Today, we're gonna talk about what's going on inside organizations right now
so today if you're here with me live it's December 19th my 4 year wedding
anniversary so shout out to mrs. la Savita miss Linda
she's probably teaching her her 3rd graders right now I loved have loved
every minute of my life with you babe but for everybody else who's celebrating
my my anniversary with me it's December right now maybe you're
watching this on the replay in January everything I'm about to say about what's
going on inside organizations right now it applies it'll it'll be applying for
the next six eight weeks and I'm sure will will put this on the reruns for you
so I wanna I want to talk about what's happening I want to talk about that
looks like I'm gonna give you some some case study some stories about what's
going on inside of companies and I also want to tell you how you can take
advantage of this to use it to your advantage if you are looking for a job
so we're gonna we're gonna hit those we're gonna hit those I got three points
at the end of things that I want you to do to tailor your job search your job
search so so let's think about this like I said it's December and what are you
doing right now I mean aside from watching me whether you here with me
live or you're watching us on the recording what are you doing right now I
just got done the kind of the speech bubble still hanging out of my mouth and
I was talking about reflecting I had to look back at the year I was thinking
about what I was doing I can I get a show of hands or a knock in the chat
what are you doing right now what what is typical that a lot of people do at
the end of the year right they reflect they think about what's happened they
think about the changes they want to make in their lives they think about the
upcoming year and all that good stuff right maybe you're setting some goals
right we got some good goals stuff coming for you here soon too right let
me know what you're doing in the chat and to think about it companies are no
different they're no different and I don't care when their fiscal year ends
there's something about December and January that makes all companies think
about the new year then explain why that's the case but
they look back right they look at the results they think about their quotas
and their targets and their people in the hiring they did in the process that
they put in they think about it they think about what do they need to do from
a planning perspective to go into the next year and it's a very very dynamic
time right now and they they rethink they plan they set their goals and they
look at the whole year they really do and I want to give you I want to give
you a couple stories to illustrate this one story and I don't think I told this
story last year but about a year ago we had a a client of mine actually it was
somebody who was a client for a number of years he left his organization opened
up his own company started to grow that and had been running it for three or
four years or so and reached out to me almost almost to the day almost to the
day and and and and said hey Annie would you mind spending an hour or two with me
I'd love to pick your brain organizationally about my company I also
might need you to help me you and mile walk help me recruit some people it's no
problem we get on a session with one or two of his lieutenants and and me we
spent 90 minutes over the course of the 90 minutes he explained to me that he
was just about to win a new contract which was the biggest one in his in his
company's history and this is going to require him to hire more people it was a
consulting company so he was gonna need more consulting resources to do this but
he said but more importantly than knowing I need more consultants to help
me implement these solutions is I've got a leadership layer that I have a couple
people in place I know I need more people but I'm also a little confused
about whether I'm leveraging the people that we currently have in the right
spots so I'm not sure that everybody's doing
the right things you know related to their skill level so would you mind
talking with me and helping me understand what you would do if this was
your company so I'm not gonna take you through the long 90 minute session what
I want you to know as part of this discussion is that within an hour we
laid out what his new organizational structure
look like how he needs to move a few people around how he needs to rearrange
some of the roles meaning like cut people's roles in half replace them with
different activities take some of the things that they're doing give them to a
new person who's got more experience in those areas he needed to hire four
people at the at the executive level and so on and the reason that this is
important for you to recognize that this occurs extensively especially in small
to medium-sized companies at this time of year and what this does is it creates
this incredibly dynamic environment where things are changing almost on a
daily basis not it necessarily in a half hazard way but the fact that between one
day and the next this individual this CEO he changed his organizational
structure he knew he was gonna have to hire more people and that's going to
change as he hires those people based on who he hires the skills that he or she
has that they bring to the table and how the organizational structure may evolve
over the next few months or maybe even the entire first quarter so and and and
let's not even get into the fact that this is a planned organizational
restructuring or a planned scaling of sorts right because there's a lot of
unplanned things too we'll get to that in a second here's another here's
another story yesterday so Wednesday I spent the morning with a 100 million
dollar construction company in the Chicagoland area and they are getting
primed to grow about 30% they can already foresee some of the contracts
that they have they they've they've put plans in place I met with the CEO the
president in the two divisional vice vice presidents of for the four top guys
in the company and now this is a construction company there's seasonality
to this and in this in the late spring in the summer is when they really really
ramped up a lot of their construction but we're talking about it right now
they were looking back at some of the hires that they made throughout the year
and while they felt like they were pretty good at
interviewing they made a couple of mis hires and while it wasn't an excessive
number of miss hires it was the particular people that they hired that
because it was a miss hire there was a rippling effect that caused a good
amount of damage and they were trying to foresee how many individuals they would
have to be interviewing in order to hire say ten more people in the May time
frame it's five months from now they're already thinking about it now the fiscal
year doesn't even close at the end of the year they're one of those
organizations that has it as a fiscal year in a different month throughout the
year but what do they know they know they got to get out ahead of it they
know for some reason somes in the water December of January people want to do a
lot of thinking also organizations know they know a couple of things about the
new year they know number one that it is a highly mobile time of year where a lot
of people are leaving so while these two organizations these little stories I
told you these are organizations that are deliberately planning and trying to
be proactive and get out in front of what it is they want to do what happens
when there's something they have to react to what happens this time of year
not only are employers hiring but employers are hiring pieces right
they're being moved around right the individuals are being moved around which
means somebody might leave my company who I didn't know was going to be
leaving and now I'm in a panic because one of my most instrumental individuals
decided to leave me the third week of January because she's miffed because she
didn't get a bigger bonus or I didn't give her the promotion or the raises or
whatever right so this kind of stuff happens and organizations like this
construction company that knew it needed to hire people in May they recognize
that not everybody is going to be moving in May so there's a lot of people who
might might be thinking about changing jobs now they want to make sure that
they're trying to find the right talent so what does this all mean to you well
there's a lot of dynamic there's a lot of there's dynamic natures to what's
happening inside the organizations companies are planning their replanting
they're acting and reacting that means it's a it's a volatile not necessarily
in a bad way a volatile time where organizations are hiring and
and they're trying new things okay now I want you to I want you to I want you to
grab on a couple of concepts here so I got my can I help you mug now one of the
things that they know is they are gonna have to react as much as they are
deliberate in what they do organizations know that they're gonna
need to react to things are you getting in front of them in this time where
there is a lot of thinking going on because there is never a better time
where their minds their corporate minds are more malleable than right now think
about when you are considering something what are you doing you're trying to plan
you're trying to assess you're thinking about what might happen you're about to
go into the state of mind where you're open to ideas and they are much much
more receptive to people that they're starting to see now there's a heightened
sense of awareness they will take a closer look at you
if you send your information to them now they will because they're more active
because they're not quite sure what they're gonna see they're not quite
quite sure exactly what they want so the more you can get in front of them
that's a good thing while their minds while their corporate minds are
malleable the second thing that I want you to remember about this time of year
is when you try what happens when you try new things I don't know about you
but whenever I try something new I break it or I break stuff like in I don't know
in a couple of weeks this whole floor is gonna be filled with stuff that I broke
because I tried new things because I was excited to do this right I want to make
some changes I want to make some improvements and I don't know if you've
ever heard that expression like if you know if it's not broken
break it well it's kind of that's kind of how I think that's kind of how a lot
of companies think they want to try new things because they want to they want to
grow and they want to be more creative well what happens whenever somebody
knows they're about to break something I don't know about you I would just love
for my stocks in the stock market to rise rise rise very highly and I don't
want any risk a downside right I don't ever want the market to go down I just I
want all the good and none in the band so what a lot of employers do is if they
make an organizational mistake and they break something or maybe they plan for
something that doesn't turn out exactly how they wanted what do they want
somebody who can fix it who can fix it a versatile person can fix it and buy
versatile I mean people that have multiple skill sets that if I choose
wrong or I start out wrong or I decide I want to change my mind if I've got
somebody who's versatile who's got skills in multiple areas multifunctional
or that can kind of span the spectrum or the evolution of the career grades
that's the person that I want in case I'm wrong and versatile people are at a
premium in the early months of the year you got to recognize that who cannot fix
my organizational misstep a one-trick pony
so I hire somebody that's got one skill they're an ace at it but they've only
got one skill and I plan for and get it wrong now I can't do anything with this
person that person this is this is their skill so why am I telling you all this
because there's some things that I want you to do recognizing this is happening
and it's happening a lot and any of you that are out there that are in hiring
capacities or have influence over units I'm guessing you're probably nodding
with me like yeah this happens to me every year and it should it's not a
terrible thing but this is different than throughout the year where it's the
middle of the summer time and I need a person who knows this exact programming
language who this there they are the best at this one thing sure things have
fallen right they've fallen apart we fix them we're on our way right that's just
the cycle it's the evolution that goes that goes on right the construction
company knows that it's got to do all of its project planning early in the year
because the implementation occurs in the warmer months and the estimates have to
be right you got to get the right contractors the time frames need to be
correct right so so so so so think about that I have a
little bit more I could take a little bit more care in getting the one skilled
Pony the two skilled Pony but in the beginning of the year when I'm still
trying to figure things out the more versatile to person the better okay so I
want you to keep that in mind so here's here's what I want you to do I've given
you a couple of assets out there that allow you to target organizations where
there really isn't a job opening I almost want you to treat all your
submittals right now as if there was no job opening because that will give you
an opportunity to flaunt your various skills so first for step one what I want
you to do is I want you to get more active with my no opening cover letters
I want you to be reaching into organizations more much much more so
normally what I do is I like you to target the organization you want I'd
like you to target individuals within the organization and even if you can to
the extent target the role that you want okay and that's that's very much like my
job search challenge that I've been talking about for the last month if
you're not sure what the jobs are challenges look it up on my youtube
channel where you're where you're becoming more and more active and
contacting people I want you to amp that up and be even more active especially as
it relates to reaching into people you can use the boss hunting cover letter I
have a template out there if you don't know what that is just look look up the
video there's a boss hunting cover letter if you know what the role is or
if you don't know what the role is and you should be using the one where you
don't know what the role is a lot okay I'm gonna get to my second point of why
I want you do but I want you to I want you to because I want you to be able to
flaunt many skills that you bring to the table not that you were citing this one
specific one I also have a no job opening cover letter use those but I
want you to be highly highly active what this will do is it will get your
information in front of people who are thinking about stuff and and I want you
to highlight your versatility so lots of times if you look at my cover letters
and the ones that I've given you out in in in the in the public they give access
to the ones I just mentioned I really want you to hit your home run
skill normally however right now right now as we're doing this I want you to
really highlight your versatility and I want you to show an array of skills so I
come equipped with technology skills business analyst skills team leadership
skills or project management skills or something like that that's a triple
threat right there that's a person I love okay as opposed to I'm a
technologist who can do this the person who gives me who gives me the spectrum
the multifunctional person is far more valuable to me right now and the one
that I'm likely to lean towards to want to have discussions with so you got to
highlight your versatility in those cover letters you're gonna need to alter
them to do that and then the third thing is because things are so dynamic right
now so I mentioned I'm planning and replanting I'm trying to figure out who
I want to hire I guarantee you that lots of companies are going to in an
unexpected nature lose people that they otherwise would not like to lose because
like I said Jamie doesn't like the fact that she didn't get the rings right Suzy
didn't get the bonus she wanted or the promotion she wanted right Henri's you
know beefing about something he's tired of his boss it's tight it's a New Year's
resolution time I'm gonna get another job so I want to make sure that you are
following up more frequently than you otherwise would be and almost without
question every situation that you're in don't let your follow-ups slip if
somebody says I'll contact you Tuesday contact them Wednesday morning don't
give them much grace right if you're trying to follow up on an application or
an email that you sent to somebody you might want to compress the usual week
timeframe that I that I I mention is a nice standard to follow throughout the
year you might want to be a little more pushy this time of year the other thing
I would recommend that you do in the follow-ups is when you are rejected make
sure you are following up I would cut the timeframe in half
so if you're rejected from something I normally like you waiting 30 days to
follow up and if you're not sure what I'm talking about with the rejection I
have a video out there on how to get the job after being rejected what happens is
if you're getting rejected on January 2nd I guarantee you people have left by
January 7th by January 15th by January 22nd by January 29th and so on you don't
need to wait a whole month for this so you've got to accelerate your your
follow ups okay so just took just to recap it we've
got a lot of it's very dynamic out there right now people are thinking rethink
and planning replanting and all that good stuff and then as the week's go by
they're going to get into it right I plan it I get into it I realize I'm
right about this I'm wrong about that I make some changes that changes right the
people in the organization that I may or may not need a changes start dates I'm
gonna lose some people and so on you got to be more active with the no job
opening approach you've got to be highlighting your versatility so you got
to adjust your cover letters to make sure that you were pointing out the
plethora of skills that you have okay not just your home run skill or what
you're best known for and you got to be you got to be compressing the time frame
where you follow up all right now I hope that helps I hope it serves
you and I think I think it will make a difference I really do and and I want to
I want to sign off here if you're loving this click the little click the little
like button or the thumbs up button make sure to share this I think it's really
important that people hear this message this time of year December January even
even bleeding into February this is what's going on with company so lots of
luck with that