Job Hunting Realities

2023-10-09 15:23:45

For every bit of conventional wisdom, there is a realistic counter-point that everyone is too afraid to say out loud.

What you want is to cultivate hard-to-find skills and a track-record of long-term success—the kind that a CEO will personally take you out to lunch for, because they know talent when they see it.

Such talent has options outside the conventional wisdom:

1.) You Must Network — In reality this is only true if you have no competitive advantage in the marketplace, because once you have one, you’ll be too busy doing actual work instead of networking. This is why you sell shovels in a gold rush.

2.) Spend Hours On A Loving Cover Letter — In reality, just write a good cover letter that is honest to you and with broad appeal.

3.) Job Hop To Success — In reality this is no more sustainable than bouncing between lanes in heavy traffic, and then only works for a little while on entry-level positions; nobody wants to hire a manager who can’t manage for more than 2 years.

This is why that competitive advantage is so crucial. You go from being compared with 50 other people who are exactly like you, to being compared against one or three others that each bring a different type of win for the company.

When you have that kind of leverage, it builds over time: you get better offers, and with better offers, a better savings account, real estate holdings, work history that lets you do something truly uncoventional: be the one that interviews the CEOs and their companies to make sure you’re a natural fit for YOU.