Those Help-Wanted Ads - Leave 'em to Capitalist Virgins

It's been three decades since Richard Nelson Bolles told us to stop answering help-wanted ads and find ourselves a job or get more clients/customers for our business.  His manifesto was packaged as "What Color Is Your Parachute?"  Down-and-out in the mid-1970s I read it and applied its insights.  That's how I first broke into the field of public relations and then went on to snag a big job in corporate PR.  So did plenty of others who are now professional successes.  So, why are there too many Capitalist Virgins out there who are still restricting their search for opportunity to the help-wanted?

No, there is nothing reckless or stupid about replying to help-wanted.  Four years ago when my communications boutiques weren't cooking on all burners, I answered some ads for survival jobs and was hired on the spot.  That brought in some money and working again jolted my mind into thinking in new ways about re-building my businesses. 

What is dumb is putting a lot of eggs into the help-wanted basket. 

Why that never did work and doesn't work now is, to being with, those posting the ads may be doing that just for legal reasons.  They may already had the perfect candidate in mind.  So, we're wasting our time.

Secondly, maybe it's something in the water but our nation has been growing a significant increase in those who choose to remain capitalist virgins or have given up hope of ever becoming a player [See Tom Peters' "Re-imagine! on the need to be a player, not a working stiff, in this economy.] That means that as soon as an ad is posted on the Internet or printed in the Sunday newspaper, there will be a flood of replies.  Good luck catching a break.

Third, most opportunity doesn't come packaged as a help-wanted.  It comes embedded in networks, catchy marketing approaches, and building a presence online and off.  My clients, both leaders in the Fortune 500 and heads of professional-services firms, probably never answered a help-wanted in their lives.  They know better.  That's how they got where they are and stay employed or running businesses.

So, how can you morph into a player in how you reach out for your next opportunity, be it a better job, any job, new clients/customers, or venture capital?  Here is what I've found out over the past 30 years:

• Play in traffic.  That entails always having part of you outside your normal networks - professional, social and religious/spiritual. About the same time that Bolles preached the gospel of not responding to the help-wanted, a graduate student named Mark Granovetter was conducting landmark research.  What he discovered was that most opportunity comes from outside our usual network or from "weak ties."  Inside our familiar networks, we are all going after the same thing and also the members pigeonhole us.  Outside that comfort zone, there can be plums just hanging that no one notices and no one is stereotyping us as speechwriters when we have done a lot of marketing communications and can fill a job in that. Tip:  Join a volunteer or spiritual group you normally wouldn't.  Pick up a weekend job as a police dispatcher.

   

• Identify people within organizations to approach, preferably by e-mail.  The first contact doesn't have to be to ask for anything.  Discern a point of connection.  For instance, my initial email might refer to an article they published or an article I published which might be of interest to them.  They will probably not respond.  That doesn't matter.  Your name is embedded in the memory bank.  The next contact should arrive in their email box with a catchy subject head and a brilliantly presented pitch about how you can be helpful to them.  Yes, you can attach material.  Indicate you will be following up, preferably with a phone call.  Follow up.  This takes time but you're saving time not answering help-wanted.

• Carve out a professional branding.  How you do this depends on your temperament and strengths.  Since I find it easier writing than giving doing things in person, I started two blogs - here is the other one.  Others hit the circuit delivering keynote addresses, participating in panels, serving on boards, and doing volunteer work.

• Publish.  That could be opinion-editorials in local or national media, e-books, print books, blog posts [on your own or others' blogs], articles in trade publications and white papers, marketing communications for your own or someone's business.  They make compelling paste-ins and/or attachments for your pitch e-mail. Keep the material coming so that what you use is recent.  The op-ed you got published in THE WALL STREET JOURNAL in 2006 is too yesterday to leverage today.

• Cold call.  Telemarketing is still an effective mode of marketing and sales.  That's exactly why we get so many calls from dinner time until our faves come on the TV.  Control the conversation by starting out with providing something free.  Free opens doors.  Professional-services firms offer everything from free white papers to free consultations.

• Ask for help but ask in the capitalist way.  That entails that when you request at the same time you have something to trade.  For instance, if you want the inside scoop on the director of marketing communications at GE Environmental from an insider, figure out what to trade.  It could be providing an introduction to someone they want to meet or baseball tickets.

• Finetune your Emotional Intelligence [EI] skills.  Those with high EI often have doors swing open effortlessly.  Start off with reading what Daniel Goleman has to say on the subject.  Next, observe successful people.  EI can take many forms.

   

• Take a day off every week from hustling.  That will prevent you from defaulting into the same-old.  Often the best strategies and tactics come to us when we're driving.

• Pass on what you're learning to a capitalist virgin.  To keep success we have to give it away.   

One more thing:  If the powers-that-be at Help Wanted require on the first pass a writing assignment from you, don't submit one.  Anecdotal evidence shows that doesn't ever ever ever get us anything, not a part-time, not a full-time, not a temporary job, not a client, not a new customer.  Look at it this way:  Both parties aren't taking on equal risk.  Those applying are taking on all the risk.