You are here: Home / Archives for Keeping Your Psyche Strong

Redefining “Success” During Job Search

September 21, 2010 By

During my first job search I equated success to landing a new position.  It seemed a reasonable position, in that it’s what I was trying to accomplish.

Before continuing to read, how have you defined success in your job search?

As my search carried on, I never seemed to have a sense of satisfaction.  When I was working, I gained satisfaction from completed items or witnessed success.  But it took a meeting with a colleague to help me realize that I did not feel the same in search simply because of my definition of success.

A friend of mine, Jim Rasmussen, who has spent his career in Sales and Sales coaching, clued me into the mindset of a Rainmaker.  While ultimately judged on completing the sale, the Rainmaker knows the sales cycle can be long – so they look at the accomplishments that get them closer to a decision as victories. 

This viewpoint is important to maintaining your best work as the sales process can be long, tedious, filled with stalls and capricious behavior of the corporate buyers.  (Feel familiar my fellow job seekers?)

Jim’s lesson was that these little victories add up over time and celebrating these victories is important to keeping your psyche strong.  Once I adopted my new definition of ‘success’, I got greater satisfaction in networking and job search.

Professional sales folks have a variety of tools to track their success, so I tried to figure out how to ‘track’ my search.  I searched around for a simple solution and found the Daily Point System devised by Jeffrey Fox for his book “How to Become a Rainmaker”.   I made a few adaptations for search and sent a copy to Jeffrey and asked if could share it – thankfully he agreed.

The goal of the point system is time management and to help focus your networking on those that move you closer to a decision maker.  After using it for about three weeks, I found my successes were more rapid – simply because I was networking with the appropriate people.  I was doing the same amount of networking; I just got more out of it.

Another practice I adopted was every Friday to write down three successes I had during the week.   I kept a running list and it served a good boost to the psyche as I added to the list.

To see Jim’s profile or the “Daily Point System”, please see the links below.

Good luck today!

Mark

Jim’s profile: http://www.linkedin.com/in/jimras/

Daily Point System: http://candidateschair.com/tools/ – See Tool #11.

Filed Under: General Tagged With: , ,

A Reason to Feel Proud

July 3, 2009 By

A job search is a battle of inches.  But each inch earned can make a huge difference.

Each networking meeting, e-mail or phone call, will hopefully gain you a few more inches to get someone to know you are looking, to hear about opportunities or get the right information.

At any given moment, the inch gained may not seem like much.  They are easy to lose sight of, especially with all the pressure of financial, family, etc.

But each day, you need to be proud of keeping your focus and working a plan.  You will find the inches add up, especially if they are built alongside those you helped other obtain. 

How my inches came together:

I shared this site with a colleague.  He forwarded a note to his networking group.   A member sent me a nice note.  I responded with a ‘thank you’ and mentioned I was looking for a CFO role.  He responded that they were looking for a CFO.  Two weeks later I started.

This may sound like a crazy chain of events.  But after three years of being involved in search and transition groups, I can tell loads of stories where it was two or three events that resulted in a new role.

Be proud of the inches gained and what you’ve shared.  A strong spirit is more important than a strong resume if you are going to present yourself as the best candidate.

Filed Under: J. Keeping Your Pysche Strong Tagged With: ,

The Art of Settling for Less than Expected

July 3, 2009 By

At my monthly job transition group we had a discussion about accepting a role that is less than or outside what you seek.

Several folks have faced this situation and the general consensus was as follows:

If financial state requires it:

 Go ahead, but remember it’s only a temporary situation, so don’t stop networking – you’ll have to likely keep it to early morning coffees and lunches. 

If possible, try to get a role where you’ll do well – so you build some goodwill among your new colleagues and who knows what might happen within that firm.

If emotional state or home situation requires it:

Go ahead, but only if you can absolutely ace the job and exceed expectations.

Accepting a job so far below what you held previously held or outside your area of experience will likely find you not performing well and back on the street with a hole in your resume and no references from the position.

Good advice from fellow candidates who have faced this tough decision.

 

Filed Under: J. Keeping Your Pysche Strong Tagged With: ,