Reverse the Search

Chapter 1

The Five Myths of Job Seeking

Growing up, I mastered the game of academia. School taught me that the way you win is to read the rubric, hit every standard, and turn the assignment in on time, and you'll get your (likely high) grade back by a certain date. So that's what I did. I knew what school expected from me, and I did it.

Applying for colleges was similar. I had a general idea of which colleges I was more or less likely to get into, I filled out the applications, and I heard back from each one within a set timeline.

However, once I entered the corporate world, I realized that all the habits and expectations I had built in academia were as misplaced as a polar bear in the Sahara.

This caused me to struggle in the job search, and even get poor performance reviews at my first corporate job because I was so used to operating under a predictable rubric.

I went from being an A+ student to a C− employee.

Job seeking can feel like such a nebulous process, especially after the clearly defined rules of school. It's time to unlearn the habits we have built, and start seeing the job search process through the employer's eyes. For years, I have heard job seekers state the same false assumptions over and over again about the hiring process. Working in human resources, I know these beliefs to be patently false and damaging to those who hold them.

In this chapter, you'll learn the five myths of job seeking that are likely keeping you stuck-and how you can start to shift your thinking.

Myth 1: "It will be easier if I aim lower."

It is a tremendous misconception that if you are not seeing traction in your job search that you should aim for a job that is at a lower level. You think, "Heck, they've got to want me, as I am super qualified for this role. This will be easy!" and then you get even fewer interviews than before.

Landing a position lower than your level is very challenging to do. That's because companies are more afraid of hiring someone overqualified than they are of hiring someone who doesn't quite have all the qualifications but could learn on the job. They don't see it as a plus to have someone with extra experience. They are looking for someone to do this job, not for someone to "get their foot in the door" and then ask for a promotion or salary increase within months of joining. Hiring takes an incredible amount of time and money, starting in the interview process and extending to new employee onboarding. Depending on the type of role, there are estimates that it may take an employee six to twelve months to be fully productive. With that in mind, it's easy to see why the company does not want to hire someone who is treating their role like a placeholder until the actual job they want comes along and they leave the company. Unfortunately, overqualified candidates frequently prove this stereotype right, so most companies don't want to take the risk.

This also is the case for people switching careers. For example, if you were manager level in your past job, you might think that, if you are changing careers, you should aim for entry level roles because you don't have manager level experience in this field. But from an employer's perspective, while you are new to the field, that doesn't make you entry level. Entry level candidates are often seen as career newborns, and, as a manager, you actually have a sizable amount of transferable skills that makes a hiring manager not want to put you in an entry level role out of fear that you will get restless.

So while you may think you're giving yourself a leg up by applying for a job you're overqualified for, hiring managers instead see this as you gunning for a higher role or salary increase in the near future, or they think that you'll leave the job as soon as an offer closer to your level slides across your inbox. So instead they'll extend an offer to someone who meets 70 percent of the qualifications but who brings a unique combination of skills from previous jobs and is enthusiastic to learn in the role. Many leaders have learned the hard way that it's easier to train skills than motivate an unchallenged employee.

Myth 2: "I need to get another degree or certification to stand out."

I have never seen a hiring manager make a final candidate decision based on degrees and certifications. The thing about formal education is that it's a "check the box" qualification. If a company values and expects a certain degree or certification, it is likely a baseline qualification that most of your competition will have as well.

Now, I won't tell you to skip buying a degree if your dream is being a brain surgeon or the next Judge Judy. Even I wouldn't trust a self-taught surgeon. And I also am not going to deny the allure of having a certain pedigree on your résumé. Some consulting firms, for instance, tend to recruit predominantly from certain MBA programs. In those cases, having that brand-name degree matters. But for the vast majority of jobs out there, doing anything beyond the minimum education qualifications will not help you to stand out.

Furthermore, according to the National Center for Education Statistics, the average master's degree in business administration costs $56,850 in the United States, and a prestigious business school like Harvard Business School will charge you $231,276 for just two years of education. Price tags like that have me thinking there has got to be a more efficient way to level up in your career.

Unfortunately, getting another degree is often the first step professionals think of when they want to make a career move. Take for example my client Gail. When I met Gail, she was fifty-nine years old and had spent her career in accounting. She wanted to transition into a new field but was worried people would focus on her age as a reason to not hire her.

Gail's first instinct was to beef up on certifications. She asked if it would be best to get a certification in Tableau or earn her CPA license. My answer? Neither! Getting more education can be a fancy way of procrastinating, like deciding to clean out your closet instead of dealing with your life. Uncovering your next career move and taking unconventional steps to land job offers is more complex than paying for a certification and taking a test. But it takes far less time and money to do so.

Now, Gail was a trouper. She trusted my coaching and discovered that she'd love a job in research. In a matter of weeks, we had repositioned her LinkedIn profile to where she was getting five contacts a week from recruiters asking Gail to interview for roles (that she had never applied for!) in her new target field. In the end, she landed a high-profile research role at a top university with a 33 percent salary increase. All of this done with Job Shopping strategies and no additional education.

Gail's situation is what I see from so many career changers and struggling job seekers. If a professional is struggling to land job offers, they may feel that they need additional education or training to make them stand out. This is usually because they are at a loss for what else to do. The answer is actually surprisingly simple: build experience and relationships. Now, you might be thinking, "But, Madeline, don't I need a job to gain more experience?" Fear not; in later chapters, I'll let you in on the secret sauce of putting yourself in front of the right people and creating experience without scoring a new role. Experience and relationships are the things that hiring managers actually value, not the extra diplomas gathering dust on your wall.

Myth 3: "The job search is a numbers game."

Before online applications, people would type out their résumés, print out a stack on paper so thick you could build a fort, and then shell out precious coins for the postage or transportation to get that résumé physically into the hands of hiring managers. This led to a lower volume of applications because people were more deliberate about where they chose to apply.

Fast-forward to the era of online applications, and companies are now completely inundated with them. The vast majority of the applications are the equivalent of spam in your email inbox: they are submitted by job seekers who likely haven't read the job description and are completely unqualified.

The online application process made it easier for job seekers to apply but harder to get noticed.

When I asked recruiters at top tech companies how many of their hires come from online applications, they reported hiring only 10 to 15 percent of their workforce from that source. I spoke with a recruiter for a top streaming service who said that the number of applications would get so overwhelming to sort through that she would sometimes skip applications altogether and start searching on LinkedIn for the professionals with the right skill sets for the roles she was hiring for and simply invite those people to interview. This isn't unique to that company; many organizations with desirable or highly specialized roles employ dedicated sourcing teams to find the right candidates themselves instead of wading through the digital slush pile.

It certainly is possible to land a job by applying online. This is especially true if you directly meet the qualifications of the role (i.e., if you are coming from the same industry and held the same or similar role in the past).

But if only 10 percent of roles are filled by applying online, then applying online should be only 10 percent of your strategy.

My client Nestor came to me with a master's degree and great transferable skills as a researcher, but had applied to five hundred jobs without landing a single offer. I really admired his dedication, yet my heart broke for him; I wished we had worked together sooner so I could have saved him all that time!

Nestor's situation is common, though. Many people apply to hundreds of jobs before landing an offer, and many people giving career advice online encourage this, telling followers to apply to dozens of jobs every week. But let me tell you a secret: the job search is not a numbers game. If it were, Nestor would have landed his job by applying online.

Imagine if the promise of this book was "Try Job Shopping-it works less than 1 percent of the time!" There's no way you would read it, right? And yet, that's the effectiveness of online applications-a statistical risk that would make even the boldest gambler hesitate.

Nestor decided to embrace the art of Job Shopping. He shifted from casting a wide net to carefully curating his job pursuits. The result? Interviews at one out of every three places he was interested in. Ultimately, he secured his dream role in a different career as an organizational development specialist with a $35,000 salary increase!

One of the key attributes of Job Shoppers is their focus on a low-volume job search. As a Job Shopper, you do not apply to hundreds of jobs like Nestor did at first. Instead, you focus on a small number that actually match what you are looking for (and land interviews at many of them!).

Myth 4: "I need to stay open to many different types of roles so I don't miss out on potential opportunities."

It may seem like being open to many different types of roles would increase your chances of getting hired. You might feel that you could miss out on a great opportunity if you limit your search to only one path. It's like thinking, "Why settle for one fish when you can cast a net big enough to catch the whole ocean?" But in the realm of job hunting, casting a wide net is, ironically, one of the top reasons you're not currently swimming in a sea of job offers.

Many job seekers who do this are multi-passionate professionals. These are folks who have a wide range of skills and interests and feel restricted by the idea that they have to specialize their skills and choose one path. Unfortunately, if you brand yourself to employers as a human Swiss Army knife, they will assume you are good at many things but great at nothing and will not hire you to solve their specific challenges. Companies are looking to hire an MVP-Most Valuable Player, not Most Vague Placeholder.

Some job seekers may be unsure about their career goals and may not know what they want to do next. As a result, they apply to a wide variety of jobs to see if any of them result in interviews. Back in my recruiting days, we once opened applications for an executive assistant position. I came across an accountant who was interested in the role, and I extended her an interview since I understood that her transferable skills could make her a good assistant. But in the interview, it became clear she hadn't thought much about this career change. I asked her, "Accountant to executive assistant, that's a big career change. What steps have you taken to be sure that being an executive assistant is the right role for you?"

She responded with "Well, this interview! I saw the job description, thought it sounded interesting, and so I took the call to learn more."

This is the last thing an employer wants to hear. This leads to a pretty quick rejection from the employer's side because they do not want to take a chance on hiring someone who isn't sure if they want the job. A company only wants to hire someone who has deeply considered their career possibilities and has fully and enthusiastically committed themselves to this path. Essentially, showing that you're open to many different roles sends up major red flags to employers that you will be difficult to retain. And honestly, it's not worth the challenge.

Employers do not want to be your career experiment.

Needless to say, that was her first and final interview for that role.

To be clear, this isn't about having the right qualifications or not. Career changers who worked in completely different roles and industries can come across as completely confident in their next career move. It is near impossible to change careers if you aren't conveying this confidence to employers. They are already taking a chance on hiring someone who hasn't worked in this field before; if on top of it you're treating this as a career experiment, they are going to run in the other direction.