Hunting, Hustling, Hired: The Triple H of Career Progression #59

After all, all art is experience. Hello and welcome to The Company Doctor, where today Gary and I are talking all things career progression. We discuss how to cultivate a growth mindset, how to make the most of your superpowers, and how to navigate your way to the hidden job market. And if that wasn't intriguing and enticing enough, Gary also delivers some really useful and surprising job application advice. This is Hunting, Hustling, Hired, the Triple H of career progression. Well, hello, Gary.

Hey, George. We're not clashing with the hellos this time.

We rehearsed it and it's worked.

Fantastic. It's better when you go first, don't you think?

Yeah, I think so. Just in everything.

Yeah, pretty much. So here we are. This is a really important episode at this time. It's called Hunting, Hustling, Hired: The Triple H of Career Progression.

Yeah, it's a great title and it reminds me of my youth because Triple H was a wrestler and I used to quite enjoy wrestling.

Oh right, I thought it was someone from Steps.

Oh yeah, what, three twins? Yeah, God, what a terrible prospect that is.

I know, exactly. So no offense to anyone who likes Steps, but listen, we are going to give you steps, right?

Great segue.

This is like new age job hunting.

Yeah.

When I was putting this together, you know, what became clear, and I think we probably knew this already, is that there's lots written about job hunting. There's lots said. Most of it is a bit meh. Is that rude?

I don't think so. I think it's true.

Yeah, it is. It's a bit meh. And I thought, you know, we're going to shake it up. Do you remember? A lot of people listening won't know this, but there used to be a packet of crisps called Smith's Crisps. Then they had a little packet of salt inside. And you open that packet and you shook it around and you distributed things better. That's what we're doing here. We're going to shake it up. Nice. I want to reframe how you look at job hunting.

It is something that needs to evolve, doesn't it? Like, you can't apply the same principles that you were 20 years ago.

Definitely not. I mean, there's some things in there. Obviously we're not throwing everything out the window, but it's, you know, when I say job hunting, if you're listening and you need to do job hunting, what are you thinking? What's your immediate reaction to that?

To what?

To job hunting? Yeah. If I say job hunting, what happens in your heart?

I get a bit nervous.

Yeah. Just go, oh, because you know what you're up against, right? Yeah. So here's, here's my challenge. If you're listening and you're job hunting, you know, whether you're new in careers, you've been in careers a while, it doesn't matter. I'm going to give you different techniques. I am going to focus a lot on, on new careers because first, even first careers in some cases. Yeah. So if anyone knows anyone that's, you know, trying to get on the ladder, this is going to be a really helpful episode. But it— but also, if you've been around a while, this is also going to be helpful. But here's my question, here's my challenge to you listening listeners: are you serious about your career? Do you, do you want to navigate the path to the hidden job market? Because there's a— I'm going to talk about later— there's a hidden job market that most people don't have access to. And do you want some tips on how to make it through the masses? I put sperm in brackets and you were like, what? Just— this is probably not a good thing to do, is it? But a bit of biology, apparently when you have kids there's sperm, and there's lots of them and not many make it through. That's what happens with recruitment— bad example. But you're competing with everybody, and you're in the— you know, the chances of making it are pretty slim. That's why it's so difficult and so daunting. Would you agree?

I would agree, yeah.

And you know, there can only be one, so, you know, you can only be one.

It can only be one, so you have to stand out. And I guess we're going to get to how you do that.

We are. So by the way, I've got a deep and sexy voice today. I am— I lost my voice but it's back and now I sound like Barry White.

I think we're both a bit Barry, Barry White today.

We're going to talk about the war, so the Barry, the Barry White approach to job hunting. Here goes. Well, there's 3 parts, George, on this episode.

Who'd have guessed?

Groundbreaking, right? The first one is hunting because we said hunting is the 3 H's, right? Yeah, hunting, hustling, hire. The first one's hunting, and my subtext to hunting is, is to get yourself out of the way Okay. Yes, I know. You're— by the way, your picture is really kind of fuzzy today, so I can't see your— I can't see your complete expression, but I can see you're like looking puzzled by this.

My quizzical— yeah, yeah, I am. Get yourself out of the way.

Get yourself out of the way. Just get out of the way. Look, here's— let me just kind of rant for it.

Can I rant for a little bit, please?

This section's a rant section. Great. Because it's mainly about mindset. Now, when, when you're looking for a job You're not looking for a job. This is the issue. Your mindset is wrong. You're looking for a career, right? And if you start too quickly to look for a job, you end up doing— A, you're in the battle, and B, you look— you probably end up with something you didn't want. Because getting a job is binary. It's a kind of a constant state of failure because the success rate is so low. So if you're, if you're applying multiple times, you're going to continually get disappointed. Yeah, great. That's why people don't like it. So I want to reframe how you look at job hunting. Okay. I wanted to think, think of it as a campaign, whether you're just starting out or you're about to change careers or you lost your job and you need another one. Just stop. You know, people rush because they panic. Would you agree? Have you seen that?

Where— yeah, and I think it's, you know, regardless, as you say, whether you're starting out to, to find a new, a new job, or whether you've been forced into that situation, you— it does feel like a bit of a rush, and it does feel a bit like I need to get this done immediately. And I'll— that's when you fall into the trap of sort of just taking whatever's out there.

Exactly. And so, so here's some ideas. So the hunting part, and we're gonna— we'll get to CVs and all that stuff, but to be honest, if you don't get this stuff right, then it doesn't matter what your CV looks like. But the first, you know, we're going to give you some very practical tips, as always. But so seek a career, not a job, and think of rejection as redirection. So the right mindset— and I think we should do an episode on growth mindset, George, or something. Yeah, yeah, we've touched on it in a couple of episodes, but the purpose of growth mindset is to get people to think about when they hit adversity and failure, is not to go, oh God, I'm not good enough, am I? But it is to get you to have the mindset that you go, I think I might be able to learn from this. Like I didn't succeed. It's probably their fault, not mine. But can I learn from it and do it better next time? Yeah. If you can have that growth mindset and maintain a kind of a positive and persistent mindset throughout, which is not an easy thing to do, I appreciate, then that gives you half a chance. Because if this is going to be a campaign, yeah, this is what I recommend you do. People listening, this is for you. I would set up a war room. It's a campaign, right? Yeah. Find a corner of your house, find an office, I don't know, in your bedroom, where it doesn't matter to me, but I want you to set up a war room. I want you to think before you do anything, think about which company do you want to work for? Is there a company that you really want to work for? Are there a set of companies? Why don't you start with what you want? Because I think we move too quickly to what we have to do. Do you agree?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And also just quickly, what's the, you know, you say set up a war room, what's the benefit of that?

Why? Yeah, because I want you to lay— or it could be a scrap— I'm probably a bit 1980s, aren't I? But it could be a scrapbook. I want you to kind of piece together— I was thinking about, you know, I was watching CSI on TV the other day. Great. Doing a murder investigation. They got pictures of some of the suspects, they've got photos of areas and evidence. I want you to lay everything out. That's the reason for the war room. So that you've got— it's a camp, this is a campaign, and I want it to be fun because it's like there's the intellectual part of winning and it's in front of you and you can see everything's in front of you. Yeah, yeah. Could be checklists. It could be— and I'm going to give you all the stuff you need in front of you and your CV already. And therefore it kind of creates a bit of energy and excitement and a bit of a game plan. Yeah. On where you're going for. So which companies do you want to work for? You know, if I could work in 10 organizations, which would they be? What industry are you interested in? What kind of roles do you want to do? Let's start there. For our campaign. And then, as I said, we treat rejection as a redirection because we're, we're on it, we're on a mission, and we're not gonna, you know, just apply for one little job and hope for the best, because we're not, we're not applying for a job, we're seeking a career.

I like that a lot. And I think so many people just rely on, oh, you know, what, what's going to fall in my lap, or, you know, what's, what am I going to see on LinkedIn that has suddenly become available, as opposed to taking control themselves and being like, this is actually what I want to do and this is how I'm going to make it happen.

Exactly. And so what we're gonna do later on in the episode is give you some ideas about how to kind of have these multi-streams so you give yourself the best chance. Listen, there's no guarantees, right? Sure. But we want to, we wanna give everyone listening the best chance. Yeah. And the second thing I want to talk about within the first part is how to demonstrate experience when you don't have any. Okay. It's an issue, isn't it?

If, yeah, a bit of bluffing.

Well, potentially. Well, actually maybe not. So here's the thing, right? If you are early in your career, and you go for an interview, if you're fortunate enough to get to one, or rather you can't get to one because someone says something like, yeah, but you don't have any experience. And you're thinking, well, give me a chance and I'll have some. Yeah, yeah, yeah. If you want to, you know, get promoted or move to another job, again, the same things come up. Yeah, yeah, but you know, you haven't got the right experience. Come back to me in 3 years when you got it. So, you know, what are your thoughts about— is there a way to get experience that is self-driven by you?

Yeah, I mean, back in the day, yes, this was a real issue because I remember even at the age of sort of 17 going into a pub and saying, do you have any bar jobs? And they said, well, what experience do you have?

And I said, have you ever worked in a bar?

Nothing. Yeah, not yet, but I'd really like to. Yeah. And the answer was no, obviously, because I hadn't done it before. So it was a sort of a self-fulfilling prophecy that I was just destined never to work in a pub. I mean, I ended up working in loads, but I think you can, you know, there's things that people used to say, things like shadowing people, you know, you find someone who's doing this job and you'd ask if you could spend some time with them while they do that job so that you can learn from them, perhaps? Is that one of the—

Yeah, I mean, exactly things like that. I found out by accident and I look back now and I wonder what my motivation was, but when I was 15, I started a charity organization for cancer research and managed to persuade 4-0, 40 other teenagers to be involved. And to be honest, most of their priority was social life. They didn't really care about it. Yeah, I ended up doing a national— I organized national events. I met Lorraine Kelly. She's in a national event. Well, she's a national event. She's, um, you know, and I, I, I, I did all sorts of things, and I'm not bigging myself up, but what happened was when I went to my first interview, this was by luck, I didn't plan this, right? They said to me, you know, what's the most— one of the questions was, what's the most difficult thing you've ever done? No, because you haven't worked before. So what's the most difficult thing you've ever done? I said the most difficult thing I ever did was trying to persuade 40 teenagers to get involved in, uh, running a national event who were more interested in the social life. And the things I learned from that gave me more experience about life and leadership than anything I can imagine.

So draw on personal experiences.

Yeah, I create— I didn't do this intentionally, but I recommend people do. I created experience that gave me— it differentiated me at the interview. I was only— my first job, I, I had an interview, it was 18. I didn't have any qualifications because I couldn't be bothered. But this is what I'm recommending to people, the way— and this is what I, I advise young people to do, and it's the same at any age, by the way. Yeah, do something big. Do, you know, create a charity, work in a— if you want to be Uh, some jobs lend themselves to apprenticeships, so fine, but outside of, you know, traditional, uh, careers where there's, there's a path, go and get involved, you know, try and get a job in a pub, go and get a job in a hairdresser's. Yeah, go and work for an estate agent. It doesn't— whatever your chosen field, get some experience, right? You know, create an event, a charity event. Why not, you know, get people involved, show the, the skills you've had to build to do something like that. Yeah, that's how, you know, you can create your own experience better than going, well, you know, it's not fair because, you know, give me a chance. Yeah, I get it, but that's not going to move you forward. What's going to move you forward is in your control.

Yeah, it's really good advice, and it is difficult, especially if we are talking to people who are sort of 16, 17, 18. It is a difficult mindset to get into, but it does, you know, as Gary is proof of, it just makes such a massive difference. And you'll look back on that with real pride, uh, much more so than you would another trip to the park with a bottle of cider.

Definitely. And actually in another interview I had later in my life, so not just for early careers, but just later in my career, someone questioned my experience in management. And they said, you know, you haven't been in a management job. So why should we give you this role? 'Cause it was a kind of a slight leadership role, it wasn't that big. And I said, you kidding? I said, I've got 40 teenagers to run a national event for charity and they'd rather have a social life. I've learned more about that and I reuse that story.

Yeah, why not?

I use that not only in my early interview, I dined out on it again when I had my first interview to be a manager. Because the truth is that there are examples where people have got experience, they need to demonstrate them. Does that make sense?

Yeah. And I'm sure as well that a lot of people will have done something similar, like maybe not similar, but will have done something which they can draw on to use in an interview situation, but they just haven't thought of using it, if you know what I mean.

Exactly. Yeah. So if you're sitting there thinking, I need to get a job, I haven't done anything yet. Well, yeah, I'm— I think you need to step back, and before you go back out there, you need to start something. You may do it in parallel, and you might worry that it's going to take time, but this is going to set you apart and it's going to give you a chance. So first thing is war room mentality. It's a campaign. You're looking for a career, not a job, and it's up to you to differentiate yourself. What are you going to do? How can you add value? For the different roles that you're interested in. Now you've thought about what you want, where you want to work, your campaign is done, and we're going to reuse the campaign as we go through. We're going to connect where you want to go with who we know. We'll come back to that in a minute. So that's part one. That's the hunting. We're starting to create this mindset. It's not the only part of hunting because we're going to—

it works all the way through.

Yeah.

I hope you're enjoying this episode. I certainly am. So I'll keep this brief. This is just your halftime reminder that you can show your support for what we're doing with this podcast by leaving us a positive review on Apple Podcasts. Not just so that we feel warm and fuzzy inside, but also because it helps the algorithm realize just how brilliant and popular we are, so it recommends us to more and more people. You can sign up to our mailing list over at thecompanydoctor.com, where you'll also find show notes, videos of Gary in action, and lots of other added extras. And that's 30 seconds, so it's back to the show.

Part 2. Let's talk about the hustling. Mm-hmm. The part of the hustling is everyone has something to offer. Everyone's got experience. Everyone has a superpower. And I want to talk about the art of selling yourself as part of the hustling.

It's a tricky one, isn't it?

It is. Again, especially if you don't have experience because you don't want to be arrogant like I'm being right now. You got to be, you got to be true to yourself. Yeah. And not everyone's confident. And, you know, I get that. So, you know, I'm not trying to make you something you're not. But yeah, I do think the first thing is to stop and think before you look for a job. And we talked about that. But the other thing is that you are a free agent when you start looking for a job. Mm-hmm. You know what I mean by that?

Well, I guess you've, there's no pressure on you. You can, you are free to sort of shop around.

Yeah, pretty much. It's a bit like if you've been in a relationship for many years and then it finishes. So you, when you were in that relationship, there's certain boundaries, right? You're not gonna go with someone else and, You have to kind of compromise and do what the other person wants sometimes. And there's a whole bunch of stuff that goes— rules that goes with it. When your relationship's finished, you're free. I mean, it's not— you're pretty sad, but you're free. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So you're a free agent when you're looking for a job and you should relish that because you don't have any ties. You can decide where you live, where you work, who you work with, what you do. I know you're probably thinking, well, yeah, that's great, but I can't find those jobs. Yeah, we'll get there. But why don't you start from the point of view of what you want? Yeah, you're a free agent. And one of the ways I'd recommend people doing this is to think about this is your— if this was your business, me incorporated, if you like.

Nice.

How would you behave if this was your business? You know, it's in your control. You're not waiting for someone else to do something for you. The starting point is what— so what is your superpower? What I mean by that, do you remember, you know, um, that the Superman superpowers, remember that? Yeah. And the kryptonites. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So what one of your superpowers is, what do you like doing? Would you actually like doing? And therefore, what are you good at? What is your superpower? George, what's your superpower? I think I know.

Um, you think you know? Because I don't think, I don't think I do. Um, I think I'm good at getting people together to do something. I'm good at sort of collaborating. Yeah, you are. Is that—

I didn't think that has been the first one. You are absolutely good at that, and people respect you, and therefore they want to, they want to follow you. If you, if you come up with something, you have that credibility, people want to follow you for sure. But you're also, uh, you're super creative. You're good at writing, you know, you're good at music. You're annoyingly good at everything. A bit of the podcast. God, you're so annoying. And, um, you know, that, uh, that is the— that's the real superpower, because And I know through your career you've tried to focus on things that you like doing, right? It's not easy to follow a career always on things that you want to do. So people listening, what do you like doing? What are you good at? Start there. Don't give up yet. And secondly, what don't you like doing? So some people don't know what's available to them. And we've spoken about careers advisors before. Yeah. The problem with careers advisors is no disrespect, but they're careers advisors. They don't know what's going on. Most of us in working life don't know what's available because you don't know what you don't know. But you do know what you don't like. And then the other thing is, because we're talking about a career, not a job, what is the career path you might need? But you're not going to become the CEO or the managing director by Friday. So if you feel that you want to go in that direction, what is the career path you might need to take? So would it be good to get some Excel experience? Would it be good to go and understand finance or whatever? What's the path? Because it's not permanent. Like if you take a job tomorrow, It's not like that's not it. Yeah.

Yeah. So, so have in mind where you want it to sort of lead to eventually rather than just, just sort of going for what that job is.

Yeah. Now I'm not saying you shouldn't be ambitious. That's fine. But certainly be accepting that that's not the end of it. It's a bit like if you buy a house, it might not have everything you want in the place you want it to be, but it's just a stepping stone. Yeah, it may not be, but it should be a stepping stone. Depends how ambitious people are. Same with jobs. It's like a lot of people fall into a rut really early in their careers and therefore it could have been a stepping stone, but it ends up being the place of state. Yeah, that's on them. Okay. So if you're, if you're thinking of this like a business, as me, Inc. Yeah. Then unemployment is the business development part of your startup.

Okay. So this is where— Yeah, no, no, I like that.

Yeah. I've got the George face. I like that. I think, can I quite understand where he's going with this?

No, no, I like it.

Yeah, yeah, you get it. Yep, yep. Barry White says, I like this.

I like it.

I love it. Yeah, so unemployment is— and that's the way to think about it, it's business development. That's why this section is called hustling. Again, if you, if you're running a campaign, then you're not— it's not binary. Like, I apply for a job, 10,000 other people apply for it, probably won't get it. It's a campaign. I'm looking for business development. In order to be good at business development, you're trying to find other angles to connect to people. Yeah, to, to connect to what they want.

It makes sense. It's a really good way of looking at it because it's seen as such a negative thing, I think, unemployment or being out of work, whatever it is. And if you're able to turn that into actually, this is the sort of the management part of my campaign, as opposed to this is me being sad and unemployed. I mean, it's, it's, it's difficult to do, and it's probably quite tricky to get into that mindset. But if you do, I'm sure it makes a real difference.

It does. So that's the way to look at it. And then the other bit connected to that, it's about your personal brand. We've spoken quite a lot about personal brand. Yeah, the, the, there's 3 tips for improving your personal brand. So whatever your personal brand is, is, is about you being honest about what people think about you. So if I said to you, people listening, I said if I asked your, anyone that knows you, what are the 3 things I say about you, what would they be? Just 3 words. What would they say about you, George?

Um, handsome, strong.

For people listening, generally think about not what you want people to say about you, what would they actually say about you? And if those things are not where you need them to be, particularly for a particular job— like, a good example is if you want to be a project manager and someone says you're totally unorganized, that's not going to go well. Yeah. So if your brand is you're unorganized and late, then you need to fix it if you want to be a project manager. You may not want to be a project manager, you want to be a hairdresser. So by the way, if you look at my hair, I've just been to the hairdresser. So this— I've just got my hair styled.

It looks great.

You can see that, right? Yeah. So 3 tips for personal brand. The first one is to identify and address current perception. So asking yourself that question helps you understand the truth about what people might say. You could ask them.

Yeah, I've actually done that before. Sorry, just to say. Have you? Yeah, I did that. It was quite revealing and good. You've got to find someone that you trust who's going to tell you the truth. I can't remember exactly what they said, but—. But it was—

but you don't want to tell you what you want to hear.

No, exactly. No, it's quite enlightening. Yeah.

And then, and then the next thing is to redefine your brand message. So for example, if you need— if you're— if the career you're trying to get into needs someone that's organized and on time, or needs someone to do what they say, whatever you decide that thing is, then that— your behaviors need to match. Yeah. So you need to work on it. And I suggest you write them down. Just write down the 4 things that define your personal brand. For the role that you want. Yeah. And then, then you've got to showcase transformation and growth. So you've got to demonstrate it with behaviors. Now you might think, well, how's that? They don't know me. I haven't applied for the job yet. But this is the foundation of building your reputation, your personal brand. You with me so far? Got it. Yeah, yeah, you got it. And then now you're getting kind of— you're building this campaign. I want to show you how to kind of connect to everything in the campaign. I want you to— part 3 is about getting hired. I wanted to get you to the hidden job market.

Yeah, that's the, that's the tantalizing thing. You like that? Yeah, yeah, I do. Look, I was— Do you agree, George, that most good jobs are hidden? Yes, definitely. The best jobs aren't the ones that people, that, you know, people are emailing you about, or, you know, although you're seeing on LinkedIn listed or anything. Yeah, and that's what happens, right?

So the way it used to work in my, in my youth, not as long time ago, is that you used to get the Sunday Times, and that's where all the adverts for jobs were. Yeah. When you're applying for something on LinkedIn or in the paper or wherever it is anymore. Yeah. Not normally online or through Indeed. You're immediately competing with everyone else, with the masses. Yeah. Yeah. That's not a good place to be. It's the last thing you want to do. Yeah. You'll compete. You're being benchmarked against everyone else and it could be hundreds, thousands. Now, I appreciate if you're going through an apprenticeship or you're, you know, you're trying to get into a company, you have to go through that process. I'm not saying you shouldn't do it. Do it, but don't— you've got to adopt a multi-platform strategy. Do you know what I mean by that? Um, why don't you tell me? Right, you've got— for this campaign, this war room, we're going to have multiple strands to this campaign. One strand is applying for jobs in a normal way, going through 16,000 pages of forms. Get all that, do all that, fantastic. But the most important advice I can give anyone listening is to get to someone where there's a warm contact. You've got half a much better chance by a massive percentage if there's some connection to you, even if they don't know you. Absolutely. You agree with that, right?

Yeah, yeah, no, I really do. I mean, it gives you that inroad. Any sort of personal recommendation or anything like that just helps, you know, it just makes a massive difference.

Yeah. And so most good jobs are hidden. It's a bit like when you're trying to buy a house, the estate agent has some things that don't go on the market or are about to go on the market. Yeah. And your part of your campaign is to try and find those, and the way to find those is through people you know. Yeah. So the multi-platform strategy is write a list on your campaign wall in the companies you want to go and work in. Who do you know? It could be a relative, it could be a friend, it could be a friend of a friend's friend. I don't really care, but find out someone in that business using LinkedIn, using, asking people, whatever you need to do, because you've got to try and find a way to connect to someone because it gives you a better chance.

Definitely. And it goes back to, you know, we've talked so much about the importance of networking. On this podcast. And the more you network, the more people you know, and therefore the greater chance you're going to have of knowing someone in a company that you want to work for. So I think it all, it does connect, obviously.

Exactly. And that's the next part of the topic. So it's leveraging networking and relationships is the key part. We talk about it a lot, but so it's not just when, like, when you've got an interview coming up, of course you can look on LinkedIn and find out about the people that are going to be there. I'm trying to get you to do that beforehand so that when a job, even before it's advertised, someone can tell you that if you're networking, someone might tell you that job's coming up. Or friend of a friend knows of something being done in a certain place. Yeah, that, that's what I mean by that. So you're building your career relationships with warm contacts. That's your part of your campaign. It's a really important part of your campaign. Definitely. So you should build a list of names of people that you know and, and, and get— try and get on the phone to them, get in front of them, and try and find out who they know in certain companies. Yeah. You know, to increase your chances of being successful. And also don't be shy about doing it.

I think a lot of people, you know, you might not— it might be a real fringe contact and might feel a little bit self-conscious about approaching those people, but no one really minds. No one minds being tapped up.

Actually, if you ask in the right way, people really want to help. I mean, if anyone in their early careers asks me, I normally, I normally try and help, see if I can give something back. So I think, you know, as long as you ask for advice or, you know, could you help me out, you're not driving people mad. Don't ever ask them for a job, just ask for their help. Yeah, basically you're trying to culminate a CV that connects to a job. And, you know, CVs need to pass this kind of 6-second rule that I have. You know about the 6-second rule?

Is it that if you haven't enticed someone within 6 seconds, you haven't got a chance?

Yeah, I mean, you've hired people, right? You get a bunch of CVs, you just kind of flick through them. It's a 6-second rule. I flick through it. I'm looking for things I'm looking for. I'm looking for experience and background and blah blah blah. But yeah, I'm not like reading from top to bottom. I'm like flicking through it. The opening half is actually probably the most important because that's the thing you see first. Yeah, but you've got to pass the 6-second rule. And the way to pass the 6-second rule if you're writing a CV is to be really clear about the job. So when there is a— when you do find a role, you want to use the language and the experience they're looking for and connect to it. Yeah, in your CV. So that's the most important thing, not to bang on about how amazing you are. But to customize your CV. I always recommend that you create, let's say, 3 profiles. There's slight nuances. I'm not saying you should lie or anything, but for example, if someone says, I want to— I'm using project manager as an easy one to say, but there's a project management job versus a sales job or whatever it is, then you just need to use the language. You know, they're looking for words that project manager is supposed to have. Yeah. And there might be a job description or a job spec on LinkedIn or whatever. Yeah. Then basically you pull out those words in your CV. Yeah. Yeah. And then when you're demonstrating experience, you pull out things they're looking for in your CV. Yeah. So you're customizing it.

It's a good tip that, and I think a lot of people just have one CV which they sort of blanket send out, which, yeah, is a mistake.

Yeah, it's kind of a lazy approach because you've— if you think of this as a campaign, you're trying to join the dots with everyone all the way through. So So now you've got your war room, you know, the companies you're working for, you've read up on what that industry is doing or that company is doing. You've tried to find someone you know, you've, you've worked your way to maybe one or two warm contacts. They might be very distant. And now you're creating your CV against the role they're trying to fill. You're just improving your chances. No guarantees. You're improving your chances. And then as you go through, you've got some actionable insights that you can use. On the whole process, but particularly around your CV. The first one is— it's not going to be revolutionary when I say it— use ChatGPT. Oh yeah. And don't worry about it, you know. So here's, here's my experience of using it. If you always write the thing first that you want and then put that actual— the actual words that you use in ChatGPT, but use this prompt: say, I'm going to ask you for your advice on writing a cover letter for my CV. Do you understand? And then ChatGPT will say, yes, I do understand, please tell me what you want. Then you put your cover letter in and you say, please rewrite my cover letter, and then you decide what you want it to be in a contemporary way, in a professional way, with humor. What you decide what you want to tell it to do, and you'll be amazed by the, the response that you get.

That's really good advice. I, I— you probably know a lot more about this than I do. I'm sure you do, as with most things. I haven't really used ChatGPT. It's, it's a mind-blowing—

a lot of people are complaining about it's going to take over our jobs. You know what, it may— I don't think it would take over our jobs, but just use it. It's a bit like, you know, those— if you get a bike that has a battery on it. Yeah, electric bike. Yeah, it's not like a motorbike, it just pushes you up the ass and makes you move fast. Yeah, all that ChatGPT— put, just put everything through ChatGPT. You might— you've got nothing to lose. Most of the time it's free. Yeah, but definitely it's better to put in something you've written first. Yeah, because it's more like to be in your way of working. Yeah. The second thing is, here's an idea, because I'm talking about a multi-platform approach. You know, we're in the 21st century. Why don't you do a video cover letter? Nice. A nice little clip attached to explaining why you're the right person, why you want the job. That would make you stand out, right? Definitely. That's really good.

It's sort of— I hate saying outside the box, but it is. It's sort of— it's unconventional thinking. Yeah. Inside the window.

Yeah, but if you do it, you have to look professional and you have to make it, you know, you can make use of your phone, but don't make it tacky, right? Sure, sure. Just make it and don't make it cheesy. No, that's a great idea. The other approach, and you mentioned it earlier, George, is I call intentional mentoring. Find someone you can mentor, do a task, share a white paper, do an opinion piece that you can say, you know, as part of the advice, they get some value back Yeah. And then you can ask them to help you. It's a great springboard for— it could be someone senior, it could be someone that, again, a relative, a friend of a friend, doesn't really matter. Ask them to mentor you to help to get work.

And again, most people are going to be flattered and will be really happy to help with this sort of thing. Definitely. From my experience. Yeah.

The next bit of advice I give you is actionable insight is to get referred. Ask people to refer you. I'm a good bloke, you know, I'm good at this. I don't want to put pressure, but would you recommend me to blah, blah, blah? Yeah, if you know of a role, then ask them for jobs. Sure. The other thing is on LinkedIn, you've got to beat the robot.

What do you mean by that?

Oh well, I found out the other day, so I, I'm not looking for a job, I have my own business, but LinkedIn sent me a message saying I found these 3 jobs for you, uh, Director of Business Change Transformation for Lego or something like that. It was like, there were big roles, you know, and don't want to blow my own trumpet, I'm pretty good at change and transformation.

I do it for a living. Yeah.

And one of the roles said, your number of skills, you have 2 out of 5 for this role. I don't know what— how dare you! I thought, I'll tell you, I don't even want the job. I'm really angry. So I went in and I had a look, and I, I use keywords in your, in your LinkedIn description. And for my business, I use different keywords like business consulting, or I do change management. Yeah. I hadn't ticked a box that they were looking for. In their job description, which was business transformation or something. I don't know, there was a word that they used. I didn't— I can do it, but I didn't tick it. Yeah, because you can only tick 5. But if you— if I was going for a job, I would make sure that the role that's described has the right boxes ticked. Because what happens is that automation, the reverse of ChatGPT, there's an automated process. Yeah, basically filters people out. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It said 1100 people have applied for this role and you don't qualify, mister, because you've only got 2 out of 5 and I haven't even applied. So if you had—

if you had sort of reverse engineered it and ticked those things and then applied, you would have had a better chance. Yeah, great. Yeah, that's right. It is ridiculous, but it's good to know that because I had no idea about that.

So check your key skills on LinkedIn to beat the robots. That's what I'm telling you. And then have multiple things going on. Because it gives you confidence. So it's like, I'm creating some activity, I'm doing a charity thing, I'm doing— running an event, so I'm trying to build my experience. I managed to get some work experience. I'm doing for nothing somewhere else so I can learn how to be a hairdresser. Yeah, me. Um, I've, I've got a list of names, I've got my war room, I know the companies I want to work for, I've been researching them. Yeah, I've applied for some things through the very long convoluted route I need to go through. I've got a couple of other opportunities where people have recommended me because I went through the right you've got multiple things going on, you're in a much better position because you're more confident.

Definitely. Because, because it means that there isn't that one thing which all of your efforts are being concentrated on. And if you don't get that, then it's crushingly disappointing. But if you've got loads of other things going on, it doesn't matter so much.

Correct. And that's the thing. It's like if you've got one girlfriend, you get another. No, don't do that. But I think that's the key thing. So you want to give yourself confidence, but because there's a campaign. So when now you go back to your war room, this is my last bit on your war room. You've got which companies you want to work for, what the key things are, the different industries. You've got some of the campaigns you're running to build up your experience and the activities you're doing. You've got a list of names, you've got some warm contacts you might want to get in contact with. You've got some job ads that you've already applied for and the status of those. You've got your video cover letter response, you've got ChatGPT examples that you've fine-tuned. It's all about the prompting you use with ChatGPT. Yeah, keep asking it questions. Give me another example of a cover letter. Yeah, fine-tune my cover letter to make it sound more blah blah blah. Use these 5 words that they use on the CV to make sure they're included in the COVID letter. It all gets done for you. Great. That is what I want to cover with you, because the, the main underpinning— and just before I finish, you said it before— the main underpinning activity is networking. Leverage your networking and relationships. We've said this on the podcast before: be the social butterfly with a rocket launcher. Love that. Create activity, get in front of people, have as many meetings as you can. But now you're armed and dangerous. You've got this information, you know what you need, you know what you're looking for. But if you don't do the networking part, it's like having a Ferrari with a wheel clamp on. You're all revved up with nowhere to go.

I love these analogies. You can't really get out there.

The social butterfly with a rocket launcher or the Ferrari attached to you, and then you're giving yourself a much better chance and give yourself time to make it work. And do it often, and then you can't not be successful. That's the Triple H of career progression: hunting, hustling, hired. Thank you very much, Gary.

That was, yeah, I mean, really motivating and motivational, and also some really genuinely interesting stuff in there, and some lots of new things that I've learned. I always learn things when I do these episodes, but I've learned loads, and that's the main thing, as we all know. Thank you very much, Gary. Thank you all for listening, and we shall see you next time. Many thanks for listening to this episode of The Company Doctor. To hear previous episodes, including quickfire eureka moments and appearances from special guests, visit thecompanydoctor.com. And if you enjoyed this episode, do please let us know by leaving us a review on the Apple Podcasts page.