Jacob Warwick argues mid-to-senior professionals should always be looking for work, not just when desperate. Build a steady pipeline through light outreach every few months, track contacts in a spreadsheet, and keep learning in small habits. Discipline and consistent habits matter more than raw skill.
Chapters
A point that I like to make with a lot of my clients is that you should always be looking for work, even if you have a job. Having an executive career is kind of like having all your eggs in one basket. If an employer decides that there's a change in direction, or they shift the strategy, or investment runs thin, or the market dynamics change, you're the one that's left vulnerable. So how do you protect yourself? Well, instead of waiting around for that moment to happen, which inevitably it will because history tells us companies lay off every year, it shouldn't be surprising to you that you might be affected by that. Instead, work to continuously build pipeline for yourself. Some opportunities that you create today will take five years to flourish, some will take 10. The idea is that you set opportunities that might take a long time to come to fruition, but you keep nurturing those deals over time simply to protect yourself in case of any difficulties that come ahead. The best way to do that is to follow our KPIs metric and tone it down. Instead of 20 calls, 30 calls a week that are outside of your day to day job exploring your network, tone that down to one or two. Stay active. Drag that timeline out a little bit instead of catching up with people every other day. Maybe it's every four months. Set a cadence for yourself. Go back to maybe a spreadsheet where you're tracking the last time you spoke with someone or a customer CRM that you built for your job search. I have a lot of clients that do that and set follow up reminders. Hey, every four months I'm going to check in. Maybe every Christmas I send a thank you card or a happy holidays card or whatever it is you need to find ways to stay top of mind always. Instead of just staying top of mind when you need something, not only is your network going to appreciate it, but your bottom line is going to appreciate it when you don't find yourself out of work and not making any income for the next 18 months. If there's one thing that I'd like to leave you with again, after thousands of client experiences I've digested, I've tried to understand what sets people apart. And what I've realized is it's not the skills that set you apart, it's the discipline and the habit to be continuously learning to have that growth mindset for yourself to continue to improve and make yourself better. Not to the point where you're not confident or you don't think you're good enough, but just know you'll always be learning with how fast the market moves. If you take any time to be stagnant or relax, you're simply going to lose ground. And I know we like to use a lot of aggressive language about our competition and how hungry and how cutthroat it is, but it's true. I mean, in this market, somebody is going to replace you, and that's inevitable. And the only thing we can do to slow that down is to study, stay consistent, be humble, and continually learn and grow and develop over time. If you build that habit and that muscle, it doesn't mean you have to do it 10 hours a day. Maybe it's a 10 minute read of a podcast or it's a writing in your journal or putting down some ideas of what you learned, or setting a reminder in your calendar that every three months you revisit your resume to put a line in simply so you remember what you accomplished that you could share later. And then looking back at it and reflecting and saying, now that I know what I know today, what would I have done differently? And what could I learn in the future that's going to make all of this easier later? So remember, winners don't make excuses when the other side plays the game. And I hope the tips we talked about today helps level the playing field for you so that you can accelerate your career to the next level. Thank you for joining us.
