Transcript Mastering Personal Marketing

Mastering Personal
Marketing
Facilitated by Robert
Bircher
Lawyers Assistance
program
Job Hunting and
Marketing
• Since about 80% of legal jobs are
found through networking and
informational interviews knowing how
to market yourself is critical
• Many legal jobs are rarely/never
advertised-you won’t see ads for
articling students or junior lawyers in
small firms very often-even with jobs
that only hire through ads (gov’t)
insider marketing is very useful
• The harder the job market the more
personal marketing you need to do
Resistance to Personal
Marketing
• Despite its obvious value most people resist
personal marketing to some degree
• For some it is because they believe self
promotion is tacky or unethical, for others it
reminds them of a sleazy used car
salesperson-some have a secret
prince/princess complex- “a star like me
shouldn’t need to do this”
• What negative story do you tell yourself
about personal promotion? What are the
benefits to these stories?
• With lawyers two things will determine how
many offers you get-how much effort you put
into job hunting and how effective you are at
it
Personal Marketing
• Waiting for job ads that describe
you is particularly useless-you
will miss 90% of the opportunities
yet believe you are looking for a
job-also if there are no ads that
describe you, you will falsely
conclude there is no work out
there and become disheartened
• What works is to conclude you
will have to market yourself
anyway and job ads are just low
hanging fruit-easy pickings
Being Proactive Works
• Warm contact always trumps cold
contact (see p.326)
• Be aware of hit ratios-it might be
15-3-2 meaning you have to make
15 applications to be short listed 3
times for 1 offer
• Take an attitude of being a
resource person trying to match
what you can offer to what the
employer wants-not a job beggar
Loving Rejection
• Job hunting is about being selected or
rejected-you can hurt yourself with this
reality or accept it
• Everyone likes feeling safe, being
right, feeling good, looking good, and
avoiding pain-you can choose these
rather than getting resultsparadoxically-it will make job
hunting harder
• “I won’t do cold calls” is just saying I
am afraid of rejection
• When I am rejected I feel____
Loving Rejection
• People tend to personalize rejection,
buy their negative story and feel crappy
about it
• Another interpretation of this is it is
just a selection process for fit or style-it
is the same as selecting what clothes to
wear –you are not rejecting the clothes
you don’t pick
• It is not “personal” at all-you are the
one who chooses to make it personal
• Have faith in the selection process and
yourself-if you are not picked that is
great!!-it is their judgment some other
person may be better and they are
probably right!!
Getting Results
• The bottom line is that at the end
of the day you will have your
results or your reasons why not
• Become an “insider” not a beggar
at the door
• A classic example in law is
getting an articling job at the firm
where you did a summer job-you
may not have even got an
interview at he same firm
Getting Results
• People will hire who they know
over who is best qualified almost
every time
• Read about the field, attend Bar
seminars and CLE events in that
field
• Create a network in that field,
volunteer in the area
• Informational interviews are
useful here-they are low risk and
curiosity based
Networking
• All super successful people are great
networkers
• This is about taking advantage of other
people to help you out-every person
you add to your list knows about 200
other people
• If we wanted to talk to someone who
has personally met President Obama
we could probably find someone here
in Vancouver who has or at least
knows someone who has within a few
hours
• There is a method of managing your
contacts on pages 328-345
Networking
• Most people know how to create a
network but don’t want to use it or are
very timid about it
• Most people you have a real
relationship with will try to help you
• You can make requests, if people say
no make a smaller request-see page
342
• This depends on the relationship you
have with the person-inappropriate
requests will turn people off-being too
timid wastes potential-many people err
on the side of safety-it’s the call that
gets results!!