Keep on Top of Your Search – Tech and Record Keeping

One of the common comments that clients have said to me at the successful conclusion of their career transition is to say the best thing they learned from me was to keep good records. My usual thought is, “That’s IT? Nothing about my incredibly brilliant insights into how you pitched yourself, conducted your search, developed new targets, etc.?”  

I figured out a long time ago that one of the very few things you can do in the always nebulous, frequently demoralizing search is to try and control as much as you possibly can – when control is not at all easy to establish. So much of search is due to the vagaries of markets, uncontrollable events in organizations, some insensitive behavior on the part of hiring managers, and, unfortunately, much more.  

Maintaining great records helps you remember all the people with whom you’ve interacted, know the referral sources, remember suggestions and new referrals, note subjective reactions, and then be able to review everything every day. A measure of control. What you never want to happen is get a call at 10pm some evening to schedule a possible interview, and you have no idea who the person is and have no way to find out how you know them. Or, you want to review your notes regularly and make sure you’ve followed up, maintained relationships by keeping your contacts “warm,” and, obviously, follow up on a suggestion that might turn out to be significant.

Some have gone overboard in this respect. Many of my Executive MBA students, business school alums, and private clients automatically turn to Excel and create sophisticated databases, and sometimes spend way too much valuable time on maintaining the database – rather than getting out there and doing the essential relationship-building.

A client of mine, whom I’ve known for many years, recently shared some techniques with me, in the hope I might in turn share them with others. He was so good and adept with the technology and administration of data that, while much of it looks complicated to many, once in place it worked extremely well for him. His system was not a time killer. He wrote to me at the conclusion of a successful search and outlined his techniques in detail – not only record keeping, but several other suggestions for job searchers. I am grateful to him for his efforts in sharing.  

I thought it might be worth it for readers to consider some of his highlights – but please recognize that some of these techniques are not for everyone. See if any of these ideas might work for you:  

1) Apps/Products

Cloze ($20/month, $13/month for a year) – automatically picks up relevant records/files you have in Google Drive, Evernote, Gmail, etc.  Evernote is a special case; it will OCR all of your documents and photos. If there’s an article I clipped or a business card  photographed, it will pull those into the record for the relevant person or company.  

Cloze has a bunch of “smart suggestions” features. It can remind you to get in touch with people. When it detects a new phone number, email address, etc. in a contact’s email signature, it will ask if you want to change it, and then will do so if you agree. Among many other features (some of which you will not want), there is a browser plug-in to pull profiles from LinkedIn directly. Big time saver.

Stickies - I like this little app that puts virtual yellow (or another color) sticky notes on your screen. They stay "on top" but can be collapsed. Available in the app store, but is also automatically downloaded on Macs.

Things 3.0 from Cultured Code - This is, in my opinion, the best "to do" application available for the Mac. And I've tried quite a few of them. It is expensive because there is an app for Mac, iPad, and iPhone and each is a separate purchase. But I can't live without it. Available in the app store. (NOTE ADDED 10/4/2018 - I switched to Omnifocus 3.0. This new version is a major update and puts it ahead of Things for the time being.)

2) Online job postings

Google’s relatively new job search service is pretty good. Once you find the search criteria you like, I suggest taking the search string and converting it into a link you can bookmark and rescue.

I also find job postings on Indeed, LinkedIn, and Glassdoor to be useful. I don’t bother with the email notifications. They tend to get overwhelming.  

You will find that many companies use the same handful of systems for submitting online applications. But, for each company using one of those systems, you need to create your own user account. Make it easy on yourself and use the same password for every online job board. Not the greatest security, but otherwise too complicated to deal with.  

3) I can’t overstate the importance of the following tactics

Find a potential hiring manager, do a bit of research on them, and reach out to them directly. I’ve had significant success with this approach.  

You might be surprised at the responses you can get from reaching out to strangers asking for help (or market research, or due diligence). Of course, research is an essential part of preparing for contact.  

Don’t take no for an answer. I have gotten interviews after receiving a rejection simply because I kept trying.

My client had a lot more to say about other technology, in addition to what he mentioned above, and used it with great effect. I thought that it might be too much to include here, but I hope you get the idea. Again – not for everyone, but definitely worked for this client (and several others).

No matter how you do it, accurate and continuous record keeping is an essential piece of a successful search. 

The Summer Rant

I hear it multiple times every year from clients and students, at both the beginning of the summer, and at Thanksgiving. 

“What’s the point of continuing my transition process?  Everyone’s on vacation, not much is going on, so I think I’ll take the time off myself and reconvene in September (or January).”

Big mistake.  Aside from the fact that both August and January tend to be high volume hiring months, abandoning a search leaves the field to your competition.  Just because some businesses slow up during holiday/vacation times, doesn’t mean that building relationships stops. 

Your competition will be lying on the beach on the Vineyard, visualizing their energetic return to action in September.  By the way, September is frequently a tougher time to get things going.  Not to mention the loss of momentum involved, which makes things even more emotionally draining than job search usually is.  I’m not suggesting that taking a break during a search is a bad thing – it’s actually a great idea – but to lose a whole season when everyone else is taking time off is not smart. 

As a matter of fact, reaching people you want to meet might be easier than usual.  Things do slow up, but there’s a good likelihood it could work to your advantage. 

Yes, some organizations do get slow during December or late August, especially in financial services, but does that mean companies are closed?  Of course not.  Someone is keeping the place open, right?  There is some business going on.  And there will be, therefore, valuable contacts to be made.

It’s also easier to get people to spend some time with you at these times; the overall pace is usually slower.  Many would rather talk with you than work!  And talking leads to business relationships, which leads to effective networking, which…

Just in case your relationship-building does slow down a bit during these times, it is also a perfect time to do your basic research, stay knowledgeable in your field, utilize the somewhat empty business libraries (in New York City, for example, SIBL), re-think your e-mail writing campaign, organize your resources and records, and get a lot done.  We’re now in the period following Memorial Day.  It’s time to step it up. 

Don’t Stop Until the Door Slams (or Opens)

Private clients, business school students, and corporate clients have frequently asked a basic question about executing a successful career transition:  How many times do I contact someone I want to meet until I get a response?  Or, how many times do I call or email before I can get an answer, any answer, about the job I interviewed for?  

My standard answer is “Until the door slams.”  In other words, until there’s a firm “no.”  Or, we hope, the door opens: “We want to make you an offer,” or “I’d be glad to meet with you; sorry it took me so long to get back to you.”  We want that door to do something.  There are exceptions, as when you start to feel that it’s pointless or that the situation isn’t important enough to keep putting yourself out there.  Or that the job wasn’t that great to begin with, and the non-response is telling you something about the organization’s culture.  Career transition is tough enough, right?  Maybe you just are tired of going after that one situation, without any response, after you’ve tried so many times.

Many think all this persistence is standard sales technique.  In many ways, it is.

A View from Within the Organization

A while back, when I was a staffing officer with what was then called The Chase Manhattan Bank (employees referred to it frequently as “Mother Chase,” since in those days you could count on lifetime employment in many departments), I dealt with many external recruiters. 350 of them when I first started; no exaggeration.   

This was in an era of the brand new fax machine – the one that created an odor throughout the entire 22nd floor of 1 New York Plaza, which used a slick, oily paper roll feed.  The resumes from recruiters literally flew out of that machine.  And, unfortunately, the phone never stopped. No answering machines allowed in the office in those days.  They were considered impolite and possibly a missed business opportunity.  Needless, to say, no pc’s on individual desks yet (and, of course, no email).  

By the time I left “The Chase” after five years, I had learned an amazing amount about corporate hiring practices, i.e., networking, ads, internal referrals, logistics of setting up interviews, how to make which referrals to whom in the organization – and, most interestingly, how the utilization of executive search/recruiters works.   The recruiters exhibited a wide range of behaviors – relentlessness, dishonesty, misrepresentation of clients via doctored-up resumes, high quality clients, factory-produced candidates who may or may not have matched specifications, bribery of astonishing breadth (that’s a whole other article, but I must mention the word “kickbacks” here), and both excellent and terrible social intelligence.   

The most important thing I learned was that the relentlessness part was the characteristic that was most successful, in presenting candidates for open positions, whether or not we liked the recruiter. After the incessant phoning, the key was presenting quality candidates.   Some of the most successful recruiters were… obnoxious.  

I certainly wouldn’t suggest to people I advise that they become as relentless as the recruiters with whom I worked .  Unlike career transition, the chemistry between them and me or others on our staff wasn’t all that important.  I figured that out by the time I was about to leave the bank, and was training my successor.  He was surprised to hear that our “core” list of recruiters didn’t necessarily consist of people we liked; he was even more surprised that I couldn’t stand spending time with about 7 out of the 10 I worked with most.  I mostly cared about their presenting quality candidates for open positions.  Of course, that latter proportion is not appropriate for what we’re looking for in a career transition, where chemistry and fit are critical.  

A Recent Client Example

I’ve been working with a client recently who has a combination of strong presentation and impressive credentials.  She’s what I call a “walking unique selling proposition.”  Unfortunately, she is hitting her market at a time where the politics of her geographic area are having a profoundly negative effect on opportunities in her profession.  This means a rapidly shrinking market for her unique skills.  

She’s been relentless.  Not like the recruiters mentioned above, but in very subtle, sometimes indirect, always intelligent ways, which will work far better than the hard sell techniques I discussed when talking about recruiters working with The Chase Manhattan Bank.  

She was introduced to a major figure in her field, a man who could open many doors for her, not to mention that he ran an organization of great interest to her.    

The meeting went poorly.  Something was off, and my client couldn’t figure out what.  But the dynamic just wasn’t there, and the conversation went nowhere.  Of course, this happens frequently in any career transition, and you never know what happened.  Maybe the other person had a migraine?  Or just wasn’t in the mood for an informational meeting?  Too many variables to fully understand, unless you might’ve said something that you knew was off the mark.  My client had no idea what the problem had been.

I told her not to beat herself up, that bad meetings in this process happen sometimes, with no clear reason.  One of the hardest things in career transition is that it’s so isolating, and people end up ruminating about every aspect over and over again, which frequently ends up like an exercise in reading tea leaves.  Some introspection is good for a job search, but there have to be limits.  Otherwise, the whole exercise becomes self-defeating, and a job seeker becomes reluctant to risk making mistakes.  That fear, of course, could easily create a diminished search. 

My client continued her relationship building (otherwise known as networking), and oddly, two of the next people she met suggested she meet the man with whom she had had the bad meeting.  She was reluctant to follow up on their suggestions to contact him; I thought she had nothing to lose, and maybe he had forgotten the first meeting.  Her two contacts also mentioned that he was hiring for his own organization.  This was too tempting to pass up.  To hell with ego and fear of rejection.  

She contacted him and arranged a meeting.  This time was an entirely different story.  He did remember her, but the conversation flowed, and she now has a job interview with his organization set up.  She couldn’t figure out what had gone wrong in the first meeting, but it didn’t matter!  

Her persistence paid off in getting an interview for a job she really wanted.  Her key was to keep going until that door, in her case, actually did open.