What Finding First Job & Fresh Leads Currently Have In Common
My eye got drawn to a recent London broadsheet headline; How to get your CV seen by a human [sub'n req'd].
The author majored on two scenarios. The mature jobseeker and the first-timer.
With the former, defined as over-50, advice was a tad staid. Avoid job boards, work your contacts, and network with recruiters and on LinkedIn (yew).
Yet the latter showed perhaps more striking similarities to solution selling door-opening.
With the delicious subhead; find a side door or “proof move”.
Though missing their third point; think small.
Which exhorted the virtue of eschewing the obvious Big Cos. In favour of the "start-up or scale-up".
Here's their given example of a 'proof move', via Calypso Rose, the co-founder of OffScript.
“A young architecture graduate ... had been cold-emailing CVs for months with zero replies.
She switched tack: picked her three favourite recent projects from her dream firms, sketched her own version of each, hand-delivered them with a note and got offered a job.
This is translatable if you care enough and you really give each brand serious thought and investigation.
Pitch a piece, don’t ask for an internship; build the thing, don’t list the skill; critique a brand’s last campaign and send it to their head of marketing.”
This chimed. I actually remembered back to when selling (myself) in the mid-90s for a while. Where I was awash with new ventures emerging from design firms, which today we'd call digital agencies. I asked some I spoke with why they hadn't mocked up a website for people - no-one had a website yet back then - they wanted to target.
They dismissed the idea.
I still get this today. Occasionally spam dodges the filters and someone professes to change my web presence in some incredible way. Shoot back and we'll zoom, baby.
Rubbish. Why not show me?
Yes, I am fully switched on to the NoSpec movement [but one sample from back in 2011]. Yet there's a middle-ground. A spot between doing it all and doing nothing that gets you in the door.
Next up, the same lady's explanation of 'side door'.
Ask for 20 minutes, not a job:
‘Can I have a job?’ gets a no.
‘Can I have 20 minutes to ask how you got into this?’ gets a yes about a third of the time.
A full 1/3 !
Not quite directly transferable to our realm, but the Discovery Call intro is fairly commonplace. I've also seen these referred to as a 'low friction hook'.
Not forgetting execs will likely be more amenable to helping someone start out than an established 'seller'.
For a brand new offering, adapting this might well work.
My own experience of doing this a fair few times brought results. Once on seeking a project in Hong Kong. Then when selling myself into what today we might call 'gigs' in fast growth firms around Manchester. Since though, I've simply lead with the issue I freshly nail for my target prospects.
I had thought on my New Product Rescue specialty like this too.
As the angle is less the here and now, but getting ahead of themselves. Knowing I exist. And if they agree to meet, well, you know the rest.