Sales Seekers

SS Podcast Ep. 6
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[00:00:00] Intro
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Mike Bird: Hello, welcome to episode six of Sales Seekers, the podcast where I help folks break into and up through the world of B2B tech sales. My name is Mike Bird, and I want to talk about a very common job search mistake that I've seen throughout my time in the career development space.

This is something that I've seen from my time as an internship placement advisor for folks entering different IT roles, but I still see it amongst job seekers really going into any kind of field or role. And that is the search mistake of not having a clear job search target to be operating on as you go about looking for your next job.

I've seen this come up, especially for folks who were earlier on in their careers, which are mainly the folks that I tend to work with. Career coaches who work with slightly older populations of folks have told me that this is often less of an issue, but it's still a significant challenge for folks who feel like they could maybe do a whole bunch of different things.

Maybe they have a variety of different skills, different experiences. And they're not exactly clear on what they want to do next. Or they just generally don't have a clear direction for their career long-term and they don't know where to begin.

Now this is a mistake that can really slow down a job search. And I do have a resource on my website, just on my homepage, that's designed to help folks shorten the length of time needed to land their next job. So there's my Job Search Preparation Checklist sitting on salesseekers.ca just on the homepage partway down. You just enter your email. You'll get that delivered to you.

I want to talk a little bit more about this particular challenge and the impact that it can have on a job search, as well as how to go about actually fixing it so that you can have a faster job search. What do I even mean when I say a clear job search target?

[00:01:55] What is a clear job search target?
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Mike Bird: A clear job search target is one that has clarity and specificity around, number one, an industry or a field that you're pursuing. So for example, consumer packaged goods versus a digital marketing agency. I could be a marketer in both of those kinds of fields, but the specifics of the marketing role in each of those fields is going to be different. And therefore my applications to those kinds of roles will look different as well.

Another key area of specificity that I'm looking for when working with folks is around what type of organization they want to work in. So whether that is a startup or an early-stage company, something that is maybe a large mature enterprise on the other end of the spectrum. Something that might be in the middle, maybe a growth stage company or a medium-sized business that is probably not going to grow much more unless it undergoes a significant change in its corporate strategy or its structure.

These are different kinds of organizations and different kinds of cultures and they value employees in different ways. Startups, for example, will often work with folks who may be able to handle a variety of different tasks and have a broader overall scope of focus versus someone who is hiring for a role in a large enterprise where they may be looking for a real specialist who does one thing really, really well amongst a massive workforce of other people who do things in a very specialized manner.

The function or the role that someone is applying for is another area where folks often are not tight enough in terms of their clarity and where they want to go. So for example, if I have experience in both sales and marketing, ideally, I'm not looking to try and target both of those functions at the same time in a job search.

If I go down the sales route, I could be an Account Executive who's closing new business, or I could be an Account Manager who's working with an installed client base. And although those are both sales roles, they are going to feature slightly different skill sets for the folks who are actually filling those out.

So my application, if I'm an AE going into a really large enterprise is going to look different versus if I'm an account manager who is going into an early-stage company, that may not even have that much of an account management function to begin with.

[00:04:16] Why not having a clear job search target hurts your job search
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Mike Bird: Why does not having a clear target hurt job seekers?

There's at least two things that I see right off the bat. First off, ideally a job seeker is able to align their unique value proposition as an employee to fit the needs of an employer better than anyone else that they might consider. This is the person who typically gets the job offer at the end of the day. A job seeker who doesn't have a clear target isn't going to be able to strategically align themselves to an employer if they have nothing to align themselves to.

So if I use a bit of a metaphor here, it's akin to going bowling with your own personal bowling ball- in this metaphor the ball represents all of your skills and experience- but not having any pins at the end of the bowling alley to actually aim and throw your ball at. To succeed in a job search, you need both a well-packaged and effectively marketed set of unique skills and experiences, as well as a set of prospective employers who will value this package that you're carrying. You need the ball and the pins in order to score points.

When you don't have a clear job search target, you're more likely to send out generic resumes at a massive number of job postings, which is what a lot of job seekers actually do. And as we know, the vast majority of applicants don't get considered for an interview.

Doing what everyone else is doing is actually a pretty bad strategy in this case. This can lead to significant job search fatigue and become demoralizing over time, which can sap a job seeker of the confidence that they need to be effective and to sell themselves well in an interview.

Another thing that I see job seekers who are in this situation often face is that they may settle for a role that is less than ideal for them. They may not be in a company that they really like. The role may not pay quite as much as what they were hoping to make. They may be in a situation where they weren't able to compete for a more competitive role: they weren't able to stand out amongst the talent pool that was applying for that job.

Mike Bird: And so they ended up going to sort of a, I don't want to say second tier, but maybe something that they didn't really desire in terms of a first-rate company for them. And everyone will value a company in their own way. Sometimes a really huge successful company is not good for everybody. But the point that I'm trying to get at here is, you want to be able to make yourself marketable to the companies that you feel like are the best places for you to work.

If I wanted to work at NVIDIA right now, one of the hottest tech companies in the world, if you think about AI and chip manufacturing and things like that, and I wasn't able to stand out for a role at that company, and I instead took a role at Intel, which is still a really good company in a lot of ways, but is clearly going through some struggles and is at the beginning of a significant corporate turnaround.

The difference between those two situations may be in how well I was able to actually market myself specifically for work at a place like NVIDIA versus another company that is not as in demand. In reality, if you don't have a target, landing a role at even a moderately competitive or desirable company can be really difficult and just a matter of pure luck.

If you ended up doing it, maybe you had a resume that was well-tailored to what they were looking for, but ideally we do not want to rely on luck to make a job search go forward.

[00:07:43] Fixing a job search that lacks a clear target
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Mike Bird: A really great job search is not rooted in luck at all. It's rooted in strategy and consistent action that supports that strategy. So how do we get this kind of thing in place?

Early stage career coaching when working with somebody who is at the beginning of a transition usually involves helping a client to better understand their unique strengths, likes, dislikes, desires, and deal breakers- or the things that they absolutely wouldn't want to do in a job.

For a lot of job seekers, their ideal role lives at the intersection of what they are naturally good at, what they are naturally excited by, and what the labour market is naturally seeking and valuing. However, you get to your decision around the kind of specific industry, organization and role that you want to pursue building a list of 10 to 15 specific companies and roles that you want to work in, whether they are actively hiring for that position or not, is often the best solution to help you move your job search forward.

With this list of target companies and roles, you're in a much better position to: number one, determine what relationships you may already have in place within these companies that would allow you to potentially become a referred candidate.

Number two, carrying out cold outreach to people who already work in these companies with the immediate goal of building authentic relationships, and with the eventual goal of gaining a referral. This is what you would do in a situation where you don't have an existing relationship in that company. And then number three, submit targeted high-quality applications to open and hidden roles.

At the end of the day, this is the beginning of making a highly tailored, solid application that stands out from the rest of the crowd. When you're aiming yourself at companies and roles that you not only care about, but you're also a great fit for, you begin to actually gain momentum and open up conversations that lead to opportunities. This builds energy and moves the job search forward more easily.

Companies want to hire people who will do great work for them specifically. If you can succeed in demonstrating that, you'll become a top candidate who gets interviewed and is seriously considered for the eventual job offer.

[00:09:52] Conclusion
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Mike Bird: All right, I will stop there. This is a quick hitting episode on how to fix this top job search mistake that I've seen for years. So many job seekers struggle with this. If this is something that you've felt, or you're dealing with right now, that is totally understandable.

Again, go check out the 5-Step Job Search Preparation Checklist I've got on my website at salesseekers.ca. I'll put a link also in the show notes to this. This is a great tool to use if you're trying to find some quick wins to speed up your job search and today's topic is one of the things that I address in that. If you have deeper questions on this, feel free to reach out to me: mike@salesseekers.ca.

I'll leave you with this. Stay targeted, stay focused. You'll have a much better job search and a much better career. I'll catch you again in a couple of weeks. Bye for now.