Fire Your Boss Read Free Page B

order to get reemployed quicker. Since we’re all now destined to be fired, and job searches take so long, it makes sense to turn job hunting into a proactive, ongoing part of your work life.
    And rather than looking for the one perfect new job, you should be broadening your efforts to cultivate as many “offers” of employment as you can, which you can then either accept or reject. Instead of acting like a big-game hunter setting out on special occasions to bag a specific target, you need to act like a commercial fisherman who goes out every day and casts lots of lines in the water, checking his hooks whenever there are bites, and then deciding whether each catch is a keeper.
    Jared Edwards has never had a problem making sales. Whether it was peddling photocopiers when he first graduated college, hawking woodworking equipment at state fairs, or selling music-room fixtures to schools, he was successful. But after a board shake-up led to the termination of the entire sales force at the music-fixture company, Jared had a hard time finding another sales position. His wife’s salary kept the family afloat while Jared pounded the pavement, worked his network, and trolled the Internet. After six months he began taking part-time weekend and evening work as a cabinetmaker to help make ends meet. Finally, after eighteen months he landed a job selling a computerized reading-education system to school districts. When Jared and his wife came to see me it was for help cleaning up their credit, which had taken a battering during the time he was out of work. When we got around to discussing employment, Jared told me of his recent odyssey and explained how happy he was finally having a steady job. I told him not to put his job-search tools away, because he needed to start fishing for his next job right now.
No One Hires a Stranger
    In the 1980s it became conventional wisdom that “networking” was the way to get on the “inside track” to the better jobs. Networking involved making indirect approaches to individuals and asking for “advice” and “guidance.” The idea was to use business contacts to get to know people who might have job openings, or who might know of job openings, which hadn’t yet been advertised, and do so while avoiding the human resources department. Rather than scanning the want ads, you perused your Rolodex and schmoozed at industry gatherings to make appointments for “informational interviews.” These were thinly veiled job interviews in which you did your best to impress and solicit a job offer. If none was forthcoming, you asked the person you were meeting for the name of someone else to talk to about “opportunities.” Your grew your network and, inevitably, landed a new job.
    This backdoor approach became institutionalized and has now become outdated and ineffective. No one falls for the “informational interview” anymore — that’s why they’re now so hard to come by. 2 Executives know they’re simply job hunts in disguise. Human resources departments, tired of being bypassed and seeing upper-level jobs filled through networking, turned to headhunters to fill those spots. Employed executives now scrupulously avoid professional association meetings and industry gatherings because they know they’ll be accosted by job hunters and overwhelmed with résumés and business cards. Of course, when these recalcitrant executives are terminated, they suddenly become regular attendees.
    2. I used to give one or two informational interviews a week to people sent to me by clients or associates. Now I just tell them I don’t know of any jobs, but they should feel free to send a copy of their résumé for my file.
    Instead of networking, people today need to perpetually follow a long-term track to which they add a second, short-term track if unemployed. The best long-term track today is to turn to your personal life to develop business opportunities. That’s because, in my experience, no one hires a