Long-term affluence seems to have frayed the human wiring for survival.
If that wiring were intact, folks needing jobs would get them. Intuitively they would sense and carry out all the right moves. For instance, a few months ago I hired a contract writer, who was paralyzed by a stroke on one side. He offered to work free for a week as he proved himself. He did work free and did prove himself. His were the right moves.
I have to assume that a Greenwich, Connecticut former marketing executive didn't recognize what the right moves were and how to make him. Yesterday I read about him in an AP story on the unemployed. He didn't make the cut for selling gym memberships. I know the person who did. The guy's a hustler. He sizes up the situation and does whatever it takes to close the deal, including nailing down that job.
Can you fix your wiring? Of course. I did just that in 2003 after way too much success ate my business, my nest egg, my talent and my mind Download Geezerguts. Here are some recommendations. They have been effective with those I coach.
- Stop looking for a job. Get one. Looking for a job becomes an exotic art in itself, accompanied by joining networking groups, buying books on job hunting, and not missing one advice column.
- A job, any job, is a start. Don't pursue an immediate homerun. A job leads to a better job, then usually a much better one or starting our own business. No job leads no where. On the job we relearn survival skills.
- Try what zen business teacher Marc Lesser calls "radical openness." In his book "Less: Accomplishing More by Doing Less," Lesser documents how those who are open to what's happening in the now versus being busy busy busy spot opportunity and have the energy to exploit it.
- Position and package your sales pitch - in person, on paper, over the phone, through social networks - to demonstrate what you can do for the organization based on what you have accomplished in the past and present for other organizations. The new economy runs on results, not credentials. Yes, return to the drawing board and redo all job-search communications to tell the story of can-do.
- Adopt the stance of already being on the team, but don't push that too much. Use "we." Make suggestions. Offer to develop those suggestions, at no cost, more fully to submit as part of the job application.
- After each point of contact on a job search or the pursuit of new business, reverse engineer what you did well, what you could do better and what was counterproductive. Staying employed demands continual and immediate course correction.
Yes, we can change. We can relearn how to survive. The trick is being willing to let go of all those success formulas from a different time. What used to work simply doesn't, not any more. Here is an ebook with more than a million downloads on remaking ourselves for not ordinary times Download Savingsoulsonparkavenuekstreet.