Faced with global competition and an economy in recession, employers today are focused on productivity and profits as never before.
As a result, smart hiring managers interview only those candidates with potential to help the bottom line. For many companies, employees are seen as a variable cost – hence the term “human capital” – to be retained only as long as they produce.
What does this mean for you?
Looking for an old-fashioned job with a pension, great benefits and stability — like the one Dad used to have — is a waste of time.
Instead, know this: You will have perhaps six or more jobs during your lifetime. From this day forward, you need to always be looking for your next opportunity.
This is the cold, hard reality.
But it can be bracing when you understand that your future is bright, if you take full control of your career. And that control begins when you understand how to market yourself effectively to employers.
Here’s another cold, hard fact: The most qualified person is rarely the one who gets hired. The best jobs go to those who present themselves as the best solution to an employer’s problems.
Today’s job market favors those who market themselves effectively. The best kind of marketing for the job hunter is called Guerrilla Marketing. Applying Guerrilla Marketing to your job hunting is the the only way to consistently move your career forward.
What is Guerrilla Marketing?
For job hunters, Guerrilla Marketing refers to the use of unconventional tactics to get noticed and hired by employers. It relies on the creative use of your time, energy and imagination. And it requires you to thoroughly understand your target employers, their products and their competition, before you ever approach them for a job.
Here are the key principles of Guerrilla Marketing for job hunters:
- You create your own job market — with no competition — by approaching employers on equal terms and offering specific solutions to their problems, as opposed to approaching them as a supplicant, asking for a job.
- Measure your success by how many in-person interviews you get each week, not how many resumes you send out.
- Weekly Track the number of new networking relationships you make.
- Start a fire by focusing intently on a list of 10-25 targeted employers, instead of applying to all jobs everywhere.
- Use multiple marketing methods to reach employers. Doing so leverages the Force Multiplier Effect and creates synergy.
- Use the latest technology as a means to reach employers, not as an end in itself. The test of any technology is, does it produce interviews?
Guerrilla Case Study
Here is how one job hunter used Guerrilla Marketing tactics to land a job.
John was booked for a week-long project as a freelance copywriter in a big Seattle ad agency. He knew the minute he walked through the door that he wanted to work there permanently.
Here is what John did to get the job.
“The Monday after my assignment ended, I came in early and fished some important-looking papers out of a recycling bin. I found an empty office with a computer whose monitor didn’t face the door and sat in it surfing the net for a few hours every day.”
Every hour or so, John walked the halls muttering at his papers and looking busy.
“I talked on the phone. I ate lunch in the lunchroom. I waved to the receptionist when I left for the day. And if anyone asked me what I was doing, I told them I was a freelancer handling some paperwork, which, while not entirely true, was not entirely false, either.”
After a couple of weeks, John — who had literally become a Johnny-on-the-spot — was booked for another assignment, which he parlayed into five years as a full-time employee.
Now. You will John’s Guerrilla Marketing tactic, and lurk about an employer’s office after fulfilling a temp assignment, in the hopes of turning it into another contract or a full-time job.
Maybe.
Can use John’s guerrilla mindset, and get creative about turning a temp or contract position into a permanent one?
Absolutely.
Finally, let’s take this a step further.
How could you “act the part” for your ideal employer and make it blindingly obvious that you are the best person for the job? How could you convince them to create a job for you, if one is not available? What research, volunteer work, or other efforts could you employ to get employed?
This post was adapted from an Article by Kevin Donlin and David Perry, co-creators of the Guerrilla Job Search System. Click here to see some free interviews and listen to an audio to here a many more Guerrilla Job Search tactics I am sure ther is one you can use start using today.
