Drucker, ‘the man who created modern management’, said that top managerial performance is incompatible with fear of job loss. For this reason alone, knowing how to get a job quickly is something that both individuals and their organizations should have a common interest in.
My first book The executive’s guide to finding a superior job, became a best seller because I was able to integrate Drucker’s methods with my real-life experiences as an executive recruiter. One book review in the Chicago Tribune noted that my methods approached job seeking as a business and these methods worked well because they were already proven for effective management. The book sold over 100,000 copies and got me started writing about management, even as I practiced it.
That book is long out of print and many of the methods I introduced for job finding are outdated today. However, the notion that the job search itself must be taken as seriously as any full-time job, and that Drucker’s concepts are still valid, holds true.
Drucker’s insights applied to job finding
Drucker’s insights can be organized into six steps:
- Organizing self-knowledge
- Defining a specific job goal
- Knowing your competition
- Conducting important research about the job
- Developing and implementing strategy
- Negotiating the job offer
Self-knowledge
Reviewing and organizing self-knowledge may be the most important aspect of the process, although many career advisors fail to even mention it. China’s most respected military strategist and philosopher, Sun Tzu, lived 2,000 years ago. His ideas are still taught in the West and China today.
Sun Tzu wrote: “If I know myself and know my enemy, I need not fear defeat in 100 battles. If I know only myself, I will lose half. If I know only my adversary and not myself I will lose all.”
How do we know ourselves in preparation for a job hunt? First, we start by asking ourselves basic questions such as:
- What have I done well in the past?
- What do I like to do?
- What do I want to do?
- What industry do I most like?
- What kind of company did I most enjoy working in?
- What compensation do I want?
- Are there other factors which will attract me to a certain type of job or that I want to avoid?
The next task is to integrate this information into a resume built around your accomplishments, achievements and awards that are relevant to the answers to these questions.
However, do not send this resume to anyone; It is for your own use. Review it daily during the job campaign and update it as you remember more accomplishments, achievements and awards that were missed. These will come to light as if by magic, as you review your resume daily and talk with prospective employers.
Sometimes accomplishments that you spent only a few days doing are more valuable to a prospective employer than something on which you spent a year or more. Moreover, as you do this it will build your self-confidence and help you in responding to job opportunities and speaking during interviews.
Defining a precise job goal
You cannot get ‘there’ until you have defined where ‘there’ is. In fact, this is a basic principle of a strategy called the principle of the objective. Drucker said this many times and in many ways. He recommended five questions that every manager should ask before starting a new project and the first was: What business are you in? Or put in a different way, what is your mission or objective? If you are about to begin a job search you need to ask yourself what your goal is, because it is, , once defined, your objective.
Part of your job research occurs during this phase as you investigate the average salary for the job you want and how much you are going to ask for after your prospective employer makes the first move and suggests a figure. You never reveal your figure until that time, and as you will see, sometimes not even then.
Some jobseekers squander their limited time and resources on interviews that may have little to do with their real goal and resources including time and expenses are always limited. Your defined job goal should get priority during your job campaign. At times, you may be offered an interview for some other job than the one you are interested in. If you are desperate for any job, by all means, interview as the company may have the job you really want available later. It is also always good to get practice in interviewing.
However, there are negatives in interviewing for anything other than your job goal. Every interview that you have which does not meet your goal criteria takes time and effort from your campaign for your real objective. An opportunity for exactly what you seek may occur while you are distracted.
If you need a job badly, of course, take the interview. If this interview for a ‘target of opportunity’ job is local and will not require a lot of time or resources, it might be okay to interview for a job other than the one you defined as your goal.
Knowing your competition
Knowing your competition for your job, once it is defined, is important too. I am talking about the class of competition rather than any specific individuals, although they are important. For example, if the job description advertised by your potential employer states that a masters in business administration (MBA) is desired but not required, this is important information in any communication with your potential employer. If you have an MBA you want to emphasize its importance for this particular job and if you do not, you want to emphasize the importance of experience, verified by your accomplishments and achievements.
Do your research
More extensive research on the company and the job precedes every interview, it is not cursory. One of the best examples I have seen came as a result of following this advice and applying my methods by an out-of-work executive who had read my first book. He had previously started several entrepreneurial projects, none of which were successful, and he had been president of a chain of health food stores which also failed. One day he saw an advertisement in the Wall Street Journal for vice president of a new division at 20th Century Fox. He had never held a senior level position or even worked in the film industry previously, but he applied anyway.
His research was not only from magazines and trade newspapers, he made telephone calls around the country talking to individuals who had worked in this corporation that he found through the articles he read. He discovered exactly why the division was being created and what his prospective employers were looking for. After a series of interviews over a month which included with the president and senior vice presidents, he got the job offer at a high salary. He told me later me was successful over several hundred applicants including nine other finalists all of whom were already employed in the industry and were senior executives. He was the only one that was not.
Develop a strategy with specific objectives and implement it
All of the previous steps should be integrated with your strategy, which you should write out and keep together and then take action to implement the strategy you have developed.
Negotiate and accept the job offer
Finally, you must negotiate the job offer. Never accept any offer without at least some level of negotiation, otherwise your prospective employer may undervalue you. Frequently you will be able to get a higher compensation than you anticipated. In many companies, yearly raises are limited, typically from three to five per cent.
One of my readers attended an interview at a major corporation and was asked immediately how much money he wanted. He was about to give the figure he had previously calculated from research but remembered what I had said about waiting until the job had been discussed fully and to allow the interviewer to make the offer.
Instead, he asked: “Could we delay negotiations until we explore more issues concerning the job and how I would approach it?” To his astonishment, the interviewer responded that it was fine, but he would not pay more than a certain amount, which was 50 per cent higher than what my reader was going to ask for. He told me that if he had asked for the amount he had originally intended, he probably would not even have gotten the offer as he would have been considered less qualified.