Advancement
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When I was in my final year of high school, one day the English teacher handed me back a paper I’d written and it had a B+ on it. While there were a lot of classes that I would have been incredibly happy if I received this grade in, English was not one of them. In fact, with the exception of a horrible play I’d written for one English class, I hadn’t received a grade of less than an A- in any English class for years. I decided I needed to meet with the English teacher and go over this. After all, I figured something must be seriously wrong.
The teacher asked me to meet him for lunch, so a few days later, I was sitting there with the teacher having lunch. We spoke for some time before the grade came up and when it did I said, “Listen, I haven’t received a grade this bad on any paper I’ve ever written in any English class. There has to be some mistake.”
I then proceeded to list all of the other teachers I’d taken classes from, including this teacher’s boss who was the head of the English department of the school, and rarely if ever, gave “A’s” in any of his classes.
Incredibly, the teacher looked at me for a few seconds, grabbed the paper and crossed out the “B+” grade and changed the grade to an “A.”
“I know that grade was ‘out of line’ I guess,” the teacher said. “I just wanted to motivate you to try harder. Of course you are also going to get an “A” in the class. Just keep up the good work.”
I will literally never forget this episode because it was something I used in college as well. I would take a class with the head of a department and work my tail off. Then I would take classes with the people who worked for the head of the department. If I got a grade less than an “A,” I would meet with them and tell them about how their boss had given me a perfect grade and how well I had done in this class or that class. In addition, the more classes I took, the more ammunition I had. In every single instance where I did this, I ended up getting my grades raised from “B’s” to “A’s.” I didn’t know anything about psychology at the time. All I knew was that this worked. The principle was very simple: other people’s opinions about my academic work mattered more than the opinion of the people who were my teachers at the time. This sounds incredible and hard to believe, but this is something I quickly learned. Teachers seemed to believe that the opinion of others were more important than their own.
I can still remember some of the teachers’ faces to this day. When I would bring up the judgment another teacher had about my work who was considered better known, more influential, or more powerful than my own teacher, they would suddenly look uncomfortable. They would make loose statements justifying why they had given me a grade lower than an “A.” It was an incredible thing to witness, and it’s something I did several times.
Why was this occurring? Well, a paper is a subjective thing. The differences among them relate to things like the logic used in reaching conclusions, writing style, the ability to understand details of what is being written, and more. However, when it comes right down to it, the grading of a paper is pretty subjective. There are many obvious differences in the quality of given papers but, for the most part, the grading of papers is subjective. Therefore, the person grading the papers is often in a position where they are questioning reality and are unsure they are evaluating reality correctly. When this person is provided “cues” that outside authority thinks something is exceptionally good they will then follow these cues. The idea is that reality is something that’s quite subjective and providing testimonials or outside authority for people to understand reality is something that can be of tremendous benefit to helping you convince someone of your way of thinking.
In fact, all of us are somewhat confused about the actual state of reality and how to judge various things. We are always looking for the opinions of others, in most cases, to help us make up our minds. We use what other people think and believe to form the basis of our own opinions. We do this because it helps us make sense of the incredible amount of information out there.
I would like to reveal to you one of the most incredible tools for success you have available to you. I have personally witnessed numerous businesses and careers transformed by this tool. This tool can work for you no matter who you are and no matter what you want to do. If you employ this tool, you will have many more interviews than your competitors. You will get more job offers than your competitors. You will also look upon your job and the work you do as an opportunity to constantly build on your expertise and sell-ability. You will alienate fewer people along the way, and you will be more confident in everything you do in your career. The tool I’m talking about is PROOF.
About every 1 in 1,500 to 2,000 résumés I review has letters of recommendation attached to them. Some of these résumés also have one or two pages of references attached. Others have quotes from various people who have worked with this particular individual. These résumés always stand out to me. They are incredible because they give life to the résumé and much, much more depth than they would have without these “letters of recommendation” and other testimonials. Any evaluation I have of a particular individual is given even further credence by the recommendations of other people. In fact, one of the most helpful things is when there are recommendations by famous people. For example, if someone attaches a recommendation from a Congressman or a Senator, I am generally very impressed. The idea that a senator is writing a recommendation for me to review makes me feel important. We give a tremendous amount of weight to the opinions of others and even more to the opinions of well-known, important, and famous people.
If you do nothing else as the result of reading this article, get people who can be solid and important references for you in your job search. Get testimonials on your résumé or attach a page with testimonials describing what a good worker you are, what good work you do, and so forth. If you do this and nothing more, your job search will become ten times more effective than before. By this I mean that for every résumé you send out, you will be ten times more likely to get an interview than if you didn’t send the résumé. It is that simple. Testimonials and positive references are something that can bring you incredible results.
I know what you are thinking: what if you got fired from your last job? What if you don’t have any testimonials and solid references? What if you didn’t get along with all of your coworkers? Then remember you will have to fix this in your next job. You want to build up a long line of references and positive testimonials. Your entire career can be built upon a steady stream of outstanding testimonials. The more testimonials you have, the stronger your applications will be. You want the ability to stand out and get the same jobs others aren’t getting, and there is no more powerful way than with testimonials.
There is something in our genetic makeup that makes us extremely influenced by testimonials. I’ve loved watching how various people use testimonials for the longest time because of an experience I had when I was younger. My father and I used to take trips to New York from Detroit about once a year because he would need to go there for business and would bring me along. I was around ten years old. While I loved going to New York, the trips were exhausting because we would spend hours walking around. My father loved walking the streets and seeing all the sights and sounds. I will never forget one day when we passed a man who’d set up a small table on the sidewalk. He was playing a game where he would shuffle a ball between three different cups then have people guess which cup it was under when he was done. There were two or three people gathered around him who looked as if they kept winning money.
“This is fantastic! I’ve already won $150!” one man said to my father.
“And I’ve won $200!” a woman exclaimed to my father.
We sat there watching this sidewalk spectacle for a few minutes before someone said to my father:
“You ought to try it too!”
“Yes, start out with $40!” the man shuffling the ball around said.
It made no sense, of course. The man shuffling the ball appeared to be just standing there losing money hand over fist. My father reached for his wallet and put his hand on some $20 bills and was prepared to put them down. Instinctively, however, I knew it didn’t seem right. Sometimes young people can see things that older people cannot because they haven’t been so jaded by the world. I grabbed my father by the arm and pulled him away from the game. The man in charge of the game started coming after us.
“You have to try this!” he exclaimed.
For someone apparently losing so much money, he certainly was eager for new players.
I am in Las Vegas today and went to see Chris Angel last night. Chris Angel does all sorts of magic tricks. Over the past several years, I’ve been purchasing various books to learn about the sort of tricks he does and have learned several of them. The same books I read studying many of his tricks have also taught me about the simple science behind what was going on with the man with the ball under the cup on the street corner in New York. The man was using an ingenious tool of “social proof” and testimonials from others out there to convince my father it really was possible to win. He was giving fake testimonials, in effect. I’ve seen this sort of act occur on street corners in New York more times than I can count in the several decades since I first saw this. The reason people keep doing this scam over and over again is because it works. We are influenced by testimonials.
When you see an infomercial on television, they are using testimonials to influence you. Every advertisement you see on television, with limited exceptions, uses testimonials. The advertisements that run in magazines and are successful are almost always using testimonials to make their point. All of these people use testimonials because they work. The testimonials work because we are influenced by what others believe about something. You’ve been influenced by testimonials and are probably being influenced by them on a daily basis. I’m not just talking about testimonials found in advertisements. I’m talking about a friend of yours who tells you they used something and it works exceptionally well. I’m talking about someone you know who appears to enjoy using a certain product or service, which you also decide to use. We are incredibly influenced by testimonials and, like it or not, we cannot help it. Most of us give other’s opinions about things almost as much weight as our own–if not more.
If you don’t make use of testimonials, references and so forth in your job search, you’re straining to get work and convey your specific virtues in a way that makes no sense. You can have people do the heavy lifting for you by talking up your various virtues. This isn’t a job you need to do yourself. Let other people talk about how great you are. Others can easily make your case, and this is a heck of a lot more effective than if you try and do this yourself. Allow others to make your case.
Another powerful thing you can put into your application materials is information about your performance ratings. For example, “I was the top-rated executive in my division 7 out of 8 quarters.” There are numerous techniques you can use in this regard, but talking about what others have said about you that’s positive is enormously helpful. Including comments by supervisors in quotes such as “What Others Have Said About Me” then listing numerous positive statements that coworkers and supervisors may have made to you formally, or informally, can be incredibly powerful in making your case to a potential employer.
From the time I was 18 until I was 27 years old, I always did asphalt work during the summer. A good part of this work involved selling my asphalt service door-to-door in residential neighborhoods. I thought this was the easiest job possible. All I ever needed to do was show up at a door and tell people I’d like to do their driveway, and that I’d done work for numerous neighbors of theirs over the years and continued to do so. While it was more involved that this, using “inferred testimonials” of others was something that worked like magic for me.
I can’t tell you how many job seekers, salespeople, and others I’ve instructed about the power of testimonials. However, this is still something hardly anyone uses in their job search. I can’t understand why, but it is what it is. For someone in the sales industry, for example, using testimonials like this might double or triple their income. For someone looking for a job, they might get three or four times as many offers–or even more. The power of these testimonials, references, implied endorsements, and so forth is like gold. You should use them every single chance you get.
THE LESSON
Proof is itself a tool in your job search and if you employ it effectively, you will stand ahead of your competition. Reality is subjective, so providing proof in the form of testimonials can do a lot to sway someone to your way of thinking. Testimonials, references, and endorsements are worth their measure in gold, and you should employ them whenever possible.
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 : Advancement, Featured, Finding a Job, Keeping a Job
Tagged: career advice | a harrison barnes, endorsements, english teacher, high school, inferred testimonials, job search, job search blog, job seekers, letters of recommendation, looking for a job, use of testimonials
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Do not be distracted by your insecurities and doubts, or you will never achieve success because you will not allow it to happen. Focus only on the message about your skills and capabilities. Identify your goals and create a gameplan, and fill your mind with positive and hopeful messages that will drive you towards said goal.
In this article Harrison explains how you can ensure success in your career by externalizing your opponents. Your job is like a game; if you work hard, play by the rules of the company and are seen as part of the team you will be viewed as a valuable player for the company. The most significant part of any game is the presence of an opponent. Don’t look for an opponent among your co-workers. Never speak negatively of your team members. Instead, concentrate on the external opponents. External opponents bring you and the team closer as you work towards a common goal. In order for you and your company to succeed it is important to have an external opponent. Harrison advises people to consistently work hard and not participate in the politics. This is a sure way to score big in your career.
In this article Harrison discusses how people who stand for something always do better than those who do not. Companies who stand for something always do better than companies who do not. The most successful companies not only stand for something, but they are completely consistent with their core principles. This is what keeps them going and this is what makes them successful. One of the largest problems that people have in their careers is when they diverge from what they are good at. When you do not stand for something, you divert from your true strength. Everything begins to crumble and slowly fall apart when you are not doing something that you are really good at. The biggest success comes when you stand for something and are good at it.
Companies necessarily seek to employ positive, forward-minded people. A firm’s success depends on their employees, and they seek people who will enhance them rather than merely contribute to the bottom line. People with positive natures, who contribute to a healthy social environment, prove essential to the growth and success of their employers.
In this article Harrison discusses that the meaning you give to things will control the quality of your life. How we feel about ourselves is all due to what we tell ourselves certain things will mean. The meaning you give things is crucial for your career success. You need to choose meanings that make you stronger. You need to ensure you interpret things in a way that serves you and does not hurt you. You need to reach your full potential. Don’t classify yourself as someone who is not fit to succeed at the level at which you’re capable. You need to take charge of your mind to have the career and the life that you deserve.
In this article Harrison discusses the importance of ‘energy’ over technical skills. When people are hiring you they are purchasing your “energy” more than they are purchasing your technical skills. They are interested in your ability to influence the world around you through your energy. When you are marketing yourself and seeking a job, or working in a job, there are essentially two things you are marketing. You are marketing your technical skills, but more importantly you are marketing an intangible sort of energy. The most successful people have mastered the art of projecting positive energy. The better your energy, the more employable you will be and the farther you will go.
You can never become too comfortable if you wish to be successful. Your success will largely depend on your ability to become dissatisfied with your current position. Successful people are never satisfied with the status quo, and constantly push beyond their comfort zone. When do you this and succeed, you set a new standard for normality in your life. Be continually dissatisfied, and always pushing yourself beyond your comfort zone.
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.
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“Other peoples’ opinions about my academic work mattered more than the opinion of the people who were my teachers at the time. This sounds incredible and hard to believe; however, this is something I quickly learned. Teachers seemed to believe that the opinion of others were more important than their own.”
I think it’s a bit wrong. When you are deciding what to take for a breakfast, other people’s choice may influence you. But it doesn’t mean that other people’s opinion matters more, than yours. Also, it may work against you if you mention someone’s opinion, and that person is in conflict with your current teacher/partner.
However, the post is rather interesting, thanks for sharing!
Dear Mr. Barnes,
Your essay contains some of the best examples of “apples and oranges” analogizing that I have had the pleasure of reading. It is one thing to suggest to a supervisor that a history of past performance may be predictive of future performance; it is another to suggest to a supervisor that present performance should be evaluated not only based on past performance, but on someone else’s perspective of that past performance. I am frankly amazed – and saddened – that you had the misfortune to have encountered so many unprofessional teachers. While bias due to the “halo effect” is well recognized, what you describe is wide-spread, almost pathologic, lack of self-esteem and abandonment of professional responsibility. I offer my condolescences to you, on one hand, for the lack of integrity you seemed to have encountered. On the other, I suggest that the point of an education – and perhaps a well-lived life generally – is to benefit from as much honest, well-informed, constructive criticism as one can garner, rather than attempting to dismiss these opportunities for growth by perpetuating only the “positive” responses one receives.
Best Regards,
Harry
Your “piece” regarding testimonials was very interesting. In fact, I can see what you are saying more to my specific instance. I am an artist, a creative type, but a solitary person by nature. I forced myself into business to “make a living” and support my family and over the years, though I tried to succeed, and did to some extent, I continued my solitary ways. Eventually, through events not germane to this correspondence, in a general sense, I did not maintain relationships, lost my contacts and now, I am starting over. I can see moving forward how useful your words are, not in only finding employment but succeeding in selling my true self. The inspiration to look now, at the people around me, who appreciate who I am and what I bring to their life, is a good thing. Thanx