12 biggest mistakes job hunters make

Twelve Biggest Mistakes

Job Hunters and Career Changers Make and How to Avoid Them

Little-known, but deadly mistakes that stop job searches dead in their tracks; mistakes that cost thousands of dollars in the blink of an eye.

Plus, Bonus Money-Saving Chapter “Let your friends at the IRS help pay for career coaching.”

Lucrative Careers, Inc. Jack Chapman

Wilmette, IL 60091 (847) 251-4727

[email protected] www.LucrativeCareersInc.com

By Jack Chapman

Author of “Negotiating Your Salary: How to Make $1,000 a Minute”

Frederick Career Services Steve Frederick

Skokie, IL 60076 847-673-0339

[email protected] www.1on1careercoach.com

mailto:[email protected]

http://www.lucrativecareersinc.com/




http://www.1on1careercoach.com/

Twelve Biggest Mistakes Job Hunters and Career-Changers Make and How to Avoid Them

Contents

Contents .............................................................................................................................. 2 About Jack Chapman and Steve Frederick .......................................................................... 3 Mistakes are Easy if Nobody Trained You ........................................................................ 4 Pat Traditional—An Illustration .......................................................................................... 5 Mistakes in Pat’s Job Search! .............................................................................................. 8 Answering All the Online Postings and Print Ads.............................................................. 8 Avoiding Answering the Online Postings and Print Ads ................................................... 10 Inept Networking ............................................................................................................... 15 Not Focusing: Leaving Self “Open” to Many Kinds of Jobs ............................................ 16 Unscheduled/Unplanned .................................................................................................... 18 Doing It Alone ................................................................................................................... 19 Ordinary Big Investments .................................................................................................. 22 Letting Motivation Take Care of Itself ............................................................................. 24 Letting Others Control Your Job Search .......................................................................... 24 Not Preparing Well Enough for Job Interviews ................................................................. 26 Talking About Money Too Soon—Not Knowing Your Market Value ............................. 27 Not Letting the IRS Help Pay for Career Coaching ........................................................... 28 Appendix A: Pat Traditional’s Mistakes.......................................................................... 37 Appendix B: Traditional Compared to 21st Century Career Coaching ............................. 38 Appendix C: Four-line Solution to Nine-Dot Problem ..................................................... 40


“Jack Chapman and Steve Frederick…both men are in the upper ranks of America's most respected career coaches.”

-- Joyce Lain Kennedy, career author, syndicated career columnist

About Jack Chapman

Jack Chapman, a nationally-known pioneer and thought leader in career coaching, has helped thousands of people find work that is satisfying and well-paid. Whether a client seeks to beat a tough job market to get their next job, follow an inner calling, or leave a field that is no longer satisfying or viable, Jack helps them develop a vision for their long-term future, then provides the structure and support they need to reach it.

His book, "Negotiating Your Salary: How to Make $1000 a Minute" has helped people across America to get fair compensation. It is recognized nationally as the "bible" of salary negotiations, and is now in its seventh edition. His one-on-one coaching has helped high- profile executives to add hundreds of thousands to their compensation, middle managers to finally get paid for the value they produce, and hourly-wage workers to pad their wallets.

Jack has touched many people beyond his client base through his innovative career workshops that provide both challenge and inspiration. As a facilitator in personal growth groups, he has likewise helped men to reach their potential in all aspects of their lives. Jack is also a popular guest on TV and radio shows.

His background includes seven years of study in the Jesuit order, where he earned a B.A. degree with 5 majors: Classics, Philosophy, Theology, Mathematics, and English and a master's degree in Vocational Guidance.

About Steve Frederick

Steve has been helping people to get their careers moving since he started a resume service during the recession in the early 1990s. Clients raved about his work, and he was soon hired by a national career counseling organization, where he gained experience with a diverse client base and began working with his current business partner, Jack Chapman. In 1996, he and Jack fired the boss to go into private practice.

Since then, he has assisted over a thousand clients to further their careers. Steve is a committed advocate who helps clients to believe in themselves and to reach for high goals. He is a talented writer and popular public speaker who delivers many career workshops locally and webinars to a national audience. His career columns appeared for over a decade in The Pioneer Press and The Daily Herald newspapers. He has won numerous awards in Toastmasters International, including second place in the Chicago Area in the International Speech contest, and he received an environmental public relations award for his work in explaining complex issues while working for the US Environmental Protection Agency.

Steve holds a Master's degree in Public Administration, and his background includes work in all three sectors: government, nonprofit and the private sector. His experience includes computer training, a Legislative Assistant in Wisconsin, Community Relations Coordinator for the US Environmental Protection Agency, and Director of a nonprofit organization, the Chicago Area Committee on Occupational Safety and Health.

©2007-2013 Jack Chapman [email protected]



Mistakes are Easy if Nobody Trained You

Job and career mistakes cost thousands of dollars, and they're easy to make.

Jim was unemployed for six months. He answered every online posting and ad he possibly could, talked to all his friends, and even got some interviews, but no offers! Discouraged, he came to see us (author, Jack Chapman & his associate) to find out what he was doing wrong. Not much. Only one thing. One simple thing! (Actually it was Mistake #12.) We identified it, he changed it, and he won his very next offer.

If Jim had only known this mistake in the first month instead of the sixth, he could have saved himself thirty thousand dollars of unemployed time! Jim did the very best he knew how. It's just that no one ever taught him how to hunt for a job.

Kathy was stuck in a job where she was underpaid, bored, and run ragged by a supervisor who made the job even worse. For eight and a half months, she had been sending out résumés, networking, and contacting recruiters. Her self-esteem was dropping day by day and even her performance on the job started slipping. She couldn't afford to quit because she needed the money!

She came to us exhausted, worried she might be let go. The stress of working and job hunting had given her two colds and one bout with the flu already. In one session, we analyzed what was wrong, and a few sessions more corrected it. (It was mostly mistake #6.) In ten weeks Kathy had a new job and $560 more a month! (Which means the eight and a-half months she spent doing it wrong cost her $4,760 in lost income.)

And because she didn’t keep some simple records, she lost $500 in tax deductions. (Don’t miss Mistake #13— how to let your friends at the IRS pay for your job search.)

Lots of people make lots of career- and job-search mistakes and never even know it. Read this account of Pat Traditional’s job search—you may well find yourself experiencing some of the same frustrations. Watch for things you consider mistakes,




and we'll discuss them later in this report.

B.T.W ., we will refer to Pat as “she” even though the job search described applies equally to men and women. We have chosen a fictitious and perhaps humorous career of “dungeon-making.” The illustration applies universally, however, to all career fields and choices: for-profit, not-for-profit, government, corporate, small business, etc. By keeping the situation fictitious, we believe it is easier for the reader to focus on the job search method rather the particular characteristics of a specific job market.

Pat Traditional—An Illustration

Pat always thought her hard work would pay off. She had put in many years of service with Grumphnoodle Dungeons and Torture, Inc., and had done an outstanding job. She didn't play politics, was always on time, admitted her mistakes, and did the very best job she could. But one day when the layoffs hit, Pat suddenly found herself unemployed.

She had successfully looked for a job about ten years before and thought there would be no problem this time, though she knew things were much tighter in the job market nowadays— especially in the dungeon-making industry, which had experienced a steep de- cline over four hundred years.

First things first; she put together a résumé. She wanted to do it right because she knew it would be the critical marketing piece of her job search. The purpose of a résumé, she knew, was to get her in for an interview.

Being unemployed was scary. Money felt tight, so she decided against getting professional help at this point. She talked with a friend who had invested in a good career-and-job-search consultant, but that seemed like a luxury she couldn't afford. I can always hire some help later, she thought, if this doesn't work.

She did meet with a volunteer coach named Jim at the job ministry program of a local church. She liked him very much, but since Jim was quite popular and only volunteered a few hours a week, he wasn’t available for another appointment for four weeks.

In the meantime, Pat made an appointment for the following week with another coach, but spent most of the time discussing the basics she’d already covered with Jim. She didn’t like this coach, so made an appointment with a third coach. Once again, she spent the hour mostly covering the same ground. She was disappointed, but looked forward to meeting with Jim again the following week. It was a good appointment but since they were limited to an hour, they didn’t get as much done as she’d hoped.

Then, Jim said he was going on vacation, and wouldn’t be available again for six weeks. At this point, Pat decided to discontinue these services. It confirmed her decision to do things on her own. So she bought a book called The Best and Greatest Résumé Book Ever and followed its advice.

Pat's objective was very clear: to continue her career in a medium-size company. This time, though, she didn't want to get stuck. She knew she had good technical abilities and was very organized. She also knew her next employer would want a




person who could take on challenges and get things done. She wrapped all that into her objective:

Objective Challenging position where keen technical abilities and outstanding organizational skills will lead to managerial responsibilities.

She followed with detailed information about her extensive responsibilities, education and training. She knew people would want references, so she included them on a separate page.

With twenty years' experience in all aspects of dungeon-making, she felt she would be qualified to do many other jobs, too. Although she had primarily been involved in the installation of torture paraphernalia, she also knew construction, maintenance, customer relations, PR, and sales. Further, she had also dealt directly with royalty on many occasions. She considered this a real plus. In order to get a new job fast, she kept herself open to many kinds of jobs rather than choosing to narrow her focus on just a few.

Beginning the Job Search

Next, she jumped into a three- pronged job-search strategy: direct marketing, online postings and print ads, and networking. By using several methods, she was determined to leave no stone unturned in her comprehensive search.

Direct Marketing

Pat researched online to compile a list of three hundred companies for which she felt she could do construction, sales, PR, or facilities management. Deciding to by-pass the personnel department (someone told her that you should always bypass personnel), she mailed directly to the top executive. She spent some money to get names of top executives and emailed them her information.

Concerned about spam-blockers, etc., she also surface-mailed her résumé. She individualized names and addresses on her cover letters. Then she personally signed and stamped each letter. Some- times, she found corresponding email addresses of other people in the company, so she personalized an email to those hiring decision makers, too.

It was a lot of work! So far she had several hundred dollars invested in relevant books, stationary, postage, online lists, etc. It took her about two weeks to complete the project. Still, she thought she was in pretty good shape in that, after unemployment compensation, those two weeks cost her only about sixteen hundred dollars in lost earnings.

Online Postings & Ads

Pat's second strategy worked like this. She posted her resume on Career- Builder and Monster.com, and religiously applied to every position that looked interesting. “It’s a numbers game,” she thought, so she answered as many postings as she could.

In order to increase her chances of accessing interviews, she responded to

©2007 Jack Chapman [email protected]


Twelve Biggest Mistakes Job Hunters and Career-Changers Make and How to Avoid Them each posting and every ad with a customized submission, highlighting the part of her

dungeon-making career that related to each prospective employer’s need.

Identified Ads and Unidentified (Blind) Ads

On the identified ads, she called the companies a few days later to verify that her email submission and/or her letter and résumé were received. No sense taking chances! If the company wasn't certain it had been received—“We get hundreds of responses, you know”—she would resend immediately, just to make sure.

When she found a blind ad (one with no employer name or address), she included more information—references, salary history, copies of some award certificates—and a schematic of a high-tech torture machine manufactured by E. A. Poe Enterprises, which she had installed. She knew it was important to include every selling point possible.

She signed up for the postings-to- your mailbox service from Monster.com. Suitable postings were beamed to her email inbox every day, and she applied for those jobs over the Internet.

“The Internet is working for me. If there’s a job that fits me, my résumé will find it—or the job will find me!” She knew it was important to include every selling point possible, so she revised the resume to add sales/PR/operations experience.

LinkedIn

Pat heard people rave about LinkedIn, and wanted to be up to date. Everyone said, “You’ve got to have a LinkedIn profile!” So, she dutifully created one. Since she’s a very private person, she didn’t want to put a lot of information about herself in such a public place. She skipped the photo, and for her headline, she wrote “Unemployed” so people would know she was available. She added short descriptions of her job duties in the Experience section, but left the rest blank. She certainly didn’t want to bother people she had worked with by asking for recommendations, so she skipped those too.

Networking

With twenty years in dungeon- making, Pat knew some pretty influential people. If they chose to put in a good word for her, it would go a long way! How was she to fit this in?

There was so much to do—direct mailing, emailing, answering ads, following up on ads, networking calls to all the princes, princesses, and royal administrators she knew, plus a royal jester or two. Pat wasn't quite sure how to organize these activities. She did know that to avoid burnout she'd need balance, so she decided to blend some of her job-search work with some relaxing activities.

Daily Routine

She started the day with a leisurely breakfast, hot coffee, and the morning newspaper. Then, she went online and printed the job postings. About mid- morning, she would spread out all her work on the kitchen table to begin the day's



Twelve Biggest Mistakes Job Hunters and Career-Changers Make and How to Avoid Them job hunting activities.

If she needed some extra peace and quiet, she'd go to the library. Often, on the way, she was able to handle a few errands and chores like picking up her children, something she loved and wasn't often able to do when she was working.

Networking, the third strategy, got off to a slow start. Pat figured it was best to concentrate first on quality—the places that she knew from ads had actual openings—and then go for quantity by direct-mailing to many companies. She figured an hour spent on direct marketing would reach a whole lot of companies at once, whereas an hour spent networking would reach only a few.

Networking would only get her in contact with one person at a time - it was kind of like fishing with one hook; you could put your bait in the water only one place at a time and then hope the fish were biting there. Direct mail marketing, on the other hand, was like using a big net to catch as many fish as possible.

By mid-afternoon she had time to make some calls to friends and business acquaintances. Most people were very busy, so it took several calls to reach them. She succeeded in reaching only one or two people for every hour of networking time she put in.

It wasn't very efficient, but the conversations were terrific! It was a little embarrassing telling people she was unemployed, but she got over that eventually. Her friends and contacts were very sympathetic and understanding and seemed to be genuinely interested in helping.

Networking Dries Up

It wasn't long, though, before some of Pat's suspicions about the tight job market were confirmed in her conversations.

Of the twenty-five people she contacted, only one knew of any companies that were hiring. Pat emailed and sent a résumé and cover letter to that company immediately and used her contact's name in the letter. When she followed up, however, the position had been filled.

Of the other twenty-four people, nearly every one she contacted requested a résumé and said sincerely that they'd keep it—and keep her in mind. Six people who were in more influential positions volunteered to email the résumé to several hiring- decision makers inside and outside their companies. Pat felt encouraged, even though there weren't as many openings as she had hoped.

All in all, her networking led nowhere and, before long, she ran out of contacts.

Concentrate—Cutting Out Distractions

It looked as if this job search would be tougher than she'd originally thought, so Pat decided to concentrate harder on the search. Since she didn't feel much like going out anyway, she eliminated some of the evening entertainment she and her husband used to enjoy. Besides, she felt especially uncomfortable talking with people at parties and more than a bit out of place being unemployed. Consequently, she concentrated on her job-search work a little after dinner. To unwind, she relaxed later



Twelve Biggest Mistakes Job Hunters and Career-Changers Make and How to Avoid Them with a little bit of TV.

Confident in Job Interviewing

Interviews were slow in coming. Pat knew that people generally liked her. She was sure that once she got into an interview she'd do fine. She went on a few interviews that turned out to be a waste of time—several for insurance and other straight commission sales and two for multilevel marketing companies. She also had two interviews for positions with real possibilities and thought she did well.

At least that's what she was told. Her interviewers said she was a very strong candidate and they were very confident she'd be called back for a second interview. Soon she had two offers pending. The one with Amontillado Masonry Co. was really good. She let up on some of her other job-search prospecting because she wanted to really concentrate on getting the Amontillado offer.

A week after her interview, she received a rejection. They had picked someone else “whose experience more closely matched their needs.” That set her back emotionally. She angrily deleted the email so she wouldn’t see it and feel bad. She had really wanted that job.

Discouragement

Up until this point, she had been able to put on a happy face, but the lack of response from companies puzzled and worried her. Maybe she wasn't as marketable as she'd thought? Maybe her competition was better than she'd thought? What was wrong? Was her résumé not good enough? What had happened to all the letters and résumés she'd sent out?

Two months into her search, despite Pat's best efforts, discouragement began to get the best of her. She began to resent the people she saw who were working downtown! When someone complained about a job, she felt like saying, “Be thankful you've got one!”

Worse, she was really beginning to feel the pinch financially. Pat's income loss was now at about eight thousand dollars, job-search expenses at about three thousand. Not wanting to waste any more time and money on anything but what she saw as the best possibilities, her number one priority became cultivating contacts.

If only she could talk with more people who had openings, she felt she'd do OK, but she couldn't find the right people.

Recruiters

So, looking for contacts in the next logical place, Pat got out the directory of executive recruiters and began cold- calling them. Surely, she thought, with all the things she was qualified to do, there must be some company seeking her talent. After all, if companies paid good money to recruiters to find good candidates, they would certainly want to talk to her. She was good talent!

Cold-calling proved to be the hardest thing to do. The recruiters who would talk to her seemed polite, but generally uninterested.




One explained that, since recruiters get paid by companies they work for, there was nothing the recruiter could do unless a job order came in that fit Pat's background. Even then, recruiters were looking for candidates who...

a) preferably, were employed,

b) had skills that were in very high demand,

c) had a direct line of relevant experience (no career changing), and

d) happened to fit a job assignment the recruiter was filling at the moment. They all promised to keep Pat's résumé on file, but Pat wondered if that really meant anything.

Mass-Mailing Marketing Firms

She went in to talk to one marketing firm, but it turned out they really wouldn't help market her; they wanted $1500 to do more mass mailings and email blasts. By now, Pat had spent eight hundred dollars on twelve hundred letters, and $300 for email blasting, from which she'd received minimal response. Even when she did get calls, they always wanted to know her salary requirements—then, when she discussed them, she was frequently pigeonholed as overqualified or under qualified, which eliminated her chances of arranging an interview. More mass résumé distribution, she knew, was not the answer.

New Lead

Finally, after many months of a discouraging job search, a friend of a friend told Pat's husband that a company just starting up needed an administrative manager. When the company called in response to Pat’s résumé, they had a really good half- hour phone interview and determined that Pat's experience and salary expectations fit the job; so they scheduled a job interview.

Job Interview

Pat had learned by now how important it was to thoroughly prepare for each interview. Hearing “Don't call us, we'll call you” often enough made her realize she simply was not the interviewing genius she once thought she was. Pat had now read two books on interviewing. Each presented some contradictory advice, but she took from them the best points she could.

One thing both books told her was to research the company, so she boned up a bit on the company and the industry. In the interview, she was actually able to persuade these folks to take a chance on her!

Salary Negotiation

This was the first hot interview she'd had in months, and Pat didn't want to scare this one off with high salary requirements. So, feeling confident that in a few months she could easily negotiate a substantial raise when they saw how productive she was, she accepted their offer as is. “Businesses pretty much have to pay a competitive salary anyway,” she reasoned. Besides, she had to give them a yes or no right away or she might lose the job to someone else, and she knew she'd




have to do a lot of research to really know the salary range.

Pat was pleased to be working again. She was glad she had done it on her own! She probably made some mistakes here and there, she thought, but all in all she guessed they probably cost only a few days of job search. She was proud of how thorough and persistent she'd been.

She was sure there couldn't have been a single opening that she hadn't applied for! She also felt good about her documentation for tax purposes.

To keep organized, she had been careful to charge all her job-search related expenses on one credit card; she kept all her credit card statements so she had a record of deductible expenses, plus, she also noted how many miles she drove for job search purposes. Armed with this info, she was planning that Uncle Sam would give her a 28% tax refund on those expenses and mileage when she filed her taxes.

Catching up on bills and other expenses she had put off because of her long unemployment period would take several months, maybe a year. But, Pat figured, that was just a “cost of doing business.”

Read on to learn about the mistakes.

Mistakes in Pat’s Job Search!

How many job-search mistakes did you find in this account? We found over seventy of them (see Appendix A for a list in order of appearance).

Our estimate is that Pat's mistakes caused her to waste several months of her life and minimally six thousand dollars (possibly thirty thousand or more if the next few years of being underpaid are counted). For starters, NONE of her expenses will be deductible because she’ll flunk an IRS inquiry/audit—they will all be denied because of her mistakes #71 - #73. That cost her about a $500 tax refund. [See Mistake #13.]

No matter what your particular career, you could find yourself making any of over 287 job and career-search mistakes. There are actually thousands of mistakes if you include mistakes specific to only one function or industry. The number 287 refers to the mistakes that are always mistakes in a job and career search no matter what your level, function, or field. Here are twelve of the most common ones.




Big Mistake #1 Answering All the Online Postings and Print Ads

Only one job in five is ever advertised; a large percentage of those aren’t good jobs.

Many positions listed in the newspaper or posted online represent the bottom of the job barrel: entry-level jobs, high-turnover positions, straight commission sales, scams, multilevel-marketing sales, recruiting or “fishing” expeditions, salary researchers, personnel and government agencies paying lip service to EEO hiring, and one percent—occasionally a good job or two—for which a hundred percent of the competition is applying.

Relying on Ads for Openings and Vacancies

But most job-hunters devour online job postings and newspaper ads as if they will actually provide something. And that’s so predictably rare!

Companies often receive hundreds of responses to both ads and posted positions, especially when posted on some of the more popular sites. These published openings melt away to nothing, like cotton candy with every bite, and all you have left is a sticky mess.

And worse: even when job-hunters do find an interesting position, they ruin their chances for an interview by sending an application and résumé and hoping for the best. Or, they’ll disclose salary information that gets them screened out of interviews from the get-go. [See Big Mistake #12, talking about money too soon.]

If you’re a traditional job-hunter, you spend hours of time slaving away, bragging about yourself in e-mails and cover letters, and inevitably discovering that the sole result of all this effort is that you end up looking like every other self- adulating, ill-informed job-hunter.

They all send “By golly, I’m great; hire me!” messages that sound the same. (Also, odds are that when you go to the interview, your “Hire me!” will be blown out of the water anyway, because you’ll make Big Mistake #11.)




Job Search Tactics Out of Date

Don’t feel bad if you make those mistakes. No one taught you how to do it right—though reading this report will begin to straighten you out. Remember, the world changes fast. The job-search methods that worked for your parents may no longer be functional.

It wasn’t so long ago that you had to dial a telephone to make a call…from a land line; corrected typing mistakes with whiteout; put a needle on a record to listen to music; and used a “church key” to open a can of beer.

These weren’t mistakes a couple of decades ago. Now, they are! Answering all the ads wasn’t a mistake a few years ago. Now, it is!

Here’s what to do with print ads and online postings. Don’t answer them all! Answer a select few.

• Spend no more than 10% of your valuable job-search time on want ads. • Give yourself a limit of one hour to pick out the top ten. • Really go after those ten. (See below.) • As for the rest you’re interested in, just spin off a quick résumé. (See

below.)

Going After the Top Ten (Don’t Send a Résumé)

Use Google or another search engine to find information about the company. You’ll want answers to these basic questions:

• What business is the company in? • What unique competitive advantage do they have in the industry? • What are the two largest problems or challenges the company faces?

Now, decide if you want an interview.

You don't have time to answer them all. So pick the best ones where you think you have the best shot at success, and do them really well.

• In your letter to the company, use the information you gathered. • Send an e-mail and a letter to personnel, and then • Send another directly to the hiring-decision maker. • Focus on what you know about the company and how you can help it out. • Cover enough ground in your e-mail/letter so that you don’t need even a

résumé. • Actively follow up to set an interview. (I know that’s easier said than

done. You can probably use some help. Read Big Mistake #8: doing it alone.)




Big Mistake #2 E-mailing/Mailing Unsolicited Résumés

Unsolicited résumés are garbage, wasted effort, job-search dung. “Exaggeration,” you say? No way!

Employers never hire résumés. They hire people, so only interviews count— that’s it. And—surprise—résumés don’t get you interviews!

You’ve spent hours on your résumé, haven’t you? Trying to get all your great facts down on paper so someone will read it, be duly impressed, and scramble to the nearest phone to call you up.

Fat chance.

First of all, an unsolicited résumé is like a salmon swimming upstream against the current to spawn. Only a tiny few ever make it, and the ones that do have a moment of pleasure and die.

Computer screening software reject them, secretaries kill them, personnel drones file them, and hiring-decision makers give them three seconds and pitch them because they’re the same old stuff. E-mail is worse. It often never even makes it past the spam filters. All along the way, everyone who looks at résumés is prejudiced.

You can be the hottest thing since sliced bread, but if you don’t have experience directly in their industry, you’re a foreigner. People always think their business is unique and the best candidates are found within their industry. That’s often wrong— for instance, sales is sales, almost no matter what field you’re in—but your unsolicited résumé won’t convince anyone that your skills transfer.




Cover Letters (e-mail & surface mail)

And generic cover letters? Even a bigger waste of time. Don’t get me wrong; you need a cover letter, but today’s job market is an extremely specialized and personal market. No matter how many bullets you sweat over it, a generic cover letter cannot, by definition, be made to appeal to each individual who receives it.

Mass production is efficient, but in this competitive market, the end result is empty. Your eloquent history highlighting good deeds sounds exactly the same as the next fellow’s and will follow his to the circular file or electronic recycling bin. Whatever paper you develop for your search must be very target-specific and able to withstand the “five-second résumé review” test.

Since this is the age of specialization, the job search of the 2010s also requires a very personalized approach. So, if you’re a widget-manufacturing statistical-quality- control engineer, while the decision-maker is seeking a flamadoodle manufacturing statistical-quality-control engineer…you’re out of luck! Remember, résumés don’t work very well any more anyway; so since they’re already sick, it doesn’t take a very big résumé mistake to put one in its grave.

If your résumé sells your past, you’re screening yourself out of a lot of jobs! Your résumé has to sell your future. Dump the pure chronological format (unless you’re positive you want to stay in the field you’re in now), but keep your chronological job history. (People get upset if you have just a functional résumé.) Then put the most powerful thing you can do for your employer in plain English at the top of the résumé.

Comparisons of Résumé Objective Statements

Objective Position with growth potential in a progressive company with responsibilities for sales and sales management, leading to a national scope.

Blech, self-centered! Now, same person, same national-sales-management

position.

Try this:

Objective To double or triple the sales of manufactured goods, sold to accounts with national distribution.

Compare again:

Objective Administrative management position with opportunity to maximize profits by

minimizing duplication of effort, by organizing and prioritizing activities by objectives, and by building high morale and a productive staff.

Too much job-hunting jargon. (Are there any one-syllable words there?) Try

what I said before. Put down, in plain English, the most powerful thing you can do for an employer.

Objective No matter what the industry is, I can get things done well, done on time, and

done right the first time.




After your objective—punchy, powerful, and pointed—put down your best examples of success. Remember, it’s not so much what you say, it’s to whom you’re writing that counts.

OK, I’ve confused you. I told you not to send a résumé (see Big Mistake #1), now I’m telling you how to write one. Should you use a résumé or not? Answer: yes and no.

Yes. You need one. But its main purpose is to get your own thinking straight, not to get an interview.

Don’t mass-mail it. (Exception: if you fit the profile recruiters are looking for— see Big Mistake #10—or have a greatly in-demand skill set, a targeted mass mailing can work for you, but proper networking will almost always outperform mass mailing.) And don’t mail indiscriminately with a mass-produced cover letter.

So do compose one, but keep it focused on what benefit you can provide for someone else, not how you’re God’s gift to the job market. Get it directly to people one or two levels above where you wish to be working.

The singular exception to the “mass mailing” rule can, in some cases, be e-mail. The cost is so small, it goes into the “can’t hurt you” category. Buying the addresses of recruiters is usually not expensive. Purchasing more specific company lists with names, though, can get expensive ($.50–$2 each for hundreds of names.)

Remember, though, direct mail only works for people who are not career changers.




Big Mistake #3 Treating Your Online Search Like “Help Wanted” Ads

The Sunday newspaper used to be loaded with printed openings. In those days, you’d pour through the paper, circle a whole bunch of openings that look good, and submit your cover letter and résumé to as many as possible.

There’s only a trickle left, now, in the paper, and even that trickle of printed ads are also accessible online. Given the online postings’ parentage, it’s easy to treat these job postings the same way you searched the newspaper. Circle openings and apply.

This type of answering Help-Wanted Ads job search okay, but it’s the lowest rung of an internet job search. Yet, most job hunters spend up to 90% of their online time applying to those published openings.

Don’t ignore published openings.

Just to be clear: the opposite extreme—ignoring posted openings—is also a mistake! (People sometimes say, “I know I shouldn’t be answering ads, but…” Well, no “But…” is needed. Sound career advice does NOT say “don’t answer ads.” It says since only 10% of jobs are filled from ads, you should spend only 10% of your time in that job-search mode.)

Internet job search can be passive, active and proactive.

—Passive: applying to job postings on the big job boards and then waiting for an interview.

—Active: searching the internet for all possible venues for job postings.

—ProActive: “reputation based” job search, where you build your online visibility and credibility so employers, recruiters, and word-of-mouth jobs come and find you rather than you applying to them.

I’m going to use “fishing” as a metaphor to guide you around Big Mistake #3. We’ll illustrate the three levels of e-jobsearch by matching them up with three methods of fishing.




•Passive,

•Active, and

•ProActive

will correspond to…

•Still Fishing,

•Trolling, and

•Choosing the Right Pond

Passive – Level One

Passive: When you go still fishing, you bring your line, reel, bait, hooks, bobbers, etc., and row out to a place you think is likely to have fish. You put bait on the hook, drop the line in the water, and wait…and wait…and wait… and wait…

You wait hoping a fish will find you.

Active – Level Two

Active: If you exercise more initiative, you’ll bring lures and a casting rod. Instead of standing still waiting for a fish to swim by your bait, you row your boat past many likely places to make your bait pass by a fish. That’s called “trolling.”

You reach out and cover water hoping you will find a fish!

Passive Again

Passive, still fishing is like posting your résumé, or answering help-wanted listings. You lower your bait (résumé) into the giant internet (pond of job postings and applications) and hope someone reads your résumé or app. and calls you for an interview. “Looky there…I’ve got a bite!”

Because the internet is full of job postings, you can “drop your job search-line in the water and wait.” But you’ll probably wait a long time, because there are a lot more lines than there are fish. 100% of job hunters are fishing for the same jobs you’re looking at. And, since the internet costs only time, not money, a huge portion of those job hunters apply for free—qualified or not!

Active Again – Level Two … 8 websites

If Passive job search is like still fishing, Active searching is more like trolling. You attach a lure (résumé) to your line and actively row through many likely places.

You scour the internet to uncover niche “Openings and Vacancies.” (See Big Mistake #4 for perspective on “openings.”) Here’s some initial places you send out your lure (résumé):

1. Indeed.com. This site does not publish jobs themselves; instead, they search everywhere else on the internet to find postings that fit the keywords you give them.

2. Specialty job boards. You’ll find just under 1,000 of them listed at IAEWS Web site (http://www.employmentwebsites.org/website/roster). Find your specialty.

3. Associations have their own job boards. To locate associations that apply to you, try http://www.weddles.com/associations/index.cfm.



http://www.employmentwebsites.org/website/roster)

http://www.weddles.com/associations/index.cfm


4. Individual corporations often have openings posted. Often, they’re posted internally before migrating to the public job board page. Pick target companies and check their career opportunities section.

5. Fee-based job clubs. Exec-u-net.com and TheLadders.com are the top two job- seeker fee paid sites. In addition to job postings that [purport to be] exclusive for their members. They also offer other job-search services.

Discussion: Why would an employer agree to an exclusive listing? Aren’t they interested in getting the best selection of candidates? Why keep a listing restricted?

Well…it’s a lot of work to sift through applications. If a listing for, say, a “gallium-arsenide computer chip design engineer” on Monster.com gets 10,000 responses, it will take days to sift through them to find the 10 qualified candidates—if those 10 are even looking at Monster to begin with.

On the other hand, if they post the job on electronicsengineer.com, they may get 100 applications with 5 viable candidates. Much better than 10,000. No?

So, an employer weighs cost, exclusivity, and other restrictions and compares them to the success likelihood, and places ads accordingly. Even if it starts as exclusive to one board, it will spread like a virus and exclusivity will quickly evaporate.

What this means for you is that you can’t rely on a search site like INDEED, or keyword search to passively find your job; you should actively “troll” to many places.

6. Another fee-based option. BlueSteps has just under 300 recruiting firms as members. So, instead of your filling out and continually updating applications you make to search firms, you need to do that only once.

This site (https://www.bluesteps.com/Home.aspx) is run by the Association of Executive Search Consultants (AESC). All the blue-chip executive-level firms are members, as far as I can see. Unlike monthly job hunters’ membership fees, you pay a one-time fee for a lifetime membership. So, even after you’ve landed, you can still be found by recruiters, and the uniformity of the application will help them compare you, apples to apples, with other candidates.

7. Craigslist. Seems like an unlikely spot for career positions, but we can’t argue with success. Our candidates find valuable leads here, and not just clerical; they have professional, technical, and managerial positions listed.

8. USA Jobs has federal government openings; Idealist.com specializes in jobs in the nonprofit sector.

Okay, let’s review the “fishing” metaphor again.

—Passive: You can go to Career Builder and Monster, apply like crazy, and wait.

—Active: You can cover all the likely job boards, companies, associations, etc., by trolling far and wide, beginning with the eight mentioned above.



http://www.bluesteps.com/Home.aspx)


Wrong Pond! Too many lines; not enough fish.

All the still fishing, all the trolling still only amount to 25% of the market. Now, let’s discuss… FISHING IN THE RIGHT POND.

All the recruiter openings and advertised openings combined are less than 25% of the job market. Over 60% of jobs come from building personal connections: “Networking.”

So, if you spend more than 10% of your time on the vacancies and openings (Big Mistake #4) sector, you’re FISHING IN THE WRONG POND.

Let’s do some math: Suppose there are 100 jobs out there. 25 published or listed with agencies, and 75 unpublished, “word of mouth.”

Of 100 jobs, 25 of them will be filled from job postings and recruiters. 100% of the job hunters see those 10, [We’ll guesstimate 10,000 people will apply for those 10 jobs.] Statistically, you have a .0001% chance.

By contrast…

Of 100 jobs, 75 of them will be filled by word of mouth. 1% of the job hunters hear about those jobs, so, say, only 100 people apply. If you run those stats, odds are

50% you’ll get a word-of-mouth job.

[Disclaimer: 50%? – well this is just an illustration, but you get the point, eh? The number of job hunters was just a way to paint a mathematical picture, not a true statistical representation of job market.]

Which is the better pond to fish in? 25 jobs and 10,000 job hunters? Or 75 jobs and 100 job hunters? No brainer: the unpublished market.

How do you catch fish in that pond? “Reputation-Based job search.”

Some call it “Branding.” Jack Chapman, the author, prefers “Reputation” for several reasons. If you’re curious why, e-mail [email protected] and he’ll tell you.

Remember the employer above, who had to wade through all kinds of unqualified résumés? What if, when she needed help, before she actually posted a Help Wanted notice, she learned about you? And what if your reputation was stellar?





What if, instead of just a traditional résumé for the hook, you published your expertise in blogs? And suppose you created and published white papers, you had

your own website and other methods of online visibility…and an outstanding LinkedIn profile, 20+ recommendations, and good use of social media?

That, then, is what we call being in THE RIGHT POND!

Right Pond! More fish; fewer lines.

Unpublished Jobs

I presume you have a good career coach; ask him/her about how to really nail a Reputation-Based job search. It will help not only your next job come to find you, but the next one…and the one after that.

And we recommend you attend Jack’s “E-Networking and E-Job Search” webinars. Register for that on the website: www.LucrativeCareersInc.com. Ask your career advisor about this.





Big Mistake #4 Concentrating Your Search on Vacancies and Openings

One of the deadliest mistakes left over from obsolete job-hunting methods is the concentrating the search on companies with “openings.”

What is an opening?

Definition: When someone dies, quits, or gets fired, and no one inside the company wants the job, you have an opening, sometimes called a vacancy.

How good a job can it be?

Yet job-hunters keep asking people to tell them about openings. But get real! At any given time, what are the odds that someone just died, quit, or got fired? Slim, huh?

And let’s be generous and say that a position is vacant 3.9% of the time, two weeks out of the year. (In a minute, you’ll learn that they are probably not vacant even one day of the year, even though people, die, quit, and get fired.) Do you want to limit your search to jobs that appear 3.9% of the time?

Out of a hundred jobs, study after study has shown that most of the good ones are never “openings” or vacancies. In fact, of a hundred jobs only twenty are ever advertised, (Are those the cream of the crop? I don’t think so!) and only ten others come through agencies (we’ll talk about those in Big Mistake #10)…which means that 70% of all jobs—and most of the best jobs—are never “vacancies.”

And the ones that are vacancies are like the kids who get picked last for the sports team. Who wants ’em?

Alternatives to Chasing Vacancies

You’ve probably noticed by now that career moves in the 2010s require a very proactive, make-it-happen approach. Among unadvertised positions, 43.3% are created for the applicant, often at the time of the interview (according to the Ph.D. job research by Dr. Mark Granovetter of Harvard).




I know. You’re thinking, But nobody’s going to create a whole job just to make room for me. I agree — if you’re still using outdated job-search techniques.

Any organization or business has three people problems. (We’re talking about

management and professional-level problems at this point, not blue-collar or hourly.) Any given executive may have all three of these problems at once, or only one or two.

Executive’s Three “People Problems”

Executive

Underperformer Top-Quality Person New Needs

Underperformer: There is always someone in every organization who is in-competent. And everyone the person works with every day wonders, how in the world does this person survive? The fact is that such people do—not because the executive is not aware of the problem. In most cases, the executive is extremely aware of the problem and would like to get rid of the person!

But what happens if the executive walks over, knocks on the door of this individual’s office, and says, “I’ve had it with you; you’re fired!” Who does the job? Who carries out the responsibilities from that day on? That person’s work falls on the executive’s shoulders. So you create another problem. These incompetent people always do some things right; no one is a hundred percent bad or wrong.

A smart executive does NOT deal with the problem by firing such people on the spot. You don’t solve this problem by creating a vacancy. You tolerate such people and get as much out of them as you can for as long as you can, but you are always looking for someone to replace them. ©2007 Jack Chapman [email protected]



Top-Quality Person or New Needs: The same is true for the top performer and new

needs. The top performer will need to be promoted and a replacement found; new needs will require new people. So there are often hiring needs in companies that are not (yet) vacancies or openings. By concentrating a search on vacancies and openings only, you miss up to 80% of the jobs!

Admittedly, while it’s true that executives are always looking for good talent, it’s also true that they do not have time to talk to every job-hunter asking about vacancies or openings. It takes planning and focus. You must know which execs are interested in these kinds of “possibility” interviews and use some persistence and good search techniques to get in to see them.

All in all, however, getting a position built around yourself isn’t as uncommon as you might think. And there’s more: even when answering ads, you don’t have to be looking for vacancies and openings. While a properly prepared and trained client does answer ads and get offers for standard “openings,” still, they never behave as if they want to fill a “vacancy” or “opening”! At the hiring interview (usually the second; see Interview Big Mistake #11), our clients have armed themselves with special reports or job proposals showing the employer-to- be that they together are co-creating this position for mutual success, not just “filling a vacancy.”




Big Mistake #5 Inept Networking

Anyone ever ask you about openings in your company? It’s painful to say “sorry” to these people, and it’s humiliating for them to ask. Networking for openings doesn’t work.

Oh, it was OK when you were just beginning your career. I got my high-school stock boy job by having a friend’s dad pull strings for me. But that works only at entry-level jobs. Once you’ve got a career in mind, it’s unlikely that your friends and acquaintances know the right people to talk to.

Networking Is Not Just Talking to Lots of People

Don’t get me wrong. Person-to-person job searching is the hands-down preferred method! It’s just that most people think networking works all by itself. They’ll go to association meetings (usually made up of 90% job-hunters and wannabes and only 10% doers) and ask about vacancies or openings. They’ll pass out their résumés on the street like flyers. They’ll collect business cards like baseball cards, hoard them, and wish they had some realistic good reason to talk to those people. They hope they’ll be remembered when a vacancy or opening turns up.

Then there’s networking among “primary” contacts. Friends and relatives and acquaintances don’t like being imposed on; besides, it’s just hit or miss when you ask everyone you know about jobs—the way Pat Traditional did! She burned up her network instead of cultivating it.

Plan Whom You Need to Meet

To avoid this random, billiard-ball-style networking, you need a written and re-searched plan of whom you want to talk to, how you can make or save them a bundle, what’s going on in their industry that you can key into, and a thought-out rationale and method to get in to see them face to face. You need a clear agenda for each meeting. You must know how to milk the meeting for further contacts by knowing—at least by title if not by name.




In all likelihood, your résumé will not entice anyone to see you. Telesearch telephone techniques, a hot 60-second personal profile to sell your future, and especially avoiding Big Mistake #’s 6, 7, 8, and 9, are crucial to generate networking interviews.

Need a Good Impression, Not Just Numbers

Poor networking is worse than no networking. Meeting people is one thing; making the correct impression is another. That you can meet a lot of people and have them talk with you doesn’t mean you’re getting closer to a new job. If people aren’t impressed, if they think you’re too arrogant, too pushy, too meek, too timid, too uninformed, not committed enough, too confused, too anything, all that a hundred networking contacts will do is generate a hundred poor impressions—you’ll burn bridges that you’ll have to rebuild later once you get your head on straight.

I had a client who came to see me very excited about how he “knew everybody” in his industry. When we did a candid reference check, we found out he was well known, all right. But he wasn’t famous, he was infamous! He had to shape up in a number of areas, including going back to everyone he knew and revising the impression he’d made.

In some cases, you may not be able to repair the damage. You never get a second chance to make a first impression. We can see, therefore, that poorly conducted or ill-prepared networking will only make things worse every time.

Don’t Neglect Online Networking

As mentioned in Big Mistake #2, sites like LinkedIn (and others) can help you to access the people you need in the companies you want to reach. If you approach people in those community sites, you must be very clear about the purpose for meeting and connecting on these sites. The purpose cannot be to ask for “vacancies” or “openings.”




Mistake #6 Not Focusing: Leaving Self

“Open” to Many Kinds of Jobs

On the surface this makes sense, doesn't it?

If a hundred jobs are out there and you narrow your search down to go for only two of them, your chances are much less than if you're open to everything, right? Wrong!

When applicants who come to see me tell me they aren't sure what job they want, they say, “I want to see what's out there.” I tell them they must be confusing the job market with a singles bar. You may find some interesting one-night stands, but the serious jobs don't land in your lap that way.

You see, today’s job market—I'll say it again—is personal and specialized. If you want a long-term relationship, it's going to take some serious research and decision-making on your part.

But how in blazes are you supposed to know what your best job focus is? There are too many choices! There is a job explosion out there now. Consider how many jobs there are today that didn't exist ten years ago! Practically every job that has to do with PCs did not exist before Windows 3.0; 90% of today’s millions of Internet-related jobs were created after 1994.

Up until 1/1/84, “Ma Bell” was the one-stop shopping place for your telecommunication needs. Now there are hundreds of companies, thousands of products, and millions of new jobs in telecommunications. Innovations in marketing communications, medicine, foreign trade, automation, diet and nutrition, environment, and practically every other field you can think of have exponentially exploded the number and kinds of jobs in the past ten years.

You must focus to find a great job. The key to scoring a great job is to

a) get in on the ground floor in competitive niches before everybody starts doing it, OR

b) develop a specific area of knowledge and expertise that will be in demand now and in the future, OR




c) lock in an opportunity to take a mature industry and to take it to the top of its class.

All of this requires an in-depth focus on the job or field you're competing in. You can't stay wide open and hope to be discovered, hired, and promoted by a great company.

There is no more job security like our daddies or granddaddies knew. By keeping yourself wide open to possibilities, you actually shut yourself off from deeply-buried possibilities. To avoid this mistake, you must have written specs for your next job and be committed not to settle for less than you really want. Answer the questions in the “Key Elements” chart to determine your specs.

If you don't know the answers to those questions, then you're just hoping somehow that your employer will do that thinking for you. Good luck! When your employer sets your goals, your goals are not yours, they're the employer's.

One reason people make the “wide open” mistake is that they are unwilling to believe that they can really have what they really want.

They're stopped by “too old, too young, too dumb, too smart, my wife won't move, I've been in this job too long to change, there are no good jobs left out there, how could I ever really find out what I want anyway?” kinds of thinking.

Internal Limited Thinking

Often, these thoughts aren't even expressed; they are assumptions. These limiting beliefs and assumptions prevent them from knowing what they really want to do or believing they can actually do it and make money.

We all have many limitations; some we see, most we don't. Most of our limitations are self- imposed. I'll show you. Here's a puzzle. Try to solve it.

Instructions: Below are nine dots. By starting on any dot and drawing nothing but four straight lines without retracing or lifting pencil from paper, connect all nine dots.

• • •

• • •

• • • Give up? Look up the solution in the appendix. The problem is difficult only because of

self-imposed limitations on your thinking. It's the same way we put limitations on our job search and career satisfaction and success for not knowing there are other ways of doing things.

Try it again!

Instructions: this time, same instructions, same nine dots, but three straight lines! (Believe me, it can be done. Just free yourself from some limiting beliefs.)

Here's another example of limiting beliefs:

By adding only one line, change the Roman numeral IX into a six.




Examples of Unlimited Thinking

Here are some examples of people I've worked with, or people you'll recognize. Look at what they've accomplished by “un-limiting” their beliefs and focusing their thinking.

• Retail-store manager went to Denver as a management consultant. • Computer LANS specialist became a law firm administrator. • Ray Kroc (at almost 60 years of age) quit selling and started McDonald's. • The author of A River Runs through It began writing at age 70. • Wayne Dyer self-published Your Erroneous Zones, national best- seller. • Real-estate salesperson moved into international finance. • Medical-equipment salesperson turned international-trade specialist.

Key Elements of a Career Position Define these six elements and you’re defining a Career Position.

Satisfaction

What work will really call on the greatest portion of your abilities so that you’re challenged and happy at work? What fields can you best do this work in?

Growth

In what area of specialization can you become more and more expert so that you’ll always be in demand?

Advancement

Do you want a big company with supervision and growth up the corporate ladder? Or a small with consistent but satisfying responsibilities?

Environment

Philosophy of the company, management style, relationship with coworkers. What are those like for you?

Location

What city or rural location do you want? Commuting time? Travel requirements? Work from home?

Compensation

What package will satisfy you? What are your five-to-ten year income goals?

• Real estate property manager turned massage-spa owner.

These folks didn't get great jobs by “being open” or “finding out what's out there.” They did it by finding out their hearts' desires, defining their goals, and going for them a hundred percent.

©2007 Jack Chapman [email protected] Page 2



This focus makes them more attractive candidates, too. Put yourself in the employer's place. You have two candidates. One has done a job for several years and is looking for “what's out there.” The other is clearly focused and committed to making plenty of money and being absolutely the very best at the job she knows she wants! Whom would you hire?

Keeping yourself “open” can take a long, long time, so un-limit your thinking; go for what you really want. You'll generally need others' help to remove limiting beliefs because by their very nature they are hidden from you. If you feel stuck about your focus, get some competent help. (Read Mistake #8.)

©2007 Jack Chapman [email protected] Page 3



Mistake #7 Unscheduled/Unplanned

Most people spend more time planning a vacation than planning a job search. They just start out beginning anywhere (usually answering online postings and ads!) and then go on to whatever is in front of them next. Huge gargantuan pieces of time are squandered like quarters in a slot machine.

Employed job searchers must structure their searches or they'll never find time to complete them and do their regular jobs, too. Unemployed job searchers feel that they have all day to do things and soon find themselves baby-sitting, cleaning, watching TV, surfing the net, and running errands because—let's face it—those things are easier than job- hunting. Doing an unstructured job search means doing whatever seems important that day. It's like taking a vacation by driving one direction and stopping whenever you run out of gas.

A good job search has four elements of structure:

1) Completely thought-out methodology, preparation, and research so you know all the right things to do.

2) Daily solitude and planning so you can see all your tasks at once and keep yourself focused on the most important ones.

3) Space dedicated to the search. Phone, voice mail, email, and word-processing equipment. If you have stuff scattered all over, you'll waste time; kitchens are the worst place to search.

4) Accountability—someone to report to. Everyone knows that you learn a lot more taking a course than studying alone. Having exams and due dates for assignments keeps you on track and gets you to do the difficult or scary stuff when you'd rather pull the covers over your head and hide in bed. (FYI: Spouses and parents are not good accountability partners; other job-hunters can be helpful if they have the right attitude; competent job- search and career consultants are excellent if they can practice “tough love” with you.) Accountability produces consistency, consistency produces persistence, and persistence is omnipotent.




This structure will prevent two other common mistakes:

• Putting all your eggs in one basket. When you get an offer that's hot and you thinkyou'll close it, the tendency is to slack off on the other avenues. Don't! Goodstructure keeps you moving on all your paths.

• Good structure will also keep you going after you've been rejected. I have hadmany clients turn rejection letters into job offers, but only because they followedstrict rules on following up everything with a future sell.




This is a big one.

Mistake #8 Doing It Alone

You may have been told “you can do this by yourself.” “Don't pay anyone to help you.” “Companies should pay fees to find you.” “You don't need any help.” Men, especially, think this way; we're taught to be self-sufficient.

For some inexplicable reason, society expects you to succeed at getting good jobs on your own, but nobody ever shows you how!

Your parents can't show you how; their job-search methods are out of date. Your teachers can't, either; they are academics and aren't trained in all the realities of getting public- and private-sector work. But you're still expected to know how to do this.

Using Experts I must confess I am strongly biased in favor of everyone using career coaching—I am

one, after all. But, in addition to my own personal opinion, I think it just plain makes good sense to hire an expert.

I invite you to consider my reasons and analysis, below. Read it and see for yourself if good help in this arena can put money in your bank account.

In other domains, the normal procedure in modern life is to use experts when we can. Think about it. You go to a dentist to care for your teeth, a doctor to care for the rest of your body, an accountant to handle your taxes, a lawyer to handle your legal matters, a mechanic to fix your car, and a builder to remodel your kitchen. You go to teachers to learn history, calculus, art, writing, dancing, science, etc. Many people donate thousands of dollars to their churches to support a resident “spiritual expert” (priest, minister, rabbi) they can go to for keeping their souls in good shape.

You probably even learned how to do your present job from people (experts) who had done it before you.




There is virtually no important realm of life where you don't enlist the help of experts. Oh, you can be a do-it-yourselfer, but only with small projects that can withstand an

amateur.

• Pay a mechanic? You might do an oil change, but not an overhaul.• Pay a lawyer? You might do a simple will, but not an estate plan.• Pay a doctor? You'll handle a headache, but not pneumonia.

Why do we get expert help on the big projects? Because the cost to do it yourself on significant projects is just too high. One mistake costs thousands.

Fortunately, we usually get quick feedback when we attempt a do it yourself job and don’t do it well. If you don’t install the bathroom faucet properly, water sprays all over the room. Men, if you decide to save a few bucks by getting out your Black and Decker drill to fix the cavity in your wife’s tooth (who wants to pay a dentist, anyway?), you will hear instantly if you screw up. Not so in job campaigns!

I’ve seen many people who are convinced they are running great job campaigns, despite embarrassing resumes, poor self-presentations, zero preparation for job interviews, and no idea of what they want to do next. Rejection is usually part of even the best job campaigns, so it may take many expensive weeks and months for people to come to realize they need to radically change tactics. Sometimes, people get lucky and get hired despite an inept campaign, but luck seldom finds a job worthy of their talents.

Why, then, does society encourage do it yourself careers? I think it’s just because the profession of career coaching began in the 70s, so it’s relatively new. So if you haven’t considered it before - consider it now.

Let’s look at the economies of this investment.

Compared to other investments, your career is worth a hundred times as much! And more! Why? Because career coaching improves the very source of your wealth; it is the care and feeding of this goose that lays the golden egg!

Cost/Benefits Analysis Economically speaking, investing in career help has an excellent return on investment

(ROI). At average earnings of only $30,000 a year, your career generates $1.5 million in earnings, plus earnings needed to generate a retirement income of $50,000 a year for ten to fifteen years more.

One wrong job costs 10 percent salary. Two wrong jobs can cost ten to eighty thousand dollars in lost earnings and unemployment time. One mistake in salary negotiation can cost six to fifteen thousand dollars or more; and if you keep that job 3.4 years (the average time in a job), you lose $18,600 to $45,600 over that time.

Another way to put it: The right job and proper salary negotiation almost always net 10 to 15 percent more than the alternative. Over 3.4 years, that's 35 to 60 percent of a year's salary you could lose in just the few minutes of salary negotiation.

If you're like most American “worker bees,” you are probably seriously undervaluing




and undermining your career by hoping it will just take care of itself. You assume that all you have to do is stumble onto the right vacancies or openings and it will all fit together for you, even though nothing else in your life works like that! Or maybe you have a picture of how you’ll be promoted, but no clear plan of action to get there; no list of people to affiliate with.

My belief is that your investment in knowledgeable help will pay for itself. This isn't like other investments meant to earn a 3-to-10-percent return; this is an investment in the very source of all of your 1.5-to-4.5-million-dollar life earnings.

Career Investment Analysis

You owe it to yourself to put your career investment in perspective. First, compare it to your investment in school—which is actually an indirect investment in your career. Schools take tens of thousand dollars from you and do not guarantee you a job (or really even help you very much to find one). Forgive them. How could they? They themselves don't know how! They are academics. They get their jobs answering ads in The Chronicle of Higher Education. They know even less than average about focus, networking, and created positions.

Note: Many colleges and universities have excellent placement/career centers. Take advantage of them! It's one way to avoid mistake #8 Doing It Alone. They can be the most valuable part of your entire educational experience. Caution: some advisors are experienced; others are recent hires with academic, but not much career coaching expertise. Make sure you’re working with someone experienced.

You might want to use the Next Generation Career Coaching” chart in the Appendix to test their skill and evaluate their competence.

You not only invest $20,000 to $200,000 hard cash in school to get a bachelor's degree (add another $100,000 interest if you take out school loans), but you also lose the earnings you could have had over those school years. So you give up, say, an additional $20,000 - $35,000 earnings each year, plus paying thousands more in tuition, books, travel, and room and board, totaling a grand investment of $500,000 or more!




Ordinary Big Investments

Investments we all make now: Car: $30,000

Price (What you put in)

• $15,000–50,000 purchase• $5,500/year gas, maintenance

costs• $2,000–10,000 options: stereo,

a/c, power windows, electricdoor locks

• Paid for by career

Payoffs (What you get back)

• Forty-eight months’transportation

• Then you need to trade it inand spend more money to buya new one

Vacation: $2,000

• Paid for by career • Two weeks’ getaway (from thelousy job you have to go to theother fifty weeks)

Insurance: $2,000 or more a year

Toys and luxuries: $Thousands

Dog or cat: $3,000 over its lifetime

• For auto insurance, lifeinsurance, property insurance,disability insurance, healthinsurance, dental insurance


• For Hobbies, Ferrari/Jeep/SUV,Fur coat


• For food, vet bills, licenses, fleabaths, grooming, cremationburial


• Peace of mind, but no moneyunless you’re hospitalized,dead, your house burns to theground, or your car smashesinto a school bus

• Some “Fun, fun, fun ‘til herdaddy takes the T-Bird away…”

• Companionship (of a kind)

Investment Career coaching: $75–$275/hour or $3,000–$10,000 fee

Compare the above with a… CAREER COACHING INVESTMENT

Price (What you put in)

• For an expert to help you getand win interviews for the rightjobs

• FREE! Paid for out of increasedearnings

• and BONUS for USA citizens,made even more affordable by agenerous tax refund from UncleSam. See Mistake #13.

Payoffs (What you get back)

• 10 percent higher earnings fora lifetime ($100,000–$1,000,000)

• Higher satisfaction• (If unemployed): 20–60 percent

less time in job search, whichtranslates into $3,000–$35,000or more in your bank account

To break even on this investment it will take twenty years of earning $25,000 a year more than you would have earned without the degree. Now ask yourself: after spending two hundred thousand dollars—minimum—to get a degree, how much time, energy, and money do you invest to make sure that your career does better than break even? Probably none. (Oh, maybe a résumé or job-hunting book or two.)




Does this make sense? If you had a two-hundred-thousand-dollar car, you'd insure it. If you had a two-hundred-thousand-dollar home, you'd insure it. If you had a two-hundred- thousand dollar investment portfolio, you'd hire a financial advisor to insure its growth. How do you insure your career investment?

Typical $5,000—$20,000 Investments

Let's compare a career investment to some of those other investments you're probably willing to make: car, vacation, mortgage, insurance, home improvement, leisure time, luxuries, pets, etc.

Think of this: how many people do you know who own a pet, and how many have a career consultant? Notice that people are more willing to put three thousand dollars into pet care than into getting the help they need to derive the most satisfaction out of this single most important—and potentially, most lucrative—aspect of their lives, the one thing that makes all other investments possible in the first place!

“Money,” they say, “doesn’t grow on trees.” So where does it come from? Your career! Your career is a money tree of a kind; if you water and fertilize it, you'll reap huge rewards. If you expect it to grow and prosper without planning and attention, it will “dead end” on you.

One last point and then I'll go on to Mistakes #11 and 12. I hope you've seen the light and the logic of investing in expert help to reap a ten-to-hundred-time return on your investment. So now that you've decided not to do it alone, exactly what kind of help should you get?

• You want someone who knows how careers are made today and how jobs are won. Résumé services that will help you mass-mail résumés like confetti are not career management consultants and coaches.

• You want someone who will stick with you throughout the day-to-day challenges that will arise in your search. Just a wind-you-up-and-you're-out-there-on-your-own-again approach doesn’t cut it. The real value of consultation is continual problem-solving: handling the unexpected, firm-but-kind accountability, and applying proven principles to the unique circumstances of your own job or career campaign daily.

• You want someone who's been around for a while. Find someone up to date and familiar with “Next Generation Career Services” (See Appendix B) who can offer cutting edge techniques and strategies as opposed to advice from bygone days.

• You want someone who will sit down with you and really listen to what your goals and desires are in the work world and who will deal personally with your situation, not people who will indiscriminately throw a generic-services package at everyone they meet.

Mistake #8 Summary:

So there you have it: my unabashed endorsement of getting an expert to help you in your career. I believe, in summary, that doing a career move alone will never allow you to get outside your own nine dots, your own limiting beliefs and blind spots.

It's foolish to ignore professional help in the one area that is so critical to your entire well-being and security. Your career is a $2.5-million asset that should be protected and cared for with utmost attention.




Mistake #9 Letting Motivation Take

Care of Itself Nothing puts your self-esteem on the line faster than a job search. You face

rejection and self-doubt daily. It takes a good deal of internal motivation to keep yourself moving at all, much less to keep the correct frame of mind needed to win interviews.

A single day of beggar mentality (“Please, somebody give me a job.”) is a whole day wasted. One interview done with self-doubt could mean losing the opportunity of a lifetime. Hiring- decision makers hire positive, cheerful, high-self-esteem people who are confident (but not arrogant) about their value.

• Take special care to ensure your proper motivation.

• Assemble friends into your own “hallelujah chorus.”

• Periodically ground yourself with your value by reading your résumé and rememberingyour successes.

• Schedule a weekly contact with culture—a play, an inspirational movie, a work ofart. Serve as reminders that whatever the mind can conceive and believe, it canachieve.

• Avoid negative newspaper stories (fires, murders, layoffs, unemployment statistics,etc.), TV news, sitcoms, and negative people. People tend to come away with ageneral depiction of life as boring, tragic, and inane. This is something you cannotafford while job hunting. Do keep up to date on important news, particularlydevelopments in business that may alert you to opportunities and help you presentyourself as an informed candidate while networking.

• Use motivational tapes and books as well as nurturing times with spouse and friends.Your motivation must be jealously guarded, protected, renewed, and nourished.




Mistake #10 Letting Others Control Your Job Search

Everyone hopes for a free lunch. So when friends say, “Give me or email me your résumé, I'll pass it around to a few people in my company,” you're only too happy to oblige.

When you do, you've lost control. Tell me, who really cares about your career? No one but you (and your career consultant, if you have one). When you let others do job-searching for you, you put your worst foot forward.

• First, all they can present is your past experience. Your talent, chemistry andpersonality require a personal interview.

• Second, your friend can find out only about vacancies or openings, the smallest andworst portion of the job market. They won’t know about possible created positions.

• Third, once their contact has politely looked over your résumé and rejected you,your chances of overcoming that rejection and getting face to face are worsethan before. What started out with someone opening doors ends up slammingthem shut.

Recruiters Wishful “free lunches” also come dressed in recruiters' clothing. All job-hunters secretly

hope that a company wants them so badly it will pay a recruiter handsomely to search them out. Recruiters typically charge companies a third of a candidate's first-year salary to place the candidate. There are two kinds or search firms: Retained and Contingency.

Retained Recruiters Retained search firms handle $80,000 to $500,000 positions. The client company's

requirements are very specific. Sometimes they'll specify a degree from a certain school, a certain grade- point average, or previous work for a specific company. Sometimes they'll even want a single certain individual! Retained search firms get hired and paid to handle the search exclusively.



Twelve Biggest Mistakes Job Hunters and Career-Changers Make and How to Avoid Them Contingency Recruiters

Contingency recruiters get paid only upon presenting the candidate who is hired; they generally begin with an assignment from a client company and search for a candidate for that opening. Rarely will they “market a candidate.” This will happen for you only if you have that certain right set of qualifications and experience that are in high demand.

No matter which type of search firm is hired, companies don't part with a big chunk of change like that unless there's a good reason. Here are the good reasons. See if any apply to you.

• The candidate they're looking for can't be found by a help wanted ad or job boardposting.

• They want someone who has long years' experience in their specific industry (not careerchangers).

• They want to “raid” a competitor.• They have high-turnover positions and they want a fresh stream of bodies.If you fit those categories—your skills are rare and in demand, you have substantial

experience in your field, or you want to work for a competitor—then recruiters can be helpful.

Otherwise, they can get in your way. For those of you who have dealt with recruiters, you may remember how you often felt out of control.

They call the shots, sometimes not even identifying their client company. They are limited to vacancies or openings and will present you in only two ways: as a real candidate and as a foil. 1) As a Real Candidate.

Here you have an ally, but unless the recruiter is retained (vs. contingency) there's a possibility a middleman might hinder your chances of being hired vis-à-vis your competition. You see, contingency recruiters find an opening, then tell the company, “I have the perfect candidate for you. Will you pay me my fee if you hire her [him]?” A “yes” response is a job order or “assignment.”

Then they put ads in the paper, call competitors, and look through their résumé file for candidates. So far, so good.

Here's the problem: If you've done your focusing homework, you are targeted correctly. You already know the companies and people you want to meet.

If a contingency recruiter presents you, you've just added thousands of dollars to your new employer's hiring process because you've added a middleman. You will cost, say, eighty-five thousand dollars ($65,000 salary and $20,000 recruiter's fee) to hire, while your job hunting competitors will cost only in the $65K—$75K.

And if your next employer really has an eighty-five-thousand-dollar budget to hire for a sixty-thousand-dollar position, why not get an extra twenty thousand for yourself as an increased salary or a sign-on or performance bonus!

On the other hand, if there are companies you think you can't get to on your own, recruiters can be helpful. In retained searches, they are gatekeepers you must go through. They are always helpful if the opening fits you.



Twelve Biggest Mistakes Job Hunters and Career-Changers Make and How to Avoid Them 2) As a Foil.

In order to make another candidate look good, they'll send in one or two candidates who are credible but likely to be rejected (maybe you). They won't tell you this, of course. Recruiters must present three or more (usually around six) candidates.

It's like the realtor who wears you down by taking you to five houses you don't want (and he knows you don't want them) before showing you the one he knows you'd want all along. Good sales technique, but not particularly helpful to you.

Mistake # 10 Summary:

• Don't rely on others to do your career campaign.• Use recruiters with savvy; they can help if you fit certain criteria.• Know your own target companies and to whom you wish to speak.• Know, as well, that you have the courage and resourcefulness inside and good

coaching, you to reach many people on your own merits.




Mistake #11 Not Preparing Well Enough for

Job Interviews We don't get many job interviews in a lifetime. Maybe ten? Twenty? That's less than

one interview a year. So don't assume you're naturally good at it; it takes preparation and practice.

All job interviews are made up of only five sentences: four questions, one statement. Every question you're asked has to do with one of these areas:

1) Tell me about yourself. (TMAY)2) Why do you want to work here? (WDYWWH)3) What's wrong with you, anyway? (Sensitive Questions)4) What are your salary expectations? (Salary Negotiations)5) Don't call us, we'll call you. (Follow-up)Each one of these has to be nailed in a job interview. Each has a different strategy to

answer it. Winging it won't do. Here are the keys to answering these questions:

1. TellMe About Yourself

TMAY. The external question is “Tell me about yourself.” However, the interviewer's internal question is, “Can this candidate do the job?” This category includes all questions about doing the job and your ability to make money.

Strategy: Prepare specific thirty-to- forty-word illustrations of your problem-solving and money-making abilities with quantifiable results. Use these as concrete evidence of your potentials; let them tell you how valuable it will be.

2. WhyDo You Want to Work Here?

Interviewers’ internal question is, “Will this candidate last?” Include all questions about your knowledge of the company and your long-term career plans.

Strategy: Make sure you know enough about the company to make credible your assertion that you'd like to work there rather than with a competitor




3. Sensitive Questions

Interviewer's internal question is, “If this candidate is so hot, why is she unemployed or looking for a job?” In other words, what's wrong with this picture?

Strategy: Know and rehearse brief answers to any sensitive questions. Turn mistakes into lessons, defects into virtues, and re- focus the interviewer onto questions 1 and 2.

4. Salary Read Mistake #12 Strategy: 5 Salary Making Rules 5. Follow-up

“Don't call us, we'll call you.” Do you act proactive and keep calling them? Or do you respect their time and process and wait to hear?

Strategy: Use a structured follow- up to make sure you're getting every consideration possible. Especially follow up if you get a rejection letter. If they haven't made a good hiring decision, your follow-up will position you as the next candidate.

One common error in job interviewing is trying to get hired right away. Typically, your purpose in a first interview is only to get a second. Then you go for the hiring decision.




Mistake #12 Talking About Money Too Soon— Not Knowing Your Market Value

Employers always ask you about salary. When they ask that question before an offer, their only motive is to screen you out. They have a budget in their heads that represents their (mis) conception of how much they can pay you.

I say misconception because they are thinking in terms of vacancies and openings, just like you did before you read Twelve Biggest Mistakes Job Hunters and Career Changers Make and How to Avoid Them. Their minds are loaded with prepackaged, shrink-wrapped positions, each with a neat little salary price tag on it. If you don't fit their preconceived salary range, they give you two strikes. One more and you're out. You have to be extremely lucky even to get another chance at bat.

Remember that only vacancies or openings have salary tags. Created positions are outside normal bounds of pre-set salaries.

Also remember that, if you do it right, even an initial vacancy or opening can be turned into a created position. If you know what problems you're solving for an employer and how you can make or save them a buck, you can sidestep salary for a while.

Since it's not to your advantage to start an interview with two strikes against yourself, don't disclose salary requirements.

When you're asked your salary requirements, respond with either, “If it's okay with you, I'd rather wait to talk about salary until later—I'm sure you pay a competitive salary, so I don't think salary will be a problem,” or “Of course, I'd like to make as much as I can. If I did this job extremely well, what range were you thinking I'd earn?” They'll probably answer the question themselves!

Whatever you do, get off the money issue as soon as you can! The only good time to talk money is when you're discussing an offer.

There are exceptions to this rule, notably when talking with search personnel. (General rule there: tell all!) For fuller training in salary negotiations, consult Negotiating Your Salary: How to Make $1000 a Minute, described at www.salarynegotiations.com.



http://www.salarynegotiations.com/


This book puts money in your bank account. Most coaches say it is a “must have” book for any job search: according to nationally syndicated careers columnist Joyce Lain Kennedy, “hands down, the definitive consumer work on negotiating pay” is Negotiating Your Salary: How to Make $1000 a Minute Chapman, Mt Vernon Press, [7th Edition: 2011]. The book is available through any major bookstore, amazon.com, directly from the author. At the author's website, salarynegotiations.com, you can download the e-book instantly.




Mistake #13 Not Letting the IRS Help Pay for

Career Coaching

Job searches cost money. If you’re unemployed, they cost money at the worst time: when you don’t have any.

Where can we turn for financial help? Is there some way to make the search and career coaching more affordable? Someone we can count on and turn to for financial help?

Yes. [For those in the USA…] You can count on your friends at the IRS. While they won’t pop a check in the mail immediately, they are ready, willing, and able to come to your aid in the form of a tax break for career coaching.

Taxes: The Invisible Bill I wrote this Mistake #13 in a detailed way so you can actually see, in black and white,

this otherwise invisible job-search subsidy. Invisible? Yes. Let’s face it. Paying taxes through payroll deductions is like an “invisible bill.” Part of

your money is set aside in the government’s coffers and you never see it until the April 15th day of reckoning. And, since the government’s withholding table calculations usually make you set aside more than you actually owe, April 15th can generate a refund that feels like a windfall! Free money.

Deep down you know it’s your own hard earned money, not a bonus or gift, but, still, it feels like money someone else gives you. Even taxpayers filing quarterly estimated tax payments feel the same. So, valuing the job-search tax refund starts with making it real, visible.

Cause and Effect Relationship: Spending & Tax Savings

In most people’s minds it’s hard to connect the cause and effect relationship between the amount of money you get on April 15th, and the tax-favored spending you do today. And even those who do appreciate a tax break won’t see it unless they know how to file for it, and how to be IRS audit-proof!




How big is the refund? Is it worth the hassle of documenting and filing? I think so. I’ll let you decide for yourself, though, by showing you how to calculate your refund.

A Taxation Perspective First, a sobering word. In case you’re ready to get all weepy-eyed choked up over the

great generosity of the government’s Income Tax Code, consider this. Uncle Sam is no dummy; he’s a shrewd investor himself. He sets up this deduction so the person who does a traditional “answer a few ads here and there” job search doesn’t get any refund at all. The person who gets professional career coaching (who avoids Mistake #8: Doing It Alone) gets the biggest refund.

Why do you suppose he’s so eager to help you get help to get re-employed or better- employed? Could it be that when you’re out of work, he’s not making any income tax money off you? Hmmm. Fact: if you earn at the $75,000 a year level, the government loses $1000 in taxes every month you’re unemployed.

That could explain why, if you’re…

• Unemployed, he’ll levy his full share of income taxes on any severance pay you get,but he won’t tax your outplacement benefits (job-search coaching paid for byemployer) if that’s part of your severance package. If you’re…

• Underemployed, he won’t tax money you spend on school and training to get aheadin your current career because the more money you make, the more money he makes.And if you’re…

• Self-employed, he’s especially fond of helping you succeed in your own businessbecause not only will he get taxes from your income, but when you hire helpers, he’ll gettaxes from theirs, too!

So, just in case you had any crazy ideas about not taking a “handout” from the government—rest assured, Uncle Sam never went broke giving tax breaks for job search costs.

Taxes: Making the Dollars Appear To make an approximate calculation of the tax refund you’ll get, let’s first calculate

your job search expenses. They may not seem like much, but watch how they add up!

$500 Travel Expenses. Let’s say a local-area job search has

30 networking- and 10 job-interviews at a modest 25 miles round trip: 1000 miles. At standard 55¢/mile (as of 2013) plus parking, tolls, taxi rides, etc., you’ve got yourself at least $500.

$1,000 Job Search Expenses. You’ve Got…

• Resume copying, letters, postage, Web access, job posting site fees,• Subscriptions to special trade magazines, dues to relevant associations,• Several lunches and dinners while on job search,• Printer ink cartridges, perhaps part of a computer/printer upgrade, paper,




• Phone expenses, FedEx deliveries,• Networking dinners, meetings, social networking-events,• Pens, calculator, and other office expenses,• Job hunting books, motivational tapes and• Anthony Robbins’ Fire Walking seminar (or trainings like that).• Plus anything else you can justify as a job search expense.We’ll estimate that as $1,000. So, travel and other expenses total, conservatively,

$1500.

Optional: $1,000 to $20,000 Career and Job Search Coaching. This would be a comprehensive coaching package where your career advisor will stay

right with you through thick and thin all the way to your new job, promotion, or your own business. This could run $2,000 to $20,000 depending on how good they are, how good you are, scope of services, and how fast you land your job. Total: $2,500—$21,500.

For ease of calculation, let’s pick a number in the low-end, say…$1,500 with no coaching help, and $5,000 with coaching help

Taxes: Calculating Your Refund

Fact one: You can only deduct the amount that exceeds 2% of your income. Fact two: Tax rate for incomes between $29,700 and $150,000 is roughly 28%.

I’ll use a $60,000 income as an example in Table I; then you can enter your own numbers in Table II.




TABLE I: An Example.

Line Amount: no coach Amount w/coach Expenses: Line 20 $1500 $5000

Your Income: Line 24 $60,000 $60,000

2% of your Income: Line 25 $1200 $1200

(Line 20) - (Line 25) = Tax Deduction: Line 26 $300 $3800

28% of Line 26: THIS IS YOUR REFUND $39.20 $1,064

Now, you try it with your income. Fill in the blanks, below.

TABLE II: Your numbers.

Line Amount: no coach Amount w/coach Expenses: Line 20 $1500 $5000

Your Income: Line 24

2% of your Income: Line 25

(Line 20)—(Line 25) = Tax Deduction: Line 26

28% of Line 26: THIS IS YOUR REFUND

For more accurate estimate, enter this information on line 20 of Schedule A (sample on next page). You’ll find all the detailed instructions in government IRS publication #17.

That whole document is available at http://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/p17.pdf.

Is getting the refund worth the effort? I think so, because, as you’ll see in a moment, I’ve made it amazingly simple. But you

be the judge. BTW, only 20% or so of job hunters keep track of their expenses! Are you? Be honest, here.

You might think it’s not worth the bother, right? Well, think again. This section could be found money for you!

You have to file your taxes anyway, right? And you’ll spend the same amount of money on your search one way or the other, right? From Table II, you know your own refund number specifically. (On average refunds run $200—$2,000, so we’ll use $500 here for illustration purposes.) So, all you need to consider is, “Is the time and hassle of documenting worth $500?”

Well, since I’ve made the time practically zero and the hassle nonexistent, why not go for it? Here’s how to document expenses in a way that takes practically no effort and hardly any time as long as you follow my receipt-by-receipt method all along the way.



http://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/p17.pdf


Receipt by Receipt Method and You’ll Be Audit Proof The two things you must collect to be “audit proof” are: expense tracking and a mileage

log. Sounds like a bother, eh? Well, properly used, receipts will do both things at once. They’ll document both the amount, date, and also the job-search related purpose for your expenses. Note: credit card statements are not enough! You need actual receipts and you must record the purpose/relationship to your job search within 24 hours of the expense.

Want to make it virtually effortless? Make it no-brainer simple this way: whenever you spend money related to your job

search, get a receipt, pull out a pen, and right then and there, at the point of purchase, write on the back of the receipt what it was for. When you put your credit card or your change back in your wallet, put the annotated-on-the- back receipt in there, too.

If you spent money for a meeting, you need to also write the name of the person and a brief description of the job- search related activity, such as: “Job interview, Johnson, ABC Corp,” “Referral Networking, John Doe,” “Alumni Meeting: Doug, Bill, Jill, Jane,” “Meet- ing w/Career Coach,” “Lunch meeting; John Smith; referrals,” etc. Again, do that at the point of purchase—it will take no measurable extra time at all.

Later, at home, occasionally dump your annotated receipts into a box or envelope. Think to yourself “28% Cha-ching!” I.e. when you put in a bunch of receipts and you guess there’s, say, $125 worth of expenses, think, “Ahhh, cha-ching! $35 back from my friends at the IRS!” (28% of $125 = $35) Voila! It takes very little effort and no extra time. TIP: Keep the receipts in a cool dry place because many receipts are on thermal paper and will fade in the heat.




Your job search expenses go right here on line 23




IRS’s Favorite “Gotcha”: The Mileage Log

If you make general notes in your appointment calendar with the approximate milesdriven to an interview or networking event - that’s not enough! The mileage log is apotential soft spot that the IRS will take advantage of if possible.

Simple Way to Keep a Log Remember, a tax deduction is no good unless you have documentation that meets

IRS’s standards. If you are going to claim driving mileage expenses, you must have a log that contains the following information, and this information must be written down within 48 hours of completion of the trip to include: Beginning odometer; Ending odometer; Date; Job Search Purpose. Simple method: keep a pen and note- book in the glove compartment. Each job-search related trip write down the starting odometer, the purpose of the trip, and the ending odometer. As you do, think, “Ahhh, 44.5¢ a mile refund from Uncle Sam. He just bought my gas!” [This fluctuates year-to-year. Go to: http://www.biztaxadvisor.com/IRS-mileage-rate.html will have up-to-date information. 2009 rate: 55¢/mile.]

On April 15th, just add up the box of receipts, calculate your miles, take the deduction, and collect your refund!

Final Exhortation—Don’t Throw Away Tax Dollars

You can tell, I’m sure, that I’m in favor of career coaching and eager to make Uncle Sam help you make it an even better investment. I hope this booklet itself has been a good positive experience in career coaching.

• Have you learned something valuable here?

• Have you learned a way to make or save some money?

• Did the “Friends at the IRS” put money in your pocket?Hopefully, then, you have profited already just from reading this booklet. This booklet is an example of career coaching. It gets you thinking outside the “vacancies

and openings” nine dots. If this has been helpful, remember there’s more where that came from. I encourage you to investigate real, live career coaching.

Along with helping you avoid twelve costly mistakes, this book is supposed to help you understand how risky it is to do job/career search alone. Learning by “trial and error” is expensive! “Trial and success” is better. A coach can help you do that, and the exciting part is that it’s FREE (i.e. it pays for itself and is tax deductible to boot.)

Competent Career Coaching is Better than Free: It Makes You Money In my book, Negotiating Your Salary, How to Make $1000 a Minute, I distinguish

between what a “cost” and an “investment” is. Most experts you use: accountants, car mechanics, therapists, hair stylists, etc., are all costs. The money you spend is sunk, gone. There’s no way you can bring your hair to the stylist or car into the shop for a profit. When you come back to pick up your vehicle, for instance, the mechanic will never say, “Wow, you’re in luck! You MADE money by bringing your car in today.” That’s because



http://www.biztaxadvisor.com/IRS-

http://www.biztaxadvisor.com/IRS-


it’s a cost, not an investment.

Career coaching is an investment with an impressive ROI. It’s not an expense or sunk cost but rather an investment in yourself, your career satisfaction and success.

Every dollar you spend with a competent career consultant should come back double

or triple. How?

• For example: working with a coach who gets you back to work 4-8 weeks sooner puts $3,000—$10,000 or more right in your bank account.

• Another example: having a coach for your salary negotiations should put 5%-10%

more in your paycheck for all 3.2 years (the average) you stay in that job. What does that add up to? $10,000—$50,000 or more. That’s just the tip of the iceberg.

AND SPECIAL BONUS: When you add in the tax refund on career coaching

you’ll get from your “Rich Uncle” Sam, the return on investment is even more lucrative. Best of Success to You in All Your Career Endeavors

We sincerely hope this report on the Twelve Biggest Mistakes enriches your life and

helps you achieve more career satisfaction and success. May you have a satisfying and prosperous career!

Sincerely,

Jack Chapman & Steve Frederick Lucrative Careers Inc.




Appendix A: Pat Traditional’s Mistakes

What follows, in order of appearance, is a list of some of the mistakes Pat Traditional made in her job search. Some are covered in Twelve Biggest Mistakes; others are not.

1. Relied on hard work only 40. Thought quantity vs. quality 2. Underestimated power of politics 41. Reached one or two people per hour 3. Sought best job possible (ignored visibility) 42. Presented poorly 4. Underestimated the difficulty 43. Asked for openings 5. Prepared résumé first 44. Followed up poorly on lead 6. Critical piece is not résumé 45. Believed "No openings" 7. Allocated no money for help 46. Let others control search 8. Books on résumés 47. Took "pass it around" as a strategy 9. Unclear objective 48. Ran out of contacts 10. Self-serving objective 49. Cut out entertainment 11. No skills in résumé 50. Avoided parties 12. References included w/résumé 51. Watched TV 13. Chronological résumé 52. Wasn't prepared in interviews 14. White paper; 60# paper 53. Took "W e'll call you" 15. Wasting time surfing the net 54. Needed follow-up on "no’s" 16. Keeping open instead of focused 55. Accepted a rejection letter 17. Only three-pronged search 56. No outlet for discouragement 18. Sent direct mail outside her industry 57. No feedback on doubts 19. Bypassed personnel dept. 58. Worried about wrong problems 20. Had top-executive target 59. Resented working people 21. Missed niche job boards 60. Used contacts improperly 22. All ads answered 61. Thought "openings" 23. Cover letters—individualized 62. Expected recruiters to search 24. Follow up and re-send to personnel 63. Discussed salary before an offer 25. Extra information to blind ads 64. Used books, not people, to coach 26. Prioritized wrong 65. Accepted low salary offer 27. Pulled strings while networking 66. Hoped for a raise (vs. negotiating for one) 28. LinkedIn profile: No photo 67. Glad it was done on own 29. LinkedIn headline not useful 68. Failed to research salary 30. LinkedIn profile incomplete 69. Too many days of job search 31. Linkedin: no recommendations 70. Dismissed some jobs too quickly 32. Started day too leisurely 71. Saved statements, but no receipts 33. Coffee? 72. No info written within 24 hrs of expense 34. Read newspaper to relax 73. Noted mileage, but no IRS Mileage Log 35. Worked at kitchen table 74. Not a cost of business; cost of ignorance 36. Went to library vs. regular place 37. Ran errands during job search time 38. Started networking too slowly 39. Concentrated on ads/online postings




Appendix B: Traditional Compared to 21st Century Career Coaching

A career coaching program should not only solve your current career dilemma by helping you make a job/career move now, but it also should make sure you are “set for life.” By that I mean that first you will have:

• Identified your best career path; • Set your 5–10 year goals, and • Built your initial visibility and credibility in your chosen field.

THEN, as you’ve made a job/career move correctly, you will, at the same time, have built a “networld” of key executives and successful people who know you. By maintain- ing and developing that, your next career advancement will likely come to you by word of mouth instead of you having to go find it through answering ads and sending résumés.

Here’s a chart describing the coaching needed to make a “set for life” career move:




TRADITIONAL CAREER SERVICES “Lucrative Career, Inc.” Career Coaching Services

1. Focus on past responsibilities, rather than current skills. No method to actually increase internal self-confidence.

1. Skill Identification in a process that expands client’s personal skill vocabulary and effects and builds a positive change in self-confidence.

2. Focus mainly on past job titles or roles. “re-employment.”

2. Explore both old jobs and new options. “New career direction.”

3. Minimal assistance in exploring different career options unless you have had experience or some training in that market.

3. Development of different career options through a method/process that opens doors of opportunity that otherwise would be over looked or discarded.

4. Training often found in a class room set- tings.

4. Personalized training and individual attention to those things that will set you apart from all other candidates

5. Cover letter & résumé key job-hunting tool.

5. Developing a clear self-presentation and unique marketing materials as well as learning key job searching tools.

6. Campaign focused mainly on applying to numerous ads/postings (where 100% of job searchers are looking at that 10% portion of the jobs).

6. Campaign focused mainly on personal one on one informational contact’s where the jobs are in the making. W hen there is a vacancy or posted opening, “client usually gets an interview.”

7. “Generic Networking”: asking all your contacts if they know anyone who’s hiring. Lim- iting your contacts to 1-2 generations away

7. Three-stage controlled networking campaign. Adeptly using Internet for background research to locate, and connect with “countless” contacts.

8. Cover letter: different content, but same structure for blind ads and employer- identified ads alike.

8.1) “T” letter response to get interviews from ads; 8.2) Cover letter to get referral interviews 8.3) Dual-approach to get interviews from employer- identified ads:

a) applying through personnel and b) approaching Hiring Decision Maker(s) di-

rectly

9. Primary interview training: job interviews. 9. Primary interview training: Referral Interviews, which build connections to the hiring decision makers, without waiting for “openings.” These interviews also train candidates for actual job interviews.

10. Coaching compensation negotiation: waits for the offer at the end of the job search

10. Step by step coaching to handling salary negotiations/questions given at the beginning of the search. Coaching at time of the offer generally increases comp package by 10% and more.

11. Career Consultation Finished at time of new job or promotion.

11. Client continues to build visibility and credibility in his/her chosen field. 5-year goals estab- lished as well as the development of your network “Power Team” that has been built to advance your career now and in the future.




Appendix C: Four-line Solution to Nine-Dot Problem

I’ve numbered the dots, 1 through 9. Begin at #1, draw a straight line thorough 2 and 3 and continue that line until it meets an imaginary line going through points 8 and 6. From that point, draw the 2nd straight line diagonally down to the left, through dots 6 and 8, stopping directly below 1, 4, 7. Draw the third line up through 7, 4, and 1, stopping at 1. Draw the fourth line diagonally down to the right through dots 5 and 9. The key to the solution, of course, is to draw lines “outside the box.” The directions never tell you to stay “inside the box,” but most people try to solve the problem holding onto that limiting belief.

Can you do it in three? It can be done! Instructions: Below are nine dots. By starting

on any dot and drawing nothing but three straight lines without retracing or lifting pencil from paper, connect all nine dots.



12 biggest mistakes job hunters make

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