I always like helping people who are looking for a job. Actually, I even developed a small strategy. I call it “alternative job application”:
We sit together and draw up an “alternative job application“. It is a text where the person who is looking for a job offensively describes his or her strengths and develops a vision that outlines what extra value he/she can and would like to bring to the target enterprise with all his/her enthusiasm and courage. This sounds simple, but demands from the applicant that he thinks a lot and accepts many ideas, besides being creatively open.
As soon as this document is finished, we use the story as a text for our “alternative job application”. Additionally, we might also do a video recording that shows how the applicant can convince any audience with his personal attributes – including a link for responses – as a substitute for the commonly used gangster photos.
? All of this will be individually adapted to the job and the enterprise the applicant feels he/she would like to become part of and work in. My underlying idea is that the one thing an entrepreneur is most interested in is how the applicant can “be beneficial to his enterprise” and how and if said applicant can follow somebody’s train of thoughts.
And, as a general rule, the “alternative curriculum vitae”, will usually be followed by job interview invitations quite quickly. Naturally, these interviews, too, will have to be prepared thoroughly. After all, success mostly is not the consequence of passivity.
More often than not, the people I coach have wonderful classical curricula vitae where they describe many details in the common classical way in tables. You will read what they did and what their roles were during the last (20 !?) years, full of workshops, trainings and certificates. All these lists have been written well and with diligence.
However, these applications are not too much of a success. The applicants get negative replies all the time, which will be quite frustrating for the poor applicant. To me, this sounds totally plausible, because how are you supposed to prove to anybody how competent (knowledge + competence) you are?
Quite frequently, the “classical” curriculum vitae is something nobody is interested in. Consequently, we make it more concise and then only use it as an additional attachment. As such, it shows that there are good reasons for making yourself look optimistic in your “alternative job application”.
More often than not, the first thing I have to do is give the depressed applicant some hope and belief in his own value.
Some of the people I coached were women. After having spent several years educating their children, they now wish to get back into work. And I must say that, whenever we together manage to be a success, we are extremely happy. I share all of their joy and belief in the future.
A short time ago, I accidentally worked with a true “top-class” person. He had been manager of a very good medium-sized IT enterprise. Now he had given notice. His reason for giving notice – which was absolutely rationally acceptable – lay in the fact that the owners had sold the enterprise and the new masters had decided on a policy and goals he was not at all prepared to agree with.
Quite courageously, he gave notice without having found a new job. Now he is looking for a job as CIO (Chief Information Officer) with a well-established medium-sized company. And then, at least that was my perception, he was surprised that, regardless of excellent formal qualifications, he did not find it easy at all to land a new job.
When we talked, he turned out to be an extremely nice person in the prime of life. He also said many rational things. In many respects, he came pretty close to perfection. His personal record in life, too, looked absolutely a success to me. He also had a wonderful classical curriculum vitae.
In some way or other, I got the impression that he was not only depressed but also no longer quite up to date. Especially when it came to the internet and the turn of the era that has perhaps been initiated by digitalization. For me, his rather negative and relatively one-sided verdict on twitter, which he himself (naturally) does not use, was somehow significant.
After our conversation, I accompanied him to his car. And I was eager to see what kind of car I would see. I won the bet – it was the biggest Audi SUV available in Europe.
I had offered to support him during his application phase and said that I would also listen around in my network. All he would have to do is come back.
He never came back. Perhaps he did not think it possible that someone who rides a bike can actually help him.
Well, that is fine by me. It gives me more time to help those who perhaps need my assistance more. And perhaps I should have given the CIO the book on “The U Tactics” by Otto Scharmer?
RMD
(Translated by EG)
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