How to Find a Job – One That’s Yours to Lose

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Many of us want to know how to find a job – any job, especially if we’re getting down to the bottom of our “peanut butter jar” and we need to replenish our savings. Regardless of our financial condition, there isn’t much sense in searching around for a job that doesn’t match with what we have to offer.

Instead, we should focus on finding one that is truly ours to lose.

The reasoning behind this is quite simple. If what we offer isn’t a good match for the prospective employer, then we’re really wasting our time and their time as well. Also, our chance of being hired is diminished by the mismatch, and we’re using up valuable time pursuing a less fruitful path when we could be pursuing something with a greater chance of fulfillment for both parties.

Unless you’re in a micro job market, you really ought to focus on employment where you have something akin to an 85% match between your skills and the needs of the employer. What you should be doing is finding the job that is yours to lose. In other words, you go into the interview knowing that you’re such a good fit for the job that your focus is to keep from losing the job, instead of striving to win it.

This approach works well, whether you’re looking for regular employment or trying to serve customer needs as a contractor. If you follow this approach, you’ll find that your hit rate will increase tremendously. It’s essentially a way of pre-qualifying yourself before you write a proposal or fill out a job application.

The point is simply that our time is best spent when we focus on our strengths, instead of taking the old “shot gun” approach. On the flip side, we can’t simply wait around for the ideal job opportunity to appear in the newspaper either. There isn’t such a thing. Those who engage in that behavior are mostly making excuses why they can’t find work suitable for their talents.

Instead, we need to network, use the phone book to cold call prospective employers, and make appointments with business owners and managers to pitch why our services are needed and well matched for their organization.

That’s how to find a job in my book.

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Clair Schwan is appalled at the unemployment in this country, but recognizes that it’s caused by several factors, all well within our control – a reliance on others for regular income, apprehension about becoming self employed, failure to work hard at finding employment, getting caught up in the paradigm of “making a living” by routine work in a job instead of finding an opportunity for a career path, not knowing how to keep a job, and not knowing how to find a job. He also believes that no matter the economy, or what the want ads say, you can make your own niche in the labor market if you really want to. As George Carlin told us, “You gotta wanna.”

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