Mastering Personal Marketing

Facilitated by Robert Bircher

Lawyers Assistance program

Job Hunting and Marketing

• Since about 80% of legal jobs are found through networking and informational interviews knowing how to market yourself is critical

• Many legal jobs are rarely/never advertised-you won’t see ads for articling students or junior lawyers in small firms very often-even with jobs that only hire through ads (gov’t) insider marketing is very useful

• The harder the job market the more personal marketing you need to do

Resistance to Personal Marketing

• Despite its obvious value most people resist personal marketing to some degree

• For some it is because they believe self promotion is tacky or unethical, for others it reminds them of a sleazy used car salesperson-some have a secret prince/princess complex- “a star like me shouldn’t need to do this”

• What negative story do you tell yourself about personal promotion? What are the benefits to these stories?

• With lawyers two things will determine how many offers you get-how much effort you put into job hunting and how effective you are at it

Personal Marketing

• Waiting for job ads that describe you is particularly useless-you will miss 90% of the opportunities yet believe you are looking for a job-also if there are no ads that describe you, you will falsely conclude there is no work out there and become disheartened

• What works is to conclude you will have to market yourself anyway and job ads are just low hanging fruit-easy pickings

Being Proactive Works

• Warm contact always trumps cold contact (see p.326)

• Be aware of hit ratios-it might be 15-3-2 meaning you have to make 15 applications to be short listed 3 times for 1 offer

• Take an attitude of being a resource person trying to match what you can offer to what the employer wants-not a job beggar

Loving Rejection

• Job hunting is about being selected or rejected-you can hurt yourself with this reality or accept it

• Everyone likes feeling safe, being right, feeling good, looking good, and avoiding pain-you can choose these rather than getting results-paradoxically-it will make job hunting harder

• “I won’t do cold calls” is just saying I am afraid of rejection

• When I am rejected I feel____

Loving Rejection

• People tend to personalize rejection, buy their negative story and feel crappy about it

• Another interpretation of this is it is just a selection process for fit or style-it is the same as selecting what clothes to wear –you are not rejecting the clothes you don’t pick

• It is not “personal” at all-you are the one who chooses to make it personal

• Have faith in the selection process and yourself-if you are not picked that is great!!-it is their judgment some other person may be better and they are probably right!!

Getting Results

• The bottom line is that at the end of the day you will have your results or your reasons why not

• Become an “insider” not a beggar at the door

• A classic example in law is getting an articling job at the firm where you did a summer job-you may not have even got an interview at he same firm

Getting Results

• People will hire who they know over who is best qualified almost every time

• Read about the field, attend Bar seminars and CLE events in that field

• Create a network in that field, volunteer in the area

• Informational interviews are useful here-they are low risk and curiosity based

Networking

• All super successful people are great networkers

• This is about taking advantage of other people to help you out-every person you add to your list knows about 200 other people

• If we wanted to talk to someone who has personally met President Obama we could probably find someone here in Vancouver who has or at least knows someone who has within a few hours

• There is a method of managing your contacts on pages 328-345

Networking

• Most people know how to create a network but don’t want to use it or are very timid about it

• Most people you have a real relationship with will try to help you

• You can make requests, if people say no make a smaller request-see page 342

• This depends on the relationship you have with the person-inappropriate requests will turn people off-being too timid wastes potential-many people err on the side of safety-it’s the call that gets results!!