Sorry, no guarantees

In a consumer society, it's quite customary to expect a guarantee when you buy a product or service. My new Hyundai water boiling pot, for instance, has a one-year guarantee, with conditions spelled out in a tiny book.

I can't say how easy it would be to collect on the guarantee, but it does exist. If my dentist makes me a new crown, and I pay a lot of money for it, I expect it to stay in place for 10 or 20 years, and would go back to ask for free repairs if it fell off in two weeks. Again, I can't say he would fix it free, or at all, or even that he'll still be a practicing dentist, but there's some reason to think he will try to fix his work if it's unacceptable.

So it's not unexpected that people would like a guarantee when they get help finding a job, especially if they are paying for the help. In fact, some trade schools do make guarantees: many TOEFL language instruction courses guarantee that the school will get you a job offer. Whether it's a job you'd like, or will accept, is another story.

In New York City in the 1980's a time of recession, I co-founded a career counseling firm that helped laid-off and/or fired high-level excutives make a career transition. If, as was often the case, a firm hired us to do outplacement for its "excess" executives, we would help the people in these ways:

• to come to terms with losing their high-paying jobs,
• to do a personal inventory of skills, talents, accomplishments and values,
• to decide what career and job to pursue next,
• to strategize and develop their job campaign,
• to prepare effectively for interviews,
• to do all that was necessary to get offers for new jobs, weigh the offers and accept the best one.

Nowhere did we promise to get anyone a job. In fact,we stressed in every counseling session that no one can get you the best job for you except yourself.

We also had private clients who came to us for the same kind of career help as individuals. Again, we offered to help in any reasonable way we could, but did not promise that the client would end up with a job.

In this sense, our counseling firm offered no guarantees, only that we would help as best we could, under the conditions outlined in the contract we signed with the client. We guaranteed that we would try to help, but that's a weak kind of guarantee to a desperate person who needs a job right away.

rushing to get a job

Because the rather bitter truth is this: no one can guarantee to find for you, much less give to you, the job that you can like and do best. This is something that only you can do.

Or, to put it another way, you will never be sure of getting the best job for you until you decide to do it for yourself--to do the necessary work of self-exploration, career research, networking, getting interviews, analyzing your suitability for and interest in a particular job, and so on.

One of our clients, a Frenchwoman living in Prague who wanted to establish her own design firm, got the message loud and clear--she commented after going through two career seminars with us, "it's up to me to take charge of my own career. No one can do that for me." She's launched her firm and is well on the way to building a clientele.

No one can guarantee to you that you will do something that you must do for yourself. A coach, for example, can urge an athlete to get into good physical shape, exercise properly, get enough sleep, keep learning new skills, and so on...but in the end, it's the athlete himself or herself who must make the mental and physical effort to succeed in athletics. The coach can make no guarantees to the athlete other than guaranteeing his or her own good will, successful experience as a coach in the past, confidence in the coaching techniques he or she uses, and sincere desire to see the athlete succeed. The rest is up to the athlete.

Barbora Spotakova, 2-time Olympic Gold Medalist in the javelin event

Thereare no guarantees for the most precious things in life: no guarantees that the people you love will always by in your life, that your best efforts will be immediately rewarded, or that you'll even live to see another day. No in one can guarantee you the job you can like and  do best, but you can get solid professional help to envision, design and carry out your career goals.

Patience and Good Manners

One precious asset in the job search is patience. By patience, I mean the ability to work steadily toward a goal in spite of an unreasonable emotional desire for immediate results. Very often, the most valuable things in life come about only after a long period of sustained work, sacrifice and humility. Getting a university education, building a marriage, raising children and developing a career all call for tremendous, ongoing patience.

The patience of nature: centuries are needed to produce a waterfall

Nothing is more harmful to a job seeker than displaying impatience. No one is interested in working with a person who can't control his or her personal feelings, unless that person is immensely talented or pays his or her employees very handsomely indeed!

Closely related to cultivating patience is the use of good manners. In any culture, good manners are based on putting the consideration of the needs, feelings and responsibilities of another person above one's own needs, feelings and responsibilities. Many years ago, the Copy Center of a university where Sara worked had a sign:

"Lack of planning on your part does not constitute an emergency on my part."

For the job-seeker to be able to act with good manners (rather than harrassing people to do what he or she wants them to do IMMEDIATELY) requires patience. And patience requires developing the ability to stand back from one's own situation and consider the pressing needs of others.

Patience also require faith that all will work well for the job seeker. Religious faith is quite helpful in this case, but other kinds of faith are also acceptable; faith in one's own capabilities, faith that good manners and courtesy will be rewarded, and faith that the current "crisis" is not so very important in the overall scheme of life.

a patient, old tree produces new growth

Another word for patience might be "perspective." By removing oneself from the center of the universe, a more balanced perspective gained, one in which it's apparent that personal desires are just that: personal. Such desires are not the responsibility of others, and should not be insisted upon, if one is to be taken seriously as a potential employee.

If patience in social situations is not possible, then the job seeker is best served by scheduling some quiet time alone.Taking the time to consider one's problems and opportunities in a peaceful, serene setting is very healing, and helps one develop patience and faith.

Patience and good manners are ancient virtues, but never more up-to-date than in the job search. Practicing patience is good practice for successful living! and good manners are just plain good sense.

The basic problem of job-hunting

This morning, Sara and I were talking about some of our friends who've had their fair share of job-hunting challenges. I have been thinking about this situation, and have come up with one basic problem:

"lack of fit between the dreams, values, skills, goals, and experiences of the job-seeker and the identified needs of the organization."

Organizations must be careful to hire people who will perform the functions and duties that the organization has earmarked as most crucial.

The job interview is the venue for finding out if various candidates, who may "look good on paper," really have the qualifications and skills needed for the job in question, as it is envisioned by the organization.


Due to this narrow focus on finding the candidate who is exactly qualified for a job, the interviewer has no time or interest in finding out the candidate's full range of abilities and skills. The successful candidate must severely tailor his or her "job profile" to fit the job description as it is written.

Of course, this presents an enormous problem. No human being is made for one job, and one job only. Every job-seeker has a multitude of job-related ideas, capabilities, experiences and potential for growth. The hard part is for the interviewer to see beyond the urgent needs of the moment (as the organization has perceived them) and probe to find out about the real person whom he or she is interviewing.

For the job-seeker, there is a very delicate balance between presenting himself or herself in the precise terms of the job in question, and revealing other important assets that may be of immense value to the organization, even if not at the moment.

Then there are the factors of chance, serendipity, conincidence, unconscious prejudice (on both sides) and just plain luck that usually tip the balance in any job-interview process. Even such intangibles as mood, the weather, and "chemistry" usually have more influence on the hiring decisionthan simple facts and verifiable skills.

The lesson is not to be discouraged if you are not chosen for a particular job. So many factors are in play that no one can predict the outcome of an interview. The best procedure is to review the interview with a trusted friend, to see if any glaring mistakes were made.

If you believe you did your best, but were not selected, let go of that job and move on. Time spent in self-recrimination, bitterness, anger and envy of the person who was selected is time that is mush better spent in refocusing of your job campaign and moving ahead with vigor and determination. Good luck!

from our files: a real-life job-seeker's dilemma

(Here's a real-life interview dilemma. It's based on a CV and cover letter sent to us by a person looking for a job. Only the name is changed!)

Dear Jan,

You have given me an interesting situation to consider! Thank you for letting me assist you in your job search.

Here are some quick observations. Please remember that these are just my opinions, but they may have some validity, as I have been reading resumes and advising people in the job search for 27 years!

1. Your writing style is very good. It flows well, and is easy to understand without being overly simple.

2. You have a real challenge in this job ad because it is so non-specific:

Vacancy description

XXX company is looking for bright, energetic, positive and determined people to join our vibrant multicultural team!

Experience is not necessary, but we do require:

- Fluent Czech speaker
- Open minded
- Positive
- Flexible
- Driven to succeed

Nowhere can I see what kind of job they are offering. I wonder if this is just a "catch-all" ad to gather resumes and review them, at leaisure, to see who looks interesting. This makes your job much harder, as you don't quite know which skills to highlight.

3. Which brings me to your personal dilemma. Your cover letter and resume portray a highly-qualified person with extensive experence as a translator, writer, crafter, etc. But you don't know, because the ad is so general, what to stress.

4. Therefore I suggest the obvious! Send them a letter which mirrors their ad. Without being a parrot, use their language to write your letter. At the same time, severely edit your letter and resume, omitting anything that's not asked for. This is a counter-intuitive exercise, as most people feel obliged to state everything about their abilities. However, if you do, you may end up overwhelming the person who's screening resumes, and portraying yourself as someone who is a potential disturbance to the balance of the organization.

5. So, if you decide to go with point #4, you will end up with a shorter, snappier cover letter--about 3/4 page at most. It will mirror the job ad, but do so skillfully. It will also offer intriguing hints that you may have more to offer than what's being stated. Your resume will be one page, at most, with only relevant information, written in bullet points. At the bottom you can say "complete CV available upon request."

6. In all my experience, both in my own career and in helping 1000's of people in their career development, I have found four key truths:

• your resume will most often prevent you from being inteviewed, not help you, as it will always include something that the employer finds irritating or irrelevant. You can't avoid this.
• employers decide on whom to interview by factors that are unpredictable--usually something that's familiar or that reminds them of someone they like.
• since you can't control most of the factors of interviews, don't take rejection personally. Just keep looking. The best way to get a job is by hearing about it from a friend, or by chance, before it is advertised. Circulating socially in a variety of situations is the best way to get an interview.
• to get a job, you first need an interview (see above points). But people hire people, not resumes, so the interview is your chance to listen carefully, find out what the employer needs, and communicate to determine if you can help.