I subscribe to several e-newsletters. One perennial favorite is Dan Kennedy's. Dan is a professional marketer like my co-author Jay Levinson. His latest newsletter contained the following quote which is applicable to job hunters:
"The spider looks for a merchant who doesn't advertise so he can spin a web across his door and lead a life of undisturbed peace!" The two main reasons businesses of any kind fail are: 1. They don't market and advertise. Sadly most new business owners spend their money and their time on everything other than marketing.
2. They don't market the business effectively. You can spend a ton of cashola on marketing and not get any results if you are not following a proven direct marketing system.
Take a look outside your door and make sure that there isn't a spider getting ready to spin his web.
So how about you job hunter? Are you spending your money and time focusing on the right things? Is your list of prospects honed to a razor sharp edge? Is it a list of your top 10 employers or top 100?
My experience is that a list of 10 employers is doable. A list of 100 is too large for any but the most zealous to maintain focus and clarity.
But even before your list, are your marketing materials all they can be? Is your value statement clear? Are you using a different resume for each opportunity or is it a one-size-fits-all generic piece of pulp? Do you have an eXtreme resume to open doors and a general one to leave behind? Does your resume make you stand out? Is it an invitation to dance or an obituary?
Is your marketing message too diffuse to be of value? Or does the reader instantly understand the value you bring? Most marketing and advertising misses the mark.... all you have to do is check the "junk mail" delivered to your home today to realize this is fact.
So, Guerrilla job hunters fail because they lack focus and proper marketing materials. These are easy things to fix. So as we enter into the Christmas job hunting rush I suggest you hone your focus down to a handful of companies you can demonstrate real value to and then tell them how you're going to do it.
It's nearly Xmas. Go put your dream job under your tree.