Never Apply for a Job Again!: Break the Rules, Cut the Line, Beat the Rest (2 page)

From the outset, I’ll first say thank you to all of the clients throughout the years who have surrendered their old paradigms about career change and job search to utilize this method and prove that it works. The results, and even miracles, that you have produced have been a source of great joy, satisfaction, and, oftentimes, amazement. I also want to thank all the seminar participants and guests from my talks who have asked me, for more than a decade, “Do you have a book on this philosophy?” That constant query is what finally had me sit down and outline the mindset and mechanics that resulted in this book.

I want to thank the now defunct career consulting firm of Bernard Haldane Associates where I was coached, at the ripe age of 24, on the ideas that formulated the beginning of this approach to career management, an approach I creatively expanded upon. The method, as I understood it then, allowed me to make an immediate demonstration of its viability when I landed my first corporate role in a competitive industry (entertainment) in a new city (Los Angeles) when I knew not a soul. Part of that thanks also goes to Jack Chapman, former head of the Chicago affiliate office of Bernard Haldane, for reminding me more than a decade ago of the body of wisdom I had learned and could, therefore, teach…in my own unique way.

Thanks goes out also to the career professionals who helped me expand from a 14-year career as a professional
recruiter into the wider world of counseling and career development: Wendy Enelow, Susan Whitcomb, Debbie Ellis, Don Orlando, Randy Block, and the entire former Career Masters Institute group. I’ve also been blessed to have spent time with and learned from formative leaders and icons of the career industry: Richard Bolles, Richard Knowdell, and Martin Yate. I appreciate all the support and guidance that has been offered.

As for the actual coming together of this book, I want to thank the folks at Kingdom, Inc, and especially Andrea Davey, for help in creating the original eBook, under the title
Backdoor Job Search: Never Apply for a Job Again! 10 Time-Tested Principles for Launching an Effective Backdoor Campaign
. Next, I want to thank Rick Frishman for inviting me to his Author101 event where I met my agent, Bill Gladstone from Waterside Productions. Though I had engaged in previous interactions with Bill via e-mail—thanks to a referral by Erin Saxton—it was meeting face-to-face that moved that relationship into fruition (which demonstrates two major underlying principles of this book: referrals and face-to-face!). Thanks to Bill, what began as a simple eBook has now grown wings to carry the message further than it could have traveled by just sitting on my Website. Thanks also to Kathleen Rushall and Maureen Maloney at Waterside Productions: a great team.

I want to thank my “Web guy” out of Texas, Phil Drake, for all the support he has given me in the last few years to craft my message into the most cutting-edge Web form. I also want to thank the friends who helped me, all the way from the initial editing of the eBook to the designing of a title for this bookstore version: Richard Cornfield, Michael Hodge, Richard Knowdell, Debbie Ellis, Bridget Nielsen,
Beth Duerr Munro, Lisa Ermatinger, Shaun Baker, Allana Pratt, Angela Best, Barbara Anastasia, Brenda Anderson, Don Orlando, John Kremer, Dan Poynter, Alan Watt, Roz Esposito, Taffy Wallace, Stephanie Hubbard, Rafe Leyva, Marc Zicree, Scott Pitts, Mindi White, Agi Szecsenyi, Bryan Winter, Rick Hoppe, Shauna Markey, Craig Greager, Martin Cox, Rosario Zubia, and Joyce Sand.

Thanks to those who submitted stories about their experiences in using this method in their own career situations. I could only include a few, but appreciate the effort made by everyone, including Cathy Severson, Ron Feher, Ken Finster, Kay Stout, Connie Brizendine, Tessa Adler, and Randy Peyser. Thank you also to the creative handiwork of Rick Hoppe who stepped in with a customized CareerGuy graphic that filled a last-minute need perfectly. Thanks to Dan Lack, Sara Grace, Greg Bailey, Ann Longanecker, Erin Mellinger, Cathy Paper, Frank Wanderski, Jack Bennett, Linda Reilly, and Leann Little for helping with connections for endorse-ments…and thanks to all of those willing to bless this work with their endorsing words of encouragement. A big thank-you to Dr. Ivan Misner, The Father of Modern Networking.

I want to lastly acknowledge those closest to me, my mastermind group, my seminar transformation group, my Saturday support group, the wonderful woman in my life, and the emerging man in my life—my son. He recently landed his first job. Guess how. You got it: Stealth!

Darrell W. Gurney

Los Angeles, CA

www.CareerGuy.com

Contents

Foreword

Preface

Part 1: Rethinking and Rule-Breaking

Chapter 1: Rules to Start Breaking

Chapter 2: Why Applying for a Job Is Dumb

Chapter 3: The 4M Method of Career Management

Part 2: 10 Time-Tested Principles for Launching an Effective Stealth Campaign

Principle #1: The Best Way to Get a Job Is: Don’t Be Looking for One

Principle #2: An Ounce of Research Is Worth a Pound of Job Search

Principle #3: A Question-Able Person Creates Enthusiastic Relationships

Principle #4: You Can Never Have too Much Information, and the Higher the Altitude, the Better

Principle #5: A Friend in Need Doth Repulsion Breed

Principle #6: Call Me Expert, I’ll Open My Door

Principle #7: Eyes-to-Eyes Gets You the Prize 149

Principle #8: Building Relationship Equity… One Meeting at a Time

Principle #9: Top-of-Mind Is Easy to Find

Principle #10: Treat Yourself Like a Business to Stay in Business

Conclusion

Appendix A: The Stealth Method in Action

Appendix B: Career Transformation Affirmations

Index

About the Author

Foreword

For more than two decades, I have been working with business professionals and entrepreneurs across the globe, teaching them how to achieve significant business growth through business networking and referral marketing. Throughout the years, I have heard hundreds of amazing stories about the power of networking and what people have been able to achieve, not only in business, but also in life by simply building their personal network and making connections with others. I know of a million-dollar referral that was passed from a dentist to a logistics company after meeting at a networking event in Thailand, a couple who credits the successful adoption of their child to networking, several marriages that resulted from networking (including my own—I always say that my wife Elisabeth is the best referral I ever got!), and hundreds upon hundreds more stories testifying to the amazing results that networking can bring.

With this book, Darrell Gurney has painstakingly and effectively tailored networking’s key concepts, strategies, and insights specifically to the needs of career professionals— individuals in the fields of accounting, marketing, operations, engineering, programming, and so on. Whereas entrepreneurs are often very inclined to get out and network, as they depend mostly on themselves to keep their business alive and thriving, career professionals can often adopt a false idea that they will be taken care of by a company and therefore don’t always recognize the value of networking for their own advancement.

Never Apply for a Job Again!
teaches not only entrepreneurs but also
the honorable and necessary professionals called employees
how to gain the top-of-mind awareness, affiliation, and opportunities that exist in abundance in our world—even in challenged economic times. A job is a job is a job, whether it’s paid for by a salaried paycheck, a consulting fee, or a year-end dividend from the expansion of an enterprise. We all need our next “job,” and Darrell Gurney’s face-to-face method for climbing into the hearts and minds of people who matter is good, solid people sense. It’s about high-
touch
when high-tech is all the rage.

People do business with people they trust, and they recommend these businesses to their friends. This same principle goes for career professionals, be they accountants, marketing folks, operations players, and even so-called “pocket-protector” techies such as engineers and IT experts: people stay connected to people they trust, and they recommend these people to others who can use their expertise by hiring them. Networking is, hands-down, the most time- and
cost-effective strategy for landing your next opportunity, be it a long-term job or a temporary gig.

Stealth networking is the mainstream career management technique of the future. Career professionals who invest in themselves by learning how to stealth network like a pro will be rewarded with a long-term, sustainable, and stable career. As you peruse these pages, pay close attention to what is presented about stealth networking and building social capital—focus on building relationships and offering information that could be helpful to each contact you make, not in looking for a job. This way, there will always be a “somebody” out there who knows you and is referring you. The fact is, we’re more interested in people who seem interested in us… it’s a symptom of our me-centered culture. This is what Darrell teaches in Stage 1 of The 5 Stages of a Stealth Meeting— your complete and total focus should be on asking questions and being intimately interested in the person you’re meeting with, his background, her industry history, and so on. Call it an act from the referral gods, but when you do good things for others, those good things have a habit of making their way back to you—even if from a different person or group of people. Build “relationship equity” just to build it and the universe responds. Take note of all that just arises “out of the blue”: the former employer from years ago who just happens to call; the neighbor who tells a friend about you; the volunteer opportunity that has you working beside a CEO in your industry. By getting out and connecting, you fertilize and water your “out of the blue” garden.

Overall, Darrell Gurney’s method is a great referral generation strategy. As I spell out in my book
Networking Like a Pro
, senior executives are hiding from you. Darrell shows the way to win at this game of hide-and-seek. You’ll be shouting “Olly olly oxen free” all the way into the good graces of these senior players who will reveal themselves to you…to get you hired.

~I
VAN
M
ISNER
, P
H
D,
N
EW
Y
ORK
T
IMES
BEST-SELLING AUTHOR, AND FOUNDER OF
BNI

Preface

My first book,
Headhunters Revealed! Career Secrets for Choosing and Using Professional Recruiters,
came out a decade ago. It was to assist job-seekers in getting the most value out of a viable tool of career transition—third-party recruiters, or
headhunters
. I wrote it during the late 1990s, a working world shaped by a candidate-driven market, when there were far more good jobs available than people to fill them. It was written from the perspective of having been a professional recruiter for more than 15 years, finding jobs for everyone from executive VPs, CFOs, and directors of sales to human resource managers, executive assistants, and accounting clerks.

Headhunters Revealed!
basically asserts that it is always smart to have the career partnership of a headhunter in your back pocket when managing your career, in the short term (“I need a job NOW!”), and as a passive candidate in the long term (“If the right opportunity comes up, I’ll consider
making a move.”). Knowing how to best work with these enigmatic entities, how they operate their business, and what makes them tick allows you to reap the most benefit from their expertise. In strong and vibrant economies, headhunters are a savvy supplement to your personal job-seeking efforts.

But recruiters, all the way from temporary clerical agencies to high-end, retained executive search firms, are just one tool in your job-seeker pouch. Also, they have a limited ability to help you in slow economic times—what is called an employer-driven market—because there simply aren’t as many jobs to fill. When there is plenty of talent available in the market, employers can recruit more directly on their own and avoid placement fees. So, it is important to learn effective job search methods in order to become your own career manager. This skill is handy for all economic seasons, yet it’s often the recessions that wake most people up to the need to learn new ways to approach their job search.

CareerGuy Tip: Become your own career manager, for good times and bad.