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Several years ago I was moving from one house to another, and I hired three day laborers from outside of a U-Haul branch, where I had rented a truck. One of the workers was a man with a strong European accent, who seemed very intense. He worked as fast as he could–practically running as he moved things out of my house and into the truck. He also frequently burst out in a paranoid type of shouting at the other two men, talking about how they needed to be more careful or they might scratch or dent a piece of furniture. In a nutshell, this man was trying to save me money by working faster and trying to prevent damage to the furniture. At the end of the day, I paid him much more than the other men. I also knew that I would hire this man again for any future work, given the chance. I appreciated that he wanted to save me money by working efficiently, and that he was willing to protect me. This is the same thing your employers are looking for.
In a tough economy there are many forces acting upon us, and most companies are forced to cut back. Businesses often start by cutting advertising and other non-essentials, such as company lunches and expense accounts. Finally, companies start looking towards your job. Employees cost lots of money, which means that eliminating jobs can save a company a substantial amount of money. This is why unemployment numbers rise whenever the economy gets tough.
I know the owner of an answering service, who also worked on phone systems during his spare time. I was speaking with him after September 11, 2001, when the U.S. economy was starting to slow down severely. I asked him about the status of his business. My estimate was that his answering service would be experiencing a dramatic slowdown due to the stress on the economy, believing that in a rough economy people would simply no longer have a use for answering services and would cut back.
“Are you kidding?” he said. “My business is going through the roof. Every business owner that walks by a receptionist and sees her filing her nails instead of working quickly realizes that’s not money well spent. If he gets rid of her and transfers all of the calls to an answering service, he’ll see savings very soon.”
This is the sort of thing I have been seeing in companies across the country, as we go into another economic contraction. This has a real relevance to your job, and it is career advice you need to understand. It is the difference between people who survive in recessions, who do well and stay employed, and those who end up being cut.
I want to digress for a moment and share with you a quick image. If you have ever been to Germany and watched workers in factories, you know that it is an amazing sight. As you may be aware, German factory workers are among the highest (if not the highest) paid workers in the world. What is so interesting about German factory workers is the incredible intensity they bring to their work. They are so serious in their day-to-day work that the difference between them and the typical American factory line is staggering.
However, the Germans also charge more for their work.
When a recession is at hand, or when an industry is experiencing a contraction, companies very quickly look to start saving as much money as possible. They look around to see who is working hard and adding value, and who is not. When my parents were in their prime, working in the late 1960s through the 1980s, most people would join a company and stay there for their entire careers. The United States at some point grew very arrogant, and its manufacturing, agricultural, and information technology sectors were pretty well isolated from the rest of the world–and from serious competition. Other countries in Europe and Asia still had a lot of catching up to do, while this country was awash in wealth and major waste.
My grandfather used to say that you should only buy cars made on Friday because the men on the line were typically still hung over from the weekend on Tuesday. This is literally something people used to request when purchasing cars made in the United States. This is an indication of how fat the United States had allowed itself to become during this time period. It is hard to believe, but true.
My parents lived in a world in which it was almost impossible to get fired from a job. When you joined a company, you typically had major employment security. There was a ton of money going around the United States, and it was obviously just a different time and place.
With the Internet, computer programming can be done anywhere in the world. Phones can be answered anywhere in the world. Designs can be done anywhere in the world. Engineering can be done anywhere in the world. Legal work, incredibly, is now being done everywhere in the world. This country is no longer isolated from the rest; it is now forced to compete with people from areas of the world where there are drastically lower cost structures. Americans’ jobs have become expendable in many respects.
This brings me to your career. In your job, you need to ensure that you are always providing as much value as possible. If you see waste occurring in your job, and you know the work you or others are doing can be done in a more efficient way, you need to point this out to your superiors. If you come to a realization that there is no way your employer can make money from the work you are doing, you should be concerned. This is not something that is in your best interest, especially when you think long-term.
In my career, I have seen plenty of people who have managed to constantly force themselves out of jobs. People who talk their bosses into one raise after another when times are good may find that, when the economy turns and the company realizes it can hire someone at half the cost, they will be out of a job. People who do not put in extra effort, or who create lots of waste in the company, may find themselves out of a job when a recession or restructuring hits. You need to ensure that you are always creating value–far more value than you are worth.
I once spoke with someone once who was telling me how everyone who did a certain type of recruiting received an annual salary of $80,000, plus a commission. When I did the math, I realized that it would be impossible for any recruiting company to make money while paying recruiters that much. Absolutely impossible! Why would any firm do that? However, assuming the firm did actually pay its recruiters that much money, it was certain that these would be some of the first jobs to go when times eventually got tough.
The people who become most impressive during downturns and who grow within companies are the people who point out cost-saving measures and capitalize on financial opportunities that benefit the company, not just themselves. I would encourage you to be one of these people. If you are a manager, you need to ask yourself if you can get more work done with fewer people. This will make your supervisors happy. If you are an extremely successful salesperson, you need to ask yourself if you can show other salespeople in your organization how to sell like you, and how to be more successful.
If you look around at your workplace, I’ll bet you can see numerous ways you could increase efficiency and save your company money. This is exactly what your employer needs to see you doing.
Watching waste and being vigilant about efficiency impresses employers and justifies your continuing, successful role in the company.
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.
Filed Under : Featured, Keeping a Job
Tagged: career advise, career blog | a harrison barnes, computer programming, economy, increase efficiency, information technology, job search, job search advice, legal work, new employer money, receptionist, recruiter job, recruiting
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Resourcefulness can make you better at everything you do, and separates the truly extraordinary people from the general herd. Do everything within your power to be resourceful in your job search, life, and career to give yourself the best possible chance of achieving your goals, and learn how to employ the resources currently at your disposal for maximum impact.
The most successful people in the world share the common characteristic of sharing, or concentrating on the value that they give back to others rather than on their own growth and profit. Focusing on yourself never leads to long-term success, but leads instead to unhappiness as well as emotional and financial challenges. Your greatest consideration, therefore, should be how you can contribute to others, and how your actions can impact their lives.
The best way to attain your goal is through small, incremental steps on which you can build. Establish a routine, and make sure you are consistently working towards some kind of goal. Start small, and always build upon what you have done before. Most people fail to achieve their goals because they believe everything should happen quickly and at the same time, instead of progressively building upon their past achievements.
Make sure that you are involved in groups that focus on positive things. Your success in life depends on your ability to focus on the outcomes you want, and the focus of the groups with which you associate will in turn shape your own focus. You must endeavor to always choose groups with a positive focus.
Everything you do is a form of preparation for your job interviews, as you are always under some form of scrutiny. The best employees can always spot other good employees, and you cannot “fake it”; merely doing a good job in your work is a form of interview preparation. Always put your all into your work, therefore, even if you do not have long-term plans to remain at your current employment. Switch jobs as infrequently as possible. The time to prepare for a job search is before you even realize that you need to do so.
Your greatest successes will come from some of the smallest actions in terms of meeting people. You will cause a “stacking effect” the more you meet and connect with people; conversely, people cannot connect with you when you are withdrawn and nothing will happen. You must do everything in your power to connect with as many people as possible.
When myriad candidates are applying to limited positions, practicing unusual tactics in your job hunt will prove far more helpful than following the established routine and waiting for positions to come to you. Much like in military strategy, well-planned and unconventional moves can help you conquer your goals without suffering significant losses. You can land an excellent position by focusing on companies’ needs, rather than depending on job and recruiting advertisements.
You can change your life forever by harnessing the power of persistence. Think about the people in your life, and whether they empower you or hinder you in achieving your goals. You must win at all costs, and persist until you succeed.
You need to provide people what they want, otherwise you will not have a job. Although they might not always be the most desirable kinds of jobs, certain jobs always exist because they provide services that people will always require. The only secret to continual employment is to provide a service that people always need; if you do this, and nothing else, you will always find yourself employed. Give people what they want.
Your ability to help people will determine the extent of your success; the more powerful and effective your help, the greater rewards you will receive. One of the rarest and most profound achievements is to follow through on your goals and create a paradigm-shifting idea. The more revolutionary your work, the more people you will affect and the more memorable of a career you will have.
You will greatly benefit your career by helping and promoting your company’s expansion. A common belief is that expansion is fundamentally positive, and a lack of expansion is fundamentally negative. You must be on the side of expansion rather than contraction in every area of your life. All employers seek people who will help them expand, and the more your ability to contribute to this expansion will provide you increased job security and a greater likelihood of being hired.
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.
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I read the article “The Power of the Positive”
By Harrison Barnes and I agree 99%. The only
area I disagree is that when someone is speaking
negatively, I simply state “Not so” in an effort
to turn the conversation positive and help my
fellow man (or woman). If after I make a couple
of attempts to turn the conversation into a
positive view of the issue being discussed,
then I will walk away.
I believe that “I am the light of the world
and the salt of the earth”…
…Merry Christams
This is really effective statement for everyone who do the job.
Company first start cut their expenses from other product like marketing, papers, maintanance, Electricity & at last your job.
So do job religiosly & make positive face in your superior mind about you.
I read the article “The Power of the Positive”
By Harrison Barnes and I agree 99%. The only
area I disagree is that when someone is speaking
negatively, I simply state “Not so” in an effort
to turn the conversation positive and help my
fellow man (or woman). If after I make a couple
of attempts to turn the conversation into a
positive view of the issue being discussed,
then I will walk away.
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