This post originally appeared as a 10-02 Weekend Issue of the Daily Job Hunt email. Sign up for kick-butt career hype in your inbox each morning.
Mindset for Success
Everybody Farts. It’s easy to compare your behind-the-scenes insecurities to everyone else’s public highlight reel and conclude that you’re less than. But you’re not. We’re all human. We all fart, and we all fail sometimes. So resist the urge to put people on pedestals and conclude you’re not worthy of their time and attention. Keep it real, and go reach out. Human to human.
Tune Your Tone. Being overly formal is a great way to blend in with the other applicants and never get noticed. You can be professional without having a stick up your butt!
Instead of
“Dear Mr. Jones, respectfully, would you please view my attached resume?”
try something like this:
“Hey Tom! I love what Example Inc. is doing in the Marketing Automation space, so, I made you this quick video about why I’d be a great fit for the Customer Support role.”
Links worth checking out
- How to Deal With “We’ll Keep Your Resume On File” (1 min blog post)
- FlexJobs (jobs board)
- How to Start Your Career in Customer Success (Career Guide)
Quote of the Week
“Resumes are dead.”
— Richie Norton
Be More Human
The biggest fear of job seekers is that they won’t find a job.
The biggest fear of currently employed people is that their job will be automated away.
Funny thing is, the cure for both of these is the same:
Be more human.
Take the most common problem for job hunters, for example: “I don’t get noticed.”
If you don’t get noticed, that means you’re applying in a way that is indistinguishable from all the other applications. In other words, you’re just following the rules, doing what everyone else is doing, like a robot. And that’s what makes your application forgettable.
The fix here would be to do the opposite.
Rather than conform, lead with what makes you unique (e.g. by pitching yourself). Rather than talking to an automated computer system, reach out to a real human being with a personal email. And rather than “dear sir/madam” keep it real and use your own tone of voice.
It may sound simple, but it works every single time.
We see it every day.
So what about once you have the job? How do you keep it, and not get robotized/automated away?
Again: be more human.
Use machines, don’t become one.
People who are afraid to lose their job to a robot tend to cling to all the tasks on their plate like a drowning man to a lifeboat.
Ironically, it would be way more effective to do the exact opposite.
Do your best to automate away mundane tasks and let machines do the boring stuff, so that you create as much room as possible for your human creativity and ingenuity. For your empathy, compassion, and innovative thinking. For the parts of you that are too human to be replaced.
Turns out those are the most fun parts of your job anyway.
Double win.
So it doesn’t matter what you’re looking for in your career right now. Whether you’re looking to get hired, or looking to stay hired, and build a future proof, robot-resistant career.
The answer is never to become colder, more obedient, more of a rule follower, and more like a robot.
Instead, do the opposite.
Be more human.
Corné
and the DJH team
