Luck vs Hard Work: A Case of Mistaken Identity

Posted April 13th, 2012 in blog_news, For Job Seekers

“The harder I work, the luckier I get.”
- Samuel Goldwyn

“Make your own luck” may look good scrawled on a graphic t-shirt and paired with a snap-back and some Vans, but it makes less sense as a (non-fashion) statement.  Given that luck is, by definition, beyond your control, how can you make it?

Apparently, the respondents to a recent LinkedIn survey have the answer:  Over 70% felt that things like work ethic and communication skills contribute to the amount of luck we receive.  But if that’s true – if tireless effort, networking and taking advantage of opportunities are the things that lead to big breaks – what’s the difference between ‘luck’ and ‘hard work’?

I don’t mean to wilt the leaves on your clover, but I think there’s a danger in linking effort and luck, as it disassociates success from control, undercutting the hopeful spirit of the article.

Let’s say it’s your dream to become a management consultant specializing in corporate social responsibility.  One day, your boss decides to launch a ‘Green Workplace’ initiative and needs someone to lead the committee.  Though your boss may be completely unaware that you’re the Jeremy Lin of corporate social responsibility (hopefully with stronger knee ligaments), you happen to run into each other one afternoon at the coffee shop next to the office.  Your boss, who can’t be bothered to go through an interview process, arbitrarily offers you the position of committee leader.

Was it by luck that you were given this potentially career-making opportunity?  Not necessarily.  There’s obviously an element of timing involved – but let’s say you’d strategically chosen to choke down coffee shop sewage every day to match your boss’s break schedule, increasing the likelihood of getting some one-on-one time.  Can we really call your good fortune ‘luck’?

Those who apply the concepts identified in the survey – a strong work ethic, good communication skills, acting on opportunities – are likely to be the kinds of people who would come up with these types of strategies.  In doing so, the line between ‘luck’ and ‘reward for effort’ is suddenly blurred.  In our example, you clearly took action to put yourself in a situation to succeed, so, in a way, your new undertaking should be credited as an accomplishment, not just dumb luck.

Let’s just admit that we have more control over our careers than we’d sometimes like to believe

The survey results are meant to give the apparently unlucky reason to believe there are ways to turn their fortunes around, to restore faith in our ability to control our careers.  To me, if you want to empower someone, you should be making them feel that they control the breaks they get.  To keep calling it ‘luck’ even though you’re making calculated decisions to bring about certain results seems to snatch power from the individual, instead attributing it to random cosmic forces.

I don’t mean to get all Freudian, but if luck is driving our careers, what personal responsibility do we really have?

In spirit, the article is trying to debunk the notion that we are powerless unless we fill our briefcases with horseshoes and rabbit feet.  My issue is not with the message, but how it’s framed.  I’ll be the first to admit that luck plays a role in career success, but strong work ethic, communication skills and opportunism should also increase your career trajectory, and give you a better chance of catching breaks.  What they’re really saying is that we can’t increase our luck, but we can increase our odds.  Putting ourselves in more potentially luck-bearing situations increases the likelihood that, at some point, we’ll catch a break.

By thinking of it this way, we can disconnect luck from success and re-establish the notions of control and responsibility.  So maybe it isn’t the number of bowls of Lucky Charms you scarf down at the breakfast table – maybe it’s where you’re going, or who you’re eating with, that’s actually going to help your career.

 

Guest post by Geoffrey “Don’t Call Me Lucky” Gilbert, Recruiter at Poly Placements

If you could only choose one, which would it be: Success or happiness?

Posted March 23rd, 2012 in blog_news, For Job Seekers

They don’t go together as automatically as you think.

Whether you’re a virtue ethics professor or a shoe-gazing hipster trying to impress a girl with your emotional depth, many of us have pondered this question.  You may feel the answer is simple: success and happiness are one and the same.  If you have a great career, it seems natural to assume that it would make you happy.  It’s a nice idea, but I, for one, am not ready to join hands and go skipping off into the sunset.  The truth is, success and happiness are often unrelated.  The fine folks at the University of Notre Dame agree with me… sort of.

Their longitudinal study, the subject of a recent article on Fortune.com, found that high-achievers – educated, ambitious individuals that gain status and prosperity through career accomplishments – are not significantly happier than the rest of us (and to top it off, they tend not to live as long!).  It seems disheartening, at first.  Imagine you attended a prestigious business school, landed a great job at a venture capital firm, discovered the next Velcro and became wealthier than Croesus.  The thought that these accomplishments may have no effect to your ability to find contentment seems like a karmic punch in the gut, but aspiring entrepreneurs need not throw out their Steve Jobs turtlenecks just yet.

Don’t panic: Happiness is subjective

It becomes much less unsettling if we stop considering happiness an objective concept.  It doesn’t take much to show that there are more definitions of delight than there are Drake songs on the radio, which changes how we should interpret the results of the study.  If you were to ask a random assortment of people what happiness is, you’d hear a lot about beer and beaches, but you’d also get references to more substantive achievements, like advances in cancer research or the pursuit of universal morality.  I’m not judging, but it is safe to say that some people need more to be concerned about than a flip cup winning streak.

To some, happiness is simply the maximization of pleasure: do what makes you feel good.  Others see it as the by-product of meaningful pursuits: your mission is to dedicate your life to discovering XYZ, and true happiness is only gained when we make strides in that pursuit.  The pleasure-seeker has a distinct practical advantage – for them, happiness is well-defined.  The physiological and emotional responses you experience when you laugh at a joke, score a big goal for your rec league team or have a great date provide instant, unmistakable feedback, letting us know our score on the happiness high striker.

Those with deeper, more abstract definitions, on the other hand, may have a tough time understanding what happiness even feels like.  Sure, lessons learned from life experiences can help make us better people, but in terms of how happy they make us feel, it is isn’t exactly a wild night in Tijuana.  With constructs as fuzzy as “virtue” or “truth” as our guideposts instead of clear-cut physical indicators, searching for a deeper happiness can be like running a race without knowing where the finish line is.  This lack of clarity makes the journey much more rigorous, but the ultimate payoff is arguably much greater than that of the simple pleasure-seeker.

So what does this mean for you?

I am not trying to imply that the high-achiever is working on a more advanced philosophical level than the average person.  My point is that it is clear that with all the possible concepts of happiness, it is easy to see how it can be disconnected from career success.  Without any insight into how the participants of this study define happiness, we can’t draw any real conclusions.  I will be interested to read the full report when it is published later this month, because right now, it is a bit like anything by Michael Moore: sure, it brings an important issue to light, but it should be taken with a grain of salt.

Whether you work to live or live to work, simply understanding what success and happiness mean to you will go a long way in determining how to achieve them.  To borrow from two wise men – Socrates and G.I Joe – knowing yourself is half the battle.

Guest post by Poly Placements recruiter Geoffrey Gilbert.

Five reasons your career path has stalled

Posted June 26th, 2011 in blog_news, For Job Seekers

Successful people think long-term about their career.
Do you?

So you’ve been in the working world for a few years, and after some initial success, you’re finding that your career trajectory has slowed down – you haven’t had a big promotion, raise, or even a call from a recruiter in a while, and you don’t know why.

Well, assuming that you have some decent basic skills, aren’t living in an economically depressed area, and aren’t Lindsay Lohan, the answer probably lies somewhere in the following 5 areas:

1.  You’ve done too much job-jumping

If you’ve had more than 3 or 4 full-time jobs in the past 2 years, and aren’t able to adequately explain why none of them ‘took’, you may be looking like a bad risk to a potential employer, or a risky proposition to your current one.

How to combat this?  If you’re applying to jobs, offer brief explanations in your covering email (“The company went out of business” or “Seasonal contract position”) that make it clear that you didn’t just change your mind and leave previous jobs.  If you’re hoping to advance in your current position, you might just have to wait a few months until your manager is confident you’re going to stick around – it wouldn’t hurt to make it clear you’re thinking long-term by saying things like “I’m setting up the system so that when we do this next year we’ll be ahead of the game!”

2.  You’re invisible online

If you haven’t had a call from a recruiter in a while, it’s probably because you’re invisible from a Google perspective.  These days, 99% of recruiters start their search online, and most of them start from LinkedIn and work outward.  If you haven’t got a profile on LinkedIn, recruiters won’t find you, and if your only online presence is a LinkedIn profile that hasn’t been updated since 2009, you aren’t going to make a recruiter’s top 10 list.

3.  You’re invisible at work

When was the last time you put your hand up and asked for an extra project or to lead a new initiative?  It’s hard for managers to notice you as a rising star if you’ve just been keeping your head down and getting your basic work done.  No new initiatives on the horizon?  Invent one!  Offer to become the environmental coordinator, organize a charity event, or write a guest blog for your company’s website and then take it to your manager.  Even if your offers aren’t accepted right away, you’ll get noticed as an enthusiastic go-getter who really wants to do more.

4.  You haven’t kept in touch with former colleagues

Recruiters know that the best candidates come through referrals, so a referred candidate always takes priority over someone who just submits an application.  By the same token, the best opportunities tend to turn up because someone you know thinks you’re ‘perfect’ for the position.  It’s hard for people to recommend you if you haven’t spoken to them since the last day you worked with them, 3 years ago.

No, you can’t be best friends with everyone you ever worked with, but if you make an effort to keep in touch with, say, 3 people from every job you’ve ever had, you’ll increase your career prospects exponentially.

5. You’re not in the right job

It sounds like a cliche, but it’s true:  In order to have a really successful career, you have to genuinely love – or at least like, most days! – what you do.  When you enjoy what you do, you don’t mind coming in early and staying late, going the extra mile, and thinking about your future.  When you don’t…well, let’s just say that managers aren’t in a hurry to promote employees who they know aren’t fully engaged in their work.

If you’re finding it harder and harder to come in early, stay late, or make that extra effort, it may be time to consider making a move.  The first step?  Make a list of the elements you think go into the ‘ideal job’ (everything from ‘great co-workers’ to ‘managing a team’ to ‘a shorter commute’ to ‘opportunities to be creative’, if these things are important to you).  The more you know about what your ideal job looks like, the easier it will be to either transition your current role or look for a great new one!

 

 

Are you a helpdesk technician? Here’s how to jump-start your career.

Posted June 10th, 2011 in blog_news, For Job Seekers

Being a helpdesk rockstar is a surprisingly good career move.
Here’s how to become one.

(You know what?  Sometimes it really is all about listening patiently.)

We do a lot of helpdesk and service desk recruiting, staffing and management, and here’s what we’ve learned:

  • Great helpdesk staff can make a huge difference to the overall health of an organization
  • As a member of a service desk or helpdesk team, you have the power to make a big difference, every day
  • Being recognized as a stellar helpdesk technician can be a good springboard to a fantastic long-term career

Sure, some days, working on the helpdesk can be tough – most of the time, people are calling you because they’ve got some kind of problem, they’re freaking out, and they need their problem fixed, like, yesterday.  But if you can stick to a few basic principles, you’ll find that you not only stand out and get recognized in the short-term, but you’ll find you have lots of long-term career options as well.

5 ways to become the most popular helpdesk guru in town

1.  Be enthusiastic about what you do – and let it show

When people get the impression you like what you do, a whole lot of good things happen:  Their trust level increases, their panic level decreases, and they do a better job of communicating their problems.  This makes it easier for you to solve their problem, the problem-solving tends to take less time, and both of you walk away feeling like you’ve had a positive interaction.  So don’t be afraid to be cheerful!

2.  Be confident

Most of the time, the people you’re interacting with  don’t know as much about how to fix their computer/smartphone/peripheral as they wish they did,  and all they can think about is “Holy jeez, what if it’s going to take days to get this fixed, just when I have 43 documents to complete before Monday!?”   Saying something like, “Don’t panic – I’ve seen this problem before and I’m pretty sure we can get it fixed for you without too much trouble…” is a good way to diffuse tension.

3.  Communicate!

The helpdesk technicians who get promoted (and get raises!) fastest?  The ones who take a few minutes to tell their clients what’s going on:  Messages or emails like “I’ve got to reinstall X, but it shouldn’t take more than 2 hours” or “Just wanted to let you know that I’ve ordered X for your phone and it should be here by Friday – let me know if you have any problems in the meantime” don’t take very long, but they make a huge difference in how you’re perceived within the organization.

4.  Be honest about what you don’t know – but know where to find out

In the long run, you’ll earn more respect by admitting when you don’t know something than by pretending that you do.  ”Hhmmm, I haven’t seen this particular issue before, but I know Bob is an expert in this, so let me check with him and get back to you as soon as I can…” is a better approach than keeping a client on the phone for an hour while you futz around, pretending to know what you’re doing.

5.  Cross-train

You may be the ‘X’ specialist in your particular helpdesk environment, but the best helpdesk technicians are all-round gurus – and it’s the all-round gurus who have the most successful long-term careers.  Here’s how to become an all-rounder:

  • Ask co-workers (i.e. specialists in areas outside your own) to teach you new things
  • Ask to be assigned to longer-term project teams outside of day-to-day helpdesk functions
  • Seek out and take advantage of formal learning opportunities, like new certifications, webinars, or conferences
  • Look for ways to make the helpdesk or service desk function more efficient, and then speak to your manager about implementing your ideas

By building your organization-specific skills (via co-workers and projects), your technical skills (via learning opportunities) and your management skills (by making the helpdesk function work better), you become more visible – and more valuable.

Network smarter, not harder

Posted April 26th, 2011 in blog_news, For Job Seekers

Personal networking is crucial to your career.
It’s easier when you’re more strategic about it.

Hopefully by this time I don’t have to tell you why ‘networking’ is important for your career, whether or not you’re currently in the market for a new job.  If I do, you can review the basics here.  And here is some more good basic info from the Rice MBA program, which is, if I am not mistaken, quite prestigious.

So you know you should be networking, and that you should be doing it on an ongoing basis.

But networking is more than just running around handing your business card (or your resume) to everyone you know.  In fact, that kind of scattershot approach is almost guaranteed not to generate the results you want.

How to network more effectively

The best networkers – i.e. the people whose career trajectories tend to outstrip their peers – approach their networking efforts strategically.  Here’s how:

1.  Identify gaps

A good personal network contains a wide array of people in a wide array of roles from a wide array of industries, because you never know when you’re going to need specialized expertise or advice.  Do you know a lawyer or two?  An accountant?  A procurement specialist?  A couple of computer geniuses?  If all your contacts are within your industry, it’s time to broaden your horizons a little.

2.  Use Facebook to tap into your personal network

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again:  Facebook isn’t just for ‘personal’ stuff.  Check out your friends’ Facebook pages – could be that your best friend from university is now a senior VP of something and could be a great addition to your ‘career’ network.  So why not invite her to lunch?

3.  Be visible (especially online)

Google your name.  Does anything come up?  If not, it’s time to raise your profile, whether by populating your LinkedIn profile, starting a Twitter account, writing a blog, posting a presentation on SlideShare, even comments on blogs using your own name – something that indicates you’re different/above-average/not just another corporate drone.

4.  Have something to say

This is both a corollary to #3 (in order to be visible online, you have to have something to say (preferably related to your career or industry, of course), and a networking strategy of its own.  Networking is all about building personal relationships, and people like to build relationships with people who have interesting things to say.  So the next time you go to a networking event, don’t think about how many business cards you can hand out – think about what insightful comments you’ll contribute to the discussion.

Which leads us to…

5.  Have something to offer

Networking is a two-way street:  The best way to put yourself in a position to ask a favour of someone else is to have done a favour for them in the past.  So set yourself up as an ‘expert’ in something, and make it clear you’re happy to offer help or insight on that topic.  (It doesn’t even have to be directly career-related – one young job-seeker I know has collected a lot of favours simply by being an expert in how to use advanced Blackberry features.)

6.  Enjoy the process – and learning new things!

The most successful networkers are people who enjoy the networking process:  They like other people, they like interacting with people, they love learning new things, and they see networking as an opportunity to do all three.  Don’t think of networking as another unwelcome work-related task – think of it as an opportunity to meet interesting people, learn interesting things, or go interesting places.

If you don’t know what job you want, you’re guaranteed not to find it.

Posted October 23rd, 2010 in For Job Seekers

Recruiters aren’t mind-readers. If you want them to connect you to your dream job, you have to be able to tell them what that dream job looks like.

In previous posts, we’ve talked about the basics of working with a recruiter (aka ‘headhunter’), and how to ensure they put you at the top of their callback list.

But this week I was reminded that before you start connecting with recruiters – before you even start writing your resume, in fact – you need to do one very important thing:  Figure out what job you want.

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