Monthly Archives: December 2011

This past week, I just finished listening to Great by Choice by Jim Collins… probably one of the best business books I’ve read in a long time… and I read just about everything anyone suggests.

It reminds me that if you are any kind of professional you know you need to be reading books that relate to your profession all the time… leaders are readers… I’m often blown away by people who are supposed to be professionals who spend their time reading fiction or not reading at all… we all have to be “students” of our game

It also reminded me to emphasize the fact that if you are a candidate looking for a job, you’d best be reading one or two business books that relate to what you do… somewhere along the line, one of the interviewing authorities you speak with is going to ask you what business book you’ve recently read and, “how has it had an impact on you and your profession?” If you don’t have a really good answer… I mean a really good answer to this question, you’re going to be caught flat-footed… and worse, if you act like you have recently read a book just to look good and then get asked to describe it in detail…if you can’t, you will certainly be eliminated as a candidate…

What are you reading?…how has it had an impact on your professional life?

Just read advice by a well known author and career adviser…he advises people who are looking for work to “target the top 10 firms you’d like to work for” and agressively pursue them for a job. He communicates the idea that just because you want to work at any organization…they also want you.

Unfortunately, this kind of advice gives people all kinds of false hopes about the reality of this job market. Unfortunately, reality… especially in this market… is not like in the movie Field of Dreams, “if you build it… they will come.” Just because it might be nice to work at a particular place has got nothing to do with the reality of finding a job there. Just because you might think it would be peachy to work at a particular place has nothing to do with the reality of them hiring… let alone hiring you.

If people are naïve enough to believe something like this, they quickly find out the real world doesn’t work this way. Unfortunately, they spend a lot of time and effort before they are deflated and disappointed by reality.

My suggestion would be to target 200 companies… 300… anybody who might  listen. Please don’t put your faith in the “Top 10.” If you are an absolute rockstar in your profession, you… or your agent… might have luck doing this kind of thing. If you are like most of us mortals, you’re going to need to go after more organizations than that.