Job Hunting in a Tight Market:
Strength in Numbers
Finding a job can be a challenge in the best of times — so why go it alone? Members of the HBS Club of Greater New York gathered in November to benefit from the expertise of Kate Wendleton, president of The Five O’Clock Club, a national career-counseling network. Focusing on follow-up and job creation tactics, the club uses small-group strategy sessions led by trained career coaches to guide members through the job search process. “It’s a practical yet sophisticated approach to the job hunt,” said Angela Piscitello (MBA ’95), the event’s organizer. Ten of Wendleton’s tips follow.
- Expand your job-hunting targets. If you are searching only in Los Angeles, for example, think of other geographic areas. If you are looking only in large public corporations, consider small or private companies or nonprofits.
- It takes an average of eight follow-up phone calls to get a meeting. After you have written to someone asking for a meeting, do not leave messages for the person to call you back. Instead, keep calling. If you’re still unsuccessful in reaching your contact, try asking the company’s operator to speak to the person’s assistant or someone who sits near that person.
- To be successful quickly, a job hunter should target two hundred positions. These are not job openings, but two hundred positions you think may be right for you. For example, if there were thirty appropriate sales positions (not openings) at a certain company, a job hunter would have to target only six or seven such companies to get a decent offer quickly.
- A job hunter must have six to ten job possibilities in the works concurrently. Five of those possibilities will fall away through no fault of your own. For example, a company could decide to hire no one, hire a marketing person instead of an accounting person, or hire someone’s brother-in-law instead of you. It’s not your fault.
- Job hunters who get small-group career counseling throughout their searches get jobs faster and at higher rates of pay than those who search on their own. They also land a position more quickly than those who work privately with a career coach throughout their searches. The reason? Job hunters learn from each other’s strategies, help each other, and help motivate their comrades.
- The average résumé is reviewed for only ten seconds. Résumés should have a summary containing the most important accomplishments the job hunter wants the reader to know.
- Thank-you notes after a job interview are ineffective. Instead, a job hunter must influence the hiring manager in any follow-up correspondence, addressing the key issues discussed in the meeting.
- Unemployed job hunters are not at a disadvantage. More than 78 percent of the unemployed job hunters who attended targeted group coaching got jobs that paid the same or more than their last jobs.
- When networking, try to meet with people who are two levels higher than you are. The person in that role is in a position to hire you or recommend that you be hired.
- Don’t do it alone. The key to group coaching success is that the job hunter gets an alternative to the more traditional approach of simply answering ads, sending out “cold call” letters and résumés, waiting for callbacks, or even paying large, up-front fees to career coaching firms.
Alumni Career Services is located in Teele Hall, 230 Western Avenue, 617-495-6582, 617-496-5699 (fax), career_advisors@
hbs.edu (e-mail), or visit www.alumni.hbs.edu/careers/
careers.html. For more information on The Five O’Clock Club, visit www.fiveoclockclub.com.
