From the course: Planning Your Career and Your Life

Maximize your contacts

From the course: Planning Your Career and Your Life

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Maximize your contacts

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- Job adverts are all very well, but actually there's a much better way to find another job, and that is via people you know. Personal contacts are so much better than just a cold advert and a job interview where the odds are going to be really stacked against you. So the first thing to do is to collect people, right? Everyone you know, keep a list, collect all those contacts, keep them all written down with notes against each person. The more people you know, the better, and you need to have a system for keeping all of that neatly there. Send lots of Christmas cards, socialize when you travel around the country, call in and see people. You never know where these contacts are going to lead. So that's really, really important. And then when you're talking to people, just ask if they've got any openings, how's business, how's it going, are they recruiting, do you know? Because you never know, and they might say, "Well, actually, we just need somebody just like you." So lots of contacts, and always keep asking them. And there's a negotiating principle which says, if you don't ask, you don't get, and I've spent my whole career actually being a little bit cheeky. So when I worked for Westland Helicopters, they brought in a new pay structure, where everybody was negotiating their own pay, and it was all out of control. So they brought in a thing where you had to be an engineer, a senior engineer, and a principal engineer, and you couldn't be paid a certain amount until you got to be a principal engineer. And I was already earning that amount, and I was about 10 years younger than you had to be to be a principal engineer, and so I was just looking at that, thinking, it's going to take me 10 years before I can be a principal engineer, and even then I'm not going to get a pay rise. So I thought, what shall I do? And I thought about leaving, but I thought, no, before I do that, I'll go and see the managing director. I booked an appointment, and I went to see him, and he had this massive, great office. And there he was behind this huge desk, and he said, "So what can I do for you?" And I told him about the new pay structure, and how couldn't see anything happening for me for at least 10 years, and that was far too long, and I didn't want to leave, 'cause I liked working there, and he said, "Oh, well, I need to make you a manager. How would you like to be in charge of all of this bit over here?" And I said, "Yeah, that would be great." So suddenly I got this big management job, turned out to be fascinating, and that was just from having the balls to go and ask for it, really. And all my friends were going, "How did you get that?" And some of my friends were leaving. None of them had gone to see the managing director to say, "Look, I'm not happy. Is there anything we can do?" And so I think the first thing is, if you don't ask, you don't get, so if there's a particular job you like the look of, you've just got to try for it. Next thing I want to say is that agencies are much better than adverts. So go to a recruitment agency and say, "I'm looking for a job in this area, what have got?" Because if you just apply to an advert, you're going in exactly the same as everyone else. Whereas if you go through an agency, they will big you up to the employer. They'll say, "We found somebody perfect. You've got to interview this person." And that will be much more helpful. So all the best jobs I've found, if they haven't been through people I've known, have come through agencies, never through an advert. So check out some recruitment agencies, and don't give up when you go to the first recruitment agency and they go, "No, we got nothing suitable," 'cause some recruitment agencies don't deal with the right type of person for you. They might only do lorry drivers, or they might only do typists, or something like that. So try several agencies till you find one that's good. My next tip is always have your CV ready. Completely up-to-date, ready, typed. Because if you don't have your CV ready, then when an opportunity comes up, you might miss it. You might be too slow, or you might be too lazy, and you might think, oh, well, I can't be bothered to do my CV for this, but if you've already got it, you're going to say, "Well, how about this?" And you can give it straight in. So always have your CV ready with everything on there so that you can give it if you need to. And if it helps, by the way, I've made a whole course on CVs and how to be interviewed. So it could be definitely worth checking that out. So those would be my main suggestions, much better to deal with contacts and agencies, much better to ask previous employers that you know whether they've got anything good rather than going through job adverts.

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