Become the job candidate with a 100% money-back guarantee

If you’ve been in the work world awhile, you begin to realize a thing or two. After an even longer time, you know even that much more. Who would have ever thought that would be a bad thing?

I remember when looking for my first jobs and, on more than one occasion, hearing the words, “You don’t have any experience”. Of course, to get the experience, you had to get a job. But, somehow, you got your foot in a door and, well, you know what you got. Fast forward to 2009 where there are more people than there are jobs. If you’re one of the unfortunate who is presently dislocated from a career spot, you may enter this phase thinking, no sweat, I’ve got experience, only to find that you are now woefully over-experienced. What’s a body to do?

When a huge earthquake hit San Francisco in 1906, San Francisco was cut-off from its East Bay neighborhoods. Those who owned boats began ferrying passengers across the bay – for a price. Some people went from being a simple boat owner to wealth, almost overnight. As the saying goes, when there is a crisis, money changes hands.

It is not that companies suddenly don’t need CFOs, customer service reps, or salespeople. They need ‘em, they just can’t afford ‘em as a regular employee. This shouldn’t stop you from approaching them with a proposal on how you can make or save them money (the only two things they’re really interested in doing). Instead of trying to jam your square peg into an exceedingly small round hole, exploit your knowledge and expertise by proposing to a company that they let you do for them what you’ve done well for others – on a contract basis. And treat the transaction as would any contractor. Give them a money-back guarantee or suggest a pay-for-performance deal. While competing candidates may be looking to pare down their resumes, you will want to showcase yours.

Do you do what you do because others think you should?

I am fond of Fred Smith, the CEO of FedEx. As most know, when Smith attended Yale, he wrote a paper about an overnight delivery service for which his professor gave him an average grade. The reason I like Fred Smith is that in spite of what someone of stature thought would not fly – no pun intended – he did it anyway.

Great ideas almost always suffer great criticism. You will always find someone, somewhere, who will tell you that your notion is not viable or worth the risk. This criticism isn’t restricted to launching unheard of products or services. You will also find it when moving from a well-seeded career to something you’ve never done before; like quitting your law practice to become a windsurfer instructor in Tahiti. Everyone will think you are crazy.

This makes me think of Ray Kroc, former CEO of McDonald’s. As a milkshake machine salesman in his early fifties, Kroc discovered McDonald’s, an efficiently run outfit on “E” Street in San Bernardino, California. He gave up his job and bought the restaurant from the McDonald brothers for a comparative pittance. I have no doubt many thought Kroc to be nuts. And, when McDonald’s struggled in the early days, I am certain those naysayers were smug in their critique of Kroc’s life choice.

However, there is some real wisdom to be taken away from people who take great risks – even if that risk, by conventional definition, was a failure. Look closely. These people are not satisfied with simply getting from Point A to Point B with the most security or toys. Life is for the livin’, man. Choosing a career because others think it is great is one seriously lousy way to live – especially if your heart is on the tip of a wave in Tahiti.

The important thing to remember is, at the end of the day, you’re the one who lives with your choices. Don’t you want to do what you do because you think you should?

Career luck: Depends on who you ask.

Waiting out another (delayed) flight at Chicago’s O’Hare airport last night, my husband introduced me to me a vendor he deals with who also lives in our home city. The man was the President of a small, global organization his father had built in Australia before expanding across the world. Now, with his father reaping his rewards of the business in his retirement, the son was running the business. In our brief discussion, he told me about spending 5 weeks per year in his home country of Australia, where his corporate office was located, and one week per year at a lake house he and his wife owned in Wisconsin where, he said, he “kept all of his toys”. He had to be about 35. Sounded idyllic.

For a moment I envied him, thinking how nice that he had a lucrative career already planned for him by his father. All he had to do was step into it. No worries, mate. The rest of us, well, the rest of us have to figure out how to write the most compelling cover letters, craft the perfectly composed resume, spit shine our shoes, and not make a single gaffe during an interview in order to make our way into our little spot of career heaven. And, after we’ve done all that, we get to spend years proving that we’re OK and hope we get to reap some great financial reward for our efforts. Seems kind of unfair, doesn’t it?

So, as we climb to 34,000 feet, I began to wonder if people like him feel they didn’t have any choice when entering the family biz. For all we know, this guy could have wanted to be a professional surfer, house painter, or chimney sweep. Maybe Dad is one of those forceful patriarch types that what is said goes. I then couldn’t think of anything more dismal than feeling as if you didn’t have a choice about your work.

I then remembered friends who felt obligated to join the family biz and despised it. They spent their time dreaming of the day they would get up the cohunes or chutzpa to tell their parent(s) that it just wasn’t for them because they wanted to be a professional surfer, house painter, or chimney sweep. Each day spent in a job that had been fashioned for someone else stole that much more time from their lives.

Even if your road may be long and difficult, and no shortcuts provided by family, know that the direction you take is entirely your own. You can’t put a price on that.