My client Paul, a Chief Operating Officer, found himself unemployed when his position was eliminated after his company’s acquisition and merger early this summer. From our first coaching conversation, I felt he would be getting in his own way with a perception that was a double-edge sword:
- His perception that he should confine his networking to associating with other executives.
- His perception that his unemployment was an embarrassment to be kept secret.
Paul’s mindset was severely limiting his networking possibilities and his windows of opportunity.
· Connect across boundaries
Paul’s not alone. Many job seekers—particularly executives, are often inclined to want to network only with other executives. Bad idea! Over many years as a coach, I’ve helped recently- and involuntarily unemployed executives. They often came to me with a notion that their job-search support had to be within the confines of the executive circle. They turned down participation in outplacement which had them in the trenches.
To be fair and clear, they weren’t turning up their noses at non-executives in a similar situation; they just had the false idea that only those at their levels and roles could really be of help in the job search. It goes deeper than that. This way of thinking was often shaped earlier during their employment. It was reflected in executive-level training programs, in meetings, in who they had lunch with; you get the gist. I’m not judging here. I get it. If this is you and you’re comfortable with sticking to it, do.
But here’s the deal. If you are an executive in job search mode and you conduct your networking in a segregated manner, you will frankly miss a lot of useful information—resources to leads. Paul began to connect across job role or level, class or generational lines. He talked to everyone from his former CEO to his former assistant; to a circle of people that included his minister and his butcher. He found that there is no correlation between the source of information and the value of that information.
· Come out of the closet
When you are in a job search, you are in a marketing campaign. Don’t hide it! This is important:
Everyone you know should know that you’re in the job market,
your talents and your targets.
Then ask,
“Who else do you know that I should talk to?”
I saw a client’s ah-hah experience with this about a year ago. A friend of mine, Patty, called me one night. She was worried about her fiancé, Dan, a CFO who had since she’d known him, been a confident leader and extravert, always up for a challenge and typically a positive guy. This wasn’t the guy she was seeing now. Dan’s employer, a manufacturer in the construction industry, had suffered some blows in the recession two months prior; Dan was one of the victims. Patty said that Dan seemed withdrawn, reserved and unengaged. She confided that one of her red flags was that he had not been telling anyone he was unemployed. When asked, he was saying “Oh, I’m working on some initiatives I can’t really talk about.” Anyone hearing that would naturally assume he was working. Who would think to help him even if they had help to offer? No one, of course.
As a gift, Patty gave him a career package and reluctantly, Dan began working with me. By that time, he had three months of unemployment under his belt. During this time, he had spent most of his search time at his computer, applying for advertised openings. He had no LinkedIn presence—no social media presence at all other than outdated content about his former employer (which still mentioned him as CFO). His days consisted largely of receiving “thanks, but no thanks” letters—sometimes. More often, he heard nothing. He had sent out about 100 resumes; he had zero interviews. His search was as dead as a doornail. It drained him physically and emotionally; and it was a vicious cycle, because he changed nothing to show he was on the market!
Through our conversations, I learned that Dan was telling Patty even less than she realized. I listened in disbelief when Dan told me that he had been in a men’s vocal group for years. They practiced twice a week and performed around town. Not one of his fellow singers had a clue he was on the hunt for a new career opportunity.
Dan and I developed his positioning statement that clearly articulated to folks that he was a talented CFO, an available one—and for what! He used it repeatedly in mock role-play scenarios with me. I could hear the octave-lift in his voice. He said he felt ready to restart his search with newly-found energy and confidence. He committed to it. He fleshed out his strategies and a plan, including a detailed networking map of every person he’d ever worked with. One by one, he contacted them. And he let the guys in his singing group know exactly what was going on. He said that was very liberating. No one in the group was in a position to hire him. But to a person, they had tips, names and support resources. One of those tips led to a controller job with a building materials distributor. It was a landing he would not have made, had he not talked to people outside his executive circle; and more importantly, not talked to people, period!
Photo: Brett Jordan
