How To Have 10 Competing Job Offers Without Sending An Application
Between July and September 2011, I received over 10 separate job offers ranging from Maine to Boston to Chicago to Canada, from elementary schools to high schools to professional organizations to television studios to churches and more.
Thing is, I never sent any of these people an application or a resume.
That's not to say I didn't send out applications (I did, over 30 of them) however, not ONE of the applications I sent out turned into a hard job offer (one turned into an interview, with no call back)
Imagine how happy you'd be next time you're job hunting to have dozens of jobs come to you and compete for you instead of begging and pleading
How would learning this process change your life?
The trick is a simple word gleaned from the sales world: Referrals
In sales there are 2 main kinds of clients, "cold clients" - the kind you call or find out of the blue, (usually you can sell to about 10% of these people) and "referrals" - the kind referred to you by someone they trust (percentages climb to upwards of 60%)
In the job market, cold clients are jobs you sought out, sent an application and resume to, maybe gave them a call one time, maybe you even got an interview, but you are a simple piece of paper to them, along with the 40 or 100 or 1000 other pieces of paper they got, good luck beating out every other one by being the smartest, best qualified, most awesome candidate.
Referrals on the other hand, happen when someone who knows you hears about a job from a friend or colleague, and says "hey, ____ would be great for that, here's their info".
This type of interaction holds so much more weight than you realize.
Organizations don't hire people.
Get that through your head.
Organizations. Don't. Hire. People.
People hire people.
The person who hires you will be a real person and needs to be thought of and treated as such, they are not just an extension of the place they work for.
Since people hire people, you need to think like people do, and people do nice things for their friends.
Here's a scenario: you were looking for piano lessons for your daughter, and your best friend said "hey my brother just moved to the area and he teaches piano, I think he'd be great for you, here's his card"
Are you more likely to go hunting through the yellow pages, or call your friend's brother?
Exactly.
So how do you do it?
1) Give before you expect to get - No one ever moved forward in this world by being selfish, in the world of referrals it comes back to haunt you. Start by looking at the people around you, those you care about and those you are just meeting, and seeing if you can help them in some way, if they tutor math maybe you can help connect them with a faculty member at a local college, if they need a mechanic maybe you can give them the number of yours and call him and ask him to give them a deal. The more you do for others, the more they will do for you.
2) Eliminate Humility - I'm not saying become and insufferable arrogant braggart (like me), but I am saying to make sure everyone you meet knows what you do and that you are good at it. You shouldn't have friends that are surprised to find out after 8 months that you are a computer programmer, you never know who has an uncle in HR looking for a new recruit. When the inevitable "what do you do?" conversation comes up with a person, feel free to express your passion and drive and skill in your area of expertise. On a similar note...
3) Let People (Subtly) Know You Are Searching - No one likes to be beaten over the head with requests for help and pleas of "why can't I find a joooooob?" However, people need to know you are looking, so find subtle ways of slipping "I'm in the market for a new position" or something similar into your conversations, particularly with people in positions of power in your industry.
4) Stay In Touch With Your Network - This cannot be emphasized too strongly. Over the years (particularly in college) you will meet dozens and eventually hundreds and thousands of people in your field. Those who become fond of you should be getting a visit or a phone call or at the very least an email from you every few months. Just a chance to catch up, say hi, see how things are, and update them on your life. This will keep you fresh in their mind when job offers and opportunities come about. If you think your college professor will still be recommending you for jobs 5 years after graduation when he's mentored another several dozen students that are younger and more recent in his mind, you're dreaming. Keep. In. Touch.
By using these simple steps, you can go from living in your parents basement to having 10 separate jobs competing to give you the best package, as I had.
Now, living in Boston and taking advantage of 4 of these opportunities and the added pay, flexibility, and benefits that come from them knowing I could walk away for other job offers, I realize (as my phone rings with another part time job opportunity) that I may never have to send out applications again.
Reframe your life with referrals.
Having trouble getting started? Have a referral success story? Share it in the comments!
How to Improve Anything by Failing Brilliantly
I want to become a better writer.
In today's world, written expression is becoming more and more important each day. From resumes to professional emails to essays to proposals to online dating profiles, society is demanding you learn how to write well. Unfortunately we live in a culture obsessed with instant perfection and highly critical of any first fledgling attempts at skill building.
"I wasn't born with it"
"I just don't have that talent"
"I don't have a knack for it"
"I'm not lucky to have a natural flair like you"
We've all heard these sayings a million times, whether it's about writing, starting a business, singing, teaching, sports, or any other field where excellence is rewarded (hint: every field)
This is categorically UNTRUE
In reality, no one became amazing at what they do overnight, and no one has done it without hard work and practice and (here's the shocker) PLENTY of the F word.
No, not that, this F word is much more scary: Failure.
Even the stereotypical example: Mozart, the born prodigy, the child genius, put in thousands of hours of hard work and practice before writing his first real lasting work. His early compositions are mostly transcriptions and arrangements of other composers works, and in fact, his first well known composition wasn't written until his early 20's. Considering how often he practiced (his father enforced this strictly) and that he was writing music from such a young age, it actually took him far LONGER to become a success than most composers!
So what does this have to do with you, and how can you improve your skills?
Do it. Every day. And fail brilliantly.
When I last sent out a round of job applications I didn't do so with the goal of getting a job. Odd, yes? My goal was to get rejections. I can hear you now: "who WANTS to get rejected?" Allow me to explain.
When my goal was to 'get a job' I spent days crafting the perfect resume, writing and rewriting and editing and changing templates. At the end of two weeks of "job hunting" I had sent out one application. One BEAUTIFUL application, mind you, though not beautiful enough for them to fire the guy they hired 4 days prior and give me an interview.
So why the goal of getting rejections (specifically, 10 rejections in one week)?
It's harder than you think to achieve.
I had to put out at least 10 applications, and I had to do it quick. Once i found a lot of places weren't responding at all, I had to put out even more applications, and call back, and email, and show up in person, until I had a solid rejection. I had 6 or 7 solid rejections pretty quickly, but then an amazing thing started to happen, I got interviews. And I got second interviews.
And I got job offers.
Over half a dozen of them in a span of 2 weeks. The SAME amount of time it had taken to send out ONE application and receive ONE rejection when the goal was "get a job".
In the end I failed BRILLIANTLY. I have a label in my gmail inbox called "Failures" and as of this check, there are over 30 rejection notices from that round of applications, not counting the phone and in person rejections. While you can choose to focus on the pain of those rejections, I choose to focus on the beauty of having my pick of several fantastic competing offers in different areas of the world.
So how do I intend to improve my writing?
Do It. Every Day. And Fail Brilliantly.
Think this post was a brilliant failure? Let me know in the comments below:
A Choral Conductor Takes Up the Baton
I am blessed to be able to conduct the University Orchestra for a section of each of their rehearsals this semester. Last Monday was my first time in front of them, and it was fantastic. There were (as always) several flubs but nothing that required me to stop the ensemble. I was able to keep them together by giving them rehearsal numbers and clear cues. I conducted the second movement of Dvorak's New World Symphony, number 9. It is beautiful music and I could feel that the musicians respected me and were giving their best effort to the reading. I feel the success I had is due to the amount of preparation I put in studying the score, as well as the time I've spent in conducting study over the past years working on instrumental technique as well as choral. A lot of conductors say there is no difference, and in the essential framework, or 'home base' of gestures, there isn't a real difference. Beyond that, however, I feel a distinct difference between directing instrumentalists and singers.
The biggest difference is in the amount of musical training. The average orchestral musician has been studying their instrument for at least a decade, if not more. Many of them have been playing for longer than I've been alive. Some twice that. The average singer may have been singing since they were young, but for most it is purely recreational, and coincides with little to no training in music reading, technique or expression.
So the first road block to me as a choral guy in front of an orchestra is that many of the people I am to lead have far more experience, knowledge and musicality than me.
The other big problem is that orchestral conductors on average are far more skilled than choral conductors. This is undeniable and directly tied to the number of orchestral and choral conductors in this country. Almost every church has a small volunteer choir, most schools have at least one if not several choirs, and most universities and colleges have between 2 and 10 choirs. Many schools have bands but not orchestras, the days where churches had orchestras attached to them are just about dead, and even large universities have at most 2 orchestras with 1 being the overwhelming majority. With so many fewer spots for conductors in the orchestral world, obviously the ones with positions will be more talented than the plethora of choral conductors in the country. Many church choirs are led by people with no more musical training than singing in choirs for a few years (one of my conducting students directed a church choir for 2 years while in high school, never having had any conducting training, and having sung in church choirs for several years).
I don't think this is a bad thing, as the more people we have actively engaged in music making instead of passively observing the better. What it does result in is the (correct) notion by instrumentalists that the average choral conductor is not as skilled as the average orchestral conductor. So my big roadblock here was knowing that a large portion of the ensemble will automatically be looking for me to be a poor conductor because I'm a vocal guy. This is also a possible advantage however, because when people assume you suck, it's relatively easy to impress them.
In the end it went very well, I had a large number of players come to me afterwards and compliment me, and I had several people tell me the best thing a choral guy in front of an orchestra can hear:
"You were clear and easy to follow"
Solfege Hand Signs
I've noticed a lot of hits on my blog coming from people searching the term "Solfege Hand Signs" or "Kodaly Hand Signs" so I thought 'why not make a post specifically about it?' Before I spent the last two summers in Kodaly training at the New England Conservatory I spent 2 years teaching myself movable solfege. There were not any teachers at my school who specialized in this method and certainly none that advocated handsigns, so I was on my own. I got every book I could and watched youtube videos and scoured the internet to find all the help I could get, and after two years of hard work, became rather proficient in both movable do solfege and handsigns.
Movable do solfege focuses on the tonal relationships between pitches, assigning a syllable (do re mi fa so la ti do) to each pitch based on its location within a particular key and relation to the tonal center.
In a similar fashion, the handsigns give a physical and spacial representation to the pitch based on its location and relation to the tonal center. The syllables and handsigns do not correspond to absolute pitch names (C D E F G etc) but rather to scale degrees (the 1 2 3 etc of a key). Each syllable has a specific handsign that relates to it and the height of each handsign helps to show the direction of movement. Do is located at the belt-buckle, so is located around the chin/mouth, and high do is located around the forehead. Below is a wonderful site where you can find a chart showing all of the handsigns
http://www.classicsforkids.com/teachers/training/handsigns.asp
I hope this has been of some help to those of you who show up here, thanks for visiting!