Get ready to rumble, Lightweight.
The current job market is like a massive, nasty heavyweight brawler – intimidating, ornery, and intent on crushing your spirit. You, on the other hand, are just a no-name prospect with a handful of professional bouts on your record. The fight hardly seems fair.
The press says you don’t have a chance. Vegas predicts that you will leave the ring on a stretcher and, should you choose to enagage the brawler on his terms, you will do just that. If you want to win this one (and get a new/better job) you’re going to have to get crafty and become a counter-puncher.
For those of you who don’t follow the sweet science, here are a few keys for developing a successful counter-punching strategy:
Patience and Speed – Study your opponents, learn their tendencies and then strike with quick precision when you see an opening. This is easier said than done. Most people abandon their game plans when the bell rings. Instinct trumps discipline and they charge into the fray with their heads down, throwing bar-fight haymakers. In the working world, this translates into burning up all your leads/contact/opportunities at once, without waiting for confirmation that your strategy is the right one. In the fight game, this is called punching yourself out.
Mix up Your Punches and Angles – Your resume is just one of the weapons you should be throwing at potential employers. Similarly, email is just one method of deployment. You need to develop multiple tools for showcasing your talents (personal websites, portfolios, blogs, etc) and utililize multiple mediums (phone, email, social networks, meetings) to strike your targets.
Expect to Go the Distance – Don’t press for an early knockout or you will likely find yourself on the business end of a beat-down. Success will come from repetition and improvement as the fight progresses. Good counter-punchers get stronger and begin to impose their will in the later rounds, after showing the brawler that they won’t be overwhelmed into submission.
That should be enough to kick-start your training montage. Here is some final wisdom for the road, courtesy of Morgan Freeman in Million Dollar Baby:
"...boxing is backwards: sometimes the best way to deliver a punch is to step back... But step back too far and you ain't fighting at all."
This is a wonderful post. It is important to stay positive and I like how this post reinforces that!
Posted by: Blast free Resume Post | May 16, 2009 at 01:27 AM