6 new ways to get more job opportunities

This is a practical book that shows you how to take control and build a career that will enable you to have a real impact. You will not find tips and tricks on how to format a resume or to prepare for a job interview. Rather you will learn how to adapt to the challenges of professional life today. Employees need to rediscover their entrepreneurial instincts and use them to forge new sorts of careers. Click To Tweet

With the passing away of traditional career paths, (get a college degree, then an entry-level job at the bottom; you move steadily up the ladder until you retire). With the emergence of two forces – increasing Globalization and rapid advances in Technology, the gap is growing between those who know the new career rules and have the skills of a global economy and those who maintain the old ways of thinking.

To succeed, you must:

1. Develop your competitive advantage in the market by combining three elements: your assets, your aspirations, and the market realities.

Your Assets:

There are two types of career assets:

Soft assets are things that we can’t trade directly for money: the knowledge and information we possess; professional connections and the trust we have built up with them; the skills we have mastered; our reputation and personal notoriety.

Hard assets define our paycheck, but what matters are our skills, connections and experiences. If you think you lack certain skills that would make you more competitive, start developing them. Whatever you do, don’t you use them as an excuse.

Aspirations:

Expectations and values include your innate wishes, ideas, goals and vision of your future, regardless of your existing asset mix. It’s about what is important to you in life. Aspirations and values are both important pieces of your competitive career advantage simply because when we are doing work we care about, we work harder and better.

Market Realities

When a market simply does not exist, it does not matter how smart you are; it doesn’t matter how hard you work or how passionate you are. Studying market realities is a critical factor that you must take into account.

Roadmap: Write down some of your significant assets in the context of a market reality. Think about how you’re currently adding value at work. Create a soft-asset investment plan that emphasises learning about growth markets and growth opportunities. Why not meet with three trusted connections and ask them what they see as your greatest strengths?

2. Use ABZ Planning to Formulate a Plan A based on your competitive advantages.

ABZ Planning is an adaptive approach that promotes trial and error. (For those of you who work in the marketing sector, we can define this method as A/B Testing).

Plan A is what you are doing right now.

Plan B is what you target when you need to change either your goal or your course of getting there. Once you pivot to plan B and stick with it, that becomes your new Plan A. Plan Z is your lifeboat. It prevents you from ending up on the street.  Plan Z is what allows you to take on uncertainty and risk in your Plans A and B.

Career plans should leverage your assets, set you in the direction of your aspirations and account for the market realities. Click To Tweet

Prioritise plans that offer the best chance at learning about yourself and the world. Not only you will make more money in the long run, but your career path will be more fulfilling. Ask yourself, ” Which plan offers the most learning potential?” In general, a lesson we can learn from the technology industry is that it's better to be in front of a significant change than to be behind it. Click To Tweet

Roadmap: Make a list of your uncertainties, doubts, and questions you have about your career at the present moment. Draw up a plan to develop more transferable skills, those skills and experiences that are broadly useful for potential other jobs. Once you’ve figured out which skills to invest in, make a concrete action plan, stick to it, whether by signing up for a course or conference or simply by spending one hour per week self-learning.

3. Build real, lasting relationships and transform these relationships into a powerful professional network.

A right connection in the professional world is like dating. When you’re deciding whether or not to build a professional relationship with someone, there are many important aspects to consider. Target the attitudes of the person which can help you build your assets and attain your aspirations. Especially when the person is flexible, he or she can help you adapt your career plan as necessary. And like dating, you should always have a long-term perspective.

Relationships matter because the people you spend time with shape who you are and who you become. The fastest way to change yourself is to hang out with people who are already the way you want to be. Click To Tweet

Roadmap: Look at your calendar over the past six months and identify the five people you spend the most time with – Are you happy with the influence those five people are having on you? Plan an event where your friends bring a few of their friends; in other words, invite your extended network.

It's not about the people you directly know. It's all about the people they know that counts. Click To Tweet

4. Find and create opportunities for yourself by creating networks, being resourceful and staying in motion.

To hustle is bad, but to hustle is also good!

If you are looking for an opportunity, you’re looking for people. If you’re trying to mobilise resources to go after an opportunity, you’re trying to enlist the support and involvement of other people. Always remember, it’s not a company that offers you a job – It is the people who do. If you don’t know where to start, consider going to www.meetup.ca, 5@7, a professional network on Linkedin. Remember always to keep your eyes open! It was during a 5 @ 7 that I got my current job ( thanks for the confidence you put in me Myles Walsh. As Caterina Fake, the co-founder of Flickr, says, The less money you have, the fewer people and resources you have, the more creative you have to become. Click To Tweet

5. Take on intelligent risks as you pursue professional opportunities.

There will always be uncertainty about career opportunities and risks, but risks are also dynamic. You are changing, the competition is changing, and the entire world is changing, so we are all risk takers! Many people think that you get career stability by minimising all risk, but ironically, in a changing world, that’s one of the riskiest things you can do. The best and biggest opportunities frequently are the ones with the most question marks. Click To Tweet For your new start-up, the only long-term answer to risk is resilience.

Roadmap:  Identify- and take on risks that are acceptable to you but that others tend to avoid. Find a project with these sorts of risks. It will differentiate you from others.

6. Tap network intelligence from the people you know for the insight that allows you to find better opportunities and make better career decisions.

Neither a book (nor a search engine) can tell you what skills you need to excel in a certain market niche; only your network can. Click To Tweet

Roadmap:  Adjust your LinkedIn profile newsfeed to make sure it’s showing the information that’s most helpful. If you are using Twitter, are you following the people you should be following? Become a go-to person for other people in your network on certain topics. Make known to your connections your interests and skills by writing blogs or setting up discussion groups. When people come to you for intelligence, you are simultaneously acquiring knowledge from them.

Our work is changing. The workweek is collapsing. And now, more than ever, our careers are governed by global forces.

To succeed professionally in today’s world, we need to adopt these entrepreneurial strategies.

Start-up of You – Authors : Reid Hoffman, co-founder and executive chairman of Linkedin & Ben Casnocha, an award winning entrepreneur and author. Business Week named him one of “America’s best young entrepreneur”

Check out the video below to have a full explanation about the concepts behind “The Start-up of You”