A Silicon Valley Insider’s Tips for Finding a Job

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A Silicon Valley Insider’s Tips for Finding a Job

An acquaintance of mine—a computer industry insider who is always au courant with what’s happening in Silicon Valley—recently shared with me his worries about the current job market. He’s worried, I should add, not for himself but for one of his daughters. Versatile, charming, well-educated, an experienced and highly-skilled marketer, she’d ordinarily have no problem landing a top-flight job. But these are not ordinary times; there are few jobs to be had. Like a great many others, the state of not finding a job has begun to seem normal to her.

My acquaintance—I’ll call him Simon, and his daughter will be Julie—has until recently forced himself to not interfere in the life of his adult daughter. But a few weeks ago he decided that he had to step in and offer fatherly advice. But he didn’t just barge in. He gave a great deal of thought to how he could be helpful. The first thing he did was peruse available literature on how to find a job. Most of what he found centered around a few good points:

Create and Build Your Brand: A personal “brand” is a way to differentiate yourself from others by highlighting what makes you unique and valuable. In other words, a brand is what people think of when they think of you. You then leverage your brand across platforms (creating profiles on social networking sites, sending out tweets, maintaining your own personal website, etc.) in a consistent manner. [Read a Wall Street Journal article on how to build your brand]
Massage Contacts: Get the word out to everyone you know that you’re seeking a job. You never know who might be the person who connects you to the opportunity you’re seeking.
Research Potential Companies: Harness the power of the Internet to find companies that are hiring in your field. Investigate their bottom line and future potential. Determine how they treat employees. There’s a lot of information easily available that can help you create a list of companies to target—profitable companies that you’ll be happy working for.
Use Social Networking Sites to Find Jobs: Sites like LinkedIn, Facebook, and all the rest have resources that can help. Twitter has become a very popular resource for finding a job: How to Find a Job on Twitter; Twitter Job Search; or Wall Street Journal article on using Twitter to find a job
Have an Up-to-Date Resume: Work on it, whittle it, and work on it some more. Be concise, accurate, and, above all, be truthful. If you feel that your resume is badly-written, get professional help, or try the free and helpful tools on sites such as Resume-Help.
Learn New Skills: Don’t sit on the couch acting depressed in your spare time. Instead, take a class and learn a new job skill, or brush up on skills that have become rusty. Learning something new makes life exciting.
Prepare to Star in Job Interviews: Dress for success! Wear something that makes you look and feel confident. Make a list of questions you might be asked in your interview, and come up with really good answers. Practice answering questions while looking in a mirror. At the interview, don’t complain about the job market or anything else: be positive and sincere.

After doing a week or so of research, my acquaintance Simon gave some thought to the way Julie had been searching for a job. As he told me, she had been using a gestalt process rather than a systematic one, which he viewed as the fatal flaw in her job search. He then drew up a systematic plan of attack and offered it to her to use in any way she saw fit (he was very careful not to say “This is what you should be doing”). Happily, she accepted his advice as spot-on. She began using a more systematic technique and within two weeks had gone on her first serious job interview in many months.

I asked Simon if I could use his attack plan on Plugin.com, and he was generous enough to agree. So here’s one Silicon Valley Insider’s reasoned plan of attack for finding your next job:

It seems to me that you need to apply your e-marketing skills to yourself and sell “Julie” as a product to the world. You need to find a way to rise above the hoi polloi of job seekers so that employers call you rather than vice versa. To accomplish that means having a systematic planned campaign with regular reviews, progress assessments, and daily reports to management. I’m happy to play manager for the moment.

First, you need a regular schedule with the day broken up into small manageable parts. The programming world has found this to be a good mechanism for making things productive. So make a list of what is to be accomplished today, then tomorrow, and so forth. Here is a beginning:

Make a detailed plan for the day [15 minutes]

Exercise to keep yourself alert and mentally active [1 hour]

Education: learn something new that makes you more employable [1hour]

Keep track of the market for your services: what’s hot and what’s not [???]

Network (gathering resources and intelligence) [1 hour?]

Scan published opportunities and send out resumes [1-2 hours]

Document what you did and send it to your “manager” [15 minutes]

And so forth and so on. Of course your topics will be somewhat different and a whole lot more specific.

You are the marketeer so you’ll have to figure out how to get yourself known to the world at large. Think of yourself as a product. How will you get the word out? This is low budget guerrilla marketing. You might be able to use Facebook and social networking to leverage yourself into rock star status. (Well, singer in a girl band status with potential.) Twitter is the new hot thing. There are folks using Twitter to find jobs. Find out how that works and give it a try. Organize your out-of-work friends to work as a collective and meet regularly to do things to find jobs together. Expand your network any way you can. Write a blog about finding a job in Silicon Valley and document what you do and what works and what does not. Be creative and outrageous.

Good luck in your job search, readers. Remember to be systematic, but leave room for being creative, outrageous, and courageous. Most important, land that job!

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