© Copyright Keith Williamson
and licensed for reuse under this Creative Commons License.
The eight steps to a successful job search and Napoleon Hill’s eight steps to riches are identical by no coincidence. The same single-minded passion that brought great fame and fortune to nearly 200 individuals Hill studied can be applied to your career.
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Think and Grow Your Career, Part 10 of 10
Over the course of 20 years, Hill interviewed and observed the most successful people of the early 20th century to find a recipe for success. In “Think and Grow Rich,” the best-selling business book of all time, he offers the eight steps. Here, they are, named in Hill’s words and explained in relation to a job search or career change.
For more details on putting the steps into practice, please visit each link below. When you read each post, make notes about how the concept applies to your job search or career change. Ask yourself how you can put each into practice — now.
1. Desire: Knowing the type of job you want and being definite about your career goal.
2. Faith: Having confidence in yourself and your ability to attain the job you want.
3. Autosuggestion: Knowing how to nourish your belief that the job is already yours.
4. Specialized knowledge: Obtaining the education or training you need to prepare for the job.
5. Imagination: Applying your imagination to the way your goal will come about.
6. Organized planning: Adding your intellect to your dreams to create a plan to reach your career goal.
7. Decision: Acting on your job search plan.
8. Persistence: Evaluating your results and if they have been unsuccessful, creating and acting on another plan.
Napoleon Hill, despite his 20 years of research and writing, isn’t all about intellectual concepts. He is all about action, and so is a job search. Yes, you have to create and know your strategy, but having one will set you apart from only about half of the other candidates for the position you want. The clincher is your action.
In a job search, a proactive approach means deciding which companies you very much would like to work for and finding ways to know and be known by them. This is called networking and is the most effective way to get a job. It doesn’t mean you can’t post a resume and search on job postings; however, you need to realize that a great many more jobs happen through networking than through all of the other strategies put together. Spending your time networking makes the most sense because it yields the most results.
Bonus Networking Tips
- Networking also gives you more high-quality information about your prospective employer than other strategies. When you post your resume, you wait for someone to discover you. You may never have heard of them or the city they’re in and may have difficulty learning more.
- When you search for job postings that match your skills and experience, you often don’t know if there is a real job or if the company is just “fishing,” if the job is still open, if it has been or will be filled internally, how many others are applying, what the company has in mind for the position outside the bare job description, and how you and the company fit each other’s goals.
- When you get to know people at a company and let them get to know you before you are hired, you become a “known quantity,” and are perceived as a better risk for the company’s hard-won funds.
- Being referred by someone inside the company carries this same “seal of approval.” Just be sure the person referring you will follow through and say they want to work with you.
The first time you are not hired is an easy time to quit. We feel disappointed, rejected, and a failure. We worked hard at the preparation and weren’t rewarded. The secret is to stick with it. Working your strategy with wholehearted accountability will make the ultimate difference. There is no halfway. There is no second place. You don’t get a consolation job. Staying committed to yourself and your dream will be the most difficult and rewarding thing you ever do.
Copyright © 2010, Jeri Hird Dutcher. All Rights Reserved.
Permission to Reprint: This article may be reprinted, provided it appears in its entirety with the following attribution: Reprinted by permission of Jeri Hird Dutcher, nationally certified career coach and resume writer. For information about coaching and resume services, visit www.Workwrite.net.
