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Early in my career I used to work directly with attorneys who had lost their jobs or were having extreme difficulty finding their first job. If certain people were persistent enough, and I saw they had real potential, I would generally invite them into my office and offer them work for some time to keep them going.
I was not offering them work because they needed the money—most had enough money to survive. Instead, I would offer them work because I knew they needed to be around people in order to get through what they were going through. They needed to feel connected to others around them.
More than money or prestige, the most important component of work is the quality of connection we get with others through it.
Someone who is confused and let down by the work world will undergo a complete change once they are able to be part of a work environment and start feeling connected with others. For most people, nothing is worse than feeling and being alone—and not having a group. Everyone needs a group to belong to.
Losing a job is among the most difficult things that can happen to anyone; however, I do not believe it is the financial impact of losing the job or not being employed that is most painful for people. Instead, the biggest pain comes from the lack of connection the person experiences to those around them. Not being allowed to participate in the activities of the group can be extremely painful.
One of my favorite movies is About Schmidt with Jack Nicholson. The movie is about a man who retires from his job and struggles for connection with others. He sponsors a young boy, Ndugu, a six-year-old Tanzanian boy. He writes the boy letters and much of the story takes the form of his letters to Ndugu. When his wife dies, Schmidt decides to go on the road in a thirty-five-foot Winnebago. He feels extremely alone and struggles to find a connection with the world and people around him. He struggles with rage, depression, and all sorts of emotions that the viewer is led to believe he was not facing before his retirement and the death of his wife.
Ultimately, the movie shows that Schmidt never was connected to others and never realized he was lonely when he was busy going into the office each day. After a long career, he suddenly realizes he had security in his job as an actuary but was not really valued by others and never really had a connection. Without his job and wife, he realizes how important connection with others is and the fact that he no longer has it.
A few years ago, I was spending a lot of time at work. I had all sorts of people doing various jobs in the office, and frankly, there were people doing jobs that did not need to be done. It is bad management when you have more people than you need–but as a young manager I did not understand it at the time. I was eager to hire people and put them to work—even people I did not need. I was seeking connection.
One day, my ex-wife said something to me I will never forget:
“You have so many people working there, you like hanging out with all those people. You do not need most of them—you just enjoy the company.”
At the time, a part of me instinctively knew that she was 100% right. I was running a business that could be much more profitable if it had fewer people—but I enjoyed having a lot of people around. It was as if I had made my office into a social arena.
This was during the “dot-com” era, and I made the office a great social place to work. We had fridges filled with soda and beer. We had a Starbucks coffee machine before Starbucks was popular. Dart boards, pool tables, Ping-Pong tables, and foosball tables were scattered throughout the office.
Going to work was a ton of fun and I enjoyed it a great deal. Very often, the whole company went out together after work. As hard as it is to believe, people often worked on Sundays because it was fun just hanging out in the office. Connection, friendships, and so forth were highly valued.
Work had been turned into a place of connection and fun. There was very little that might be considered “impersonal” and “professional” about the office. Instead, people were able to connect with others around them. Thinking back on these times, the sense of connection I and everyone else got at work was very enjoyable and made work a great place. Life is more enjoyable when we are connected to others.
Something very interesting about people who achieve the most success in their careers is that they are often the most alone. They are focused on being extremely successful and this success serves to separate them from others. Instead of making them more liked, or more connected, they generally lose a sense of connection with those around them because they are so “special.” People treat them differently, isolate them, and only connect to them on a superficial level—where they may be trying to get something from them. This is not connection and people who become extremely successful often know this.
The cast of famous people who lacked a connection with others is legendary. One example is Michael Jackson, who ended up spending most of his time with young children. He felt these were the only people he could connect with. When someone feels isolated and disconnected, all sorts of strange things can happen.
People seek connection in innumerable ways and they really need it. When people do not feel connected to others, they may join radical organizations, gangs, or something similar, to get that feeling of connection. Most people do not get up one day and think that they want to be part of a white supremacist organization, for example. They end up joining the organization and adopting its beliefs because the members of the group accept them and provide them a sense of connection.
People will go to great lengths to be connected with others. Some gangs have used rituals such as the “blood in” that require the killing of another person (sometimes a complete stranger) in order to complete the initiation and be accepted as part of the group.
The need people have to be connected with others is extremely deep, though. We have religions, churches, community groups, schools, sports teams, and more. Friendships and sex are about connection. Most of our jobs are, of course, about connection. If you look around, the odds are very good you will see the many ways you are trying to connect with others in your life and how much you need this connection.
To be successful—and happy in your career—it is important that you work with those you feel you can connect with. Many people believe a key to success is being different and unique. To some extent it is good to be different and unique; however, if you are too different and unique, you will never be connected to others as much as you could be otherwise. Being different separates you from other people.
Because the need to be connected with people is so important, you should understand that one of the main needs most people have from work is to connect with others. Perhaps it is on the phone, in person, or otherwise, but we all require connection. You need to ensure you have this connection with others in your work because everyone needs it and requires it.
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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, The Role of Jobs in Today’s World
Tagged: apply for a job, attorney jobs, attorney search, career advice, community groups, finding jobs, job blog | a harrison barnes, job search, legal career, legal profession, losing a job, sense of connection, sorts of emotions
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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 can totally relate to this article. I am an immigrant who moved to the USA about 12 years ago…When I got laid off back in 2008 I was partly hurt because I had never been let go before. But, I was felt really good because I had no true connection with most of the people I worked with…Even though I went to college and Law School, there is still a lot about American pop culture that I don’t know and I always felt as an outcast at times…
This article will definitely help me focus in my job search and remind me to get a sense of who the people of the firm I am interviewing are like and whether I could connect to them somehow…