The Secret to Getting Help

"Choose the life that is most useful, and habit will make it the most agreeable." Francis Bacon

If you want help in getting your next job, finding your next career, you need to be useful.

What does it mean to be useful?

Being useful means being of value to others. Regarding a job, it means being of use to your employer. Have you identified how, as specifically as possible, you are going to help your next employer? When you apply for a job, does your application and/or your resume clearly indicate, in as many of their words as possible, that you CAN do the job? Does your experience and education support your claim that you can do the job by showing you have done the job and know how to do the job?

Even if you are useful, if you do not handle problems or become a problem yourself, then your value is diminished. Being useful has a definite cost/benefit ratio. Your benefit to your co-workers, your boss, your company has to outweigh your cost. When you apply for a job, do you take the initiative to make it easier for the people reviewing your resume to see how you can be of help in that position? Do you behave in a useful, helpful manner when you make your follow up contacts? Are you involving other people in your network in the process and showing the potential employer how you work with others?

As you apply for jobs and follow up on your applications, you create opportunities to demonstrate how useful you can be in how you behave, how you handle situations, how you deal with others. If you are helpful to others, if you act in a helpful way by at least expressing your willingness to help them, you create a more positive, more appealing, impression.

Expressing in your cover letter, email, initial phone call and follow up contacts a desire to be helpful throughout the hiring process grows a more agreeable relationship. Also, respecting their time and effort by staying in touch without demanding they do the same is both agreeable and helpful.

There is a reason why every customer service contact begins "How may I help you?"

Are you helpful or are you demanding?

Who would you rather hire?

Let us at JVS help you be helpful to your next employer.

Visit us at www.jvsdet.org


And you can always reach me at wtarrow@jvsdet.org and meet me on LinkedIn.

Walt