A New Mindset and a New Paradigm
Episode #1 of the course How to find a dream job and get hired by Ryan Lecour
Welcome to the course!
I’m Ryan, founder of JobMarketInsiders.com, where we provide career change and career enhancement resources, as well as insider information on the job market.
Over the next ten days, you will learn to set yourself way apart from the average job seeker. You will be equipped with the latest cutting-edge hacks and strategies for navigating the job market and landing your dream job.
Here, you will not find the average obvious advice that typical resources provide on this topic. I’m going to assume that you already know how to shake hands, make eye contact, arrive on time, dress professionally, and use normal stationary.
Today, we’re going to start by putting ourselves in the right mindset for job market domination.
What Stops You
Many people face mental limitations when it’s time for a new job or career. Maybe these will sound familiar:
• “Employers discriminate on the basis of age, and I’m too old to get hired.”
• “There are no good jobs for people with my degree.”
• “Employers never hire me once they find out I was an entrepreneur.”
• “My recent gap in employment seems like a deal-breaker.”
These are limiting beliefs and assumptive myths that can be quickly dispelled with the right attitude and the right narrative. Let’s consider how the best version of you might think of them. They almost become ridiculous with the right outlook. Here’s an example of how “Superhero You” might think of the first one:
“I’m not looking to be the same as entry-level candidates. Comparing myself to younger people in the job market doesn’t make sense. My experience gives me specialization in various areas. Therefore, I need to find the opportunities with people and companies who have the sort of problems I can solve. Therefore, I may have to take a more entrepreneurial approach. My age should only have influence on the terms by which I’m engaged (i.e., long term vs. short term or vendor/contractor vs. employee). It says nothing about my ability to perform a job.”
Exercise: How would Superhero You think of the other mental limitations we’ve identified?
The Extraordinary Path
We’re on a mission to be more like Superhero You. It’s what lands a dream job. To get something extraordinary, you must be extraordinary. You must be on the Extraordinary Path. What does that mean? Well, here’s a simple table to illustrate the Common Path vs. the Extraordinary Path:
| Common Path | Extraordinary Path |
| Vocation determined by software | Vocation determined by interaction and experimentation |
| Outsourced advocacy (recruiters) | Direct involved advocacy (representing yourself) |
| Job boards | Word of mouth / behind-the-scenes research |
| Resumes with empty claims | Pre-application contact |
| Cover letter all about you | Them-first approach and invitation to apply |
| Application via computer | Multiple options from process repetition |
| Successive failures | Multiple offers |
| Lower standards and settling for less | Bidding war stimulation |
Don’t worry, we’ll be clarifying this table in the lessons to come. For now, use it as a road map, of which we can fill in the gaps.
Establishing Common Vocabulary
Last thing for today, let’s look at rapid-fire definitions of fancy terms I made up. They’re good to get a handle on because I’ll be throwing them around a lot in the upcoming lessons. Here they are:
High Value Telegraph (HVT). These are things that you do that showcase your value. They amount to inherent demonstrated proof.
Low Value Telegraph (LVT). These are things that showcase to others that you are average. They are the signs of the Average Frustrated Chump on the job market. They are things like empty claims, telling rather than showing, red flags, inconsistencies, and the list goes on.
Who Cares Test (WCT). Everything you do has to pass the WCT. Because the hard truth of the matter is that nobody cares. And so everything you write, do, and say must pass this test—i.e., there must be some reason or nugget in it that will make people care.
And that’s it … for now. We’re going to have other fancy terms to learn, but we’ll cover those as we go.
Tomorrow, we’ll be learning how to get ultra-specific about the target job we’re after, and we’ll start discussing how to find unadvertised jobs.
Happy job marketeering until then,
Ryan
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