How do you currently find opportunities and get jobs?

Most professionals put up their resume, read through job posts and apply to ones they think they can get.

And some savvy professionals network, set up a LinkedIn account, and try to connect with potential employers over “coffee meetings”.

There’s only one problem with these mainstream tactics: 99% of the time it doesn’t work. And it takes a colossal amount of effort to get marginal results. 

And because of this poor effort to return ratio, most professionals simply either give up, or they settle for the first job they get and call it a “success”.

That is NOT how you win the career game!

That’s not how you become a high-value professional or break the six figure, and then the seven figure, and eventually the eight figure barriers.

That’s not how you find meaningful work that matters or work that you enjoy and feel fulfilled by.

And that’s definitely not how you become the best you can be.

What is Popular Is Wrong

Above anything else, the mainstream job hunt pegs you as a “pursuer of jobs” rather than someone who is “pursued by employers”, giving all your power away to your corporate overlords. This ruins in your negotiations, restricts your contracts and completely controls your career track.

(Sidebar: when you have no power at work, terrible things can and do happen. I’ve seen situations where employers dictate what their workers can eat, what they need to wear, even who they could date – all because the employee has been thoroughly dis-empowered by a lack of alternative employment options).

Fortunately, you don’t have to keep doing it this way… 

There is a much better way for attracting jobs and opportunities and controlling your career than the mainstream methods of “scattershot application” and “begging for coffee meetings”.

But before I can show you that, we first have to ask a very serious question about your career and your job attraction strategy:

Do you have a marketing limitation or a skills limitation in getting the really exciting jobs you want?

This is, literally speaking, the million dollar question… So you need to get very clear and very honest about your answer.

Those who fail to answer this question honestly end up getting stuck in a vicious cycle of putting in a lot of effort for ever diminishing returns, wasting hours, days, months, even years trying to fix problems that don’t exist.

And those that answer this question honestly can avoid that dead-end alley, and instead, by a few minor tweaks to their strategy, permanently switch from job seeking to job attraction.

So… Let’s unpack this…

Skills Problem or Marketing Problem?

Skills problem means you lack specific skills and/or experience related to the job you want.

For instance, if you want to run a sales department, but you’ve never sold anything, you would have a skills problem.

If you have a skills problem, employers will flat out tell you that you are unqualified, in obvious and not so obvious ways. They will not take your applications seriously. They will not permit you to apply. And anyone honest that you have dialogue with, in the profession you are trying to move into, will tell you that you need a certain “degree”, or “diploma” or “experience” before you can get the jobs you want.

One of the most tragic cases of exploitation I see is perpetuated by unscrupulous career coaches and recruiters, who take people with skill problems, and instead of telling them to upgrade their skills, they convince these job seekers to work on their marketing (i.e. fix your resume, knock on more doors, cold call random executives, etc.)…

This is just like painting the exterior of your house and maybe planting a few decorative bushes on your front lawn, when your house has no heating and the roof is leaking. It’s not going to work. It’s a waste of time.

So… In summary, skills problem means – you haven’t got what it takes, yet… You couldn’t do the job or do it well.

Compared to this, marketing problem is very different. If you have a marketing problem, you could actually do the job given the chance, but no one knows that you exist!

And how exactly do you know if you have a marketing problem?

If you have a marketing problem, you will not hear anything from employers, even when you apply. You won’t be seen, noticed, or interacted with. And while on paper you have passable qualifications and a resume that you think is decent, you will not be getting calls for the jobs you actually want. At best, you’ll be underemployed and underpaid. At worst, you’ll be unemployed or stuck in a dead-end job.

Ironically, many professionals who have marketing problems think that they just need to level up their skills to “get to the next level”. Or they think that in order to “break into their industry” they need some magical “on the job experience”, so they get involved in unfunded startups, or take weird side gigs, or get unrelated jobs to beef up their resume. Some even get into unpaid internships – which, by the way, does not work (unpaid internships have no positive impact on getting jobs – Nace 2014).

Working on skills when you have a marketing problem is just like redoing your entire kitchen, flooring, and bathroom – and getting into a ton of credit card debt in the process – before bothering to check that your house is listed on the market or noticing that your real estate agent has never sold a property.

Again, it doesn’t work. It’s a waste of time. And if done excessively, it can get you permanently overqualified.

Effectiveness in your career requires the wisdom of knowing what problem to solve.

Wisdom of Solving The Right Problem

Just like in medicine, you need the right medicine for the specific ailment. It doesn’t matter how expensive and advanced a particular drug is, if it’s meant to treat a headache, and you take it to cure your skin rash – at best it won’t do a thing. At worst, it will backfire, causing side effects and even end you up in a hospital.

It is true that many professionals are underemployed, misemployed, and frustrated. Pretty much no one would say no to a better job. But, unfortunately, their approach to a better job is all wrong: overqualified experts get even higher credentials that no one notices, while underqualified professionals find new ways of yelling louder about their outdated skills that no one cares about.

As a result, dissatisfaction with jobs continue to frustrate, while the erroneous approach to getting better opportunities “keep them in their place”…

This is, actually, a very serious problem. Ultimately, when people are stuck in their place, they train their brain to cope and compromise with situations that they should not tolerate. Situations like wage suppression, unfair hours, lack of upward mobility, and worst of all, getting stuck in a dead-end job where you don’t get any meaningful experience that increases your pay grade.

By the way, I’m only talking about the objective problems associated with a lack of career development. I haven’t even begun to talk about the psychological side of frustration, despair and resentment associated with working a job you don’t like. Which, by the way, according to Gallup – the American research group that funds and organizes phenomenal studies – job dissatisfaction is such an endemic problem that roughly 70% of people dislike their jobs, and about half of them hate their job, and spend their days simmering in resentment and envy, while looking for opportunities to actively undermine their employer!

Considering how much of our life we spend at work, collaborating with our coworkers and tackling various issues of the day, it is a soul crushing tragedy that so many people hate what they do for a living. And they stay there because they are afraid of looking at the job market, and when they are forced to look, they are grossly ineffective because they spend all their effort solving the wrong problems.

The solution is NOT doing what everyone else does. The solution is assessing your situation wisely, and tackling the right problem…

The Way Out

If you’re looking for a job, if you’re thinking of looking for a job, or even if you’re not thinking of looking for a job… If, basically, you get paid to do work:

You need to determine whether you have a skills limitation or a marketing limitation.

Are you getting at least one job offer each month?

Why don’t you make 2x or even 5x what you make today?

What is limiting your meteoric rise to a high-value career?

Are you trying to convince employers that see you to hire you, or are you trying to get seen by employers?

Do you have a skills problem or a marketing problem?

You need to think this through, perhaps even ask someone who is more experienced, and figure it out.

Once you figure it out, it’s quite easy to solve:

If you have a skills problem: Learn about our five core skills and seven high-value disciplines – these are the highest paid and most growth oriented, cross profession skills that are already in high demand and are becoming insanely lucrative. (Not our words, this is World Economic Forum’s own assessment)

If you have a marketing problem: Learn how to switch from job hunting to job attraction. You need to put your experience and credentials to work for you, using formulas that gets employers’ brains on your side, and turns the tables with the corporate world.

You can do it. And if you only knew how amazing it is to have a high-value job, you wouldn’t waste a second.