The 10000 Hour Rule and Job Hunting | Job Search Radio

More than eight years ago, Malcolm Gladwell released the book called, “Outliers: The Story of Success.” Among the many great points he makes, he popularized the notion of the 10,000 hour rule. On this show, I utilize the 10,000 hour rule to make a point about you and being a job hunter.

 

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I want to talk to job hunters and say something that will give you what I think is a Homer Simpson moment. You’ve heard of the 10,000 hour rule, right? It takes 10,000 hours of focus concerted effort under the advice and tutelage of the teacher in order to be an expert.

When you start job hunting, you have exactly how much experience? Think about it. You have exactly how much? And you putting how much effort into preparing? Writing your resume. What do you know about writing resumes? You may have read a bunch of them but how much experience you actually have writing one? Judging by what I see from people, somewhere near zero.

How about interviewing? How much interviewing have you ever done? I doubt it’s anywhere near 10,000 hours and then you wonder why you don’t get results.
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Maybe it’s about networking. You have the LinkedIn profile that doesn’t get results or maybe you don’t even have a LinkedIn profile and wonder and wonder why no one is calling you.

Salary negotiation! That’s the one. But you don’t really have a lot of experience with that either and wonder why you don’t get results.

Let me ask you a question. If you could go to a website and get answers to all the critical interview questions and get advice from a master, without be helpful to you? I’m sure it would be.

I recently launched JobSearchCoachingHQ.com, and inexpensive site, with over 400 pieces of content including all my books and guides the job hunting, lots of videos, a bunch of podcasts, articles that I’ve written, curated so it is really good, available to you on the site for one price.

Plus the ability to ask me questions when you’re stuck with something

. You may think your friends, family, former managers know what they’re talking about when they speak with you but stop and think for a moment. How many jobs have they ever filled?

You may say your boss or former boss interviews a lot of people and certainly they should know. Trust me. When they’re on the other side of the desk, they stink up the joint and if you don’t believe me, point blank you’re wrong. I interview people who are hiring managers and they are awful… But they give you advice.

It’s time to stop giving other people advice about what they should do and take some for yourself.

Figure it out. When you write that resume how much experience that you have? Three hours over the course of 20 years? You don’t know what you’re doing. You think you do but you don’t know what you’re doing.

Again, JobSearchCoachingHQ.com is my site with advice for job hunters good anywhere in the world (you have to speak English to understand me, of course). There is a lot of great material there and you’ll get your questions answered by me and were building the community there were other people will be able to chime in and offer you advice.

Again, JobSearchCoachingHQ.com

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Do you really think employers are trying to help you? You already know you can’t trust recruiters—they tell you as much as they think you need to know to take the job they after representing so they collect their payday.

The skills needed to find a job are different yet complement the skills needed to do a job.

Jeff Altman, The Big Game Hunter has been a career coach and recruiter for what seems like one hundred years.

JobSearchCoachingHQ.com is there to change that with great advice for job hunters—videos, my books and guides to job hunting, podcasts, articles, PLUS a community for you to ask questions of PLUS the ability to ask me questions where I function as your ally with no conflict of interest answering your questions.

Connect with me on LinkedIn

Job Hunting and The 10000 Hour Rule

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Originally Published on Linkedin

Most of us have heard of the 10,000 rule popularized by Malcolm Gladwell in his book. “Outliers: The Story of Success.”

In it, he tells the story of The Beatles, Bill Gates and others who expended great effort over periods of time which, remarkably, added up to 10,000 hours of practicing their craft and became experts and successes.

Some have quibbled with Gladwell claiming that he simplified the original source material of Anders Ericcson who described it as 10,000 hours of deliberate practice under supervision of devoted teachers.

And when you start a job search, you have about how much cumulative time practicing your craft?

Resume writing? How much time have you spent engaging in the deliberate practice of writing a resume?

Or practicing how to interview?

Or networking well?

How about engaged in salary negotiations?

Some of you who have worked or are in management roles may correctly respond, “I’ve hired a lot of people in my career. I’ve interviewed hundreds of people that must surely count for something.”

Unfortunately, it seems like your experience is like watching someone play golf—you have an intellectual idea of what to do but can’t deliver consistently in ways that will insure that you address the ball like Jordan Spieth does, let alone drive it as well as he does.

And even if it were transferable, how does that help you with all the other facets of a job search?

If you’re honest with yourself, you will finally admit to yourself that you are at best an amateur being led to the slaughter by employers and recruiters alike.

If you are not sure that that is true, please answer a few more questions.

When a company calls you about a job because they found your resume on a job board, your profile on LinkedIn, your resume was presented by a friend of yours who works for the hiring manager, do you think they have your interest in their mind or their own (HINT: It isn’t you. They want to hire someone to do something for them)?

Here’s question #2: When a recruiter represents you for a job to a client of theirs, whose interest is paramount in their thinking–Their client’s or yours (HINT: This is a trick question)?

The Answer is their own. They are thinking of the financial reward they receive when you are hired by their client and work there for 90 calendar days first and foremost. Making their corporate client happy is second and you are third.

“But they need me!”

There are many more of you than there are clients that will pay them. They work for their corporate client—the people that pays them.

That is the sad truth of job hunting—you are someone who is being managed through an applicant tracking system (by the way, never apply for a job through one) and everyone knows that what goes into a sausage machine are often unappealing.

What can you do to change things?

Start with this idea— Admitting that you lack experience is the first step to solving the problem.

Until you can face the fact that in job search, you are the mark in a game of three monte (the person being set up to lose by con artists of a particular street game) you are in trouble.

Help is not a four letter dirty word. It is not a sign of weakness or incompetence. It reflects the wisdom of knowing you need support to get to where you want. When you don’t do it, it is like the stereotype of men not asking for directions and getting lost. When you finally get a job offer, you accept it because you are thrilled to finally receive a job offer, rarely because the position is so good, the money is great, the job opportunity is so terrific or your potential with the firm so fabulous. People often just give up and resign themselves to accepting a job offer because they don’t want to look for a job anymore.

Practice will help you become better. Do you think great athletes or teams just run around and do stuff for the first time or do they practice for hours, days, weeks and months to do what they do. They practice a lot and earn millions! And you practice how much?

The more experience you get with writing a resume, tweaking your LinkedIn profile, interviewing and salary negotiation, the better you will become.

Asking the right people for advice is critical. Hire a coach. Usually, people ask friends, family, former bosses, ex-colleagues—people who have as much experience as they do (or less) for advice. Hiring a career coach to help you throughout the search will help you get advice from an expert who has no financial interest in which job you accept (unlike the agency recruiter who is talking/selling you into an opportunity they represent to you), nor will they benefit from your great performance after you join (expect if you refer people to them).

Job hunting doesn’t have to be hard, difficult, painful or take so long. The skills needed to find a job are different, yet, complement, the skills needed to do a job. You have to be firmly in charge and do your homework to excel during this and every phase of your career.

 

© The Big Game Hunter, Inc. Asheville, NC  2016

 

Jeff Altman, The Big Game Hunter is the head coach ofJobSearchCoachingHQ.com and professional recruiter with more than 40 years of experience.

Connect with me on LinkedIn

Follow him at The Big Game Hunter, Inc. on LinkedIn