How to Find a Job Faster in 2022

Hey, everybody, Andy here. Happy Thursday, helping you build a career you love. Today, we are going to be talking job searching and making it faster and easier. If you're here with me live, get in the chat, say hi. Let me know who you are, where you're from, what you do, what you need. Put some question marks in front of your questions. Tony P, EGR, Music 80s, Buffer, Truckerman, Suzanne, Patty, Vanessa, Daryl, D, great to see you and everybody else. What are we talking about today? Job searching is hard. It sucks, and I'm noticing that a lot of people want to make it a lot harder than it is. I thought about if I had the job search and I had to do it all over again, knowing what I know, seeing what I've seen, what would I tell them to do? How would I take it down? How would I simplify it? I was thinking about this a couple of weeks back as I was working on a project for myself, and I had placed some constraints on myself. I came up with something that I thought was really good, and I only came up with it because of the limitations that I imposed on myself. I thought, I need to bring this to a lesson to my job searching community to teach them how to put restrictions on their job search to make it better, make them faster, make them more powerful, and get the results that they want. I want to take you through seven specifics and a bonus, so eight of the things that I would take a very close look at. If you're just starting your job search, this is where I'd start. If you are in the middle of your job search and it ain't working, I would strip it down to these seven or eight things, depending on who you are. Now, I want to start out with a couple stories. One's a pretty short one, and one is a little bit longer. It's a little bit of a peek into my life, but I think it's an interesting story to share with you, something I'd like you to know about me, but something that I'd like you to think about for yourself. Now, I don't know if you know who Susan Kerr is, and you may never have heard of her, but if you have one of these Apple devices, she is a very big part of your life because when they were creating the first Macintosh, they enlisted her. She's an artist, and they said to her, you got a 1024 square space, like a 32 by 32 grid. We need you to draw us the fonts, the folders, the brushes, the little icons, or whatever we're going to use, and you got to do it in that space. She didn't whine about it. She didn't complain about it, and with a piece of graph paper and a pencil, she basically drew a lot of the foundation of what we use today in a Mac. It's obviously evolved, and it's much prettier, and the resolutions are higher, and everything looks a little fancier, but it was a pretty spectacular creation, and primarily because she had constraints, and she didn't complain about it. Now, there was something in my life a number of years ago that I wanted to complain about, but I didn't, and I want to share this story with you. It's a few minutes, but I hope that you can apply this to your life, and I definitely want you to apply this to your job search. When I got out of school, I spent my first 10 years as an IT and management consultant with Anderson Consulting. It's now Accenture, and I run large projects. I built project management methodology, estimating tools, other governance things to run very large projects. In the beginning of 1999, there was a dot-com boom. Maybe you were there, maybe you remember it, or maybe you remember the cratering of it. Either which way, I was recruited out of where I was, and I took a job with a company called Inforte in the beginning of 1999. That's actually where Kara and I met way back in the day. I started there in January, and there was 107 people. I was employee number 108, and they were hiring me to actually build out a sales and account development methodology, teach them how to sell into large accounts, how once you sell them, how to grow them, how to work with the customers, how to run projects and things of that nature. I got there. I was there for about a week, and I started getting my assignments and my clients, and I started going out into the world, and I realized that we weren't running projects very well. While initially it could have looked like a disaster, I realized this is why they hired me was to help clean it up. While you're running a quarter of a million dollar project, when you have a 20% overrun, it's not the end of the world, but we're staring down the barrel of seven-figure jobs, and when you start running 20%, 30% over, it kind of stings. We implemented custom solutions, and we implemented a lot of customer relationship management solutions, Salesforce automation, customer experience, things of that nature using the Siebel product, which is now part of Oracle, I believe, unless they've been gobbled up by somebody else. But anyway, I created an estimating tool that would help the people who are running the projects plan the project, estimate the project, know how long it should take, put some controls in place and things of that nature. I brought everybody who was responsible for doing these kind of things in on the weekends around April, and I was teaching this stuff, and everything was going well, but a few months later we started to pick up these other technologies, like four or five more of whatever the hot new things were that large companies, the Fortune 500, Blue Chips, but the startups, the dot-coms, were trying to implement these solutions, Blue Martini and Vignette and Ariba and some of these other newer products at the time. So one day, a few months later, my boss, who was the chief operating officer and the VP of sales, came in to see me, and they said, Andy, could we talk to you for a few minutes? That was fairly normal. We talked quite a bit, but when they walked me to the conference room, I knew this was something serious because most of what we could handle, we could do in the hallway. But I sat down, they looked at me, and they said, we're getting invited to a lot of proposals, but we're not able to respond fast enough. Companies are moving at such a breakneck pace that we need to create a response to our proposal and tell them what the project's going to cost, and we need to do that within 24 hours. I said, well, that seems kind of silly. Why is that necessary? Isn't it better to kind of get it right? And they said, well, that's not even the worst part. They want us to be able to fix our fee and tell them exactly what it's going to cost to within plus or minus 10%, and I'm thinking $1 million, and I'm thinking two phases out, and they want something down to 10% accuracy with less than 24 hours to assess it. And the two of them looked at each other, and they said, yeah, that about sizes it up. And I looked at them, and I said, you guys are nuts. And actually, I probably, I think I used two words. One started with an F. The second one was crazy, but I got the idea. So I said, let me get this straight. We're hiring these people off the street who don't know anything about these technologies. We're sending them into these discovery sessions with a salesperson, and we're asking them, they can't even, they don't know the technology, they can barely even spell it, and you want them to be able to create something within 24 hours. So I said, okay. So I got on the phone. I called a number of technologists that each worked in the different, you know, within these different technologies. And I said, hey, you know, how do you break these units down? What does this look like? You know, if I ask you to make these changes, what does that look like? How long does it take you? What are the variations? So I start to get a basis for estimating these new tools. Now, I was flying to three different cities at the time. I was in California, Minnesota, and North Carolina every week. And so I had maybe at least the 14, 15 hours in the air. So I built a tool over the next couple of weeks for each one of the different solutions of which we had eight. And I said, okay, I've got to send somebody into a meeting who doesn't know anything about the technology. So how can I do this? So I created a sheet, one sheet, an Excel spreadsheet for each of the different technologies. And I said, I taught everybody, all the delivery executives, we call them. I said, you go into a session. All you need to do is you need to ask these questions. All you need to tell the tool is yes or no, give it a number, one to whatever, and then gauge high, medium, low on each of these questions if they're appropriate. And if they're not applicable, just put NA or whatever. And then I'm thinking, there's nothing magical about 24 hours. I could get that number in 2.4 seconds. I could just have them do what I teach them to do. And I could have taken a 22-year-old who had absolutely no experience in anything, shot him into a meeting with a sales rep, and asked these questions from a customer and come up with the same number. And so when I showed this tool to my boss, I literally saw a tear in his eye. He finally understood that we were going to be able to do this. So I got with the people who were responsible for running these projects, and I said, okay, look, all the new projects, I need you to run it with this tool. I need you to plan it this way. The other thing is, I need you to go to all your existing projects, and I need you to pretend like you're starting over and make a run at this as if you didn't know anything. And it's fine to massage it, but I need data, and we need to fine-tune this thing, and I need to meet with you within the next three months, and we need to watch what's happening so I can tune this thing so we don't take a bath. So that's what we did. And while this was going on, now the motor's really running. And now I think, well, heck, what else can I do for them? I could give them a button that after they come up with that plan, they can hit a button, and it would put all the staffing resources out. Who needed what, how many project managers, business analysts, technologists, and whatever, when they needed to start, all the dependencies, I could build macros for that. What else can I do with it? I could shoot that data into the operational staffing system. The ops guy's going to love me because he's not going to have to chase anybody down. And all of this stuff started to occur because I had to do something that would never have occurred to me, ever. Why would this be necessary? I just had 10 years of tried and true practices that say it makes sense to take your time and estimate it right and get it right. You're measuring it with a micrometer, marking it with chalk, and cutting it with an ant. Why would I rush that? So why am I telling you this? Because there were constraints that were placed on me that forced me to do what? They forced me to get creative. They forced me to focus, like really focus. They forced me to channel all my energy into thinking about how this can be done inside the parameters I was given. And when you think about it, I would say to you that the greatest inventions, you know, I know you know that expression, right? Necessity is the mother of all inventions. But your creativity, when you're thinking in these constraints, is going to bring you a lot more creativity. And I would say to you that expression about, you know, hey, think outside the box. I actually think that's a pretty stupid expression because I want you to think in the box. I want you to make the box as small as possible because that's going to bring out the best in you. When you start to figure out what are the constraints that really matter, speed mattered, accuracy mattered. So how can we build something and make it bulletproof that would do that? And for more than a decade, even well after I left, that company used that tool to estimate all its projects that it did that way. It was probably the most impactful tool I ever created that had the biggest impact per capita, per dollar, per whatever on an organization. So why am I telling you this? Because I had to strip it down to the necessities. I need you to strip down your job search, strip it down to the studs. And so today I want to talk to you about what those studs are because I think the more constraints you put on yourself, the less you do, the better it will be. And don't get me wrong, less is only more if what you're doing less of, you're doing better. Okay. So, so I'm not saying don't send more messages. I'm saying only send messages to a particular type of person. Shrink your base. Okay. So I want to, I want to go through that and I think about, you know, some of the best social media messages I ever wrote were because I had to pack it in a tweet. All right. This is you packing your job search into a tweet and I got a bunch of them here. So I got a question though. I got to ask you guys before I get into the, into the, into the numbers. What's the roughest part of your job search? Tell me what the roughest part of your job search is. I'd like to see this. I'd actually like to take a sip of this beautiful tea. Go in the chat. Just, just distill it down. Give me a couple of words, right? Resume, interview, like just what's the toughest part? I want to, I want to see this and let me see if I can, um, I know we're on a, we're on a bit of a delay here and 45 seconds to one minute max answer. Another awesome story. I appreciate that. Give me it. Toughest part of the job search. I'd love to see what this is. And hi from France. Yes. Agadio. Great. Here. Motivation. Tell me, tell me what you got. Let me see if I can pull this up without, I'd never tried this. Here we go. What do we got? Motivation. Finding the people. Deb, let me show. Identifying the target companies. Geraldine, HR. Michael Tierney. That's a fresh template menu. Interview that never takes me further. Preparing for the interview. Resume and cover letter. Going beyond HR. Look at you guys. I love it. Not finding the positions. John C.E. What's up, buddy? Jessica Lewis. I love it. Suzanne. Liz. Finding the time to apply. Later rounds of interviews. Find companies that fit my parameters. Okay. I want you guys to keep this stuff in mind. I'm going on my cards here and, um, all right, here's what I would do. Stripping it down to the studs, baby. Okay. Focus. Can you do a one second test? All right. This is not remedial. What do I mean? Can you tell me in one second what you do? I'm a career coach. I coach people, right? I help them find jobs, those kinds of things, right? Now, why is this so important? Well, if you could see what I see and the number of people that I coach and I get their resumes in advance and I, right, I get all their stuff and I read through them. These are brilliant people, bright people, ambitious people who are willing to spend money to take their time with me to go through their, their, their work life. And I would say more than half the time, I don't know what they do. Like I literally, meaning not that I'm unaware of what an architect does or what an engineer does or whatever. It's like that they are an engineer, that they are a strategist of some kind. And if, if, and it takes me 15 to 30 minutes sometimes asking them questions to distill it down to one second, and I'm your coach who loves you and I'm willing to spend however long it takes to get it right for you, but you're going into an interview and it's taking you longer to explain what you are because you haven't distilled it down. And those people are not as in love with you as I am because you're interrupting their day because they got deadlines and customers and bosses yelling at them and everything else that's going on in their life. They don't want to spend all that time to try to figure out what you are. They need to know what you are. It would be better if they knew in advance before you even got there. That's the resume part. But on the resume, can I see it in one second? Bootcampers, tomorrow, hot seating you with resume, with your resumes, we're going to pull them up. Okay? Hopefully you'll get the memo today about that if you didn't already. But can you do this? Why is this so important? It crystallizes what your bread and butter is and why they need you. All right, now let's take it up one notch, one sentence test. Now you might've seen my describe yourself in one sentence, the elevator pitch, the headline kind of thing, but this is really important that you tighten that up because when I introduce myself, I say I help people find jobs and thrive in their career. That's what I do. Now, there's a lot of different ways I do that, but that's really what I do. That's what you pay me for or that's what you come to the show for, right? So that's it. But this week I've talked to six or seven people. Every single one of them, it's got awesome backgrounds that do a lot of different things. But if you can't distill this, I don't care how many different things. Do you have any idea how many different things I do, right? I write books. I write blogs. I have a YouTube channel. I have a podcast. I have this, I have that. I do different things. Sometimes I have online training courses. Sometimes I get free webinars. Sometimes I write a blog post. Sometimes I coach you. Sometimes you pay for a session with me. Sometimes, right? Like it doesn't matter. I do all these different things to make that happen, but ultimately that's what I do. Now, a lot of you, especially the senior folks who are multifaceted, which is awesome by the way, but from a communication standpoint, you need to be, can you strip it down to that's my bread and butter? That's my bread and butter. And sometimes it's complicated. And if you got to take a minute to tell me that's too long, that's 50 seconds too long. So and it's, it's long for you and this is great practice for you. Not only introducing yourself, but this is the best clarity marker you'll ever have. I ultimately do this. I help companies generate more money through digital marketing assets, right? That's whatever it is, but it needs to be clear. Now I could say I help white collar professionals find six figure jobs and thrive in them. That's another way I could add more teeth, so to speak. But can you do this? Stripping it down to the stud. Number one, who has a hard time with this? Who has a hard time with this one? Show me in a chat. All right, next one. Okay. This is a, this is a big one. This is a big one. What will I do? Now, what will I do? I know some of you are laughing, right? Okay. Show of hands. How many of you are searching in several different industries? How many of you are searching for multiple functional roles? So here's, this would better serve you. And I want to be really clear because I don't want you to get confused between some of the messages that I teach you. If you're open to five industries, pick one, pick the one you love the most. Channel everything into that. Channeling works. If you are a PM, but you could do project management office, PM work and BA work, pick one, pick the best, pick the one you want and go with that. Now you might say, well, Andy, haven't you told me that to increase my possibilities, I ought to go up and down my chain? Yes. But that assumes that you have focused and exhausted all avenues and are simply unable to find something. But when you harness it in on one thing, you're going to be much, much more effective. I'll give you an example page from, from my life. You guys know I teach on, well, hopefully, you know, I teach on two things. Job searching, which we're talking about today and leadership development, but career development, high performance, self-help, that, that kind of ilk of, of packaging. We talked about that last week with skill development. If I didn't teach on job searching, I'm convinced that if all I did was eat, sleep, breathe, walk, talk, whatever leadership stuff, and my leadership subscription was the only subscription and the only thing that I offered this world, I could add the number of people in that, in that membership and add two zeros on the back of it. And that's how many more people I could get in there. I'm convinced of that. But when I look at, when I take me down to the box, when I get in the box and I think about what is the thing that I do, I think from who I want to serve and the fact that I think about you, I want me to be for you the only place you ever need to go to get anything career related. Aside from I need to learn how to code in whatever language, I'm talking about anything that has to do with your skill development, finding the right job, thriving in it, developing your skills that transcend all functions and so on. I want to be the only place you go. So my focal point is the individual. And I use different assets to focus on serving the individual. What don't I do? I don't, I don't work with companies. I don't teach companies when they say, well, you come and show us how to help, help my team how to interview better, how to recruit. Can we pay you to do that? No. Why don't I want to do that? Because I decided there was a, there was a line that I drew in the sand that said, I, it matters to me more that I helped that one person transform their life a hundred percent going from no job to job or going from this to promotion or whatever thriving because that person chose me individually. If your boss came to you and said, this Andy guy is going to come and teach you interviewing. You need to show up at two o'clock. What's that? That person's not going to be vested. I'm not dealing with people who are not vested and I'm certainly not going to go train a company and half those people are going to be gone by the time I leave the office, right? With the, with the turnover. So I choose not to do that even though that's easier money, but my soul matters and what matters to me. I want you to focus on the thing that matters the most to you. And by extension, let's go one more. I would, and I want to be really clear about this. I coach a lot of people that are looking in seven different cities. It's hurting you. Where will I do it? If you're open to move into the South, pick the place you're going to go and do nothing but meditate on that place. I would go, I, if I actually could afford to, if it was me, I would consider it an investment. If I lived in Chicago and I was going to move to Atlanta or wherever, Arizona, my mind, my wife's all over me about that, right? I would go to the place I was going to move. I would lock myself in a hotel room for a week and I would do nothing but think about all the places and I walk around in the neighborhoods and I would just think about this place and send my energy out there, right? I know that's a little bit of an expense, but I'm telling you, I mean, we had a, we had a person in my bootcamp, Victor, who did that. I coached him. He was in rural Pennsylvania. I said, go to Washington DC, sleep on somebody's couch. He did for a month. He got a, he's changed careers, got a different role in a 25% pay increase because he invested in himself that way. All right, so I would, I would siphon it down and say, well, Andy, hang on a second. You told me I should look all over the U S yeah, that's fine to do. If what, if you focus down on this, I'm only going to be a PM at healthcare companies. Awesome. Go and find every per every healthcare company. I don't care where they are. And then you're targeting from here. This is, this is what you're doing less of the geographical region. You're open to the possibilities, but that's just because you're trying to get dialogue going with people. But I'm talking about if you actually are genuinely going to move, then you want to try to as much as possible limit this. Okay. All right, let's get into number five. Hang on. My cards are flailing all over the place here. All right. Number five. How will I find it? I wouldn't do anything. Literally nothing. I literally would do nothing zero other than target bosses. Andy, I can't find enough bosses. No, the goal, look at other companies then, right? There are so many people that are out there that would hire you. But a lot of you are farting around with the ATS chasing recruiters and God forbid third party recruiters and other people who aren't getting back to you and HR people and whatever. I wouldn't do anything. Let me tell you about Rachel. Rachel, who I love by the way, Rachel, if you are out there, you know, you know, I am your biggest fan and Rachel, uh, she found herself in Germany because she wanted to marry the love of her life and she's from South Korea. So she moved, moved to Germany and was there for a very short time, found me, joined my coaching program a few years ago, didn't speak the language that really handicapped her ability to get work there. But through the bootcamp within eight weeks through my bootcamp, she got a job with an insurance company. They created a position for her international insurance company. Fast forward two years. Now she knows the language a bit better. She is a financial services whiz with mergers and acquisitions, big time job, but it was very difficult because she wasn't having any luck getting any, you know, any interactions with those types of firms a couple of years ago. So, so, and in November, Thanksgiving is your, so she lets me know, Andy, I want to light it up again. I'm going to go at it. I'd like a session. I said to her, okay, we get together. I said, all right, you're going after the big, the big boys and girls. So she would chasing companies like bank of America, Deutsche bank, and some of the others of that elk. And she had some traction and then Christmas time rolled around and new years and things started to slow down. And I said, nope, you're only allowed to target bosses and you're only allowed to do informational interviews or in actual interviews with bosses or people to get you to bosses that you want to work for. That's it. That's your whole scope. You do nothing else. Do nothing. Zero. Nothing else. And that's what she did. And then all of a sudden it started to die down and the holidays were here. And I, she's Andy. What am I doing wrong? I said, nothing. Keep going. She says, yeah. But I said, nope, everything's fine. She says, well, I got, I had a coffee with this person and they're not getting back to me. What should I do differently? Nothing. You're doing fine. And then yesterday I woke up to this, right? And, and she, Ooh, here we go. Andy. Hi. I got a verbal offer from credit suites, nailed the interview with the CEO. After the one we had a session recently, I still have informational interviews. I think she's going to get another offer. And she did nothing. But what we call in the sales world, targeted account selling, that's when they give their best sales people a finite number of accounts and say, you only get to sell to these people. And that's all she did. It was down to nothing. We stripped it down to the studs. I told her, do nothing but this, nothing but this. And this is what happens because she was laser focused. And here's, and here's the thing that I want you to take away from this. She would go into the system and let me know, or through our one-on-ones, let me know that she felt like she was really struggling and she was beaten up. And I kept telling her, you're doing everything right. You're doing everything right. It only takes one, right? That's a pawn being moved off the chessboard. But what do most people do? Well, they didn't get back to me so that Andy's technique doesn't work. There's a million things that contribute, not to mention, so the more people she targeted at those particular types of companies that increased the number of dialogues and discussions she had and coffee meetings and video meetings and whatever, that's pretty dang fast, right? This is like eight weeks into the new year and this is what's happening. So I'm telling you though, I'm not saying do less. I'm saying hit more bosses. If you're going to do anything, stripping it down to the stud, right? That's what I'm talking about. All right. How about this one? This is the trickiest one though. Here's the trickiest one. What about the interviewing? Right? We saw a bunch of those in the, in the, all right. It's about them. 99% of the people I coach here again, love these people. Brilliant, bright superstars do interviewing prep backwards. And I'm going to be really specific. So like this or not, you in an interview are in a sales call. I don't care if you don't like sales. It is what it is. And the best sales people, the best sales people can show the individual that they're speaking to. And it's an individual. It's not a company. It's an individual. You're talking to a person, right? You sell to people how their life's going to be transformed, how maybe how their company's going to be, how they are going to benefit and how, what this means to them. They think about that person and how that person's life's going to be solved. Do you know what they're not thinking? I'm a desperate job seeker and I need this job every single time as an information technology and management consultant, I went into a sales call. Every single time as an executive recruiter selling recruitment services or in it as an eight is me, the recruiter going in to sell the recruitment services. Not one time did I think, Oh, I need this job. Oh, I need their money. Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, I, I, I'm a company, I'm selling my services. What happens if I don't get this? I'm thinking you have a problem and I'm the answer. Okay. You have a problem and I'm the solution. You all are the solution to somebody's problem. You need to think of it that way. You should not be thinking, Oh, I need this job. Oh, what are they going to ask me? No. The stripping it down to the stunts part is obsessing over that person you're going to be talking to and trying to build a relationship with them, thinking about what it is they need to know, to know how their life and their company or whoever they represent or speak on behalf of is going to change. And that's what you need to be obsessed about. And I did a, I did a job search challenge that many of you know, and that job search challenge will help you with the part I talked about with Rachel, where you're targeting bosses. That's job search challenge, Andy, part one. I also did a job search challenge, part two, the meta level stuff, the advanced tactics. And I talk about how to do this, how to obsess over the interviewer, how to think forward that this is the first step in building the longterm relationship that you are going to have with them. And when you think about that, here's the difference in mindsets, Andy, I got to learn all the behavioral questions and the stories I'm going to tell and the this and that. That's you being the desperate job seeker and thinking about you and what you want to say. Here's what I mean. You're going to go to a, you're going to go to an interview, four different people throughout the day. They all get four different stories about the, tell me about yourself question, right? What does that HR person need to know? What does the hiring official need to know? What does the tech screener need to know? What does the staff member I'm talking to who as a courtesy needs to know about me? Do you think any of them would get the same? Tell me about yourself story? No, because you have to obsess over them and tailor what you're saying to what they need to understand so that you're connecting with them so that you're building the relationship with them. Not, here's what I am. Here's what I do. Here's a story about a disagreement. Here's a whatever. It's got to be about them, not about you, but you all study this about you from your history standpoint. Okay? When I think about prepping a job search packet for you, I'm thinking about you. What are they struggling with? What do they need to know? Right? There's so many things that I know that you never hear about because I have to choose what you need to know so that it changes your results, not how it would necessarily change my results. That's what you've got to obsess over. It's about them. Work backwards. What would the staff person care about, right? Do you think that person cares so much about that great unit you built over there or as it relates to how the unit you build affects me and my development and what opportunities I might get and what your work management style is like and how I might want to work with it and how I'm going to benefit from that. You need to think about them and now some of you are saying, well, Andy, I don't always know the person I'm going to go talk to, or I don't know their background. They have no digital footprint. I can't look them up. What's their title? Extrapolate. Guess. They pop somebody in front of you. Be a little nimble on your feet. Ask them, who are you? What do you do? What's important? Just let me know. I just want some context, right? Meta stuff, meta stuff. Down to the stud. This is where you start. Okay? All right, wait. Hang on. All right. Got salary. I had to throw this one in. All right. Number seven, you just need to be thinking, Andy says, find a needle and a thread and sew my lips together. Do not break the glass until I got an offer in front of my face. Let me tell you about M. I'm going to call her M because she's got a pretty unique first name and she's in my coaching program and she was flailing around in her search and I'm going to tell you what buttoning your lips does for your salary. Negotiation. Had an eclectic background, a lot of non-household names, startups that failed, short-term companies, even I think she was a day trader for a while, wanted to get a job at a fang company. So she got in my bootcamp, in the big bootcamp and got organized, got directed, and then got an, was getting down to the end, was about getting an offer. She wanted to have a coaching session with me. She said, Andy, um, I'm out of work. I've been out of work for a while, out of work, early fifties, single mom, no, no income. And one of the big boys and girls was about to hire her. She said, I did what you told me. I never told him anything. I kept pushing it off. I said, make me a fair offer. They came to me with what the broad strokes and she did. She was so blown away by the number. She said, can I get more? Yeah. Let's get together. All right. Here's what you do. Here's what we know. Here's what you say. And there were some things that we knew and some things that we didn't. So I gave her literally the exact words to say on this part. You have a base salary, restricted stock units. You have some vacation days, some of these other sign on bonus, some of these other miscellaneous things. For the things that are discreet, we're going to ask for $55,000 more dollars in the first year at a minimum. That's the cash part. And we don't know, we need to ask it in a manner so that you allow them to take control and own the decision. But you, but because there are uncertainties in some of this, we need to do some things. We need to jab them a couple of times. We need to bruise them a little bit to let them know that there is uncertainty in your decision and where the certainty lies, where that line is, that you will give them your word, you'll take it. So I want you to do some very specific things to get them thinking. And then I want you to do some vague things to make sure that you give them an opportunity to decide how badly they want you. Because based on what they do with the vague stuff, we're going to know how they feel about you and how much harder we can push, right? So sometimes you can't do all this in one fell swoop. She was so nervous about this because she'd already gotten like a 50K sign on bonus. She's like, I never got a sign on bonus, but I didn't understand. I said, no, we need to increase that. We need to increase this and we need to ask for more stock. And you let them know that it's up to their discretion. And then you give them all this rolled together. And then you tell them if they meet this, you will make everything else go away. You will drop your other interviews. You will give them your start date and so on, because they need to be certain that they know if they hit these numbers that you're theirs and they will likely exceed your request, which she found out, I said, because they don't want the uncertainty. Okay. So here's what I woke up to right after Rachel's, right after Rachel's message, I woke up to this one and this is what, because she did not say anything, did not tell them what she earned, did not tell them what she expected. And she said, they blew me away by, they basically upped her call 50% on top of what she countered with because they wanted to make it go away because they had no frame of reference. She made the argument. There were other things that she needed to do. Now this is a tall offer, but we made it a lot taller. Okay. So, I mean, you know, when you're going from three and a quarter to four and a quarter with one counter, that's pretty good. You can't do that when you're talking about salary along the way. Things like this don't happen. So this is what happens when you, when you button, when you button up. So I want you to, I want you to think about that. I know some of you think, well, Andy, I'm wasting my time. You're not wasting your time. You have to get through it, convince them you're worth it. And then when you get down to the end, there are a lot of tactics that you can take advantage of that you have at your disposal because you did not talk about this along the way. And they don't have a frame of reference and you need to get where their head is first, which is what she did. And so that was, I was so happy for her. All right. Those are seven. Now I got one more. Actually, I, I think I might've saved my, my favorite one for career changers for last. All right. Now, if you are changing careers, you know, you guys say, well, how much time should I spend on this? And that I say to you, if you are a career changer, 100% of your time should be spent networking. Okay. So networking only for career changers. Don't try to boss hunt. Okay. Don't try to boss hunt unless you're getting introduced by somebody who's really close to the boss and don't go in the, heaven forbid, don't go in the applicant tracking system. So what happens when you get focused? This I woke up to on Sunday. This is from Maria. Same kind of thing. Annie, great news. This is a job changer for a woman in her fifties who wanted to change careers. I accept, joins the program, desired company within three months. I recognize I wasted a lot of time. I was feeling directionless. I found the program, but this, this is the thing that I really love because you could have an experience or you can gain an experience. The program isn't about jobs. Don't think my program is about job searching. It's about focus, proactivity, confidence. Like she said, these are experiences that will transcend and what I networked my way. I networked my way, right? She stopped doing the other stuff, bypassed the ATS, even negotiated a raise, didn't have to sacrifice her happiness criteria. The other thing, there are people around you in your community, whether in our community that are welcoming and support you or people that you can tap into, but job searching doesn't need to be lonely, right? The networking part, this networking part will really help you and if you don't have a network, you got to build one. All right, so if Andy had to job search all over again, I would make sure I was crystal clear and somebody knew within a second what I did. I would make sure that I had a one sentence test. I would make sure that I know the industry and function I was going to go for. I would only focus on one. I'd make sure my geo was in order and I would think and target only one place. I would only target bosses. I would do nothing else. I'm not even being funny. I would think about and obsess over the interview. I might pick their pictures out, put them in my booklet and just think about them. Okay, that's what I do. I think about all you. I got your faces somewhere. Button your lips on salary and networking for career changers. All right, that's all I got today, people. If you're loving it, click the thumbs up button. Make sure to share this. Make sure you're subscribed to the channel. If you're here with me live, we're going to the chat. If not, I'll see you next week.