Before you head off to any important business or social event... and especially to any series of job interviews... always find out and commit to memory the names and backgrounds of the key participants.
Names, above all, you must nail down. Personally I'm no good at those "have-an-amazing-memory" courses that tell you to sear the letters of "George" into your brain by picturing a Giraffe Eating an Orange. But whatever works for you, do it. Nothing else so simple is so pleasing to people as knowing their names.
But Please Don't OD on First-Naming
Have you had formal sales training? If so, you're in danger of becoming one of the many people who've overdosed on the instructor's exhortation to repeatedly say the other person's first name. That gambit is now so common-and so obviously phony-that it's deeply offensive to almost everyone. You know the script:
"Well, John, that's another achievement I'm very proud of. You see, John, folks have always told me that I have great people skills. And beyond that, John, I was fortunate enough to have been sent to this sales training course-you know the type, John-the kind that not only makes you a great persuader, John, but also a truly wonderful warm, caring person. And that, John, is another reason I've been so successful."
Ugh! Bring in the next candidate, please!
Hang Up "Sir" & "Ma'am" with Your Uniform
Here's some advice I've had to give again and again to men and women who've spent a long while in military service... or who grew up attending one of those otherwise superb military prep schools. Please, PLEASE, PLEASE stop calling people Sir and Ma'am. Affirming with every utterance that "you're- above-me" is not necessary in the outside world. Until you break that ingrained habit, you'll never be accepted at the executive level in business.
Should you consider buying a franchise?
Here's an idea that many outplacement firms will bring to your attention by holding franchise fairs, inviting in franchise salespeople, and distributing sales brochures for franchises.
Frankly, I'm not keen on that tactic. There's nothing inherently wrong in telling you franchises exist, or in suggesting you think about buying one. But is that helping you find a job? Is that what your employer paid to have done for you? How is that better than the newspaper ads the franchisers are always running to lure you to the same spiel they'll give you in the outplacement office? As one national sales manager told me:
"Whenever we get into an outplacement office full of panicky unemployed executives with severance money in their pockets, it's like shooting fish in a barrel."
Of course. Far easier than corralling and pressuring the idly curious who stroll the franchise fair at the Coliseum on Sunday afternoon.
Maybe a franchise is life's perfect fulfillment for you. May be. But please, always be careful with your life's savings. And especially when you're uniquely vulnerable... out of work and bracketed between an outplacer emptying an office and a salesperson filling a quota.
Here are two rules for when folks yell, "Invest in yourself!" and then suggest franchises:
1. Don't risk your savings when you're unemployed, on something you wouldn't even look at if you had a good job.
2. Do work at least one week in a unit of the franchise without anyone knowing you might be a purchaser. Put on old clothes... drive 200 miles... stay in a motel… do anything necessary... to wiggle your way into a $7.90 an hour job behind the counter or desk of the very same outfit you're about to risk your savings and sanity on.
In at least one local office of one national outplacement firm, about one third of the executives who "found their jobs" during a recent year bought franchises. That is not a statistic to be proud of. Nor is the follow-up survey, which revealed that two years after buying their franchises, two-thirds of all the outplaced purchasers were unhappy with their businesses, or had gone belly-up, or had unloaded them (usually at severe losses).
"The Hidden Job Market"
This is a book of plain talk.
I can't close this miscellaneous article without mentioning a term you'll often hear in the context of executive job-hunting. It's often used by various people-some of them quite unscrupulous-to mean different things.
The most prevalent and legitimate meaning is the shadowy world of job openings not yet referred to recruiters or advertised in newspapers or on the Web. However, some users expand the expression to include jobs-that-aren't-jobs- yet... situations where there's nagging dissatisfaction with the incumbent, but not yet a firm decision to fire. Also, where a need to add a new position is felt, but not yet formalized as an empty box on the organization chart.
Obviously, it's a good idea to discover such situations before others have beaten a path to them. And as long as "The Hidden Job Market" is merely a sexy way of saying "go-straight-to-the-employer-and-quickly" through direct mail and networking, it's certainly a valid concept, even if overly hyped.
The problem comes when "executive-marketing" companies try to extract big money from you or your employer because they propose to "Introduce You to the Hidden Job Market." The clear implication is that there's an undisclosed supply of real jobs which they know about and you don't. And you'll never find those jobs unless they tell you. And they won't tell you unless they're paid a stiff fee.
After all that build-up, "The Hidden Job Market," being such a little idea with such a big bold name, becomes deceptive... or at least very disappointing. You feel "ripped off," when your "introduction" inevitably turns out to be nothing more than a description of networking and direct mail techniques.
