It’s about more than jobs…

I was giving a presentation at Purdue Krannert earlier this week and met a student who is studying entrepreneurship.  He approached me at the end of my presentation and claimed that the job search system I had just described was more than just for finding a job – it was a system to do “almost anything. ” (His words, not mine.) I was excited to hear this comment, because he’s right.

One of the challenges I have as a presenter is ignoring all of the exciting tangents that I could go down with the audience, and keeping focused on the core of my message. But the job search system I describe to students is the exact same system you can use to find investors, business partners, mentors, and any other category of person for your support network.

Well before I wrote Power Ties, I went through a tough realization that I was not doing very well in consulting. Most entry-level consultants start start out as data crunchers – and that was me. I was the analyst, running statistics and preparing spreadsheets. Unfortunately, no matter how hard I tried to care about the specific details and calculations in my analyses, I just didn’t. No number of proof reads seemed to catch all the glitches, and I started to ask myself what the real rewards were of forcing myself to do this kind of work.  I didn’t have an answer to that question, and that led me to a career re-evaluation.

Enter into that process the best job search book I’ve ever read: The Pathfinder by Nicholas Lore. It was within these pages that I learned about the power of informational interviewing; and the compelling reasons why you should overcome your hesitations to reach out to people. Then, after a stint as a headhunter (which was what the book led me to try), I realized that there was no good reason why I couldn’t call anyone for any reason.  Without sounding melodramatic, my life has never been the same.

It’s a powerful and liberating feeling to realize that the only thing stopping you from getting what you want in life is your fear of taking risks.  Part of the reason why I wrote Power Ties and travel the country speaking about it is that I want students to have that same feeling.  Unfortunately, if I start speaking too much about “liberation” and “power” during my presentations, students start thinking I’ve had too much coffee. However, my audiences are keenly interest in finding an American job, and my hope is that their desire for a job will motivate them to try the outreach system I suggest – even if they find it challenging.  I’m confident that once they try, they’ll feel the system’s full power as I did.  They will see the world of possibilities open up as this student entrepreneur did at Krannert, and realize that there’s nothing holding them back bur their own hesitations.