The Inexperience Advantage

by Daniel Gulati | HBR

http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2012/05/the_inexperience_advantage.html?awid=8542197906724492394-3271

I had an idea for a similar post but obviously if HBR had it published first, I forward it here.
My idea was more general: hiring an inexperienced is more risky, maybe, but it's a high leverage return risk as inexperienced people tend to work harder to prove they can do it. Once they achieve the waited level of performance, they keep the momentum of hard work and tend to go further than a highly experienced person who developed low amount of effort to be at the expected performance.

Marketing applied to Job Market (3): Price

Getting the pricing of your product right is another essential parameter of your marketing campaign.


In principle, a correct pricing is made of the direct unit cost added to a portion of overheads and the margin we would like to get on top of it. It seems obvious: you'd better to get the sales covering at leastall the costs and make a little margin that would be your return on investment.


In reality, the price is defined by the market. A price is nothing more than what a customer is ready to pay for an item. And this mainly depends of the attractiveness of the product/service offered.


So many businesses fail because they've got their pricing wrong: they live in the illusion that they decide the price, but that's not true: the customer does. If the price is too high, he decide to buy it or not. It works the other way around too: if it seems too cheap he won't buy either. 
If someone will propose you a Rolex watch for 100$ or an Aston Martin car for 10,000$, would you buy it?


What me laughing is when those failed business manager keep blaming external sources for their failure: the market was not ready, the customer weren't willing to pay that price for it: customer are greedy, blame the crisis, blame the weather, blame whatever you want but you always will be the first to blame!


The tough time now would be to get a price from the market that cover your costs. That mean that you need to survey your market first.
In terms of job market, the product being yourself, what costs do you have to take into consideration?

• The investment in your career is first your studies. 
• The fixed costs are the one of your private life you would like to be paid each month/quarter/year: mortgage, bill, food, clothing, etc.
• The variable costs are those that are disbursed just to get to work, as expenses for commuting, food and specific equipment (suit, tie, dry cleaning of them, safety shoes, etc.). This is a key point because once the two first are set, you only have the ability to play with the third one to determine your pricing.

The investment is the skills you acquired (what you've studied): your lifetime capital.


People used to choose their studies mainly according to their own tastes. They study what they like and that make sense. What doesn't make sense is that they rarely make a cost analysis of it. Therefore the risk is high to end up with huge student loan debt that you'll carry the most of your lifetime. And there are plenty of them.
How much does it cost to achieve those studies ? 10 grand, 100 grand a year? How much could you earn once being graduated? Will it be a good investment?
Most of the cases, the right answer is NO. Otherwise all student loan would be repaid within 5 year.
Wrong choice here may affect/arm your entire career (you should have this warning on the information packs of all universities). Wise choices can be a good investment. I've been studying in University. Because I already started a career, I had to quit my job to do so. 


For me this was a difficult calculation to check the benefits of it before deciding going for it. As I had a classmate that has the same initial qualification as me and that has started his career at the same time too, I had a good benchmark to estimate afterwards if I had make a good choice. And it was a comparison point that was a motivator too: I had not let him having a better life than me, otherwise it would have proven me wrong. To reduce the costs, I choose a accelerated programme in a out-of-a-big-town univerity instead of a long painful slow standard one in a top university. The matter studied were exactly the same, just condensed into longer weeks. Less time to party, but I wasn't there for that anyway. This was supposed to last three years, but I failed one year. Despite lot of people trying to discourage me to pursue, I continued, piling on the costs. Being off the market four years is not easy, especially when you're back in. My classmate had his salary reviewed every year while I wasn't even offered the same salary I was before leaving work. Hopefully I managed to live on a very tiny budget during those 4 years and I had financial support of a relative instead of one of those shark lenders, so I can reimburse at my own pace.
Eight years later I can tell you that I've made the good choice because now I'm hired because of a brilliant academical record and I've got a better situation that I would have expected if I would have kept my pre-university job. The cost analysis was well done.


The overhead is your standing of life


How many people are completely abashed when they lost their job ? The main worry they have is that they will lose their income. Let put it straight: the salary, the key element of your pricing, is the only material compensation you'll get in return of your work. If you loose your job, you loose it. People think of this potentiality only once they're facing it.


Speaking for me, those student years on a tiny budget have learned me to live simply. Each time I had upgraded my salary, I didn't felt the need to spend it all. I'm still living in a small house. I can probably afford a twice-as-bigger home but at a cost of a higher mortgage repayment. Now I've enough saving to go through a full year of unemployment without having to reduce my standard of living. That's part of my personal marketing plan: I don't want to take the risk to be surprised by a loss of work and the subsequent income that would put me in trouble and make me taking wrong decisions. One of them could be to bargain myself on the job market just for the sake of having a job. 


Therefore i can keep my pricing strategy the same: I've developed a specific set of skills that are very valuable to the one who needs it but with the risk that not everyone need it all the time.
At this point I cannot resist to refer to  Kiyosaki's book "Rich Dad Poor Dad": it is full of good sense advice on how to manage your personal finances wisely.


The variable costs of getting to work: This is the most sensitive, even on a political level. Take for example the person who is on the living allowance benefits. Public money covers all his basic needs: rent, bills, food. The total monthly benefits equals lets'say 1000 $. Will this person leave his assisted life for a job paid 1200$ per month? Probably not because if you take the full costs of his life and the cost of getting to work, for example a monthly bus ticket worth 200$, it won't be a good choice to get the worries of an active life (stress, less free time) for the same net income at the end of the month. People like to do short term calculations.


I've never liked being on benefits. I've been once and it was enough. If you live your life on a short term basis, where you cannot project yourself any further than the next end of month, living on benefits is probably the best thing that matches your ambitions. But don't complain then! By remaining in this little short term comfort, you're making a big loss of opportunities: to meet people, to prove that you can do a better work and then reap more rewards,... but those don't happen instantly. They need a certain amount of investment and the people remaining where they are are not showing any will to invest in anything. Popular wisdom used to say: first you have to sow before event thinking of harvesting. 


Keeping here a good visibility on your variable cost is in here essential too: would you accept a job averagely paid at your doorstep or a three-times more paid job at a one hour and a half commuting distance?
I used to live near work. I lost this job and then I had to make this choice: should I take a job in the surroundings or should I take one in London, forcing me to commute at an expensive price (trains in UK are the most expensive in the world btw)? Or should I even move to London, where employment opportunities are plentiful but where living costs are three times more expensive than where I live?


Next question that comes naturally: What is the salary I can get there?
In other words: what are the customer of that market are willing to pay for this kind of product (me)? Around my living place: not a lot. There is few demand and by the way few supply too. In London: much more. Does the variable costs of taking a job in London worth it? Plenty of people I met in my town do the same and they feel it's the best choice. Let's go then.


Prices (salaries) are fixed by the customer. As provider of work , you have little margin for haggling, especially in tough economic times, where supply is large and offer are scarce. History has proven that crisis don't last forever. On e day employees will have their revenge. Until then, unwise people are forced to review their salary expectations downwards in a desperate move to find a job. Wise career management should make you comfortable to remain unemployed for at least 1 year. If you're unemployed for more it is because 1 you've chosen a wrong job or 2 you're at the wrong place.


Job market is a local market. See Salaries benchmarks studies: they are always split by locations. Either you choose a job according to the local job market demand or you choose the job of your dream and then decide to relocate where there is a market for it. Do you know this famous actor from Luxembourg or this famous computer programmer from Mali ? No? Me neither. You know why? Because they probably died of starvations where they are because they didn't want to relocate. They would probably have more chances to succeed in their career if the first would have relocated to Hollywood and the second to the Silicon Valley. 
Don't laugh, I've got plenty of similar but not so extreme example to tell. 
We will explore that any deeper in the "position" segment.


If you want to have a right pricing, you should be in control of your costs and then compare to what the market is willing to pay for your work. If your calculation shows a loss, then either downsize your costs where ever it's possible or choose another career. Be flexible on one or the other, as long as you keep the balance sheet right.


Don't wait until your late forties to make this calculations. Not because it's too late, it's never to late for this but the earliest the best, but because the changes needed will be tougher to implement.

Marketing applied to Job Market (2): Product

To complete the overview made earlier about the Marketing applied to Job Market, I'd like to detail a little bit more each of the points I've presented before.


The first point to have right to be successful into market yourself is the Product.


The product is yourself and your process of finding a job is to sell this product to the market. In a consumer goods environment it makes sense that if you don't know your product you can't sell it efficiently. Same for yourself.


Do you know yourself? At first glance all will say yes, but is it really the case?
What are your strongest skill ? what are your weakness, what is the stuff you love the most, what do you dislike? You would be surprised the number of people who keep a job they completely dislike. Why?
"Because it's a job and I need one" will they reply. 
Doesn't it sound pathetic? Is it what you want for your own life?


Choose a job you love, and you will never have to work a day in your life. Confucius


Easier to say than to do. Yes, but what if you put yourself into the mindset to achieve that, won't you get a better taste of success in your life?


The main idea here is that people don't know really what they like to do, because your loves are part of yourself, people don't know themselves enough to get to this conclusion on their own.


How many people have you ever heard saying "I wanted so much to work as/do... but now I'm stuck here" like they have no choice !?!


The fact is that most of the people will be pushed into a career by their environment. The social pressure is enormous: parents, family, friends, classmates, teachers, neighbours, people all around you have an influence in your choices and deceiving them is a burden you don't want to face.
That's how we end up with a nation of people who doesn't really like what they're doing and then don't really want to put themselves forward to pursue into that direction if they fall unemployed.


OK, enough patronizing here. What are the solutions?

Solution one is to stop pursuing other ones dream and start giving you the means to run after yours. Do what you always wanted to do, whatever the people will say. If they love you they'll support you. If they don't support you then do they really care about you?

Solution two is to keep doing what you always have done but with your personal touch, in order to ease the pain and make things a little more bearable. A job is only an efficient way to pay your bills ant the end, why to give it more than that. 

This solution 2 applies to two categories of people:

- the ones for which changing their career path is really difficult, despite the fact that on my opinion this change is always feasible, the things that differs from one individual to another is that the cost of doing it is different.

- The ones that are realistic about their ambitions and that they prefer to keep their day job as a way to pay for their dream job. I've been meeting several of this kind before: a relative who always wanted to be a cinema critic but this career is not providing enough to bring the bacon home, so she works as a teacher, leaving plenty of free time to be an editor in several cinema lover websites, or a friend who became the director of a building company but became a reference in geology as a pastime, amassing a collection of 2 million+ artefacts and written 3 books that are each a reference in academies. Those people love their hobbies and they wouldn't be able to live on it only, so they found a job they barely like just to fund the other captivating part of their life. That's what I call a well balanced life.

Mind the Cost of Change: this is what you'll win by making the change (happiness mainly) less what you'll miss (earnings mainly). If the economical equation is negative, i.e. you'll earn less afterwards, then you may have to put this change into question: will it bring more income later (shall I leave my dayjob to get a university degree?) or less (shall I leave everything to become a movie star?). If the equation will end up with less that what you need to live, then the choice of not doing it is legitimate. 

But it doesn't prevent you to know more about what is driving you around.

What is the link with a job seeking process?

The product is you. What you put on the market is not only a set of skills. It's a temperament, a personality, an emotional human being. If this person is in search of himself, it will be undefinable. Will you buy a product out of the shelf that you don't know really what it is and the product doesn't know itself? That's most the description of Art. And the goal of art is to remain on display to be admired, not used. The You-Product need to be used, not contemplated from the rack full of other wannabes workers.


Are you currently unemployed? Take this time to learn about yourself.
Take some on-line tests: there are plenty of them available: personality, IQ, EQ, etc. They can help you to identify your true weaknesses, especially the ones you don't like to see. Are you an introvert? Maybe it's better to re-focus your job search for jobs where you would outshine. There are free tests and paying ones. Don't forget that you always got what you're paying for.
Learn about your personality. Some tests are recruitment oriented and the outcome is followed by career advices. 


You can't imagine how helpful it is to know yourself better.
Let me finish this post with an anecdote about one of my best friends. He was raised in a lower middle class and attended public school. Throughout all his childhood he had the feeling of being dumb or among silly people. This constant discrepancy made him feeling lonely all the time and he had a very introvert personality, constantly questioning himself about what was wrong with him or with the other people. This had a huge impact on his career as he never dared to put himself forward for responsibilities and he was stuck in lower range roles.
One day he took an Intellectual Quotient test after completing several free ones in magazines or on-line. This one was a formal one made by a certified organisation. The result was that his IQ was measured as higher than 99% of the population. He was then definitely to be ranked among the geniuses. This made a colossal difference in his life. While he never thought he may be one of "those" this opened the door to an answer to the zillions of questions he had unanswered about his personality since his birth. The problem was that he was raised as a standard boy while nobody spotted him as a high potential one, considering him instead as a highly disruptive guy and treating him as it.
Afterwards he learned to capitalise on it and now he have a high responsibility job, he is well appreciated by his colleagues and feel much better in life. This was a life changer to find out about himself and his best career move.

The Paradox of High Potentials - Ron Ashkenas - Harvard Business Review

Some thoughts I may have about the companies that are struggling to keep their best talents is summarized in this very good article from the Harvard Business Review blog:


The Paradox of High Potentials - Ron Ashkenas - Harvard Business Review


While reading it, I recognize a lot of situations I've met in different companies I've worked for in the past. Bright people get fed-up and leave, while a company can perform only thanks to over-achievers. How could they possibly conceive to outperform by not keeping the out-performers in their headcount?
Too many under-performers at key roles is for me the root of the current crisis.
What worries me is that it seems to be a common practice in big companies nowadays and that lead me to think that they prepare to fail if they continue that way. The question is not if they will fail but when.


Concerns about frustrating under-performers of a team when they decide to promote high potentials is a complete non sense for me. A company who want to perform should not bother to burden themselves with those average performers. Leave them to be hired by your competitors instead of the good performers !


It reminds me a real case: IBM in the 80's had their European headquarters near Brussels. A friend of mine tole be once he applied to a job there at this time. He explained that a mandatory step into the recruitment process was an IQ test. They used to select only the pest performers to this test. They were bang on target because there are more high potentials among high IQs. At this time being IBM was a star performer on the market and my friend really enjoyed working there, among his lookalikes. 
The problems began when a red-party local labour minister decided that this kind of test was too discriminatory and therefore should be scrapped in every company, on the sake of Equality of Chances to access a job. A while after, IBM had to rely on other less efficient ways of recruiting best potentials and they ended up with hiring complete jerks. That was the reason why my friend left this company. And since then, IBM has lost a lot of market share in all the markets they used to be leaders. 


My conclusion is: to avoid to frustrate jerks by favourising the best potential of a team, just avoid hiring jerks. Get better recruitment processes to only target high potentials before they join the company. 
Much easier.

How Introverts Can Become Better Innovators - Francesca Gino - HBS Faculty - Harvard Business Review

How Introverts Can Become Better Innovators - Francesca Gino - HBS Faculty - Harvard Business Review

Marketing applied to Job Market

Job seeking is a marketing campaign whose success depends how you make you known by the potential recruiters. Basic Marketing principles are very useful in here, like those 5 P’s of Marketing Mix:

Product - Price - Packaging - Position - Promotion


The success of a business depends of how basic Marketing rules are used. Let's see how they do apply to your business of selling yourself to the job market.


- Product: this is you with your skills and the way you offer them. for example: "Computer programmer in a permanent contract". Some people do put this on top of their CV. Mine was not appropriate: I put on offer a wide range of skills that is barely compatible with a permanent contract. Since I changed my product to a ‘Contractor’ form instead of a ‘permanent role’ form I don’t have to look long for work now, even in tough economical times. Knowing what you're selling is key to define the rest;

- Price: this is your salary. Understating it makes you not credible, over evaluating it makes you less attractive. I prefer to reason in terms of Added Value and that's a question I like to ask in job interviews: "What is the added value you expect me to put in this role?" Then I can better estimate the salary I'll ask taking into account how much energy and means it will cost me to reach this targeted added value. Don't get your pricing wrong;

- Packaging : that's your presentation, and your CV and look are part of it. get it wrong and nobody would like to buy it. Get it accurate and don't lie on it. What's written on the outside should be what you've got on the inside. A good packaging is essential too as it often leads people buying a stuff even if there is crap in it, just because it looks good. So please stop focussing only on the inner value of your product. What's inside don't sell by itself, it needs an appropriate wrapping. Get a spotless CV, a clean LinkedIn profile, clean up your digital reputation (no bad result if you Google yourself) and an appropriate dressing at the interviews;

- Position: that's the mix of the industry you're in, the skills you're offering and the pay you want. Where you want to place yourself within the employment world? Get it right and be flexible on it. Want to travel or not? Don't make it an exclusion point to consider a job. Know where to position you in the market is essential. Once you have defined your position, you’re ready to define your target market (employers) too;

- Promotion is the most important in a job seeking campaign. Once you've got all the previous points right, you may still fail if your promotional campaign is wrong. The choice of your promotion channels is key. If you're an ‘non exec’, you won't walk in High Street handing your CV to all the shops you see. Alternatively if you only send your CV to an occasional recruiter you probably don’t let many people know you're out there looking to put your skills at their service. Seek for ways that are appropriate to your products.

When you say the hidden job marked doesn’t exist but only hidden jobseekers you cannot be more right. A job seeker who enter the employment market is like a shop who just opened downtown. If the shopkeeper just open for business and wait for the passer by to push the door in order to make some trading he will rapidly get broke. A targeted marketing campaign is necessary anyway.

Otherwise we won't name it a "market".

Job seeking advice for talented professionals

Dear jobseeker,

Job seeking is tough, especially in those hard economic times.
I use to think that when I don’t find what I’m looking for, that’s because I’m not looking where it really is.

There are plenty of jobs out there. There are plenty of companies trading every day. There are even growing ones making more revenues this year than they ever did before. People focus on Recessions: come on, this is only 0,5% decrease. Is that a Recession? Think of the 99.5% left of the GDP/Economy. They need staff to look after those remaining 99.5%, it won’t be done by magic. Things are that in tough times, rules tend to change a little bit. Unemployment market is like a bad zombie movie: at every opportunity you have a flock of starving individuals begging for a piece of hope. The most disgusting is that some people are taking profit from that, over their fair share. There are my advices to avoid those pitfalls.

This is based on my own experience and I hope it will benefit at least one of you. There are 9 critical points I’ve identified.

1. Revamp your CV without falling into a “Pimp my CV”

Get your CV matching your personality. It’s your ad of personal marketing. It should make the guy who spend 6 seconds on it to spend more time and eventually to call you. A good CV should be like a miniskirt: short enough to keep the reader’s attention but long enough to cover the essentials. There are plenty of cv advises available for free on the Web for you not to purchase expensive CV rewriting advisors. Those advisors usually charge you over 600£ and you will end up with a cv that will probably not match the majority of recruiters expectations. The day one of them will propose me a services where they charge a success fee (no-job-no-pay) I’ll probably go for it even if they charge twice the price !
Anyone want to carry on with this business idea? If they would all be as successful as they alleges, they would all be doing that. Probably a rubbish business at the end. What I’ve found out is that they are all contradictory: some tell you to put a details that some other prevent you to ever put in your CV. Read them all, pick the common points and just use your common sense. Your CV is yours and not anyone’s else. Make it like you. If the reader don’t like it, he won’t hire you and that’s good because he will probably not like you eventually and you won’t enjoy working for a guy that don’t like you. If your CV is honest about you he’ll prevent you of ending working for a boss who don’t like you.

2 Mind the format and the content.

A Word document is the universal format. Keep it low size and with few formatting. It could be read on a blackberry or a Smartphone then. About the content my only rule is: “Don’t lie on your CV, EVER”. Lies are so detectable and lying is putting yourself in a defensive mode, not very attractive to a recruiter. Be relax, assume yourself, turn your weaknesses into strengths, failures into opportunities of learning, …

3. Keywords.

Make sure your CV contains all the relevant keywords to your activity, education and experience. In those information ages, there are too much data to check them one by one. Now people are making keywords searches. If you don’t have the right keywords that a recruiter looking to fill a job you’d like to find, you’ll miss it and you won’t even know about it. Do you like being ignored because of your ignorance?

Right, those 3 steps are the one everyone will recommend you. No rocket science so far.
That’s what you will do with your CV that is critical now.

4. Post your CV to all the job boards you know.

There are general ones and there are industry specific ones. Do them all. Widespread it all over the place like a leaflet about the last big sales in the nearby shopping centre. The most people are aware of your availability the most chances you got of being noticed. Recruiters that have a vacancy to fill will first look into the job boards databases before advertising it. That’s probably why a job is already filled once you reply to the ad.
My personal advice to the ones who only spend their time responding to job ads on those job boards: keep a log of your applications. I was stupidly doing only this for seeking work and it is particularly ineffective, like it seems to be for other people too as I see through testimonies. But my log saved me. In a spreadsheet, I was noting for every application the date, the job title, the recruitment agency, the contact person and his details and a link to the listing. It helps you to keep statistics too. Once you have a reply, record it. If you’ve less that 1% replies, then consider your job search as ineffective. Under 5% it is still more a waste of time than ever. 20% (one out of five) is a good target.

5 Get specific.

Once you’ve got a strong list of agencies and contacts, send them regular updates. If you post your CV for a specific job, it maybe not taken into consideration for other opportunities. Be sure you’re posting your CV through their websites. Get specific by submitting your CV not for a specific job listing but to a specific potential recruiter. If they have an opportunity, they first dig into their database before digging into a public database and/or advertising it. Get specific by not only targeting recruiters but also other organisation that make recruitment too, like Chamber of Commerce and especially if you are a foreign national. That lead to next point:

6 Forensic job search

Many companies are fed up with recruitment agencies. Even more than any jobseeker could be. They charge huge amounts just to pass an information by. Very few of them are bringing a real added value to the recruitment process. A company is usually searching for a talent while recruiters only spend time matching CVs. I’m a very talented man and so far I was never very successful with recruitment agencies, for many reasons explained elsewhere, but the most obvious is that the consultant in the recruitment agency is always less educated than I am and therefore always end up to BS me not knowing what he’s talking about. They have spent too much of my time demonstrating that they are nothing less than a waste of money for recruiting companies and a waste of time for myself.

A little bit of reasoning may be useful here: a company who is fast growing, dynamic and reactive into his market need to get the most of their cash. If you’re a talented professional, you should know if you’ve ever brought more value to the company who employs you than the cash they were parting for your talent (your salary & benefits). If it is the case, you’re the one they are looking for. Those companies are not using the expensive services of recruiters. They either use referrals and/or search the market themselves or even capitalise on their image. Have you ever seen job listing from companies like Facebook in the UK? How did they get their staff from? If you’re not in it that’s probably because you weren’t where they were looking for.

Forensic search potential employers and target them: this is a tougher job search but even more rewarding than any other method used so far. Get lost in the business column of serious newspapers, especially on the “best performer” lists published in the investment advices columns. Who is a fast growing company is a good investment for shareholder. Therefore they are potential hirers. They need their cash to grow and they have a culture of dynamic and success. Once you’re on their list, search them on the web, get onto their website and seek for their “careers” page. They all have one. I’ve even found some that were specifically saying: “no agencies please”. lol

Once I’ve done that and my response rate rocketed up to 50%, yes one out of two !!! Not all were very positive, but at least they were aware I was on the market and interested to put my talent at their service. First interview rate was 20%. Not bad at all, innit? Even a year after I’ve got a call from one or another that need someone of my profile in their company.

7 Go network.

A networking event is a good place to make you known by the maximum. Let’s face it: this job seeking campaign is basically a Marketing Campaign. Buzz marketing works in there too. ‘Get connected’ is the new motto. “It’s not a matter of what you know but who you know”.

I’ve done that too: find an association that is remotely linked to your domain of expertise, get affiliated and show up in one of their events. If they are active they usually have monthly events. You don’t know anyone? that’s the best reason to get to know some: “Hi, I just joined this group, how long are you a member, could you tell me more?” etc.

Before I was a social caveman, now I’m working everyday to improve my networking skills with some fantastic result. There are few job offers to await from those events and the most of them will look like a waste of time for the most of you. That’s what you’re doing with it that matters. Get business cards ready to exchange at any opportunity (you can get some professionally made ones on the web for less than 5£). Once you’ve enjoyed a conversation with one person, send him/her a contact demand on linkedIn the next day (average success rate: 50%). There it is : you start to get connected. If it’s people in your industry, that contact list you’ve build up, known as your network is priceless. Networks cannot been made while sitting in from of your screen. Unless you’re taking part to discussions groups, but with mitigated result. On my opinion, both discussions groups and networking events are opportunities to achieve an important duty, which is:

8. Give in order to receive.

In our current society people are conditioned to receive only. They get benefits, social care, television programs, download music on the Internet, get news, etc. all for free. The get-it-all-for-free society is on, but it’s eventually not sustainable. You can’t get it all and give nothing back. It’s not balanced. Religions used to dedicate a large part of their dogma to this notion of generosity but people tend to turn their back to those outdated values. A society cannot succeed if everyone is more concentrated into what they are getting than what they are giving back.

A job is working the same way: the employees that are used to give a little bit more always reap the benefits of the extra mile they were going. Job seeking is the same. You’re unemployed, right, that means that you have plenty of time then. As a jobseeker, you should know that it is a full time job to search for a job.

My success rate incredibly get higher when I started to allocate only 4 days a week to my job search. One day was allocated to give. I used to put my expertise into helping a local charity. As an MBA I helped them in their money rising and marketing management. It was only time I gave them, and knowledge they didn’t had the means to access. They are now able to carry on with larger projects thanks to that.

Even if it didn’t helped me directly to find a job, it put me into “generosity” mode which kept me out of a less attractive “selfish” mode. Turn your mood to “open to other” and get more success into your life in general. During networking events, it happened that knowing my background my interlocutor submitted a problem of his and I always respond positively. Even if he can only offer me some gratitude back, I know it puts me in a mode that is the right one to succeed in life. One day someone will be as helpful to you as you have been in the past. That’s only when you’ve brought your contribution to the society that you’re in position to claim something back, especially when you’ve made more than your fair bit of work.
This post is part of this strategy.

9. Consider alternative routes of employment.

This is especially applicable since you’re highly qualified/experienced. High experience and/or high education mean high salary. Few companies are willing to pay a lot for your skills within a permanent contract, they prefer to downgrade their requirements or propose you a lower salary.

Stop looking for a permanent job if it isn’t working. I spent 9 month in the UK searching for work, the longest period of my life I’ve been unemployed. Tough times it was. If I wasn’t able to put everything in question I’d probably still be stuck at that point.

I wanted a permanent job and was only looking for that. I eventually ended up being proposed temporary jobs or contract jobs. Eventually I accepted a temp job, paid less than 40% that my usual. Then six month later I was offered a contract job I could take either through an umbrella company or my own limited.

A limited company cost less than 200£ to setup in the UK and it’s a great way to put your feet on the “own business” ladder. It was a 6 month contract initially. 13 month later they were considering extending it some further. My advice is to accept it. It’s better doing something than nothing, as long it is in your industry and in your salary range. As a contractor I’m paid twice my usual. Wise money management put me in position to be able to sustain a full year without working if I fall unemployed again.

While I was contractor, I gave myself two rules: save 50% of my takings (that was keeping me with even more than the previous job anyway) and keep giving. As I was not able to give time and expertise, I was giving money: I used to work one day for charity: giving the amount I’m charging for one day of work to a charity of my choice every month. Since I’m doing that, my contract has been renewed every 2 or 3 months. I also got a daily rate increase of 25%. I can’t prove my pledge to give is linked to my comfortable income but I prefer to believe so, because it keeps me in the “generosity” mode. And that is something the people who pays for my services actually like.

By taking the contractor lane, they were able to allocate a budget to an expertise they needed without committing into a heavy uncertain permanent recruiting process. After 6 month they were offering me a permanent role, having fully assessed the added value of my skills to their business. I refused because now I’m really enjoying myself as a contractor. Since then I’ve just updated my CV on job boards every quarter and I got my phone ringing every couple of days from a contractor agency enquiring about my current situation.

That is so good to feel desired in tough employment climate.