Employment Do’s and Don’ts
Employment Do’s and Don’ts 1 Comment
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In the mortgage industry, many jobs have disappeared. This has put tens of thousands of people out of work.
People who lose their jobs in the mortgage industry generally have a couple of options. Frequently, they look for a new job in the same industry, because it’s the industry they know. They do their best to network, and email their resume out to every opening they can find in the mortgage industry.
“The job market is really tight,” they will tell you.
They may get an occasional interview, but they do not get the job because the companies they are interviewing with realize they don’t have the business to hire them. They may also realize there is someone out there who is more qualified. The criteria for these jobs has become much more stringent. Eventually, after weeks or months of looking for a job, the person may say something like:
“I need to wait for the market to pick up. I simply cannot find a job.”
To illustrate further the current state of the mortgage industry, the headquarters of Countrywide Mortgage is located in Hidden Hills, near Los Angeles. As you might imagine, there are acres of buildings for Countrywide and other mortgage companies around this area sitting practically empty. Not too long ago, these buildings were filled with thousands of people selling mortgages to mortgage brokers and others. Now, most of these people are out of jobs. All around this area, businesses are closing and people are desperate. In the early evenings, if you drive by these Countrywide buildings, you can see inside. There should be hundreds of people, however, in most cases you see no one.
Recently, I was playing golf with a friend who lives in Hidden Hills. When he arrived to play, he was very upset.
The night before, my friend had been invited to a small party at his friend’s multimillion dollar house. The friend was an unemployed mortgage broker who’d purchased the house when he was employed and doing very well. He’d been told the party was a social occasion. Happy to go, he’d shown up wearing jeans. When he arrived he immediately realized something was wrong – his friend was wearing a suit, and everything seemed a little “too professional.” A few minutes later, he was given a brochure about some Donald Trump condominium going up in Florida. His friend started showing a movie about the development and began telling everyone at the party if they “wanted in,” he could immediately assist them with financing a condominium.
Everyone was astonished. A group of people who’d been invited to a party were suddenly being encouraged to buy and finance condominiums thousands of miles away they’d never even seen. My friend got up and left the party upset he’d been suckered into a sales presentation.
While I have nothing against aggressive sales practices, what this story represents to me is someone who is holding on to a paradigm that no longer exists. While people may have been speculating on condominiums sight unseen years ago, this is no longer the case. Here, the mortgage broker was doing everything he could to hold onto a profession and a life that no longer existed for him. This example is extremely important to understand because it has a lot to do with you, your career, and what could end up happening in your life.
From what I understand, the mortgage broker in this example was on his way to losing his house through foreclosure. His world was crumbling around him. Like the man in the store, he was making a fundamental error so many people make: he did not understand how to adapt to a new paradigm. Understanding your paradigm and what you do for a living is the most important thing you can possibly do with your career because paradigms are always changing. The sun does not shine on every specific type of job forever. We get comfortable with one specific type of job and believe we should always do this.
A couple of weeks ago, while shopping, I met a man who was working in the computer industry. He told me he had made over $250,000 a year just two years ago writing software for mortgage companies. Now, he was working in a store selling sweaters and shirts to men for probably no more than $12 an hour.
“There are no jobs for programmers in the mortgage industry,” he told me.
The man who was trying to sell mortgages and Trump Condominiums in Florida was in the business of sales. If he realized this, he would likely not be having the problems he is having now. He could apply to every sales job available and probably easily get one.
The man I met selling sweaters in the store was also in a business: The business of programming. Instead of applying to every programming job available, he was stuck in believing he was a specialist in programming computers for mortgages and, for this reason, he could not find a job.
In everything you do, you need to understand what your basic business is. Far too many companies and individuals fail to understand this. They end up “going out of business.” Some of the largest and most profitable companies in the United States used to be railroad companies. These were the “Internet moguls” and tycoons during their age. However, when trucks came along, none of these railroad companies entered the trucking industry. Instead, they clung to the belief they were in the railroad business. If they had realized they were actually in the transportation business, they could have started offering trucking and other transportation services to their clients. Because of their belief they were in the railroad, and not the transportation, business many great railroad companies ended up going by the wayside.
In your career, it is essential you realize what business you are in. You should not be blinded by the specifics of what you do and, instead, should understand the generality of what your specific profession entails. This is the way to stay employed, and it is also the means to continual improvement.
W. Edward Deming gives an excellent example of a time when there were carburetors in all cars. The people who made carburetors continued to improve their product. Soon, however, fuel injection was developed, and everyone stopped using carburetors. With very few exceptions, many very large companies that formerly made carburetors went out of business. They should have realized they were in the business of finding better ways of putting the correct mixture of fuel and air in the combustion chamber of engines.
Something similar happened to the makers of Swiss watches in Switzerland. The Swiss invented the quartz movement; however, they failed to realize the gigantic impact this would ultimately have on their business. The Swiss continued to make mechanical watches and market these even after inventing the quartz movement. Eventually, the number of people making watches in Switzerland went from 65,000 to around 10,000 in a decade. The Swiss failed to realize they were in the business of making watches and they did not take into account the needs of their market.
What you need to do in your career is the same thing companies need to do: understand your market. When you understand your market, you have the ability to provide your customers with products and services that meet their needs. You and your career are a product. You need to sell yourself to the correct audience and know where and how to market yourself in the best way possible. You need to know what your audience wants and requires.
In 2001, General Motors released the Pontiac Aztek. The car was voted the ugliest car in the world by the British newspaper, The Telegraph. The vehicle was criticized many times in Steve McConnell’s book about software design, Code Complete 2: The Pontiac Aztek and the Perils of Design by Committee. According to another commentator, Dan Norman:
In the mid-1990s, then-General Motors Corp. Chairman John G. Smale decided to bring the world’s biggest automaker a dose of the ‘give-the-people-what-they-want’ ethic that’d animated Smale’s old company, Procter & Gamble Co. And what the people wanted was sexy, edgy, and a bit off-key – in short, a head-turner. General Motors’ culture took over from there. Design would be by committee the focus group extensive. And production would have to stick to a tight budget, with all that sex appeal packed onto an existing minivan platform. The result rolled off the assembly line in 2000: the Pontiac Aztek, considered by many to be one of the ugliest cars produced in decades and a flop from Day One.
The Aztek represented all that is wrong with GM’s design process, that official said. The concept car actually did something few GM designs do: arrive before a trend — this time, the crossover SUV that combined the attributes of a truck and a passenger car. And GM had high hopes to sell 50,000 to 70,000 Azteks a year, putting Pontiac on the cutting edge.
Then came production, the executive said. The penny-pinchers demanded costs be kept low by putting the concept car on an existing minivan platform. That destroyed the original proportions and produced the vehicle’s bizarre, pushed-up back end. But the designers kept telling themselves it was good enough. “By the time it was done, it came out as this horrible, least-common-denominator vehicle where everyone said, ‘How could you put that on the road?'” the official said.
Sales never reached the 30,000 level needed to make money on the Aztek, so it abruptly went out of production. The tongue-in-cheek hosts of National Public Radio’s “Car Talk” named it the ugliest car of 2005. “It looks the way Montezuma’s revenge feels,” one listener quipped. http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/000321.html
In an oval office interview in January of 2006, President George Bush said he believed General Motors and Ford needed to produce “a product that’s relevant.” The idea of producing a relevant product is one of the most important things any manufacturer can do. Being a relevant product is essential for your success, as well. In a bad economic climate, one of the strangest things people do is try and continue being a ‘product’ that’s no longer needed. This is nonsensical.
You need to be relevant and understand what skill you’re offering. The worst thing you can do is not be relevant to the market you’re serving. It’s easy to be relevant when you understand what you’re doing and what purpose you serve. Being relevant is about much more than just getting a job, however. Being relevant also relates to serving your employer with the skills they need. You need to understand your market and what your customers want.
One of the biggest failures in my career was due to not understanding my market. When I got out of law school, I worked for a federal judge who had recently been appointed to the bench. My interest in this job was being brilliant and showing how smart I was, what a good writer I was, and how much detail I could put into opinions, and more. I did a very good job with the harder intellectual aspects of the work. The judge I worked for admired my intellectual abilities, but his biggest concern was for me to produce work that was completely error free. Because I was so interested in the intellectual aspects of the work, I did not always give him what he wanted in terms of error free work. This was upsetting to him. Because of my concern with the “meat” of what I was doing, and not the details, I ended up leaving this position after one year, when I’d been hired for two. Had I not left, I am pretty confident I would have lost my job. I was not giving my employer what he wanted and, instead, was making up my own rules.
The next legal job I held, I was sought out for my intellectual insight into legal issues. You need to know your audience.
When you think about your career, how often have you made up your own rules? You need to understand your audience. You need to know you are in the business of selling a product to people, and you need to give them what they want. You are a product, and your job is to give your audience exactly what it wants. This is the way to get–and keep–a job.
THE LESSON
Understanding what you do for a living is very important for your career. You should understand the generality of your specific profession. You and your career are a product. You need to know where and how to market yourself in the best way possible. You need to be relevant and understand the skills you are offering. Being a relevant product is essential for your success. It’s easy to be relevant when you understand what you are doing and what purpose you serve. Being relevant is more than just getting a job. Being relevant also relates to serving the employers with the skills they need. You need to understand your market and what your customers want. This is the way to stay employed, and it is also the means to continual improvement.
Read More About You Are a Product:
About Harrison Barnes
Harrison Barnes is the Founder of BCG Attorney Search and a successful legal recruiter himself. Harrison is extremely committed to and passionate about the profession of legal placement. His firm BCG Attorney Search has placed thousands of attorneys. BCG Attorney Search works with attorneys to dramatically improve their careers by leaving no stone unturned in a search and bringing out the very best in them. Harrison has placed the leaders of the nation’s top law firms, and countless associates who have gone on to lead the nation’s top law firms. There are very few firms Harrison has not made placements with. Harrison’s writings about attorney careers and placements attract millions of reads each year. He coaches and consults with law firms about how to dramatically improve their recruiting and retention efforts. His company LawCrossing has been ranked on the Inc. 500 twice. For more information, please visit Harrison Barnes’ bio.
About BCG Attorney Search
BCG Attorney Search matches attorneys and law firms with unparalleled expertise and drive that gets results. Known globally for its success in locating and placing attorneys in law firms of all sizes, BCG Attorney Search has placed thousands of attorneys in law firms in thousands of different law firms around the country. Unlike other legal placement firms, BCG Attorney Search brings massive resources of over 150 employees to its placement efforts locating positions and opportunities that its competitors simply cannot. Every legal recruiter at BCG Attorney Search is a former successful attorney who attended a top law school, worked in top law firms and brought massive drive and commitment to their work. BCG Attorney Search legal recruiters take your legal career seriously and understand attorneys. For more information, please visit www.BCGSearch.com.
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The ability to fit into your work environment is among the most important parts of obtaining and retaining a job, even more so than your skill level. Fitting in means nothing more than being comfortable in one’s work environment, and making others similarly comfortable. Employers want to hire people who will embrace their approach to business and the world on physical and moral levels, so you must strive to fit in with their worldview.
Focus on what you are doing, not what others around you are doing. There are people to take action towards their goals, and then there people who sit on the sidelines and comment on the first group of people. People who are mostly interested in gossip and watching others usually lack the confidence and determination to take action themselves. The most successful people go account and accomplish things rather than sit back and watch others make things happen.
In this article, Harrison advises you to live the lives you wish to have, do the jobs you want to do, and basically live your dreams to your best possible ability. Life is fleeting and no one knows what tomorrow holds. So Harrison puts forward certain questions – when are you going to start living the life you want and when are you going to take charge of your life. The time to have the career you want is right now, not tomorrow, and not later. You need to take charge of your career and life and no one else is going to do it for you. Your entire life and the quality of it is a product of your decisions. You can have, do, or be anything you want. Do not create alibis for making comprises in life. What separates the best and the happiest people is the ability to stop to making excuses and Harrison wants you to be this person.
Anyone can be up when things are going well, but the real challenge comes when things are not. Do not look at problems, which are inevitable for any person or business, in a negative light; think of them instead as challenges, lessons, or opportunities. There is a silver lining to be found in every problem, and finding that silver lining will enable you to grow.
Understanding what you do for a living is very important for your career. You should understand the generality of your specific profession. You and your career are a product. You need to know where and how to market yourself in the best way possible. You need to be relevant and understand the skills you are offering. Being a relevant product is essential for your success. It’s easy to be relevant when you understand what you are doing and what purpose you serve. Being relevant is more than just getting a job. Being relevant also relates to serving the employers with the skills they need. You need to understand your market and what your customers want. This is the way to stay employed, and it is also the means to continual improvement.
Things will not always go the way that you want them to go, so you must not be discouraged by adversity in your job hunt. When you persist and consistently put forth your best effort, things are much more likely to go in your favor. Also, you must resist others’ efforts to undermine your efforts and potential; focus instead on doing everything in your power to fight on and complete the task at hand.
Having a goal or vision will propel you towards greater career success and happiness. Without a purpose, you will find yourself depressed and ultimately fail to achieve your goals. Do not subscribe to the unrealistic problem that you should never have problems, but instead regard problems as part of your overall growth strategy.
Don’t ever give up, and make the most of the tools at your disposal. Take chances and invest in your best skills, and persist in the face of unfortunate events. Have faith in your considerable work and capabilities, and use them to create value for others.
In this article Harrison discusses what a good hiring manager should look for. Many people who make hiring decisions really do not know what they are doing. In fact, they often make mistakes when hiring. They put too much emphasis on skills and experience. But the single most important aspect of hiring is evaluating the person’s unique outlook on the world. If the person does not have a positive outlook on the world, he/she will bring down the morale of the other workers. The person will harm the company through the negative outlook. The key to success is having the power to stick it out in jobs and finding happiness wherever you are. Hiring people who do good work and are always able to find happiness should be the number one objective of hiring managers.
To reach the goals to which you aspire, you must compare yourself with people superior to you for motivation. Most people prefer to look at life the way they wish it to be, rather than as it truly is. Move out of your comfort zones and face reality. Don’t seek out or compare yourself with the average people around you, as doing so will only mire you in mediocrity rather than push you forward.
You can better market yourself by taking a stand against something. Peoples’ personal beliefs, including the things with which they do not agree, define who they are as people. Standing against something differentiates you from the crowd; when done in the correct manner, without disrespecting others’ opinions, such a stance can help you land your dream job.
Maintaining a routine in both life and work is important to success. Not only do you need to establish a routine, you must make that routine demanding and push yourself to the limit. Budget a certain amount of time each week for networking, applying to jobs, brushing up your interview skills, and following up with employers. Such consistent effort on a daily basis will make a huge difference to your career success.
A recommendation from a powerful person can make a huge difference in your job search; a reference from an influential person makes a tremendous difference to a prospective employer, and thus can be a major advantage for you. When an important person whom the company trusts recommends you, you instantly qualify for positions that may previously have been unattainable. Make the absolute most of your connections with the powerful people in your life, because doing so can instantaneously change your career and life.
You must plant seeds in the minds of others, so that they will be more likely than otherwise to think of you when a future need arises. In planting seeds, you are making people aware of what you have to offer; you must make sure that you are ever present in the minds of your potential employers. Planting seeds is the most effective way to generate top-of-mind awareness, and ensure that the right people remember you at the appropriate time.
Recent immigrants exemplify the benefits of willpower, passion, and excitement in the way that they work so much harder for their goals than the people who have been here for most or all of their lives. Like most Americans, you need to rekindle the spirit of your immigrant ancestors and become hungry for what you want. The entrepreneurial spirit that brought people to America has often faded over time; adopt the fire and work ethic of new immigrants in order to achieve your goals.
Determine whether you are a global or specific person. Most people are either too general or too specific in the way they treat information, and overly detail-oriented people risk losing sight of the bigger picture. General people are more comfortable in managerial positions, while detail-oriented people prefer everything to conform to a logical sequence. Understand which sort of person you are, and seek work that best harnesses your natural inclination.
In this article Harrison talks about releasing the lack that you feel, in order to reach your full potential. If a sense of lack dominates your thinking, it will affect your interaction with the world and how the world sees you. There are many areas of your life where you are coming from a position of lack. Your ability to release this lack and go forward with your life can create a tremendous sense of peace and more natural accomplishments in your world. The amount of lack that people see out there is profound and it has a massive impact on their lives. According to Harrison, the most successful people in the world see the world as a place of opportunity and not lack.
When faced with difficult times, you must develop the ability to transcend the trouble around you instead of giving up or assuming that nothing can be done about your situation. Keep your wits about you and take charge of the situation, and you will find yourself on track for constant improvement and career success.
It is extremely important that you enjoy your job. Most people find themselves in jobs that they resent, and eventually make this resentment known by appearing disinterested and distracted. Success comes from being engaged in and grateful for your work. You can define your job according to your own vision; you can either choose to engage with your work, or avoid and despise what you do. People recognize and appreciate those who are enthusiastic about their work.
Your résumé is an extremely important document. There are entire books written about how to craft them. I have written at least one myself. There are scores of résumé consultants, companies, and others that will work on your résumé for a fee. Hiring one of these services can be useful and can improve your résumé. Nevertheless, most résumés can improve dramatically by following the below advice.
In this article Harrison explains how you can do better in your career by selling. The most successful people are absolute masters at sales. Selling is among the most important career skills you can have. When you know how to sell something you can do exceptionally well wherever you go. Knowing how to sell something is a key to survival, advancement, fame, and fortune. Everything we do is about making a sale. Selling yourself is about showing others the value you can bring them. So package yourself to the best of your ability, always be at your best and sell yourself. Develop your sales skills and do not be afraid to sell anything. Whatever your goal in life, becoming an effective salesman will help you achieve it.
It is absolutely vital to be in control of your life and career. When you fail to control your life, someone else will step in to do so and fit your life into their plans. Understand that it is in others’ interests to establish control over your life and work, and instead exert control yourself over your life and the events around you.
Do not be a dabbler, or someone who turns away in the face of stress; the secret to long-term happiness is to instead confront and push through these stress factors. Do not be discouraged by difficulties, but find ways to persist and deal with the stress. Confronting problems head-on is the key to improvement, and will take you much further than the dabblers who fail to approach their careers with commitment.
In this article Harrison discusses how persistent pursuit of something you believe in, against all obstacles, is one of the most important keys to success. So many of us just decide at some point not to push through and not to keep going even when a little bit of extra effort would push us through. The secret to being incredibly good at everything is pushing through and getting better and better when others around you are quitting. Even while hiring, employers want experts and people who are the best at what they are doing–they do not want dabblers. They want to hire the person who is incredibly committed to a job and has persisted against odds in one direction when others have given up.
In this article Harrison suggests that you actually may be safer getting a job without the help of family or friends. It is exceedingly rare that a friend or family member will ever be able to get you a position. They may not even want to help you get a job for various reasons. Their involvement in your job search may actually hurt you. The organization may actually look upon you negatively if you try to use a friend or family member to get a job. So going through a close contact is often counterproductive to your job search. Even if you get a position through a friend or family member, you could harm your relationship with that person in the process. Your friend or family member’s act of kindness may ultimately unbalance your relationship. The risks involved in this kind of job far outweigh the potential rewards.
A powerful sense of self will make all the difference in your life. You must understand that your sense of yourself and your capabilities come from inside of you, not from the external forces that have brought you to your current place in life. What you feel internally might be completely different from what the world is telling you, and you must learn to focus on the former rather than the latter.
In this article, Harrison explains the importance of making an effort in your job which is way above what is expected of you. When you have been given certain responsibilities, it means that someone is dependent on you for certain things. When you fulfill these duties far more efficiently, put in a lot more time and effort, and even stay back on weekends and holidays to complete or do extra work, your employers get the message that you are sharing their burden of pressures with them and begin to place tremendous trust in you. This is what paves the path to your promotion and growth in the company. Harrison believes that you need to develop the correct attitude and possess an extraordinary work ethic to thrive in the job you do.
In this article Harrison discusses how resisting change and not taking necessary and relevant action can be the biggest obstacles to a better career and better life. Resistance is something that prevents most people from ever changing. Resisting change can be highly damaging to your growth in your career and life. Instead of allowing your life to be controlled by external circumstances, choose to take action and bring about a change. Conduct a brutal self analysis if needed, to clear the blocks you have in your mind and to bring about change that is necessary. Most people give up. They do not persist. You need strategies and beliefs that will allow you to persist and persevere, so that you can change. The best strategy is to be focused, and this focus will help you overcome the resistance you face whenever you make an effort to begin changing.
Adopting a positive attitude will always bring you closer to success, as nobody wants to be associated with a losing side. Everyone wants to associate with and hire winners, and avoids losers. Nothing is more important than maintaining a positive attitude, as many employers hire people based primarily on attitude; with the right attitude, everything else will fall into place. You must look like you are on the winning team, even if times are tough; nobody wants to hire a loser.
The past does not dictate the future, so you should not use inductive reasoning to make conclusions about your life or career. Recognize when you are making incorrect conclusions based on past events, and switch to deductive reasoning in which you are not limited by the past. You will find your conclusions to be much more accurate, and you will succeed as a result.
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I agree and also believe you have to redesign your strategy every year to present the information in a fresh,exciting new package.I am a high school art teacher,(subjects Arts and Culture and Visual Arts) also running a small framing business from home.Plan to study further soon. Want to link my experience with tourism and marketing.Contacted Travel Channel who gave me further contact numbers.Would like to present travel programmes about international art and culture routes.Do you have any advice?
Regards
Wendy