Seek It, Find It, Get It: How to Discover the Best Job Opportunities and Get Them

By John Keller

What do the people who hold top positions in companies have in common? How did they get where they are? And most importantly, how can you do the same thing?
Imagine if one of them told you how he did it, describing a step-by-step approach that anyone could follow to accomplish what he has. Wouldn't you want to listen carefully to everything he had to say? Well that's exactly what you'll find in this book—a firsthand account written by someone who really did it that reveals the hidden advantage you too can use to achieve what he did. 

If you've been looking in books by famous gurus for answers about how to achieve professional success, maybe you've noticed that many of them haven't actually applied the strategies they're describing. Surprisingly, many have never had to put their ideas into practice, because they've never held a position of responsibility in any company. You may also have noticed that people who have achieved success—the ones who've really made it to the top—rarely reveal how they did it. 

Now you can learn from the experience of one of the people who actually made it. You can find out exactly how he worked his way from the bottom to the top, avoid making the mistakes he did, and focus on what really works.

Find out what successful people know but no one ever taught you about how to achieve professional success. Discover what really goes on behind the scenes in companies and learn from an insider how to move up the career ladder. At college they can teach you how to be a good professional, but not how to be a good manager of your own life. Change the things that really depend on you, starting with your attitude. Take charge of your life, learn to think better, and steer a course to your destination of choice.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Mayat Publishing
• Release date: May 13, 2017
• ISBN: 9781386596264

John Keller

John Keller is an executive and manager with over 25 years’ experience working in all kinds of companies, from small and medium-sized family-owned groups to large, publicly traded multinationals where he has held senior positions. Over the course of more than two decades working in different positions in all kind of companies, he has seen how people really get ahead in their careers and used this insight to develop and fine-tune a system that has enabled him to build his own successful career. He has learned to always seek to understand what’s really going on beneath the surface in companies, and to identify his hidden strengths—the ones he can draw on to adapt to the changes he sees coming whenever he needs to. Thanks to this ability, developed over his entire working life, He’s been able to anticipate and survive all kinds of business situations and unexpected changes. And he continues to take the same approach in the position he holds today, which is why he prefers to write under the pen name John Keller.

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Seek It, Find It, Get it:

How to Discover the Best Job Opportunities and Get Them

By

John Keller

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning, or otherwise, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the Authors or the Publisher.

Limit of Liability/Disclaimer of warranty: While the Publisher and author have used their best efforts in preparing this book, they make no representation of warranties with respect to the accuracy or completeness of the contents of this book and specifically disclaim any implied warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose. No warranty may be created or extended by sales representatives or written sales materials. The advice and strategies contained herein may not be suitable for your situation. This book is not intended as a substitute for the professional advice. You should consult with a professional where appropriate. In no event shall the Publisher nor the authors be liable for any kind of damages arising herefrom. The purchaser or reader of this publication assumes full responsibility for the use of these materials and information in any way and regardless of the interpretation of the advice given below.

While the stories presented in this book did in fact happen, names and personal characteristics of the individuals involved have been changed in order to disguise their identities. Any resulting resemblance to persons living or dead or actual events is entirely coincidental and unintentional. No identification with actual persons, places, buildings, and products is intended or should be inferred. Any slights of people or organizations are unintentional

While all attempts have been made to verify information provided in this publication, neither the Authors nor the Publisher assumes any responsibility for errors, inaccuracies or omissions. The author and publisher do not assume and hereby disclaim any liability to any party for any loss, damage, or disruption caused by errors or omissions, whether such errors or omissions result from negligence, accident, or any other cause.

Title: Seek It, Find It, Get It.

Originally titleled:Your Hidden Advantage.

By John Keller (Author)

Copyright © 2017 by John Keller and JJ Ackerton

Cover image Copyright: © PHOTOCREO Michal Bednarek/Shutterstok

Edited by JJ Ackerton & Mayat Publishing

www.thehiddenadvantage.com

Second Edition: May 13th 2017

Contents

Introduction

PART I

The Importance of Choosing the Path that's Right for You

1. Decide Where You Want to Get & Focus on Changing Your Life

•How I Began to Understand the Reality of Companies

•Some Golden Rules That Really Opened My Eyes

•Golden Rule #1: How to Really Get a Promotion and Salary Increase

·Pay Attention to Reality and the Signals It Sends You

·What Can Go Wrong If You Don’t Follow This Rule

•Golden Rule #2: How to Identify the Best Offer

·What I Learned After Leaving My Third Company

•Golden Rule #3: Why You Should (Almost Never) Accept a Counteroffer

·Why a Counteroffer Is Usually a Poisoned Chalice

·Why You Should Never Give a Smoking Gun to Someone You Just Shot

•Before We Really Get Down to Business

2. You’ve Been Laid Off! How To Respond In a Smart Way

•Have You Got What It Takes?

•What to Focus on When Everything Comes Tumbling Down Around You

•I’ve Been Laid Off. What Now?

•Reality Is What It Is. Get Over It Fast!

•The Day After: Getting Started and Learning to Survive

•How to Achieve the Best Possible Result

PART II

Do You Know What You Want and How to Get It?

3. Your Future Can Be Much Brighter Than You Think

•If You Take the Right Steps, You'll Get the Outcome You Want

•Where to Start: Some Highly Effective Approaches

·How to Build a Contact List That Will Really Help You Achieve Your Goal

•Laying the Groundwork for Success

·Know the Rules Before You Join the Game

·How to Achieve Success and Who Can Help You

•Golden Rule #4: Where Do the Best Opportunities Come From?

•How to Identify the Best Sectors to Look for Work In

•How to Identify the Best Companies in Your Target Sectors

4. Discovering Your Strengths: A Winning Strategy

•What Can You Offer a Potential Employer? (Including Things You Weren't Even Aware of)

•How to Provide Convincing Evidence of Your Achievements

•You Are a Great Professional:

How To Sell Yourself Effectively

•Final Checks Before Diving In

·How Social Media Can Hurt You: Keep Your Eye on the Ball

·Some Brief (but Very Important) Points About LinkedIn

·Golden Rules on How to Make Your Résumé Stand Out

•Everything in Place to Pursue your Goals: The System.

·What Is the System Really Aimed at Achieving?

PART III

Building Your Own Lasting Success

5. The System: Getting Started Step by Step and Doing Things the Smart Way

•How Companies Really Look for People to Hire (What They Never Tell You)

•Where to Look: Advancing Towards Your Goal

·Where to Look for the Best Opportunities

·How to Approach a Contact, Ask for a Favor, and Get It!

·How to Ask a Favor the Right Way

·The Best Way to Approach Second-Level Contacts

·The Chain of Success: Preparation > Interview > Feedback > Next Steps

·Make It Easy for Your Contact and You’ll Get What You’re After

·You Reap What You Sow

6. Get Your Counters Organized to Make the Game Easy

•Planning Charts: How to Do Them Right Without Much Effort

·How to Organize Your Time Effectively

·Why It’s so Important to Keep Good Written Records

•Follow-Up Charts

•How to Prepare for a Successful Meeting with a New Contact

•Offer Charts: Managing the Lasts Steps

7. How to Overcome Difficulties and Stay on Track

•Some Specific Techniques for Overcoming Hurdles

·Overlap of Activities –Tolerance Technique

·Feeling That You’re Not Making Progress –The Watchtower Technique

·Empty Week –The Scalpel-Sharpening Technique

·Feeling of Failure About Actions Taken –Boomerang Technique

·Any Recurrent Problem –Shackleton Technique (and Why It Always Works)

•What Detour Should I Take Now? How to Successfully Generate Your Own Alternatives

·Alternative Sectors

·Alternative Companies to Target

·Alternative Ways of Framing Your Skills and Strengths

·Alternatives Related to Personal and Professional Achievements

•A New Start: How to Get Yourself Going Again if You Need to

PART IV

Achieving the Professional Life You Really Want to Live

8. Reaching Your Goal

•How to Prepare for a Successful Job Interview

•Organizing a Highly Effective Script

·Putting Together a Script: Some Basic Ideas

·How to Design an Interview Script

·The Interview Script: Step by Step

·Crafting Your Elevator Pitch

·Putting It All Together

•Keeping a Detailed Record of Your Achievements, Progress … and Failures

•Closing the Deal: How to Handle the Negotiations

·An Important Step You Should Never Skip

·Wrap Things Up and Don’t Leave Any Loose Ends

PART V

The Real Secret is Your Hidden Advantage

9. Conclusions: How to Do It All Over Again Every Time You Need To

•Take Care of Your Hidden Advantage and Keep a Record of Your Conclusions

•Reflect On and Strengthen Your Hidden Advantage

•How to Make Your Hidden Advantage Even More Effective: Create a Permanent Action Plan

Afterword

This book is dedicated to those who strive to anticipate changes

Introduction

One thing is the way things seem; another quite different thing is the way things really are. You need to make an effort to discover the true nature of the changing reality around you. Fully understanding this reality and knowing how to use it to your advantage will give you a hidden advantage that will make you indispensable in any position and allow you to reach the top in your career.

Hello, my name is John Keller. I’m an executive and manager with over 25 years’ experience in a wide range of companies.

Over the course of my career, I’ve gradually put into practice and improved a unique system for getting ahead and reaching the kind of positions I’ve set my sights on. This system—based on the reality I’ve come to understand over the course of two decades working in the business world—will allow you to use everything I’ve learned to your own advantage.

The reality I’m talking about has nothing to do with what I learned at college. But if you don’t want to spend your whole professional life feeling like you’re flying blind—without understanding why you can’t get the job you’re really interested in, why opportunities keep slipping through your fingers—you need to know what’s really going on.

As you read this book, you’ll find out what happens behind the scenes in selection processes, what factors come into play in the hiring process, and how firms really go about looking for candidates when they need to fill a position.

This last point is especially important. If you’re not in the places where they’re looking, you’re not going to be one of the selected candidates, and you’ll never be the one hired.

The system you’ll learn in this book will boost your chances of being a candidate, even for job openings that are never published (which are usually the best ones). As you put it into practice, you’ll gradually make yourself a better match for the kind of positions you’re trying to land, which is ultimately what it’s all about.

Like so many others, I began my working life at the bottom. In my case this meant working at engineering firms, where I started out as an unpaid student intern and was later taken on as an employee on minimum wage. In other words, I started out in exactly the same situation so many people find themselves in today. And things would have stayed that way for years—my only goal to fight for a series of pay increases and struggle to climb the corporate ladder (as my coworkers were doing)—if I hadn’t taken a personal decision that radically altered the course of my professional life.

Thanks to this change of direction, I was able to get hired for a series of positions of responsibility at different companies. Every time I made a move, it was to a larger, more established firm, and after a number of years I came to hold senior executive positions at large publicly traded multinational corporations.

I achieved all this by putting into practice the system I’m going to tell you about in this book—an approach that has allowed me to move into progressively better jobs, climb the corporate ladder in the companies I’ve worked at, and stay in the positions I’ve held.

The system I’ve developed also played a crucial role when I had to find a good position again after being laid off. And of course it’s always a lot harder to get hired when you’re out of work, especially when you’re looking for a position of responsibility.

Like so many other good professionals, I was unfortunate enough to lose my job as a result of the economic meltdown we’ve seen in recent years, which led to massive, indiscriminate layoffs. To make matters worse, when all this happened I was at an age when it can be really hard to find a new position, especially when countless other professionals find themselves in the same situation.

It was distressing to see how we were all constantly knocking on the doors of the companies still standing, along with all the new job seekers just joining the labor market and looking for a break. Meanwhile, companies were only opening their doors to send more employees on their way.

When you’re driven to act, when everything around you is falling apart, it’s more important than ever to stop and think through what you’re going to do rather than rushing towards any place that looks like somewhere you can take shelter. And in any situation, if you head in the same direction as everyone else and do the same thing they’re doing, you’ll be one among many—invisible in the eyes of anyone who actually is hiring.

Everyone has talents and skills (advantages) they often can’t even see themselves (as if they were hidden)—valuable assets that can help them achieve the life goals they set themselves.

These attributes are what make each individual different and special. They’re also the key to unlocking your full potential and pursuing the right direction. For most of us, though, they almost always remain so hidden that we’re unable to identify and harness them.

Throughout your career—and not only when times are tough—you need to identify and know how to use all your advantages (and believe me, you have them). By leveraging these assets, you’ll be able to stand out in the eyes of employers seeking new professionals and make them see you as a strong candidate for the positions they need to fill.

The employment market today is like the world we now live in: dynamic and changing, exciting and full of challenges, but also increasingly complex and tough, and marked by uncertainty and growing job insecurity. Precarious jobs and temporary, part-time contracts are on the rise, and employees—no matter how well trained or good at their jobs—are increasingly interchangeable.

This reality is what it is. And maybe it’s tougher now than usual for a lot of people, especially those who have lost their jobs and don’t know how to look for a new one, and recent graduates who don’t even know where to start.

In this book I’m not going to talk about how I’d like things to be (I’m sure we’d all agree on that), but the way things really are and what I continue to see inside companies. I apologize in advance if there are things you read here that strike you as excessively harsh. There was a time when I had to come to terms with these things, and I wouldn’t be doing you any favor if I were to dress up these realities, much less leave them out entirely.

So the first piece of advice I can offer you is that it’s not worth wasting your time and energy constantly complaining about an external reality you can’t change. It won’t do any good. On the other hand, I do believe in the efficacy of acting on my own reality so I can change it in the ways I want to as quickly as possible. This approach has always worked for me and allowed me to move ahead.

I want you to know from the start that this system isn’t just a way to look for a position and get hired when you need to—whether because you’re looking for your first job, you find yourself out of work, or you see that your present company has no future and there’s no way to turn things around. It’s a valuable tool in all these cases—and that’s a lot in itself—but it’s much more powerful than that.

The more you put it into practice, the more successful you’ll be in building and improving your career and putting it on a firmer footing over time. That’s why this system is so powerful, and that’s why I developed it and spent years fine-tuning it.

It involves a radical change in the way you approach your professional life, and it’s the best way I’ve found to develop my career and adapt more and more effectively to the many changes that have taken place in my sector over the years. In most cases it has enabled me to see these changes coming—that’s true—but it’s at the worst of times that I’ve seen most clearly just how powerful it is.

It’s never let me down.

Given how effective this system is, you won’t be surprised to hear that I’ve continued to apply it. Even during the time I’ve spent writing this book, I’ve moved from a position in one company to a better one with another firm thanks to the opportunities it’s opened up for me, and I remain on the lookout for new professional projects to get excited about.

Right now I’ve got a good job. I like what I do, and I devote all the energy I should, and sometimes more, to my work. It’s not that I don’t want to be where I am or anything like that, but experience has taught me that only dead fish swim with the stream; the live ones struggle every day to stay where they are.

Why am I sharing this knowledge?

Because I wish someone had told me everything I’m going to tell you when I was still a student, even years before I was going to graduate. If they had, it would have opened up more options for me, and I would have been more likely to get a better job right after graduating. But whatever stage you’re at in your professional life, you’ll be able to achieve much more from the moment you start applying the System.

In my case I had to learn everything as I went. This meant making mistakes and then trying to put things right. It wasn’t until a number of years had gone by that I started to have a set of defined strategies that allowed me to get more out of my career.

You have an advantage. Instead of going through the same lengthy trial-and-error process I did, you can reap the rewards of my experience. Over the course of my career I’ve engaged in many job searches, in most cases to get a better position, though on some occasions because circumstances had forced my hand. After 25 years of successfully repeating this process, I know which strategies work and which don’t, and, most importantly, I know why certain approaches work.

To understand why certain strategies work, you need to understand the reality of how companies work internally, which is one of the things you’ll learn about in this book.

You’ll have an edge right from day one because you won’t have to think about how to design and plan your job search. Instead, you can focus all your efforts on applying a proven strategy that will work for you right from the start and make your job search as effective and time-efficient as possible.

Before getting down to business, though, I’d like to make a few things clear.

First, I want to stress that the system I’m going to describe isn’t a magic formula for effortlessly getting what you want or achieving instant success through some kind of hocus-pocus. If such a miraculous shortcut exists, I’ve never come across it, and you’re certainly not going to find it here. If you think it’s possible to find a good job without making a determined effort, this book definitely isn’t for you.

Unfortunately, these days a lot of people seem to have some misguided ideas. It’s still common to hear people say they should be given a job, or that they have a right to one. Personally, I don’t think it’s realistic to expect things to just drop into your lap, or to believe you’re going to somehow get what you want without taking the initiative yourself. If you’re reading these pages, I think it’s because you want to get a good job and know you’re going to have to roll up your sleeves and work for it.

What you really need to move forward is an understanding of how to use your time and energy in the most productive way possible.

The good news is that the system I’ve developed will work for anyone prepared to make effective use of their time.

I’ve had the good fortune to work with people with very sharp minds, and I know my own intelligence is quite normal by comparison. But I’ve always been willing to work hard and determined to do a good job. I’m also enthusiastic and have a sense of humor.

I recommend that you start by focusing on the latter quality. You need to maintain a good attitude and try to see things the right way. Having a healthy sense of humor will nurture your own optimism and other people’s. It will also help you hold your head up high and stay in good spirits, get some distance and see things from a more positive perspective, and do a lot of good for others too.

The System can be applied to any profession, regardless of the position you hold in the company you now work for. Though my own experience is in management, I’ve used simple, clear, direct language to present the core principles so that it’s easy for anyone to adapt it to their personal and professional circumstances, whatever sector they work in. As you work your way through the book, this will become increasingly clear.

The System is straightforward. It’s realistic and easy to understand and apply. As you can imagine, I didn’t want to spend a lot of time creating something that was just going to make my life more complicated. I continue to apply the System while doing my job every day. Once you’ve got everything set up, it’s easy to find time in your schedule to keep it up-to-date so everything’s ready to go whenever you need it again. Of course, you have to put in some effort and develop a certain routine, but the more you get into it, the easier it will become.

My own success (and everything I’m going to tell you about in this book) is based on four key pillars that are as old as humanity and always effective: Self-motivation, discipline, perseverance, and the ability to perceive the true nature of reality—in this case, the reality of how things work behind the scenes in companies.

At first you’ll need to really concentrate on the System—just as you do when you embark on any completely new project—but you’ll gradually see how the component parts come together and support each other, yielding a huge return on the time you’ve put into setting everything in motion.

Remember the moral of Aesop’s fable about the tortoise and the hare: It doesn’t matter what your abilities are if you know what you want and how to get it, and if you persevere. And to persevere, you need to stay focused on the goal you’re pursuing—where you want to get to—even if the details aren’t precisely defined. If you have a destination in mind, you’ll be able to keep moving resolutely forward.

If you’re reading this book, it’s because you want a good job, or a better one than you have now. You want to learn how to get ahead in your career and reach the kind of positions you aspire to—to experience all the positive changes this would bring in your life. That’s plenty of motivation to make a start and keep up a good pace for as long as it takes.

As you continue reading this book, you’ll learn about a series of basic principles, approaches and strategies that you’ll find extremely useful for achieving your goal, whatever situation you’re starting out from.

In the first part of the book, I’ll focus on a number of fundamental principles that you need to be familiar with and take on board right from the start.

I’ll also talk about what happens when you lose your job, and how important it is to tackle this situation effectively. If you take the right steps, you’ll soon find yourself in a new job; if you don’t, you’ll end up missing out on your best opportunities and remain in limbo with no definite end in sight.

In the rest of the book, I’ll offer other principles and advice, along with related strategies—all grounded in my own experience and that of my colleagues in the business world. Together, these elements constitute a powerful system for achieving career success.

The book is divided into parts so that it’s easy for you to get a clear overall picture of the System:

A methodical, practical way to get the most out of your career that works because it’s firmly rooted in reality—a reality the vast majority of us never learned about at school.

Your understanding of the principles that underpin the System and ability to apply strategies based on them will be your hidden advantage—the factor that will give you a decisive edge over other candidates in recruitment processes.

It’s time to get to work—to start using your time effectively to develop your huge potential. If you put your mind to it, believe me, nothing can stop you.

—John Keller

PART I

The Importance of Choosing the Path that's Right for You

Difficulties are just things to overcome, after all

—Ernest Shackleton

Chapter One

Decide Where You Want to Get & Focus on Changing Your Life

How I Began to Understand the Reality of Companies

For their entire working lives, both of my parents were exemplary government employees. Their careers were based essentially on putting in time and moving up through a completely organized bureaucratic structure in which each promotion was perfectly regulated, measured and entirely predictable. I grew up in a family environment where job security was an absolute given. The state isn’t an enterprise that goes bankrupt easily, so the fallout of insolvency was another issue we never talked about. The reality of working life was singular and clearly defined.

Unlike my fellow students at school and college, I didn’t get any practical advice or see any real example of how to survive as a professional in the private sector. Neither did I learn about the importance of building and maintaining a wide network of social relations. My parents had a fairly limited social life and were completely satisfied with the usual family gatherings on traditional holidays, occasions when the goal of the younger generation was to achieve a balance between the volume of the TV, and the voices of the grown-ups as they were engaged in solving the world’s problems.

As a teenager, like alone else at that stage of life, I wanted to work out what career path I should follow. Luckily for me, a teacher and friend recommended me for an intern position with an engineering firm owned by acquaintances of his. They agreed to let me work for them in the summer, and I was with them from my last year of high school until I graduated from college.

It’s true that I never had a salary while I was working there, but it was a life experience that taught me invaluable lessons I would draw on throughout my professional life.

As the years went by at college, I gradually became aware of the increasing gap between what I was being taught and what I was seeing in the day-to-day activity of the company where I worked every summer. The two worlds were poles apart, and in some ways the gulf between them grew even wider as I progressed through my studies.

I saw that the skills you needed to run a business or pursue a successful career in the real world were completely different from the ones they were teaching us at college.

The reality of the market at that time—the one I could see for myself and talk about with the partners in the company—wasn’t the one we were being taught about in the classrooms. The situation our professors were describing may have existed some years back, but it no longer matched the reality of the sector.

Approaches in the business world had changed over time, but what we were being taught hadn’t kept pace with these developments. Our teachers were doing us a disservice by failing to prepare us for the