What Color Is Your Parachute? (12 page)

Taking a civil service examination.
This has a 12 percent success rate.

Asking a former teacher or professor for job-leads.
This also has a 12 percent success rate.

Going to the state or federal employment service office.
This has a 14 percent success rate.

Okay, so much for the Worst Ways to hunt for the vacancies that
are
out there.

But now, let’s look at the other side of the coin. What are the job-hunting methods that will pay off better, for the time and energy you have to invest in your job-hunt?

Think about this in terms of
your personal energy
. During your job-hunt, your energies are limited (especially if the job-hunt stretches on for weeks or even months); so, it’s important to know which are the best strategies
that you should start with
, in case your energy runs out before you’ve finished working your way down through all the alternatives. Here goes:

1.
Knocking on the door of any employer, factory, or office that interests you, whether they are known to have a vacancy or not.
This search method has anywhere up to a 47 percent success rate. That is, out of every 100 people who use only this search method, 47 will get lucky, and find a job thereby; 53 job-hunters out of 100 will not—if they use only this one method to search for work.

What! This is one of the five best ways to look for a job? Well, yes; because it’s all relative. “The fifth best” out of all those job-hunting methods that are out there, isn’t necessarily saying much. Remember,
currently almost half of all job-hunters have been out of work for twenty-seven weeks or more, even though (as we saw in
chapter 1
) there are over a million vacancies that go unfilled, at any moment, in even the worst of times.

Our whole job-hunting “system” is so screwed up, that it’s a wonder
anything
works. So here, the facts are: 53 job-hunters out of 100 will still not find the jobs that are out there—if they use this so-called “one-of-the-best methods.” But to put things in perspective, do note that this method’s success rate is almost seven times higher than the success rate for resumes.
In other words, by knocking on the door of any place that interests you, and most especially if it is a small company, you have a seven times better chance of finding a job, than if you had just sent out your resume
.

2.
By yourself, using the phone book’s Yellow Pages to identify subjects or fields of interest to you in the town or city where you want to work, and then visiting the employers listed in that field, to ask if they are hiring for the type of tasks you can do, and do well.
This method works particularly well with “small” companies, those having fifty or fewer employees, and it has a 59 percent success rate. That is, out of every 100 job-hunters or career-changers who use only this search method, 59 will get lucky and find a job thereby; 41 job-hunters out of 100 will not—if they use only this one method to search for them. For perspective, however, note that by doing
targeted visits by yourself
, you have an almost ten times better chance of finding a job, than if you had just sent out your resume.

3.
Asking for job-leads from: family members, friends, people in the community, staff at career centers—especially at your local community college or the high school or college where you graduated—using your “links” on LinkedIn or from other social networks on the Internet.
You ask them one simple question: do you know of any jobs at the place where you work—or elsewhere? This search method has an 80 percent success rate. That is, out of every 100 people who use this search method, 80 will get lucky, and find a job thereby; 20 job-hunters will not—if they use only this method to search for work.

4.
In a job-club—a group with about seven other job-hunters—identifying subjects or fields of interest to you in the town or city where you are, and then visiting the employers listed in that field (the Yellow Pages, again, will help), to ask if they are hiring for the type of position you can do, and do well.
This method has an 84 percent success rate. That is, out of every 100 people who use only this method, 84 will get lucky and find a job thereby; 16 out of the 100 will not. That’s a success rate that is more than eleven times higher than if you just sent out resumes. It works so well because each of you in that job-club is keeping in mind the vacancies the other members are searching for, as well as for your own.

5.
Doing a Life-Changing Job-Hunt.
This method, invented by the late John Crystal, depends upon doing extensive homework on
yourself
before you go out there pounding the pavement. This homework involves step-by-step planning, revolving around three simple words: What, Where, How, as we saw in
chapter 2
(and elaborated upon, when you come to
chapter 11
).

This method has an 86 percent success rate. That is, out of every 100 job-hunters or career-changers who use only this job-search method, 86 will find a job or new career thereby.

Such an effectiveness rate—86 percent—is astronomically higher than most traditional job-hunting methods. That’s why when nothing else is working for you, this is the method that you will thank your lucky stars for.

As usual, it does not work for everyone—specifically, 14 job-hunters out of 100 will still not find the jobs that are out there—if they use only this one method to search for them. But—perspective again—this is twelve times more effective than resumes. In other words, by putting in the hard time that this method requires, you have a 1,200 percent better chance of finding a job than if you just send out resumes!

So there’s your list of the Best Ways of Job-Hunting: a guide as to how to use your limited energies best. There are eighteen alternative ways of looking for those jobs that are out there, but these alternatives were
not created equal. It can pay you big-time to know which ones are most effective, which ones are least draining of your energy.

As we saw earlier, job-hunting success depends on not using just one of these methods, but using up to four of them.

Alternatives keep you from “job-hunting insanity.”
And what on earth is
that? Well, it’s when something doesn’t work, and your response is to just try doing more of it. It’s the type of thinking that says:
500 resumes didn’t work? Let’s try 1,000
. Sanity suggests that when something isn’t working for you, try something else.