The Streamlined Job Search

Anita Brick: Hi, this is Anita Brick, and welcome to CareerCast at Chicago Booth. To help you advance in your career. Today, we're delighted to be speaking to Steve Dalton. Steve is a senior career consultant and associate director at Duke University's Fuqua School of Business. He holds his MBA from the same institution and a chemical engineering degree from Case Western prior to entering the career services industry.

Steve was an associate marketing manager at General Mills and a strategy consultant at Art Carney. Random House published Steve's debut book, which we can now keep on the shelves, by the way. The two hour job search in March 2012. His concepts are now taught at over 30 universities worldwide. He's appeared in the Financial Times, Forbes.com, Cbsnews.com, and is a regular contributor at The Huffington Post. Steve, thank you so much for making the time. I know you are so, so busy, but your approach of a really streamlined job search resonates with both students and alumni, so thanks for making the time.

Steve Dalton: It's absolutely my pleasure to be here.

Anita Brick: There are a lot of questions, but I'd like to start off. I feel like it's a pre job search jump in question. And it came from an executive MBA student who said, I'm planning a career move after I finish my MBA in about 15 months. What are some things that you learned that could be helpful? As I start planning now?

Steve Dalton: I don't think it's ever too early to start a job search. The easiest job search to do is the job search that you conduct when you don't really need a job. There's a lot less pressure. You project a lot less desperation. The key is just to be organized, to make sure that you have an infrastructure that makes the process finite.

I think what drives people mad in their job search is the fact that it feels endless. That's reinforced by kind of the poisoning effect that online job postings offer, where you can spend eight hours trolling postings and not have anything to show for it. I think it's a better approach to plan out a strategy that you like, whether it's the two hour job search or some other one.

Compartmentalize your day. Commit to a certain level of activity and then stick with it. Forgive yourself for not boiling the ocean. That's a pretty impossible task, but I will say that there's a big difference between a job seeker who is doing speculative network building well ahead of the time where they need a job, versus someone who needs the job immediately, who's available immediately, the person who's making an effort a year before.

It is easy to believe in terms of sincerity of interest. If you've been thinking about this for a very long time, as a hiring manager at a company, know that you're truly interested. It's not that you're desperate for a job, it's that you're trying to be very thoughtful about this. We can build a relationship. I can build likability with you over the course of many months, rather than just meeting you for the first time and knowing that you want to interview immediately. So starting early and having a strategy and an infrastructure that you trust, I think is really the key.

Anita Brick: So from your point of view, what are some key initial steps in terms of setting up that infrastructure that you have found to work to really streamline the process? Because it can be this multitasking approach which can kind of blow up your brain.

Steve Dalton: Yes, absolutely. That's a great way of putting it. I disagree a little bit with the conventional wisdom of testing yourself to death in terms of taking tests to figure out what you want to do. I consider self assessment, choosing your career path to be at an iterative process, to have one or more hypotheses and pursue them each halfway to the point of doing informational interview with each one of them, and then using your enjoyment of those information as your assessment for how much of a value system you share with the people on the other end of the line.

So, for example, if you're torn between an operations career, a marketing career, and a consulting career doing informational with someone and each take them through the process, my process or some other process to see what makes them good at their job. And if that resonates with you, that's a great indication that this would be a good career path, because ultimately, these people that you're speaking to are going to determine whether you get hired and whether you get promoted.

Do you share a value system? Does chemistry seem to naturally, easily happen with people in a particular field more so than another? If so, then focus on that field. You don't have to have complete answers when you start. It's just a matter of getting yourself close enough in the right ballpark so that you can narrow it down over time.

The inclination among job seekers is rather fearful. One, they should be doing something that's close to what they were doing before, even if they don't really have passion for it. That might get them hired, but that will lead them to kind of a soul crushing existence on the job, because they'll be working shoulder to shoulder with people who are passionate about that career field, who are naturally getting better because they like learning about that topic day by day.

She may be okay getting the job, but you'll be driven out in a decent amount of time once you have some ideas in mind, even if it's just an industry, then you can start the process that I would teach her to call the two hour job search. The next step would be to come up with a large enough consideration set of targets, so that you're not artificially desperate.

The common mistake people make when targeting is that they'll fixate on two small universes of companies, usually very, very big, well-known companies, so maybe 3 to 5 companies. They put all their eggs in those baskets. They either get stuck into a holding pattern where that company is not quite hiring yet, and then they don't know what to do because they don't have backups established already, or things just don't work out with any of the three.

Maybe they get interviews with all of them and everybody says no. That is usually accompanied by a period of depression. It's really hard to dust yourself back off if you don't already have a backup plan in place. I teach something called a lamp list, which.

Anita Brick: I love that, by the way. Oh really? Yeah. And of course it uses an Excel spreadsheet so it totally resonates with the spreadsheet.

Steve Dalton: Lamp is really an example of using the 8020 rule in your job search. It's not meant to be perfect, but it's meant to be good enough quickly. The basic theory of it Lamp is an acronym Lamp that stands for list, Alumni Motivation and Postings. The list is like drawing the borders of a picture, three pieces of data that are predictive of job search success.

It's like coloring in the picture. All of the creative, difficult, skilled labor is right up front. So brainstorming that list of potential targets, the three pieces of data that follow alumni motivation and postings. Those are data points that you can use to give you a first draft of who your top target should be. So you would start your list with data and you would finish it with intuition.

Because ultimately, it's your willingness to put in the work that will drive your job search process forward. The whole process takes 70 minutes, and I got some raised eyebrows when I mentioned that the list making step involves listing 40 employers in 40 minutes using four different approaches. So I split it up into four ten minute periods. Each ten minute period uses a different approach.

People raised eyebrows. That seems like a lot, but the reason I asked them to do that, there was a really interesting study done by your economy.org where they broke out the US employers by employer size, and they found that a certain percentage of U.S. employers have over 500 employees. Have you heard the stat before? Anita?

Anita Brick: I have, but keep going because I think it would be okay for people to hear.

Steve Dalton: I will ask my audiences when I do this, this presentation across the country to take a guess at that percentage. The guesses come in around 10 or 20% of employers having over 500 employees. And I'll keep saying lower, lower. The correct number is actually 0.0 5%, not 5%, but 0.05%. It's that 0.5% that everyone tends to immediately think of when they're thinking about job searching, these big brand names that are gigantic mega corporations.

And the reason I bring that set up isn't to say that everybody needs to target small to medium size employers. The reason I bring that up is because if you're narrowing your search just to big megacorporations, you've automatically, unthinkingly cut off 99.5% of the employers. They're out there. And that's pretty startling. If you're going to do that, I want you to have a good reason for doing that rather than just you didn't think about it. What I would say happens there is when you focus on that point 5% that everybody else is focusing on, you're making yourself desperate, needlessly so. I call it artificial desperation.

Anita Brick: Not to like, rush you, but I think people are kind of waiting. And we know the elephant of this list is the amp.

Steve Dalton: The amp. So hey, it's for alumni or more generally it's for advocates. Make a lamp list. After you come up with your brainstormed list of targets, the next column would take you about ten minutes and that would simply be going into LinkedIn and looking up your most recent educational institution to see if you have a connection that you can start with the presence of an alumni from your most recent program.

It's a proxy for sympathetic contact. Someone has paved the way for you already, so it's more likely than not that you would be able to copy that path. You wouldn't have to place it on your own because somebody there who's done it already so that would simply be a ten minute operation in the advanced people search of LinkedIn and you're done. That's one piece of data that's predictive of job search success.

Anita Brick: It's an either or. It's not finding the people. It's just either alumni or are there not alumni. Correct?

Steve Dalton: Correct. So it would be a simple yes or no answer.

Anita Brick: Okay. And then the next one is M.

Steve Dalton: M is for motivation. So this is the proxy for your pain tolerance, your willingness to get ignored and rejected and keep working through it. This is, I think, the most overlooked aspect of the job search. And it's a very important piece of data. So for this one it's just a five minute stop. So that's all this column takes.

I want my jobseekers to give a qualitative score from 1 to 5, using just their knowledge right now of the employers on their list. If it's a dream employer, it would be a five. If it's a second tier employer, it would be a four. And so on and so forth. I'd want them to save ones for any employer that they don't know enough about to have an informed opinion.

I don't want them blending tasks. We're using a concept here called arbitrary coherence, which means that it doesn't matter what a form means. If you rate enough data points in succession, you'll actually be very highly accurate. Knowing that your fives are better than your fours. Near fours are better than your threes. However, that effectiveness actually doesn't work if you're switching between tasks.

So at this point, if you don't know enough about a company to rate it, call it a one. That's your placeholder. We'll go back and do research on it later if needed. If we have enough targets that we like without that, we'll never go do that research. So the motivation column, even when you use my process correctly, is the response rate that you'll get from the people that you're reaching out to.

And granted, we're aiming for the subset of contacts that are going to be actually helpful. That rate is going to be about 40%. So for the engineers in the crowd, 40% is pretty good. That was an A on most tests, but for everybody else, a 40% hit rate takes some getting used to. So it's important that you start with companies that you find highly motivating.

Anita Brick: Got it.

Steve Dalton: And the P the P column is postings. So this is a proxy for time sensitivity. If a company is posting jobs that seem relevant to you, you can't really afford to wait a month before you start your networking efforts there. You might miss your chance. That's right. A lot of those postings are already earmarked for some internal candidate.

They're posting them for legal reasons. So it's not necessarily true that you're going to be able to get your foot in the door at that particular company, but if it is an internal candidate, you know that that internal candidate's former job is about to open up. There's some liquidity afterwards. Organizations, if they're advertising online, we're using the presence of current job postings as a proxy for time sensitivity.

If a company is not advertising for positions, we know they're probably not getting injured, inundated with resumes. You can wait a few weeks to approach that employer. And for some employers, they'll never have postings anyway. So small niche employers like venture capital firms or private equity firms. For more experienced alumni who are using this process, they can feel free to skip the posting column, since jobs that they would want rarely get posted. Anyway,

Anita Brick: That was a question that came up like how would you modify the process? That's good. So that's one clear way that you would modify. That's good. How do you decide? I mean, I know it's a 1 to 5 scale. Again, what's a five. What's one?

Steve Dalton: Glad you asked that. I've actually modified that to simplify the posting column. I now teach just a simple yes or no or a yes or no. Maybe whatever you're using. Yes. No. Maybe you just want to switch to three, two, one. It makes sorting easier in Excel.

Anita Brick: Got it. Okay, good. Speaking of sorting. So the way you would sort you go into Excel, you'd go in the M with B first.

Steve Dalton: Correct? Yes. Your tolerance for rejection has to go first. Absolutely. Conventional wisdom here is do you want to start with your back up so that if you make any errors, you've improved by the time you go to your favorites? I would take the opposite approach. Start with your favorites, because then if things don't go that well, you can always just try somebody else.

I don't think they really hurt you. I think the good news is that everybody's pretty terrible at the job search right now. They're all distracted by the shiny false promise that online job postings offer. So the good news about that is that that means there's an arbitrage opportunity. The game can be beaten because everybody's doing it wrong. The people who get efficient at ignoring online job postings, at building advocacy networks systematically can really beat the job market, because hiring managers are overwhelmed with decision anxiety.

There's too many candidates for any job. They just want a proven quantity. They want to ask their coworkers, who do you recommend for this position? So I can only interview five people. Instead of looking through 500 resumes, their incentives are to find a good enough candidate quickly, not a perfect candidate slowly. So internal referrals are the way to do that and motivation comes first. Postings come second time sensitivity is your second factor, and then the presence of a contact, a sympathetic contact would be your third factor and the list doesn't get sorted. So to do that in Excel, in advanced sort or custom.

Anita Brick: Sort and all of that is going to take just a little over an hour.

Steve Dalton: It takes about 70 minutes in total. Okay, cool. There's a very methodical way you can find contacts even if they're not literal alumni of your program. That's why that's the least important sort criteria. It's not because contacts aren't important, it's because they're the easiest to make up on the fly.

Anita Brick: Okay. Fair enough. One of the questions from a weekend student was, I'm in the midst of a job search and feel like there's so many things beyond my control. What do you recommend so that I can get control over my search? I think we've kind of addressed that, don't you think? Or is there any. Yeah, I could add.

Steve Dalton: I think it's really just the anxiety that you're not doing enough will eat you alive. If you look at it. The way I look at my job as a career coach is not that of a content creator. It's more of a content curator.

Anita Brick: If you think about getting control over your search and having a streamlined process, what are some things that someone should be doing every day, every week, every month?

Steve Dalton: I actually don't believe in an arbitrary time limit of effort in a given day. I believe in coming up with a process. I believe in coming up with a process that you trust. The nice thing about my framework is that it's finite. There are some days where there will be no work required. The best action to take is no action at all, because you're waiting either for people to get back to you, or you're waiting until it's an appropriate time to follow up with someone.

So for me, I just recommend that if you're overwhelmed by this process, and I find most job seekers are really struggling with anxiety in this process, pick a process that you trust and follow it to the letter. Shut your brain off and follow instructions at least until you get your feet underneath you. But I want people to look at this as if this process is like Fisher Price.

My first was Tonya, if you will. I took it a couple of times this way. Exactly. Don't think about it. You'll see it's not that scary and you'll get more comfortable taking chances and modifying it. Better to meet your needs.

Anita Brick: Okay. Fair enough. So one of the questions that came from a weekend student was, I'm targeting a new level, but feel anchored by the salary of my current career. What advice can you provide on how I could respond to an employer's request for salary history?

Steve Dalton: This is a challenging one. I don't know if you've heard the joke, but it really resonates with me. The joke of having a job is the new promotion. I call it the anxiety economy. This effect is that everybody seems to not be doing quite as good as they think they should be doing, so baby boomers thought they would be able to retire by now, but haven't been able to.

Gen thought they'd be a little bit further ahead in their career, but a lot of the promotion opportunities have been taken out of their organizations. A lot of baby boomers are staying longer, so there's just nowhere to get promoted to and a lot of money olds are struggling to get that entry level position. Whereas for me, as a Gen Xer, I'm putting in time as I had to put in 3 to 5 years as an analyst before making manager millennials.

They have to put in 3 to 5 years in retail or the service industry before they get that analyst job. I really empathize with how nobody's quite feeling comfortable in this anxiety economy. My recommendation for this job seeker would be to free your mind. I think we don't need as much money as we think we have, but it does sting to take a job at a lower salary level.

I think the new path to success in the anxiety economy is managing your hourly wage, either by finding a job that allows a better lifestyle in terms of hours. So working fewer hours or work that you find more personally meaningful or engaging. I wouldn't necessarily get fixated on that number. There are other factors that you can put on the table to increase your overall happiness, because I think that's the goal.

It's not a dollar figure. It's happiness of satisfaction with life in terms of sharing that number with an employer, I really do believe that the truth will set you free. I wouldn't volunteer it if not asked, and if I asked I would give a range. But it is what it is. There's no reason to put yourself in a situation where you're ethically violated.

You're violating ethics norms by misrepresenting. They'll make you an offer. And I would hope that everyone would negotiate that offer upward. But you can't change what facts are facts. Your salaries and I have a finite number. I would just tell people that there are other considerations to put on the table, like vacation time, the ability to work from home, ability to take sabbaticals, and other things that are available that people don't necessarily think to ask about.

I think there's a general fear of negotiating with employers after job offers are given, which I think is really a shame, because if you don't negotiate with your employer, how can they trust you to negotiate with a supplier if they were to hire you? I mean, this is the most important negotiation of your life, and you might be passing it by not even asking a question of whether there's flexibility in salary.

I'm not going to put you on my best account if you didn't even try to negotiate your own salary, because I don't trust you to push back. So I think people owe it to themselves and to show their employer that the employer made a good purchase by hiring them, by trying to negotiate their offers.

Anita Brick: And I would agree, there is one employer in the Chicagoland area, one of those that has more than 500 employees. They always lowball. They actually call someone there one day. And I said, well, is this a test? He laughed. Know? Yeah, absolutely. They have to negotiate. It's a matrix environment. If they can't negotiate on their own behalf, they're not going to do well here.

It's a very, very good point. One of the other questions from an evening student. He said if you are a career switcher from a nontraditional background, how should you focus your search? I'm trying to overcome the problem that no one is willing to give you a job until you have the experience, but you can't get the experience until you have the job. But what do you advise someone who doesn't have the skill experience match? They're working full time right now and they want to make a career switch. How do you advise them to overcome that obstacle?

Steve Dalton: I constantly refer to decision anxiety among job seekers, but it's important that job seekers recognize that hiring managers have decision anxiety, too. There are too many candidates and not enough time to thoroughly evaluate all of them. When a hiring manager has the opportunity to hire somebody that has directly relevant experience for their particular job, they're going to do it.

It's the least risky hire possible. It's really hard to overcome that someone's ready to go plug and play on the job. Training, I think, is an increasingly anachronistic idea. They want to hire somebody who's ready to go now, because it's been that kind of a market for a very long time. So I don't think that those are necessarily the people that a career switcher is trying to compete with.

I think the way that a career switcher beats that system is they target small to medium size employers who don't necessarily have the pick of the litter of people who are switching from one job to a very similar job in another location. I think that's a better place to start, but it's also important to diversify. I think likability is what beats out experience.

It's really hard for a hiring manager to tell whether a former chemical engineer or a former marketer would do better in an operations related role. If they're both career switchers, it's apples to oranges. But they both went to the Chicago booth, for example. So okay, I'm going to assume they're equally talented. I can't really judge that. But what I can judge is who's more charismatic, who's more likable, who took a better approach at getting to know me, at building my trust. And that's what I think the informational interview process does. And it allows you to beat equally qualified or more qualified candidates. Because I trust you. I'm willing to put your name in front of my boss or my boss's boss and vouch for you because you were thoughtful and likable. There are plenty of qualified candidates out there, but being qualified isn't what gets you a job these days.

It's either directly relevant, previous experience, and barring that, it's going to be likability. Do I trust you? Because the people who will help you get a job will not financially gain from you getting hired. That's not the reason they're helping you. They're not helping you because there's a bonus involved here, because the stock price is going to shoot up as soon as you start.

It's because they know it's the right thing to do. They got help when they were looking for a job last time, and they want to pay it forward, give people the chance to help you. And the way to do that is not by selling people. It's not by saying, here's how your organization's going to profit or benefit from bringing me in.

It's going to be taking a different approach. What trends are you seeing in the marketplace right now? Where do you think this industry's headed? What's been your best professional decision so far and why? But what would you be doing right now if you were me, to maximize your chance of getting your foot in the door? In this industry, those are questions that build likability predictably, that can be done predictably. Selling yourself is really hard to do, and not everybody responds very well to it. We all are. Pretty much get as sick of getting sold to all day, every day.

Anita Brick: I would totally agree with you. There's another question from an evening student. Another evening student, she said, do you think it's tougher to make a functional or industry change in your career post MBA? I'm considering staying in my current job once I graduate, as I received an offer that will be hard for other entry level MBA jobs to match. In addition, I'm still enjoying my job, but feel pressure to switch jobs once I graduate. Do you think that staying in my current job will hurt me in the long run, and then make it difficult for me to change, say, a year or two post MBA?

Steve Dalton: I do fully advocate for variety, especially during and right after your MBA, because I think you have a prodigal son, period that's open to you, where you did something before business school, you got your MBA and wanted to strike out and do something different. If it doesn't work out the way you thought, you can always go back to your previous employer or that previous universe of employers and say, this is my hypothesis.

When I switched, it was wrong. I want to return knowing better now how much I liked my previous career. If there's any temptation to make a switch, I would say now is the time to consider it. You have some license to do different things as soon as you get your MBA. That said, going back to a previous point, I really think it's about managing happiness.

Is it just sort of general grass is greener consideration that a person is struggling with, or is it truly something that they would regret not doing if they took the safe path? And what people will sometimes do is they'll be so powerfully motivated to avoid a job search, fearing that it's going to be uncomfortable and painful, that they'll rationalize very deeply that they like their job more than they do.

I would really probe on that job seeker to see, are you intimidated by the job search? Do you find it scary? If so, I would really push them to at least give themselves the option. Interview around, see what you think. And then once you have the offer, make that decision. The time to make a change, a career change in your life is right when you get your MBA, because you can always go back later.

Anita Brick: And keeping your options open and then making the decision. You've already put yourself out there, like you said, as you've done the scary part, and when you evaluate the offer, you can call us and we can help you with that. So it's.

Steve Dalton: All good. Your head is much clearer when you actually have the option, but the fear of job searching clouded decisions more than people could ever possibly realize. So it's important for me that they're not deciding out of fear. I want to know if they're deciding out of rational thought.

Anita Brick: Got it. So an alum switched gears a little bit, he said, I've been out of work for well over eight months. I've been doing some consulting gigs here and there, but don't have a full time job. Is it even worth the time to apply to jobs online? I think we already know what you think about that. And you or should I focus on networking? Also, and I think this is probably his main question, how can I convince people I'm willing to do a good job of a step below where I was with my last employer, just so I can get my foot in the door.

Steve Dalton: A first question, first job online job postings are a black hole. Yep, they may only take 10 or 15 minutes to apply to, but they take 10 or 15 minutes each time and a little shred of your soul each time that you submit to one, because you know it's not going to turn out well. The success rate is negligible.

Frankly, the way that I would recommend using job postings is when you're doing your outreach. Your question is informational. It's okay to mention that you found a posting to someone that you're looking to speak to, and then frame your informational request as, before I applied to this job, I wanted to get your take on your experience with the company, any recommendations you might have for putting my best foot forward?

That removes some of the concern from your contact side that you might really be looking for a job because they know you're looking for a job, but they might not know how to help you. If you've already done the legwork and found that that job exists, I don't recommend applying to it, but you can use it to help you break the ice with people that you're reaching out to.

That way, they can help you and then decide if they want to advocate for you. After that conversation's over. That's it. I think the right way to use postings, but I don't believe in just applying them coldly. I don't. I think the success rate is far too low. The second question was about convincing employers that you'd be willing to do a job that's a step lower.

I think that really comes back to that likability piece again. What's your story? Why are you willing to do that? Is it out of desperation? If it's out of desperation? That's not a good story that makes people uncomfortable. Nobody likes being desperate. It's a universally revolting quality from our friends. Our loved ones are significant others, so we can't afford to project desperation in our job search.

That said, if you have a compelling story to go with that. For example, you want to take a job at a lower level because it'll allow you to spend more time with your family, because it'll allow you to relocate to a part of the country where your in-laws are located to help you with your new children that you had.

If there's some reasoning behind it that makes me trust you, as long as you can find a way to frame your willingness to take a step down in your career. Two other benefits that are credible. You're not going to project desperation. You're going to make me like you more, and I'll be willing to stick my neck out for you.

Anita Brick: I agree, I agree there were a handful of questions that were asked about search firms. How do you involve them in the process? And one person, and I think maybe you and I can set things a little straight here, said how do you identify the best recruiting firms in your industry? There are a lot of talent acquisition companies that say they understand your industry, but fail to make the connections that you want.

How can you avoid wasting time with these firms, and is there a website that would be a good resource? So you and I both know that search firms don't find people jobs. They fill positions. Right? I do think the broader question of how do you involve search firms or make that a component, especially if you're an experienced hire. How do you weave that into the process?

Steve Dalton: The phrase that you used is really critical. If you're experienced, how do you leave them in your job search? That's pretty critical. The most common inquiries I get about search firms are from career switchers or brand new MBAs. Search firms aren't really don't really have an incentive to work with either universe. Their incentives are to get somebody into a job quickly, and that means poaching people who have done the same exact job somewhere else.

And getting them to switch this plug and play ready to go sort of employee. So if you're looking to do a career switch or you're just fresh out of your MBA, they're not going to be that much help to you. Typically, when they're going to be more helpful is when they find you. They call you up and you're happy with your job, and you'd be happy to stay in that field.

Then an executive search person can be helpful. The thing is, I think you're in a much better position when you let them come to you, as opposed to trying to seek them out proactively. After you've been in a job for a few years at a big name company, they'll find you. And I think that's the signal that you're in the right place in your career to benefit from them.

Anita Brick: I think one of the things that those people who are listening, you can go to the job postings at Boost to Global Talent Solutions to GT, you can go into the advanced search and say yes to search firms, and it will give you an idea of the kinds of positions that executive search firms post at Booth. So the level, the kinds of roles and also the firms that are doing that, and that might give you some ideas as well. It's actually two very tactical questions. Are you up for a few more questions?

Steve Dalton: Oh absolutely.

Anita Brick: Keep them coming okay okay. Good. So an exact MBA student said I find it fairly easy to find and create a first networking conversation, but I struggle to reconnect, especially since people are super busy. Any suggestions appreciated. Thanks in advance, Steve.

Steve Dalton: Oh, I love this question. It's one of the common stumbling blocks of people in the job search, even the ones that use my process. They stop after that first information. I equate this process to fishing for lobster rather than fishing for fish. When you fish for fish, you put bait on a hook. You throw the hook in the water, fish swim up and you have dinner.

There's some instant gratification, a visible connection between effort and results. The job search isn't like that. There is no visible connection between effort and results until after the job search is over, which is very maddening. So that's all the more important. Why do you need to have a strategy in place? It's more like fishing for a lobster. Lobsters don't swim up to hooks.

See drop cages in the water. You put bait in the cages and you check the cages every day or two to see if you've caught anything. You don't know with certainty which cage will be the one that catches you lobster. And nor do you know when you'll catch that lobster. But you do know with certainty that each additional cage in the water gives you better odds of catching a lobster eventually.

And that's the way I look at building advocates at your target organizations. You don't know which one is going to get you that job, but you do know that the more advocates you have, the more firms, the better your odds are. Eventually, once you do that information. I don't think informational pay their full benefit immediately. They pay that benefit over time as you follow up with them.

So that's why I recommend following up with them systematically. If they give you a contact during your first conversation to follow up, follow up with that contact and promise your original contact that you'll give them an update in a couple of weeks. That way, you don't let your booster feel like they've been used, you got their help, and then you drop them.

But it also gives you a graceful way to follow up with them. If they reach out to that preferred contact and they don't get back to you, you can show deference to your original contact and say, per your advice, I reached out to this contact. Well, unfortunately, we haven't been able to connect. How would you like me to proceed from here?

That way you build likability because you're showing that you're willing to take advice and be teachable if they don't give you a contact. In that informational interview, I would close the conversation using a concept from Robert Cialdini called commitment and consistency. I would say, wow, thank you. You've given me a lot to think about. Is it okay if I reach back out to you with any additional questions?

Pretty hard to say no to that. You'd have to be kind of a jerk to do that. So they'll say, yeah, of course you can reach back out to me, and then a week later than I would reach back out and say, upon further reflection, this is something I definitely want to pursue further. How would you recommend I proceed from here?

What would you do in my situation? And specifically, is there anyone I should speak to next? What I like about making the request for an additional contact, something that happens offline rather than in the conversation, is that it gives your contact a chance to figure out if they like you. It doesn't put them on the spot, because if you put me on the spot, I'm going to hem and haw a little bit.

I'll say, well, nobody comes to mind right now, but I'll let you know if somebody does. I haven't had a chance to ask my contact if it's okay, if I refer them on to a job seeker. I want to do that because that person's been my network forever. And I just met you, the brand new job seeker. And I don't want to throw my friend under the bus.

But if you ask me that by email, I can check with my friend through email and say, hey, is it okay if I send somebody your way? They'll say yes, then I can make that referral happen. So that's ultimately what I'm looking for in that first couple of weeks after the initial information is trying to get an additional contact, that person who is kind of the decision maker.

Now, it may be that you're at a small firm and the person says, I'll keep you posted. we don't start hiring until February. I reach back out to me and I'll get you plugged in, in which case you don't really need another referral. That person seems like there's a very concrete plan of attack. You follow his instructions, and that's the easiest way to build likability.

Now, for me, as far as longer term follow up, what I recommend doing is when you send your thank you note a day or two after the informational put the most compelling insight they had the most important piece of advice in your thank you note. I can't tell you how many times I've heard of people who take notes from their information in a notebook and then lose the notebook.

Just put it straight in your thank you note. If they said something that was particularly impactful, especially a piece of advice that you can then follow, I set a recurring monthly reminder on that contact. And when that reminder comes up that first month, I would recap the advice that they gave me. I'd give them an example of how they benefited from that advice, and then I'd ask them for further advice.

There's a concept called the Ben Franklin effect. Basically, if you let people do you favors, it actually builds likability more than if you repay favors right away. You can Google it. It's a really interesting concept that I wish I'd learned in business school, but this way you're deepening the relationship by saying I'm the kind of person who listens to advice, implements it, and then reports back to you what the results are.

So it's a nice, rigorous way to keep a relationship going and prompt them for further action. Each of those follow up monthly check ins lets them know that you're still out there looking, and it prompts them for action. So have you heard anything that might be useful in the last month? So let me know. I call this concept Subsequent relevance.

We spend most of our day ignoring information. Whenever you pull up your Yahoo page, for example, you know exactly where the banner ads are. You. Your eyes skip over those. You know where the weather is. You don't want the weather. You want headlines. So your eye darts down to the middle of the page to see the headlines. We do this constantly and hiring managers are no different.

They're ignoring information until it becomes relevant to them. Once they know you as a job seeker, exist and they like you, now, they're paying attention more consciously to job opportunities at the company. You've made that information subsequently relevant, but it hasn't been relevant before they've spoken to you. So it's important that you follow up systematically on your contacts to make sure that you extract the full benefit of that information.

Anita Brick: Absolutely. And think of ways to give back to them as well. The other question that relates to this very directly is how do you stay organized? So a weekend student said, Hi Steve, I really like your approach. What have you found to be a particularly effective strategy for contact management and keeping track of who you've reached out to and when you need to follow up? So I started out with an Excel spreadsheet, but that really was cumbersome and didn't work well on my mobile device.

Steve Dalton: Excel is wonderful at a lot of things. It is terrible as a calendar. That's not what it's designed for. So I know people are in trouble. When I see a lamp list that has a comments column, or it has a date falling up, or when you last spoke to this person, it's just simply not what it's built for.

Microsoft Outlook is built for calendaring. Google calendar is built for calendaring. They can send you proactive reminders. They keep track of your email in a central location. For me, the lamppost that you make, that's an Excel, but that's a strategy document that's like a balance sheet. It's correct for a snapshot in time. You only open it when you have bandwidth to approach new companies. So after you make your lamp list, the strategy is you approach five companies simultaneously, one contact at a time, and then you layer in a second or third contact as you need. If the first contact is showing signs that they're not engaging with you, but you always have five companies or more going simultaneously. That way, a 40% hit rate means if you send five emails, you'll hear back from two people on average, so you constantly keep moving forward.

I think it's critical that job seekers get comfortable using a calendar rather than a spreadsheet for managing their contacts. There are other online applications you can use to do contact management. I think it adds an unnecessary layer of complexity. We all already use a calendar, whether it be Outlook or Google, to manage our lives. We already use email applications so we can just bake those things in there.

My recommendation is whenever you send an email to a contact for the first time, follow the 3B7 routine. The 3B7 routine. The B stands for business days. Whenever you email that person, set a reminder for yourself. For three business days later and seven business days later. Seven business day reminders. That's your signal to follow up with somebody. It's been about a week and a half, so give them another chance if you haven't heard from them.

But my hypothesis is that if you haven't heard from them within three business days, they're probably not a booster. They're probably not someone who's going to stick their neck out for you. It might be a signal that they're trying to blow you off and hoping you find help elsewhere. So after that third business day reminder pops up, that's your signal to try somebody else at the same company.

You can see that that means you'll have 20 or 30 reminders on your calendar simultaneously. And that's why it's critical that you don't rely on your memory. You rely on a calendar to manage that for you. The nice thing about this format is that there's no work on weekends, because it uses just business days, and there are plenty of days where you have nothing to do.

There are no reminders that pop up on your calendar. So to make those reminders pop up, my recommendation would be just make a fake appointment for 6: 30 in the morning before you ever actually have any real appointments. That way the reminder pops up first thing when you wake up in the morning and you have all day to send a follow up email or try somebody else, but you don't spend every day stressing about whether or not it's time to follow up with anybody.

You're letting the computer tell you when it's time to follow up with somebody, or the time to try somebody else. It's that anxiety of doubting yourself, of wondering, oh, should I follow up with somebody today or not? Oh well, won't that be awkward? It's a job search. It's going to be awkward no matter what my recommendation is. Pick a routine and stick to it. I like the 3 p.m. routine, but any routine is fine.

Anita Brick: Okay, no, but that's actually a really good routine. And you just simplified Google Outlook. No other expense. We're already using those. So yeah, it's good. I know you've given us tons and tons and tons of advice today, but I'd like to ask you one final question. What are the top three things that you would advise someone who wants to really excel in his or her job search?

Steve Dalton: Okay, the first and most important one would be to treat the job search like the MBA project that it is. The rules have fundamentally changed. Online job postings broke the old way of finding a job. It's frustrating because the infrastructure is no longer clear. It's no longer about printing out a nice resume and cover letter on a nice paper at Kinkos and shipping them off, but it is an MBA like project.

Now you're hearing conflicting pieces of information. You're getting 50 hours of advice, but only have two hours to implement. So what advice is most important? You've got ambiguous constraints, so treat it with respect. How well can you navigate a job search in the modern job search environment where nobody knows the rules? So think like an MBA. It would be my biggest piece of advice if you're finding yourself frantic, working hard with no direction.

Now take a time out and seek out a mentor to ask them what they would do in your position, because they're going to be thinking a lot more clearly and they'll be able to help you, put you back on the right track. Other, more tactical items, the two tactical items that I would say is to get used to using LinkedIn groups.

They offer a secret messaging ability that people don't really realize. If you share a group with somebody, you can message them directly so you don't have to do that awkward inviting them to connect things. Even though they're strangers. What you can do is find a group that they're a member of, join that group, and then if you access them through the group's members page, you can message them directly.

Your message will show up as a fellow group member, and it's not as awkward as inviting a stranger to connect or stalking them some other way. The third and final piece of tactical advice would be to recognize that contacts are available anywhere. We live in a pretty public world with Facebook, LinkedIn, and lots of social media, so our contact information is basically out there.

You can find contact information for anybody. There are some really helpful services like emails for corporations. So it's emails, the number for corporations that give you email conventions. At popular companies. There's a great website called Email format.com, which if you look up a company's name, it will scrape the internet to find email addresses belonging to that company. So you can infer what the email address convention is.

And if you combine those with an email verification software, this is actually a tip I picked up from a former FBI agent who attended one of my lectures. You can check an email address that you're guessing at to see if it actually works, so you can try it in advance so you don't have to deal with bounced emails.

It'll ping that email address to see if it's active. It won't send that person a message, but it'll let you know if that email is active and you can give it a shot trying to reach out to a stranger. But to me, if a person finds me through a media connection or some other sort of proactive way, rather than just the basics, oh, you went to my school, we should talk. It's flattering. It implies a certain added layer of sincerity in their job search. I'm excited to talk to that person.

Anita Brick: Well, Steve, you are amazing. Great structure, great advice and practical. Thank you for streamlining the job search and making it more accessible. So someone going through a job search doesn't go crazy in the process. So thank you so much. And I really appreciate your ability to look at the personal side. It's not just the resume etc. it's the warmth. It is the sincerity, the authenticity that is clearly part of a successful job search. And thank you for bringing that to light as well.

Steve Dalton: It's my pleasure. Thank you, everybody for listening.

Anita Brick: And thank you all for listening. This is Anita Brick with CareerCast at Chicago Booth. Keep advancing.