Five Obstacles Job-Seekers Put In Their Own Way

(news.monster.com) - Every day when we read the news or listen to it, we learn about amazing people doing outrageous and fantastic things. Along with all the bad news in the world, any day we can learn about someone breaking some kind of barrier to do something important and wonderful.

Sometimes it’s a little kid writing to the president to say something that needed to be said. Sometimes it’s a senior citizen taking action to fix a problem that nobody focused on before.

Whenever one of these courageous people is interviewed, they are asked this question: “How did you make your dream a reality?”

They say “I just didn’t accept the idea that any barrier I faced was insurmountable.”

Job-seekers have natural obstacles to contend with as it is. The traditional recruitment process is completely broken. It is a disaster. That’s an obstacle for job-seekers, but only if they accept that there is only one way to job-hunt.

It’s a mental barrier that many people struggle with. They’ve been taught to follow rules, no matter whose rules they are or how foolish they may be.

Having been raised to follow every rule in sight, they don’t even apply for jobs unless they possess most of the qualifications listed in the job ad. That’s crazy!

The person who eventually gets that job will have somewhere between thirty and sixty percent of the published Essential Requirements for the job.

The more hidebound and weenietastic the organization is, the more they’ll hold out for a candidate who has most of the qualifications listed in the job ad. Once they write down the qualifications on paper, they become sacrosanct!

That’s not an organization that can flex with the changing market. You don’t want to work with people like that anyway!

There are enough hindrances and annoyances already baked into the job search process — why make a job hunt harder than it is?

Here are five obstacles job-seekers put in their own way. The good news is that they can take down these roadblocks any time they want!

Five Obstacles Job-Seekers Put In Their Own Way

1. The belief that only a full-time, salaried position in a certain kind of firm and function will be a good match for them.

2. The belief that the only way to job-hunt is to fill out an online application, as specified in the job ad.

3. The belief that the only jobs you can apply for and get are posted job openings.

4. The misconception that the way to brand yourself is to list your Skills and the job responsibilities you had in each of your past positions.

5. The mindset that employers are mighty and since you’re just one of many job-seekers on the market, you are insignificant.

These beliefs will have the effect on your job search that an anchor has on a speedboat. They will keep you from getting a great job that you deserve.

Let’s pick apart each of these man-made obstacles:

If you’ve worked as a full-time, salaried employee for decades, you might be spooked by the idea of getting a consulting business card and being open to taking on consulting clients. “But how can I job-hunt and do consulting business development at the same time?” you might wonder.

Here’s the answer, my pumpkin: those are not two different activities. They are the same activity! You’re going to network and reach out to hiring managers, which is to say department managers with problems.

If you land a consulting project while your job search is underway, that’s great!

You won’t stop job-hunting. A full-time job is just an open-ended consulting gig. You’re going to adopt a consultant’s mindset now and hang onto it as long as you keep working.

If you constrain your job search with the limitation that you can only consider a full-time job with benefits, that’s the practical equivalent of deciding “I can only take a job in a company with a three-syllable name and a Latvian CEO.”

It’s a random and unhelpful requirement that can only hurt you and slow you down.

If you believe that you must fill out online job applications in order to get hired, you are living in a dream world.

You have to find other channels apart from the broken Black Hole automated recruiting channel, and luckily alternate channels are everywhere.

You’ll use your network, your new consulting identity and your powerful Pain Letters to start conversations about pain and solutions with managers near and far. You’re going to take active control of your job search, rather than shrugging your shoulders and saying “It’s the economy!” or “It’s my age!”

You’ll scan Indeed and SimplyHired to see who’s looking for whom in the posted job ads, but you won’t confine your outreach to published job ads — not by a long shot!

You’ll write to any hiring manager who strikes your fancy, either because you read about his or her organization or heard about them from a friend or scouted them out on LinkedIn.

It doesn’t matter how a firm enters your field of vision. If you think you can help a manager surmount his or her Business Pain, then write and say so!

Forget about the tired and deadly-boring recitation of Skills and tell your human story in your resume and your LinkedIn profile.

Your path to get here is a million times more interesting than the responsibilities you held at each past job (which any thinking person can extrapolate from your job title, anyway). Tell us about your movie!

The last and most formidable self-made obstacle for a job-seeker is the mistaken belief that you are a little ant in comparison to large and powerful corporations and institutions. That’s completely false.

You have something unique and valuable to bring to your next employer — but only if you believe that you do!

If you’re not spending part of every day working on your mojo and building up your damaged self-esteem, you’re going to be a desperate job-seeker, and desperation is the most unfortunate characteristic a job-seeker can convey.

It’s easy to lose your mojo when you get laid off. It’s easy to forget how many big and gnarly problems you’ve already solved in your career. Don’t fall victim to these five do-it-yourself job-search obstacles.

Remember that not every employer deserves you. Only the people who get you, deserve you — the rest are welcome to live a long and happy life without you!