A short talk by Ramit Sethi advising job-seekers during a recession to focus on personal career development rather than doom-and-gloom media narratives. He contrasts 'top performers' who build and maintain strong professional networks and proactively market their skills with average performers who complain about the economy and do little to improve their careers.
Getting a dream job. You should just be happy to have any job. What are you thinking? This is the kind of thing that we hear from the media, from our peers, even from our parents, and I simply don't believe it. Top performers know that there's an entire game being played around them that other people do not see. And I want to share some of that from a behind the scenes story of when I went on book tour in 2009. I had just finished writing I Will Teach youh to Be Rich. My publisher sent me out on a national book tour and I went to a variety of cities, some top tier cities and some, shall we call them, second tier cities. And as I went into these local media stations, every single media producer and anchor only wanted to talk about the Great Recession. Oh, what are we going to do? Oh, there's 7 or 8% unemployment. Oh, we have a lost generation now. Certainly it was a catastrophic time and situation for the economy, but at the same time, remember, 92 plus percent of people were employed and they were being completely neglected while we focused on how bad this economy was. Now, were we doing anything productive? No. In the media we were simply saying, look how bad things are and are things ever going to change? Who knows? That was literally what was happening in the media. And I said, why don't we try to focus also on the people who have jobs, are doing well and want to do even better? Because those are millions and millions of people that are being neglected right now. Well, that fell on deaf ears. The same thing is true of the media today, and that is that it's more fun to talk about doom and gloom and what's going to happen in the future. Because what happens when you see that, you open the magazine, you click the article and that's what the media wants. However, by contrast, let me tell you about top performers. Top performers don't complain about the economy. They play an entirely different game. You have people over here complaining about the economy, the president, tax policy, and yet doing very little to improve their own personal careers. Top performers do several things differently. First of all, they don't pay attention to what they can't control. If I can't control it, forget it. Second, they know that they are expert job seekers, not just experts at what they do, but. But they know that if they were to get laid off or fired tomorrow, they would be able to find a job within days. How is that possible? Because top performers have their own networks that are extremely strong and constantly flexed. In other words, top performers know that they can't Just be good at their job. They also have to be telling other people about it and taking people out to coffee, maintaining and working those relationships. Now, what does that also accomplish? It also means that if they ever get laid off and fired, which happens otherwise lot to top performers, by the way, it means that they have a social support system that will go out and begin looking for jobs for them. All of these things distinguish average performers who often complain about the economy and what's going on in this world. And they basically play the media's game. Compare that to top performers who play their own game, an entirely different game where they say, you know what, Whatever's going to happen in the economy is going to happen. I'm going to focus on what I know, Being outstanding at my job, making sure that I let other people know that I'm outstanding at my job, and making sure that if something happens, which I know it will at some point in my career, that I will have a group of people who will support me and help me find my next dream job. While it's easy to commiserate and complain with other friends, look at what they're doing to us. That's generally not productive. You can tell by the way, by listening to talk radio. Just, just listen and see how people feel. For five minutes after they call up talk radio. They feel great. Oh, I got that off my chest. And where are they then? They're in the same place. They're playing the media's game. Whereas top performers say, I'm not going to indulge in that. I'm going to focus on myself. I'm going to focus on constructively improving my career and I'm going to always be able to find a dream job, no matter what is going on in the economy.
