What Color Is Your Parachute? Part 17

And let me reiterate: thank-you notes must be prompt. E-mail the thank-you note that same night, or the very next day at the latest. Follow it with a lovely copy, handwritten or printed, nicely formatted, and sent through the mail. Most employers these days prefer a printed letter to a handwritten one, but if your handwriting is beautiful, then go for it.

Don't ramble on and on. Your mailed thank-you note can be just two or three sentences. Something like: "I wanted to thank you for talking with me yesterday. It was very helpful to me. I much appreciated your taking the time out of your busy schedule to do this. Best wishes to you," and then sign it. Of course, if there's any additional thought you want to add, then add it. And when you're done, remember to sign it.

What If I Get Offered a Job Along the Way, While I'm Just Gathering Information?

Not likely. Let me remind you that during this part of your networking, you are talking to workers, not employers.

Nonetheless, an occasional employer may stray across your path during all this Informational Interviewing. And that employer may be so impressed with You, that they want to hire you, on the spot. So, it's possible that you'd get offered a job while you're still doing your information gathering. Not very likely, but possible. And if that happens, what should you say?

Well, if you're desperate, you will probably have to say yes. I remember one wintertime when I was in my thirties, with a family of five, when I had just gone through the knee of my last pair of pants, we were burning pieces of old furniture in our fireplace to stay warm, the legs on our bed had just broken, and we were eating spaghetti until it was coming out our ears. In such a situation, you can't afford to be picky. You've got to put food on the table, and stave off the debt-collectors. Now.

But if you're not desperate, if you have time to be more careful, then you respond to the job-offer in a way that will buy you some time. You tell them what you're doing: that the average job-hunter tries to screen a job after they take it. But you are examining careers, fields, industries, jobs, and particular organizations before you decide where you would do your best and most effective work. And you're sure this employer would do the same, if they were in your shoes. (If they're not impressed with your thoroughness and professionalism, at this point, than I a.s.sure you this is not a place where you want to work.) Add that your informational interviewing isn't finished yet, so it would be premature for you to accept their job offer, until you're sure that this is the place where you could be most effective, and do your best work.

Then, you add: "Of course, I'm tickled pink that you would want me to be working here. And when I've finished my personal survey, I'll be glad to get back to you about this, as my preliminary impression is that this is the kind of place I'd like to work in, and the kind of people I'd like to work for, and the kind of people I'd like to work with."

In other words, if you're not desperate yet, you don't walk immediately through any opened doors, but neither should you allow them to shut.

As I said, this scenario is highly unlikely. You're networking with workers. But it's nice to be prepared ahead of time, in your mind, just in case it does ever happen.

A Final Word: Bridge-People

(Formerly Called Contacts, Links, or Friends)

When you've found a place that interests you and you want to get an interview there, what will save your neck is this kind of person, whom I call "Bridge-People."

When you're trying to get information about a place, the informants who will be most useful to you will, again, turn out to be bridge-people. They know you; and they know them. They thus bridge the gap between you and a job. Bingo! You learn about the job. You end up getting the job. That is how most jobs get filled. Thanks to that bridge-person.

You can't identify a bridge-person until you have a target company or organization in mind. But when that time comes, here's how you go about identifying bridge-people:1 1. The website, LinkedIn, is your best friend here. Each employer you want to pursue should have a Company Profile page. (Unless the company is just too small.) Identify what place you want to approach, and look up its Company Profile page; go there.

2. Start with the company. Ask LinkedIn to tell you the people in your network who work for the company you are targeting. Then sort that list. You can sort it by employees there, who share: a. A LinkedIn group with You b. A former employer with You c. A school with You d. An industry with You e. A language with You f. A specific location with You 3. Then go to your school. On that same Company Profile page, look for your school-if you ever attended vo-tech school, community college, college, university, or grad school, ask LinkedIn to tell you who among your fellow alumni work for the company or organization you are targeting.

4. Then go to the company activity. On that same Company Profile page, ask LinkedIn to tell you new hires (who), departures (who), job-t.i.tle changes, job postings, number of employees who use LinkedIn, where current employees work, where current employees worked before they worked for this company, where former employees went after they worked for this company, etc. Insightful statistics!

5. As for connecting with the bridge-people whose names you discover, currently LinkedIn requires you to have one of their paid memberships, rather than the free one, to send a note to someone who's not a direct connection. But if they're still working at the company, you can phone the company and ask for them. Or you can search for their contact information through a larger search engine (Google their name!).

6. If you come up blank, both on LinkedIn and all the other places you search for names, such as family, friends, Facebook, etc., (no bridge-person can be found who knows you and also knows them) you can advertise on LinkedIn, for such connections. They have "ads by LinkedIn Members" available to you, for modest cost (so far!). You can also browse LinkedIn groups, and join those (ten at the most) that seem most likely to be seen by the kinds of companies you are trying to reach. However, don't just join them! Post intelligent questions, respond to intelligent "post-ers" that you think make sense. In other words, attain as high visibility there as you can; maybe employers will then come after you.

Bridge-people or not, never forget that people are crucial to your job-hunt. Fish swim in water, humans swim in a social context. We are social animals. Social in our work. Social during our job-hunt. Never job-hunt alone, if you can help it.

1. I am indebted to my dear friend Susan Joyce for these ideas. She is at job-hunt.org ("put the dash in your job-hunt").

Do not pray for tasks equal to your powers.

Pray for powers equal to your tasks.

-Phillips Brooks (18351893).

Chapter 9.

How to Deal with Any Handicaps You Have I know what you're thinking. If you got a job-interview (or interviews), and got turned down, you're thinking that there is some handicap (hidden or obvious) that is keeping you from getting hired.

Maybe you were thinking this, even before you went in for an interview. (You turned to this chapter straightaway, didn't you?) You're thinking, I'm getting turned down (or I will be turned down) because: I have a physical handicap or I have a mental handicap or I never graduated from high school or I never graduated from college or I am just graduating or I just graduated two years ago and am still unemployed or I graduated way too long ago or I am too beautiful or handsome or I am too ugly or I am too fat or I am too thin or I am too old or I am too young or I am too near retirement or I have only had one employer in life or I have hopped from job to job all my life or I have been out of the job-market too long or I have been in the job-market far too long or I am too inexperienced or I have a prison record or I have a psychiatric history or I have not had enough education and am underqualified or I have too much education and am overqualified or I am Hispanic or I am Black or I am Asian or My English is not very good or I speak heavily accented English or I am too much of a specialist or I am too much of a generalist or I am ex-clergy or I am ex-military or I am too a.s.sertive or I am too shy or I have only worked for volunteer organizations or I have only worked for small organizations or I have only worked for a large organization or I have only worked for the government or I come from a very different culture or background or I come from another industry or I come from another planet.

If all of this were true, there would be only three weeks in our life when we are employable!

Okay, but let's get one thing straight, from the beginning here: you can't possibly have a handicap that will keep employers from hiring you. You can only have a handicap will keep some employers from hiring you. No matter what handicap you have, or think you have, it cannot possibly keep you from getting hired anywhere in the world. It can only keep you from getting hired at some places.

As I said in chapter 4, "There are millions of separate, distinct, unrelated employers out there with very different requirements for hiring. Unless you look dirty, wild, and disreputable, and smell really bad, if you know what your talent is, I guarantee some employer is looking for you. Even if you're crazy, there's some employer crazier than you. You have to keep going. Some employers out there do want you, no matter what the others think. Your job is to find them."

You Cannot Generalize About Employers

As far as your handicap is concerned, all employers divide into just two tribes: employers who are interested in hiring you for what you can do; vs. employers who are bothered by what you can't do.

No matter how many times you run into the latter kind, once you discover their att.i.tude, you should just courteously thank them for their time, and ask if they know of any other employers who might be interested in someone with your skills. Then, gently take your leave.

And speaking of courtesy, always remember to write and mail them a thank-you note that very night, no matter how mad or frustrated they may have made you feel.

And then keep going, day after day, week after week, month after month, if necessary, until you find the other kind of employer: the one who only looks at what you can do, not at what you can't.

Everyone Is Handicapped

You may wonder how many job-hunters are handicapped. Well, the answer is: everyone. Or, you may wonder how many people in the entire workforce are handicapped. Again, the answer is: everyone.

What! Well, sure. A real handicap means dis-ability: there are some things a person does not have the ability to do. The reason doesn't matter.

Now, consider how many skills there are, in the whole world. n.o.body knows the number, so let's make one up. Let's say there are 4,341 transferable skills in the world.

How many of those 4,341 do you think the average person has? n.o.body knows that number either, so let's again make one up. Let's guess big here. Let's guess the average person has 1,341 skills. That's 1,341 things the average worker can do. You know, things like dig, a.n.a.lyze, communicate, sell, design, cook, repair-those sorts of things.

But if there are 4,341 skills in all the world, and the average person only has 1,341 of them, then that leaves 3,000 things the average person can't do.

Of course, what those 3,000 are, will vary from person to person. But, in the end, everybody is handicapped. Everybody.

So when you go job-hunting, if you have a real handicap, but it doesn't keep you from performing the particular job or career that you are going after, then what's so special about your handicap, compared with other people's? The answer is Nothing.

Unless-unless-you are so focused on the idea that you are handicapped, and so obsessed with what you can't do, that you have forgotten all the things you can do.

Unless you're thinking of all the reasons why an employer might not hire you, instead of all the reasons why an employer would be lucky to get you.

Unless you're going about your job-hunt feeling like a job-beggar, rather than standing tall to offer yourself as a helpful resource for this employer.

What You Can Do, What You Can't

To get your mind off what you can't do, and on to what you can, take a piece of paper, online or off, and divide it into two columns, viz, Then, get a list of transferable skills from somewhere.

You could use the Skills Grid in chapter 7.

Or, you could use the famous List of 246 Skills as Verbs that follows.

To download a printable PDF of this image, please visit http://rhlink.com/para14024 Or if you want a much longer list for any reason, Canadian career-expert Martin Buckland has a free mega list of 2,010 "Resume Action Verbs" at his site, Elite Resumes (http://aneliteresume.com).

Whichever list you use, copy as many of the skills as you choose, onto that piece of paper, putting each skill in the proper column, depending on whether you can do the skill, or cannot. (Or not yet, anyway.) Use additional sheets, if needed.

When you are done with these two columns, can, can't, pick out your favorite five things that you can do, and love to do; and write out some examples of how you actually did that, sometime in your past. Your recent past, if possible.

Dream Killers

What about a disability that seems to negate all your dreams: there is something you've always dreamed of doing, but your handicap makes it impossible.

Well, first of all, someone may have invented a technology or simple strategy that gets around that disability. You never know. There are some very clever people in the world. How to find them? If your particular disability has a name, look it up on the Internet. Put its name into a search engine like Google, and see what turns up. Look particularly on the list it gives you, for any professional a.s.sociation that deals with your disability. Contact them, and ask them what information they have.

An alternative way of dealing with a dream killer is to search for jobs similar to the one you hunger to do, but can't.

Example: one career counselor in Europe was working with a young adult who was dying to be a commercial airplane pilot. The killer: his eyesight was too poor.

So the counselor sent him out to the large airport nearby, with a pad of yellow paper and a pen, and told him to spend the day listening to anyone who worked out there, in whatever capacity. He was told to try to list every kind of occupation that he saw or heard about, there at the airport-besides pilot. The next day he showed his list to his counselor. It was very long. When asked if he'd come across any occupation that interested him, he said, "Yes. I love the idea of making the seats that they put inside new airplanes." So, that's the job he pursued. He ended up in the airline industry, even though he couldn't be a pilot.

Disability or Prejudice?

It is important to keep in mind, that "handicap" is a broad term, which can refer either to job-hunters' disabilities or employers' prejudices. There is a difference, and you need to remember that.

Suppose you cannot hear. If you are considering a job that requires acute hearing, then that is a disability: it means there are certain skills you don't have that are essential, at least for that job.

But now let us suppose you can hear perfectly, but you are way overweight. If you are applying for that same job, overweight is not a disability unless it interferes with your ability to do that work. Nonetheless a particular employer may be prejudiced against overweight people, and simply won't hire you, even though this has nothing to do with your ability to do the job. So, there you have the difference: a disability is something within you. A prejudice is something within the employer.

Both may technically be handicaps, because both may keep you from getting hired, but it is important to understand that a real handicap is a disability you have-you cannot do some important task required in that particular job. On the other hand, a prejudice is a phantom handicap. It may raise its ugly head in one particular interview or more, but if you keep on going, find the right employer, then poof! the so-called handicap vanishes.

You must just be sure you don't share those prejudices. That is, don't look at yourself through their eyes. Look at yourself through your own eyes.

The Key Employer Prejudices 1. The employer prejudice that is getting all the attention currently, relates to how long you've been out of work. We saw this in chapter 1. It is a prejudice that some employers have, and some employers don't. If you've been out of work a year or more, you will find employers who won't hire you because of it. Too bad! Just keep going until you find employers who don't have that prejudice.

2. The next employer prejudice that you may run into is age. Reason? Millions of baby boomers (the 76 million people born 19461964) are beginning to enter the so-called "retirement years." A lot of them-no, make that a lot of us-are not going to find generous pensions waiting, when we hit sixty or sixty-five, but are going to have to keep working long after we ever thought we would have to. And how easy will it be to get hired at that age? Guess! But again, your comfort lies in the fact that this is a prejudice, not a handicap: some employers won't be prejudiced that you are as old as you are, if they see you are still on fire with pa.s.sion about what you do, not merely marking time between now and then.

The related employer prejudice that is rearing its ugly head these days concerns money. Given all our years of experience, many of us who are job-hunting over fifty, will expect a salary befitting all our years of experience and wisdom, only to discover that some employers are prejudiced against paying us that much-since they could hire two less-experienced workers in their twenties for what it would cost them to hire just us.