Harvey Mackay talks to you like an old friend - even if he's never met you before. There's no such thing as a cold call for the homespun author of the new book Use Your Head to Get Your Foot in the Door: Job Search Secrets No One Else Will Tell You. Before he contacts you, he's researched what school you went to, your favourite sport and charity, and the work issues that probably keep you awake at night. It's the kind of extra effort that job seekers will have to make to get the ear of hiring managers in today's crowded job market, and for a long time to come, Mr. Mackay, the author of five previous career advice books, tells Wallace Immen.
Here are excerpts of their conversation:
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You say job seekers will have to work harder than ever to even get an interview. Isn't the job market improving?
There's simply going to be more competition and fewer jobs for a long time to come. Every indication I see is that the job market will take much longer to recover from the recession than most experts are predicting.
Not only have huge contracts and signing bonuses gone the way of the dodo, a lot of MBAs and finance majors who thought they had tickets to turbocharged careers are on the street looking for jobs like everyone else.
Politicians and economists aren't telling the truth about the recovery when they say it is going to get back to normal. Friends I have in business are still telling me their sales are down 20 to 40 per cent from two years ago.
The jobless numbers aren't giving the whole picture, because they don't count people who have dropped out of the market because they can't find anything. And many of the jobs they count as created are part-time rather than full-time. So where there might have been a dozen candidates for a job opening before the recession, today there may be 100. So you've really got to find an edge to get a hiring manager to listen to you, let alone remember what you have to say.
Still, competition has always been stiff. What's new about doing them one better?
The old saying is that searching for a job is your job. Now you should be working even harder in a job hunt than you would on a job. It requires getting a daily job hunt routine and it's no exaggeration to say you should be sticking to it 12 hours a day.
You need to know more than you ever thought you could, or should, about your interviewer and the company you might be working for.
Googling the company is just not enough, because everyone does that. A neat source of insider information that hardly anyone thinks to use is your local library. Librarians can help walk you through how to access business data bases, trade journals, newspapers and annual reports that aren't available free anywhere else.
Another terrific move I recommend is to scope out competitors of the company you hope to work for and informally contact current or former employees of either your target company or a competitor who can give you some idea of the corporate culture and priorities of management.
How do you get a reluctant hiring manager to open a closed door?
Most people focus so much on themselves and the how of getting a job that they don't connect with the people who can say yes to hiring them or steer them to a job opening. To get an edge, you have to understand that the person interviewing you is Numero Uno. I've been accused of being overzealous in finding ways to get their attention, but you can make an unwilling contact a friend by discovering things you have in common.
