How To Get A Job In A Bad Economy

As I talk about in my article “how to get any job you want”, you must make yourself stand out from the competition. This is especially true in an economy that is still shedding jobs and contracting in many sectors. You are competing against other people who are way more experienced than you, and they are willing to work for less than what they are worth/used to making because they simply haven’t found a job doing what they really want.

Companies have their pick of potential prospects. Highly overqualified people are applying for lower paying jobs than they would normally take in a booming economy. Some people graduating college with tons of debt are having a really hard time getting an entry-level job.

In my previous companies when I was looking to fill the sales or other position with a highly qualified and highly motivated person, I always hired people who were “kicking my door down” to get me to hire them. They would show up personally to my office sharply dressed, kind and polite attitude, their resume in hand, and ask the receptionist if they could speak to one of the owners or the person who was in charge of hiring. People who were persistent, whose resumes were perfect and not full of typos. Even if they showed up when we were not hiring, they would always follow-up every few weeks or months to see if anything had opened up. Some of them chased me for a job for six months to a few years before I would give them a shot.

When I hired people who were “kicking down my door”, they always worked just as hard to take care of our customers once I hired them, as they worked to get hired. Times when I would hire people where we had to call and follow up with them and make appointments with them, those people most often than not never worked out. This was especially true when I hired those kinds of people for a sales position. People who were not aggressive and didn’t follow up diligently to get a job, would do the same with clients. They were always the ones that had complaints from customers about their lack of service or poor service, and their sales were always horrible. It was always because the leads sucked in their opinion when asked what they thought the reason was why they could not close the same leads everyone else was. I spent over $50,000 a month on television advertising to make sure the phone rang and we had plenty of leads from our website to keep people busy closing deals. Aggressive self-motivated outgoing and friendly people always worked out great.

So from an employer’s perspective and in this economy when you put a simple ad in the paper, you get hundreds of phone calls and hundreds of resumes e-mailed to your office. Who has the time to wade through that? If you are looking to get a job, that’s what you’re competing against. By being aggressive and following up, you will be doing what 99.9% of the other people who are trying to get a job are not doing. Therefore, you will be the one to get interviews and ultimately land the job you want.

Here’s an e-mail I got from a reader and twitter follower who is struggling to find a job in his field of study. My comments are (in bold brackets like this) in the body of his email:

Corey,

Thanks for the follow on Twitter. I’ve been going through a ride the past few months. Specifically with landing a job in my field of study. I just wrote my Level II of my CFA designation, and have applied to numerous online jobs, which I hate doing. I feel sick thinking about searching online for jobs, but unfortunately that’s the way the world works now.

I feel lost, and I don’t really know what to do. As much as I hate to admit it, and seek some help/advice.

What are your thoughts? (read my article “how to get any job you want” and make sure you choose a job and company that is EMOTIONALLY COMPELLING to YOU) You need any more info? Is there a questionnaire that I could fill out so you get to know more about me?

Thanks for your time.

Tom

“There is always a way-if you’re committed.”-Tony Robbins