative assesses people, and the two have an on-going relationship to maintain.
4. Pay someone to find and assess a few good, potential employees.
5. As a last resort, look at strangers, subjecting them to interviews.

1. Current employment, temporary employment, or internships with the organization:  “get your foot in the door of the organization”  Another way of looking at this:  get out of an organization you don’t want to be in, and into one you do.
2. Do good work.  Show interest in the organization.
3. Get to know people, and illustrate your strong points.
4. Seek out an employment agency.
5. If you must rely on cold resumes:  target sectors, learn their ins and outs, be able to think tactically and speak intelligently, and provide the information that the potential employer needs.

Is this the way all hiring works?

• The more basic and ubiquitous the skills, the less the need for information;  people may be hired from cold resumes, or even off the street.
• The more specialized and technical the skills, the more possibility of a “cold” applicant who can document the skills.
• The more organization-specific the skills (e.g., some management jobs), the more probability of an inside candidate.

• Ignorance, laziness, inability to figure out what his/her skills are….

What is Bolles’s “creative approach”?

A more accurate name might be “the active approach,” because YOU:

1. Decide what you want to do:  what skills or capabilities do you have and do you enjoy developing?
2. Decide in what context you want to pursue these capabilities:  where do you want to contribute?

Occupation (the label we give to a particular package of tasks and capabilities)
Sector (what Bolles calls “field”)
Location or locations (how much travel appeals to you?)

3. Seek out organizations in sectors you want that make use, or could make use, of this occupation in locations that you want:  don’t wait for announced vacancies.  By focusing on an occupation/sector combination, you’ll gain ability to determine what organizations need (perhaps before they’ve made that decision).