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BillO got a $25 million severance. I got a much, much smaller severance once, and had to sign a non-disclosure agreement that would cover experiences that can still make an interesting novel. I had spent several years trying to reinvent myself and my career, but had to return to a job that actually kept me back onto a path that had proven complicated because I confused love with the reinvention process.
I had as usual been attracted to a projected happiness that was unrealistic and moved myself to another part of the country and consequently wound up with a bad boss, a cut in salary, and the end of that relationship. After enough of them, you’d think I’d learned something.
OTOH, I had been through four prior relationships in my life that would qualify as major and at least in one instance there was a commitment with marriage, but that is now gone just as I have realized there’s not a lot of time left. Strange but that really has only recently struck me even as I had thought I wouldn’t reach certain age bench marks. Never trusting anyone over 30 makes less sense when you reach that age.
I have had nearly as many full and parttime jobs as I have had relationships, and by now the numbers have evened out with being now “between” jobs for several years. I am ready now to try to apply for jobs again. There were jobs that I liked, probably never loved, and plenty that I lusted after and never got.
After figuring out that as I used to apply for 1000+ jobs each year with about 5-10 a day and a rejection rate that was less daily, but always disheartening each time I opened up the mail or the email.
I have had little to show for that activity except having traveled to some interesting places to have a bad meal, sometimes a decent motel room, and then the usual largely uneventfulness of travel.
This is part of the new job strategy even as I am less invested with the notion of work as I am with trying to complete some remaining life projects.
No I don’t have a bucket list because it would be unrealistic, and I have acquired a different notion of what counts as making myself happy. Here’s one possible tactic for my next few weeks. Note that I haven’t looked at my Linkedin account for year(s), and it’s not with any irony that this article is on their site.
1) Decide what kinds of jobs you want to focus on. The brand "I can do anything!" is the worst possible choice, because no one believes it -- and because managers of different departments have different kinds of Business Pain to solve.
2) Brand yourself for the jobs you want. Put a human voice in your resume (here's how!) to bring across your power and your accomplishments, not to mention your personality. Do the same in your LinkedIn profile.
3) Ask yourself "Who is my hiring manager?" His or her title, of course, is not 'hiring manager' -- that's just his or her relationship with you. Your hiring manager is the head of a department, like Finance or Inventory Control.
4) Find your hiring manager inside each of your target employers. Let's say you've got your eye on Acme Explosives, a growing manufacturer in your town. Here's how to use LinkedIn to find your hiring manager at Acme.
5) Write a Pain Letter addressed specifically to your manager at Acme Explosives -- not to the HR department. Ignore Acme's automated recruiting site. You'll send your Pain Letter through the mail, directly to your hiring manager's desk.
- Your Pain Letter speaks to your hiring manager directly, from one person to another. It doesn't use any business jargon like "Results-oriented professional" or "Multi-skilled Business Leader." It doesn't say "I was intrigued to see your recent job ad..." or use any of the traditional, kiss-ass job-seeker language. Your hiring manager is a real person with problems that are keeping him or her up at night. Your Pain Letter addresses those problems straight on. That's why it's called a Pain Letter!
6) Staple your Pain Letter to your one- or two-page Human-Voiced Resume and slip the stapled pages into an 8.5 x 11-inch white envelope on which you've written your manager's name, title, company name and street address in block print (in the center of the front of the envelope) and your own name and street address in the upper left-hand corner of the front of the envelope.
7) Take your filled and sealed envelope (now elevated to a new status: Pain Packet!) to the post office and them stamp and send it or buy some stamps and send it yourself through a mailbox.
8) Log your sent Pain Packet in a simple spreadsheet you've created to track your job-search activity.
9) Celebrate your job search progress with a nice gelato!
www.linkedin.com/…
- The first 90 days of any job are vital. It’s the standard grace period for new employees: a time to get settled, but also a time to show coworkers and employers how you plan to handle your new role. It’s because of this that the 30/60/90 Question— “What are your goals for the first 30, 60, and 90 days on the job?”— has gained popularity with hiring managers and candidates alike. Here’s how to approach it.
- What if the hiring manager doesn’t ask this question? Not to worry: you can still present your plan. In a LinkedIn article, Michael Kissinger explains that all hiring managers are trying to answer several questions about a potential candidate: Do they understand the job? Can they do the job? Will they do the job? Completing the 30/60/90 plan can answer all these questions while demonstrating your commitment and organization. Feel free to say to the hiring manager, “I’ve put together a plan of what I’d like to do in this position” and share it during or after your interview. If you’ve put in the thought, they’ll be impressed!
- Answering the 30/60/90 Question allows you to set yourself apart from other applicants with your unique vision of yourself in the role. And of course, one of the best parts of a 30/60/90 plan is its potential should you get hired—you’ll know where to start!
LinkedIn's Value to Malicious Actors
LinkedIn has been the focus of online scams and phishing attacks for a number of years now, primarily because of the wealth of data it offers on employees at corporations.
Just as corporate recruiters ply LinkedIn's treasure trove of employee data to find potential recruits for open positions, malicious actors mine that same collection of data to identify potential marks for business email compromise attacks, including wire transfer and W-2 social engineering scams, as well as a number of other creative ruses including:
1. Credentials Phishes, in which the bad guys use spoofed LinkedIn support notices to trick unwitting victims into coughing up the credentials to their LinkedIn accounts, which can then be leveraged for further mayhem.
2. Advance Fee/Fake Job Offer Scams, which see the bad guys using Connection Requests from fake profiles as the initial contact in schemes designed to trick users into parting ways ways with money or other valuable data.
3. Spoofed/Fake Connection Requests, which allow the bad guys to leverage LinkedIn's reputation with users to spring malicious downloads employees sitting inside corporate networks.
4. Dating/Romance Scams, which are often initiated through LinkedIn's InMail feature but which inevitably lead to scams perpetrated through external email accounts.
5. Spear-Phishing/Whaling, one of the more common uses of LinkedIn by malicious actors, who exploit LinkedIn profile data to hone and target other types of attacks on corporate employees.
The common element in most of these scams is the use of fake profiles whose reputation/trust is enhanced by real LinkedIn users accepting bogus Connection Requests. Once a bogus or fake profile has become sufficiently reputable it can be used to launch still other types of attacks both inside and outside LinkedIn. In other cases, the bad guys may use compromised but otherwise real and legitimate LinkedIn accounts for the same purposes.
We’ll see what happens. What’s your problem this week?