The hundredth meeting

Clients sometimes get frustrated executing a job search strategy, feeling like they "should" have results sooner. Their impatience can make them question whether the strategy they are using is really going to work.

The fact is, with more competition right now you have to be very persistent, resilient to discouragement and just keep plugging away!

It can be frustrating to be "always the bridesmaid, never the bride." I appreciate the frustration; you kind of have to believe you'll beat the odds that apply to everyone to keep your confidence up. Then when it doesn't happen, instead of questioning yourself, you question your strategy.

As much as I try to help clients execute a four-pronged approach, they tend to favor one the four approaches more than the others, and rely on it more heavily. It's often the method that landed them their last job, dangerous because the business climate and hiring practices have often changed radically since then.

When a client just hasn't broken through yet, they sometimes ask me if they should change their strategy. If the client is doing everything right I remind them that it is a matter of time and numbers - and much greater numbers than anyone personally believes they should need to endure!

But it takes what it takes, and giving up on the 99th call or meeting would be like our stone-cutter quitting one blow too soon.

"When nothing seems to help, I go and look at a stone-cutter hammering away at his rock perhaps a hundred times without as much as a crack showing in it. Yet at the hundred and first blow it will split in two, and I know it was not that blow that did it - but all that had gone before."
-- Jacob Riis, Photographer and Journalist (1849-1914)

Radically changing one's strategy would be like changing horses in midstream. I point out to the client that what they are doing is getting them closer and closer. Then I strongly recommend that they continue the approach they are using, and add in more of the other approaches to the mix, to refresh their process and attitude. Execute more strategies instead of a replacement one.