Your Next Job Is One Conversation Away: Dawn Graham (Transcript)

Full text of career expert Dawn Graham’s talk: Your Next Job Is One Conversation Away at TEDxJHUDC conference. Dr. Graham is a career switch coach, LinkedIn Learning Instructor and Host of the popular call-in show “Dr. Dawn on Careers” on SiriusXM Radio.

In this talk, she shares a simple, 3-step actionable strategy for essentially “bullet proofing” one’s careers and building job security from within, despite the ever-changing market, growing hiring bias, and uncertainty of the economic future.

Listen to the MP3 Audio here:

TRANSCRIPT:

Dawn Graham – Career Switch Coach

Imagine this: You wake up tomorrow, roll over, grab your smartphone and find a message in your inbox that says: “Effective immediately, you’re unemployed.”

Where would you begin your job search honestly? On a job board or with your contacts?

There is an article in the Harvard Business Review titled ‘Professional Networking Makes People Feel Dirty’. One of the observations mentioned was that individuals use excessive amounts of hand sanitizer after networking dinner.

The takeaway was: Despite the slew of evidence for its effectiveness, we feel unclean or more icky with networking, because we’ve convinced ourselves it’s a transactional one-sided – “I’m just using you for my own gain activity.” So we avoid it.

But what if there is a way to network in job search that didn’t feel icky?

I’m here today to share how, but first we have to let go of two incorrect assumptions.

The first incorrect assumption is that if we’re competent and qualified, we really shouldn’t need help finding a job. This is so wrong.

I experienced my first layoff in 2002. And despite that experience being a gift today, at the time it hit me like a brick.

I’d recently finished my master’s in an evening program and was working my way at a global company and they were getting ready to move me across the country for this exciting new opportunity.

And then I got a voicemail at 5:00 PM on a Tuesday saying I’ve been let go.

On Monday, I had a drawer full of stellar performance reviews and an exciting role waiting in California. On Tuesday, poof, It all vanished… just like that.

Me and 60,000 of my Arthur Andersen colleagues were jobless. And Enron was about to become a global scandal.

Immediately, I started scanning the online job boards. Emailing resumes to roles that were even a remote match to my background.

I thought, what has happened? A few weeks earlier, I was telling the world about my exciting career plans, and now I barely left my apartment because I was mortified.

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Well thought I had lost my job and that I wasn’t good enough to find a new one.

Then one day in passing, I mentioned my misery to my neighbor in the elevator, mentioning some of the companies where I’ve been applying. Only to learn that his colleague was married to a director at one of my top choices.

He offered to pass my resume along. And within two weeks I had an interview after months of building an intimate relationship with my computer, which got me nothing.

One brief conversation with a human landed me an opportunity. This experience changed my entire career trajectory.

I not only realized there was a better way to find a job than emailing resumes in the cyberspace, but that I wanted to help others never feel this stuck.

I wondered how would the job search be different if the norm was to approach it as a social activity.

When I say social activity, I mean the old fashioned way – humans talking with humans, offline face-to-face without an app, having conversations. Like with the person sitting right next to you. Go ahead and make eye contact. It’s okay.

If you’re an introvert like me, this is the part where you want to run out of the room. But stick with me.

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Long gone are the days when people spend their entire career with one company. The average tenure in a role is 4.2 years.

And with retirement age increasing, you’ll likely engage in over 10 job searches during your lifetime. Sometimes voluntarily, sometimes not so much.

Networking has been hailed as the most effective strategy for uncovering opportunities because it works.

So why does a root canal seem more appealing?

It’s like exercise. We cognitively know it’s effective, but despite the evidence, still choose Netflix anyway.

Well, I wanted to find an answer. So I studied networking and discovered, although we can learn the strategies and buy into the research, this doesn’t increase our comfort with using it in a job search.

Similar to exercise, simply believing something works doesn’t automatically equate to action.

Think about it. You’ve come to a TEDx and are surrounded by people with like interests.

Have you introduced yourself to anyone here you didn’t already know?

As a licensed psychologist, I’ve learned that humans make decisions based on emotions.

Then we rationalize afterwards with cherry picked data that support our choice. So regardless of the overwhelming evidence for networking, we’re still seduced into a linear: click-apply-send-process.

Because approaching people we don’t know makes us feel vulnerable, which means we’re stuck. We know networking is extremely effective, but can also feel ridiculously uncomfortable. And I get it.

Most of us aren’t going to talk to strangers. That’s not the problem. Problem is we’re not talking to anyone.

When I got laid off in 2002, I believed getting a job was about my skills or background or education. These certainly boost the rationale used to justify hiring decisions.

But after years of recruiting, what I’ve learned is that hiring managers are really trying to assess is if they can stand working next to you for 40 hours a week.

Even with job boards, matching algorithms and fancy apps, final hiring decisions are based on trust, which comes from relationships. In fact, without trust research shows, managers may perceive your strengths as a potential threat.

What good is a highly competent employee who takes credit for your work and then steals your lunch. Fair or not, managers prefer to hire based on trusted referrals. That’s why up to 80% of jobs are never posted because they’re getting filled before that, through relationships.

So we need to approach the job search relationally as well. As individuals, we can either use our energy to resist this reality or tap into the power of our existing relationships to access the roles we want.

Hiring managers want to make good decisions and they want to do it efficiently. They hate hiring as much as candidates hate the job search. They do.

Sifting through resumes distracts them from their day jobs. And like online dating ‘what’s on paper isn’t always what shows up at the door’, even if pre-screened by a recruiter.

So how do we make an important decision efficiently?

We use referrals in our daily lives. We use apps like Yelp or TripAdvisor, and often we’ll ask friends for recommendations on things like a great dentist or mechanic.

Managers do the same when hiring. In fact, referrals have a 50% shot of getting an interview. Whereas for non-referrals, that drops to just 3%.

Several years ago, I passed over an online candidate and a week later a trusted colleague put that same resume on my desk, along with a glowing endorsement.

After interviewing the candidate, which I wouldn’t have done without the referral, she was hired. Her skills didn’t change. My trust in her did, based on that referral.

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It’s not the most qualified person who gets the offer. It’s not the woman with stellar performance reviews and a master’s degree. It’s the one with a connection. That’s why employee referral programs in companies work so well.

In fact, 40% of hires come from the referral pool, which is only 7% of applicants.

And one study showed that over 60% of people who were hired were referred by a current employee. That number increased to 91%, if that referral came from a director-level employee or above.

What if you don’t know any directors in your field? Most of us don’t, I didn’t when I got laid off, but my neighbor’s colleague did. Everyone you know, has a network just waiting to be discovered, including you.

So some of you may be saying, “Yeah, but what about that guy know who landed his dream role on a mega job board?”

Well, even if you’re fortunate to win the online sweepstakes once or twice, if this is your go-to strategy, you’re limiting your options to the fraction of jobs that get posted online.

While also taking your chances with applicant tracking systems that weed out qualified candidates for relevant reasons like – how your resume is formatted.

And unfortunately, many online jobs aren’t what they seem. I’ve seen candidates thrilled to make it to final interviews only to lose out to an internal employee who has promised a job all along.

One highly qualified candidate was flown across the country for a full day of interviews. Leaving her search was over. She was devastated after learning, she was a pawn in their charade, used to check the legal box before hiring the person they had already selected.

The second incorrect assumption we have to let go of is that the people we regularly interact with can’t or won’t help us. Also not true.

Well most people you know don’t have available jobs falling from their pockets. There are so many other ways that can be a bridge to opportunities through their contacts if they only knew more about your career.

I bet most people in your life have no idea what your career goals are, much less what you actually do every day at work. I’m not talking about surface details like you work at a startup or a lawyer, or do something in marketing, but specifically your aspirations and particular expertise.

Think about it.

Can the people you routinely interact with – your siblings, neighbors, yoga buddies, classmates, your hairdresser, book club, or the regulars at the dog park accurately describe your expertise in one to two sentences? Can you explain theirs?

Unfortunately, when most of us have conversations about our job socially, it goes something like:

“How’s work?”

“Busy”

“Traveling much?”

“Yeah, Some! Pass the salt”

Contrast that response with, “Well, actually I’m looking for a new opportunity in New York right now”, and you’ve just initiated a chain of events that may change your future.

Last year in a rare moment, I mentioned to my brother, “I was trying to land a speaking gig at a company in New York.” Coincidentally, his good friend in Utah knew the head of that organization, which after a few phone calls ended with me giving that talk six months later.

I’m still shocked someone in my immediate family, especially my brother, had access to contacts I didn’t. But it’s easy to forget. We all interact with diverse groups of people every day – at work, online, in the community, everywhere.

In a world where six degrees of separation has narrowed to less than four, our career goals are more within reach than ever.

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And the simplest thing we can do is initiate career conversations with the people we already know.

And a great place to start: be curious about their goals first. Helping others is a great way to build relationships. And when you ask, “Hey, what’s one goal you have for this year”, most people will reciprocate and dig into your goals as well.

These conversations can lead to brainstorming introductions you might make or relevant news you recently heard or job you can be interested in.

Maybe today or maybe six months from now, but if you never speak up, you’ll miss a lifetime of opportunities that were just one conversation away.

One night I asked my regular waiter in a local Italian restaurant about his goals. He mentioned he was a refugee working his way through college and looking for opportunities in his field but missing the bridge to access relevant opportunities.

Our brief conversation led to me introducing him to a senior leader in the field he was targeting. And honestly, I’m not always privy to how things turn out when I make introductions.

But I do it because job searches are universal experience and we don’t need to face them alone.

If you want to maximize your opportunities, engaging humans is necessary. It doesn’t have to be strangers. Real networking is simply having a different conversation with the people you already know.

We’ve built relationships all around us and have no idea who has a hidden connection until we start a dialogue, like I did with my neighbor in the elevator or the waiter in the restaurant.

It’s easy to forget that the alumna we quickly wrote off because she doesn’t work in the industry we were targeting has a hundred successful classmates, strong networks of their own.

Conversations are the opening, not the outcome.

And I can tell you as an introvert, my mastery of people avoidance is Ninja-level. I can slip in and out of gatherings unnoticed, and always give five star ratings to Uber drivers who don’t speak to me, only the cost of avoiding these precious moments of social engagement.

It’s months of frustration behind a computer when the missing link may be right next door.

Networking knows no limitations except the ones in our mind.

So what if tomorrow you asked a friend her career goals and then shared yours. These everyday interactions are the game changer.

No matter where you are in your career today, between jobs passively looking or happily employed, statistically speaking, you will be in another job search.

It’s not enough to believe networking works. For the magic to happen, we must take action. So rally 20 seconds of courage, improve that discouraging voice in your head ‘wrong’, use hand sanitizer if you must, but start that conversation for you, for others, for all of us.

Because managers hire on relationships. Job seekers get referred on relationships. Getting a job is a social activity and we have access to more connections than we realize.

Thank you.