Cranston

If you are fresh out of college and embarking on your first serious job hunt, you may have already encountered that first major hurdle more experienced job-hunters know all too well - the frustrating but common catch-22: employers often require experience before they will hire you.

“But how do I get any if no one will take me on?” you ask. And that is a quandary that, unfortunately, many face more than once in the course of their professional lives. Because believe it or not, that challenge isn’t limited only to the novice. Making a career change later in life can often raise similar issues - but we’ll get to that in a moment.

When you are first starting out, perhaps the most important thing you can do is simply not get discouraged. Be utterly tenacious. Don’t take anything too personally. That’s not to say you shouldn’t learn from the process. Accept constructive criticism and heed good advice when you get it. But develop a thick skin too. Because there’s bound to be some unwarranted rejection. Keep pounding the sidewalks. Relentlessly if you must. Knock on doors unremittingly until someone finally takes a shining to you, because eventually they will. That’s a guarantee. Even if it takes longer than you expected or really hoped for.

In the beginning, sometimes it’s not as important to get the perfect job as it is just to ‘get in.’ Your first goal should be just to get your foot in the door. Then, once you’re there, you can knock their socks off - make them fall in love with you - get to know the right people, make new friends, and eventually get where you need to go.

When it comes to looking for work, tenacity is good advice no matter what stage of your career you are in. In fact, when you are older, sometimes the challenges become a lot tougher, because surprisingly and paradoxically, then rather than value your experience, HR people frequently start to hold it against you. Unfortunately recruiting professionals sometimes get hung up on industries or titles — use it as a reason to see you as someone who only fits one kind of position, and who cannot be shaped or molded into something different. They pigeon-hole you, typecast you based upon what you have already done, rather than appreciate how your skills might transfer to a new category. Suddenly your experience isn’t an asset, instead you are an ‘old dog who can’t learn new tricks’, which is ironic and frustrating.

If you are a marketing professional who came from the beverage industry, does that mean that you can’t market shoes, or even oil and gas - maybe work in the entertainment arena? If you are innovative, creative, and analytical - a person who had all the skills to make a go of it in one place, why wouldn’t that transfer to a new position? If you can write, you can write about anything. If you are a designer who understands space and aesthetics, but worked in the publishing industry, does that mean you can’t work in film, or develop legal presentations? Of course not. But you need to be prepared for the harsh reality that the employment world sometimes has an annoying need to typecast people for their own comfort - see you in way they can more easily understand, rather than as an amorphous abundance of creativity or experience that carries over and translates into another arena. And, if you have more than one kind of experience, watch out, because then they really don’t know what to do with you. Ironically, the more diverse your experience, sometimes the more challenging it can be. So keep in mind, it might be up to you to bring the pros around, shed light on your abilities, and lend coherence to the applicability of your skill set to a new position.

Don’t be surprised if this is hard to accomplish. Sometimes no matter how good a job of this you do, not everyone will have the vision to see what you need them to. A friend of mine is a talented communications and marketing professional, but also an attorney. She has worked in both arenas and finds that the skills are actually very complementary. Many of the same writing, research, analytics, and creative abilities enter both worlds in parallel - whether one is designing a campaign or taking a case before a jury. But in a recent job search an HR person actually said to her: “Are you a lawyer or a marketing person? Make up your mind. You can’t be both.”

The HR sector clearly needs to broaden its horizons - break away a little from their very rigid laundry lists. So often a job description somewhat arbitrarily requires two years of one thing, and three of another - as if life were a perfect formula. And what’s more, employers demand this - rigidly adhere to the criteria in their search, often to the exclusion of very talented and qualified individuals who may actually contribute a new perspective and bring something fresh to the table - offer a whole new outlook.

Whatever your situation, whether you are just starting out, or are highly experienced and making a career change midlife, just remember - be creative in how you present yourself. If an HR person isn’t imaginative enough to see how your skills transfer - can’t immediately see how delivering pizzas in high-school might be relevant to a corporate customer-service position post college, lay it out for them. Show them the parallels, make them see how the two jobs relate. If you can’t do so in person, this is where crafting an amazing cover letter comes in to play. Take the time to do that much. It can be invaluable. They may not always read it, but then they may. And all it takes is one person. ©Copyright 2008