Giovanni, i.e. how to find a job - and one that is even better than your prevoius one
It is not because things are difficult that we do not dare, it is because we do not dare that they are difficult.
– Seneca
Giovanni was more than 50 when he left a Telco multinational where he had been working almost all of his life . He was very qualified and very proper, but a little old fashioned. It was tricky to speak to him about networking, because he was embarrassed to contact his former clients and suppliers to see if there were any professional opportunities.
What did we do?
Everyone is different and must be respected accordingly.
GoodGoing! supports your professional development In this case Giovanni put himself to the task and, with the
support of a pretty large database of companies, he selected several dozen
- or even hundreds – of companies from Brianza (and other areas near to
where he lived) from as many business sectors where there was some degree of
compatibility. What type of compatibility? Companies that bought similar
components (he was a Procurement Manager) and with similar dynamics and markets
to the company he came from it.
In this case one of these companies was looking to replace their procurement manager as he had taken a leave of absence after falling out with the owners. So Giovanni had a series of interviews over the Christmas period and was offered a permanent job (at the age of 50 with an experience in the ICT sector) with a better package that he had with the Swedish multinational!
Unbelievable!
Is it clear what the relevant factor was in this case?
The database, the marketing letter that described what he could do for that company specifically - and not just in general terms for any company- , the fact of having considered a large number of companies and not just the number 1 choices that everyone has heard of - thanks specifically to the database.
The company also happened to be a multinational Italian public limited company.
It wasn’t easy, it was a job in its own right and took several months.
Was it worth it?
Now Giovanni is an individual and a father with a bright future ahead of him and a lot of belief in himself!
A direct candidacy doesn't just mean putting your cv on the corporate website of the top 100 global companies.
It doesn’t mean sending your cv to the website in the section “Join us”.
It doesn’t mean sending 100 letters with 100 identical cv to the Recruitment or HR Manager.
It means direct 1:1 marketing. This makes it sound like a feat comparable to climbing Everest, but even Everest can be climbed - you just need to take it one step at a time and prepare for it beforehand.
Therefore the key elements are:
- Awareness and clarity with regard to the specific strengths you can offer in detail (role, market, company, products, services – e.g.: procurement manager in a multinational telco company, manufacturer, products acquired from suppliers in the Far East through tenders …, with specific types of IT tools, liaising with...).
- Clarity in terms of professional objectives in detail (not “a job”, but where, in what type of company, doing what, what type of contract …).
- CV that offers a summary of your skills
- Letter focusing on the objective and which can be adapted further on the basis of the target of companies and the company in particular.
- Database of companies or the web… to look for names of people, company, details, etc. A good source of information could also be conferences, presentations, fairs, newspapers, publications, newsletters, etc.
In some cases people might invest months of their time and send hundreds of cvs and letters without getting anything from it. Why?
- because they don’t have the self-discipline to read the feedback: if there is no feedback, the feedback is negative
- because the target is wrong
- because we might not have presented ourselves in the right way even though we tend to think that we prepared things correctly.
