I recently checked in with MaryAnne, my best friend since third grade. She told me she was interviewing with a large medical device company. A month later, she had essentially landed the job.
I felt like I had just blinked—in a tough job market, and after being out of the workforce for almost 10 years, she found a fast path to landing a job.
MaryAnne is a mother of three who walked away from her public sector human resources career in 2003 to take care of her family.
After leaving her human resources management position with a large city, she chose to be a “homemaker”—the backbone to her family—shuttling her kids to and fro, supporting her husband in his work, and volunteering her time to charities and non-profits. But recently, her husband retired and, with the kids now a bit older, it was an ideal time to head back to work and contribute to her family in a different way.
Now, I do know (at least in my humble opinion) that MaryAnne is very bright and highly capable, especially when she puts her mind to something. But it was actually an entirely different approach to traditional job hunting that proved to be successful for her.
Like a lot of you, she posted her resume on web-based job boards—without getting a single call or email response.
What did get MaryAnne her job was an approach that is, coincidentally, at the heart of my book, The Millionaire Zone. The book, based on national research about how the wealthy use their social networks to achieve success (including landing a job), covers several key strategies. One of them is successfully leveraging the people around you—the people who truly know you—to help you get to where you want to go.
MaryAnne developed a friendship with Megan, a real estate broker for a home she had purchased several years back. During a conversation about buying a new house, Megan naturally asked about her price.
“It all depends,” said MaryAnne. “If I have a job, our price point will be higher.”
Megan, now having known MaryAnne for several years, moved into high gear and asked for her resume. She then shared it with someone in her network, an HR executive for a medical device company in the area. Before she knew it, MaryAnne had a phone interview for 45 minutes with the company’s recruiter (a good sign), and then a meeting with the people in human resources.
MaryAnne did a lot of things right—things that run contrary to what you often think is the way to find a job:
Start with your “Home Zone”—Your Home Zone, as I call it in my book, includes the people and organizations who know you best.
“Megan knew me and my strengths,” says MaryAnne. “She knows that I’m trustworthy, competent and industrious. So, she felt very comfortable, after seeing my resume, recommending me to a client in my field of expertise.”
That certainly wouldn’t have been the case if she continued to just post her resume on job boards.
MaryAnne adds—underscoring my philosophy about leveraging your Home Zone—that it wasn’t the network she built that led to the job, but rather, a personal relationship and the philosophy of simply doing the right thing.
“The key was that I spent the last 10 years doing productive, value-added things for the right reasons, rather than for money, recognition, or something else,” she points out. “If you do that—just focusing on adding value where and whenever you can—the success will follow.”
Avoid looking desperate—I know that you may be thinking to yourself, especially if you’re looking for a job, something like this: I’ve got to go out to my network or post my resume all over and tell everyone I’m looking for a job. But that can hurt you.
“If I had said to Megan, ‘I’m looking for a job. Who do you know?’ it would’ve changed the whole dynamic,” MaryAnne says. “Instead, the way it came up was natural and unintentional—it led Megan to help, not because I asked, but because she wanted to help a friend.”
As MaryAnne and others in the book discover, it’s all about who you are and what you do, not “what you ask for.”
The other key is to know the value you bring to an organization—and truly believe it, truly own it. You’ll avoid coming off as desperate and will connect in a far more meaningful way to your future employer.
Keep your skills current—MaryAnne says it wasn’t easy working around the major elephant in the middle of the room: being out of the workforce for a solid 10 years. But, she did a lot of nonprofit and volunteer work and always kept active and informed in her field.
“Wherever I could fit in my HR background, I did: When we opened a charter school, I recruited staff, and wrote policies—I participated and put my HR skills to work. And I put that on my resume.”
She also made sure to bring that up in interviews and explain that experience on her resume, keeping it fully current. MaryAnne told her prospective employer: “I may have left my career, but I was always doing something; I was never idle or complacent.”
The key, no matter what you are doing, is to stay engaged and to demonstrate, if possible, that the career choices you made were your choices—just as MaryAnne made the proactive choice to stay home with her family and wasn’t afraid to communicate that decision. She also has stayed in touch with her old peers, subordinates and bosses and added them to her list of references. “They’re all in high places now,” she laughs.
Keeping your skills current has the added value of keeping your confidence up.
When the HR manager asked MaryAnne what her biggest concerns were, she talked from a position of strength: “I know that, as a contract employee, you may think of me as a temp who will always be looking for a full-time job, and therefore you may not give me challenging, long-term assignments. That’s not the job I want. My commitment to you is that I will stay for the duration of this assignment and won’t look for another job; but in return, I want challenging work.” It’s a message that’s honest, direct and compelling to an employer.
Have realistic expectations—MaryAnne knew she wasn’t going to re-enter her career where she left it, as an HR manager. So, she lowered her sights. She did some online research to find what an HR analyst or generalist in her city with a college degree was earning, and used that figure to answer her expected compensation. “I found I was right in the ballpark,” she notes.
“I also made sure everyone understood I had realistic expectations with my competition,” she told me. “Even though I was engaged, it was all volunteer. And it had been 10 years. I was honest when I said: Believe me, I understand I can’t come back where I left off in terms of responsibility and compensation, but I want to be compensated fairly.”
Yes, MaryAnne actually said this to her future employer, and she thinks it made all the difference—not being greedy, but being realistic.
Do your homework—Know what the company’s goals are, check out the person who’s interviewing, check out the news online. Again, if you follow the “Millionaire Zone” principles, you’ll find that you can connect on a more meaningful level and truly focus on how your values and skills can truly contribute to an organization—and move you both forward.
In the end, leveraging our networks—as MaryAnne did so simply—isn’t just about landing a job in a matter of a couple weeks. It’s about building relationships and helping others to discover how you can enrich their lives or their companies.
Jennifer Openshaw is president of Finect, founder of Women’s Financial Network, and author of The Millionaire Zone (Hyperion) about how the wealthy use networking to achieve financial success.
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