Leveraging Leverage: To Help Job Seekers Land Jobs… Quickly!

If you have $100 in your pocket to influence an outcome you really want, but don’t use it, or even realize you have it, what good is it??The same question can be asked when it comes to influencing your clients/students in the pursuit of landing the right jobs.?If job seekers have valuable assets that ensure rapid employment, and don’t use those assets, why have them at all?

Leverage creates the tipping point

For the purposes of this discussion, leverage is the power you have to influence favorable outcomes.?It’s the control you have to get what you want, whether it’s getting your kids to clean their rooms, influencing students to buy-into your teaching methods, prompting prospects to become paying clients, or just influencing your own attitude to reach a higher altitude. ?And yes, coaching job seekers to optimize their leverage, to influence job offers.

Subtle or obvious

Leverage can be obvious or subtle.?An obvious example would be a mother telling her seven-year old that he can’t play with his friends until he cleans his room.?She has that power – and uses it overtly.?A subtle example might be saying to her son, “Wait till your father comes home and sees your room.”?Subtle fear! ?

Identifying Job Seekers’ Leverage Advantage

How does leverage work when it comes to planning and conducting a rapid employment campaign??Actually, it’s an invaluable tool for elevating self-confidence, accentuating value propositions, and eliminating defeating beliefs that are keeping job seekers from reaching their fullest potential. ?Most of us have experienced painful, confusing, and demoralizing circumstances.?It’s normal to feel emotions like sadness, anger and loss when challenges overwhelm us, like being terminated from a job, overlooked for a promotion, or not closing enough sales.?The key is how we react and respond to life’s challenges.?

And it’s how we optimize our assets to rapidly react, respond, and recover from setbacks and obstacles, in pursuit of worthwhile pursuits.?This first requires we identify the leverage advantage. The leverage advantage is one, or a combination of factors, that provide job seekers (or anyone, for that matter) with the upper hand. There can be little denying that those job candidates who identify and optimize their leverage, will meet and exceed their wildest expectations, pretty consistently.

Assets You Can Leverage For Optimal Success

?1. Leverage time

Time is more valuable than money.?You can always get more money, but you can never get more time.?When it’s gone – it’s gone.?While many people languish, complain, and throw away Mondays (can’t trust that day), others leverage their 24 hours every Monday, and cross the finish line first.?Stephanie uses Microsoft Word’s Dictate and Read Aloud functions to complete résumés?in four hours.?Ben is clueless about this technology; it takes him six hours to do a resumé.?Stephanie leverages her skills and knowledge to free up two hours that Ben will never have.?If Ben writes five résumés a week, he’ll lose 10 hours a week to Stephanie.?Now multiply 10 by 48 weeks a year.?Leverage of time is mega power.?Clear advantage: Stephanie.

One tip for practicing leverage in a job campaign (or any environment), entails organizing one’s workload effectively. A job candidate can create more time when she groups several similar activities that have the same goal. For instance, if she’s working on her LinkedIn campaign on the computer, it’s best to do as many other tasks as possible while the computer is open, so she can better invest valuable and productive time off the computer.

Another way to use the power of time leverage is via delegation, perhaps to friends, family members, or paid services – like secretarial and administrative services.?What can a job candidate get off his plate to free up time to better focus on what really matters? ?Delegation and collaboration are powerful leveraging skills to optimize time to optimize success.

?2. Leverage achievement

After 35 years in the profession, I’m still blown away by the number of people, at all levels, who don’t know their achievements, contributions, and value.?Professional athletes do.?Entertainers do.?CEOs responsible for stock values do.?But most working people return home after work, never giving thought to what they did or delivered that day to earn their pay and self-respect.?Indeed, you and every résumé writer and career coach, knows the importance of noting achievements on résumés and in interviews.?But I suggest there are more creative and effective ways to advance and optimize achievements to leverage one’s value.?The same is true for professionals managing their own businesses.?How can you use your achievements as leverage to grow – to dominate? ?In ways you haven’t thought about yet?

?3. Leverage connections and build a sales team

To leverage the power of one’s connections (and potential connections), and to empower a more upbeat and confident mindset to attain rapid employment, I encourage job candidates to build their own personal sales team from their connections. Job candidates hate networking, but love assembling their own personal sales force.?Yes, in essence, it’s networking, just with a new term.?In this scenario, job candidates leverage connections by leveraging a more positive and confident mindset.?They feel better about themselves and their jobs when building (and managing) a sales force, as opposed to networking (begging), in the same way flight attendants feel better about themselves and their job, as opposed to being stewardesses.?Thus, with a newfound mindset and the skill of using leverage, job candidates take full advantage of their resources; cultivating and informing relationships, instead of awkwardly forcing them. It’s about respect and collaboration, not manipulation.?

A job candidate’s sales team (connections) will let them know about available jobs before they even hit the job boards (the ones they would have spent hours researching). A connection may be able to provide an introduction to a hiring decision-maker.?Getting past gatekeepers may take hours in research and phone calls. However, members of a job candidate’s sales team might be able to open doors of opportunity with a single email. ?Bottom line: Job candidates will better leverage their connections to achieve the success they desire, when they re-think the process of networking, and instead, build a sale team to support the campaign.

?4. Leverage your talents and skills

It’s been my experience that those people who take their talent for granted, or fail to realize its contributional value, consistently fail to leverage their assets to optimize their potential and, thus, settle for far less in the workplace – and life.?How does the power of leverage tie into a job candidate’s natural talents and mastered skills? ?Plumber “A” is an outstanding plumber who has a reputation for getting it right the first time.?But if you asked him, he’d tell you it’s no big deal.?He just does his thing without giving it much thought.?Plumber “B” is also an outstanding plumber with a reputation for getting it right the first time.?In his case, if you asked him, he’d tell you he works at his craft, improves this and that constantly, and learns new stuff all the time.?He knows this is important to both his employer and its customers.?With a much greater, mindful, appreciation of his skills and talents, Plumber “B” will leverage his assets of talents to influence favorable outcomes. Advantage: Plumber “B.”

?5. Leverage your mindset

Pai Silva, writing for Forbes says, “Your attitude, whether it's good or bad, will impact nearly every aspect of your business (and job campaign). If you're looking to improve operations, sales, and everything else that affects your bottom line, the first thing to ask is whether your attitude is in the right place.?When looking for (a new employer), it's common to make a list of all (your) required skills. While there's nothing wrong with this, if you really want to (land the best job with the best company), a positive attitude should be your first requirement. If (a job candidate) is missing a skill or two, but they've got that can-do attitude that (a company) is looking for, (they will) hire that person.”?Attitude is leverage.?Perhaps the most powerful of all strategies.

(https://www.forbes.com/sites/piasilva/2021/04/30/why-attitude-affects-everything-especially-when-looking-to-improve-your-bottom-line/?sh=763b4b277eba)

6. Leverage intangibles

In addition to skills, qualifications, and personality/character traits, another seldom used asset that often contains mega doses of leverage is intangibles.?A renowned reputation is an intangible.?The reputation itself is not a skill, trait, or qualification, but it is a highly valued intangible asset.?A job candidate is hired primarily because of her 16 successful years in nuclear engineering.?Sixteen years’ experience is not a skill, qualification, or trait, but it was the key intangible asset that resulted in a hire.

A résumé writer who is also a published author, can leverage ‘being an author,’ to grow her business.?Being an author is not a skill, qualification, or trait.?But it is a valuable intangible asset. ?Perhaps a job seeker was interviewed in the media about her vast industry expertise; that media appearance can be touted to leverage a job offer.?An intangible asset.?

Summary:

Mastering leverage is a valuable life-long skill.?And the first step to mastery is recognizing its value.??And if you know this, how are you optimizing and/or advancing it? ?This is the exciting, life-long question.