By Mary Bermel, Owner, Bermel Interactive
Marketing Consultant and NEJS Volunteer
Carl Harvey, founder of sales training and development firm Success & Self-Esteem, and author of What’s Stopping You combines psychology with the art of selling to help professionals. What does that have to do with the job search? Everything. As Carl explains it,job seekers are in the business of selling themselves, and the same challenges that stymie the most gung-ho sales professional keep job seekers from moving forward to achieve their carer goals.
Carl spoke to the Expert Connections’ Meet Up founded by business leadership coach, Karen Burke in Acton on Thursday, November 5th. He says it is critical for sales professionals and job seekers alike to develop an “expanded capacity of self-esteem to deal with the risks, challenges and uncertainty” inherent in the job search as well as “relentless confrontations, negatives and disappointments.” It starts, Carl explains with understanding what self-esteem is: one’s sense of his/her capability and worthiness in meeting’s life’s challenges by thinking and acting in ways appropriate to the task at hand. Simply put, you have to believe you are capable and worthy.
For the truth is, selling is always an “inside job”. What people see, our behaviors and the results they produce, are always consequences, effects of what they don’t see, our inner state of either self-confidence or self-doubt, either our best self or our diminished self. The battle in sales is always fought from the inside out.
- Carl Harvey in preface of his book, What’s Stopping You?
He offered solid advice on how to build one’s self-esteem:
Engage in relevant and risk taking action consistently. For the job seeker, this might be interviewing or networking actively, holding yourself accountable for the quality and frequency of your effort. Rather than retreat in fear, he urges all to grow sense of self by taking specific actions – making choices – to engage and commit.
- Practice small steps, what I like to call baby steps. Break down the challenge into components. Ask which step makes us uncomfortable or makes us feel ineffective. Make the goal achievement of the component step. Repeat until you’ve mastered the challenging step. Move to the next one. Repeat.
As an example, if cold calling is a fear, he suggests calling companies in whom you have no interest, thus mitigating the fear factor.
On the self-awareness theme, Carl talked about mind management, the ability to identify, challenge and replace negatives. In that regard, he suggests several approaches:
- Judge yourself based on the plan, not by standards beyond your control. Who knows whether the resume will make it through the scanning software, let alone be read by the hiring manager? The only thing that matters is the plan. He reminded us of Harvey Milk, San Franciscan gay rights activist who failed to win municipal election 5 or 6 times in a row. Each defeat cause him to re-evaluate and re-adjust the plan. He didn’t fail; the plan did.
- Emotionally detach from the outcome, especially important during the interview process. ”I don’t need this job / this sale” might seem counter intuitive during these times, but his point was in order to perform best, we must act in our own best self-interest at the moment. Kill your expectations, kill your excitement and focus on staying in the moment not dwelling on what happens if you do or don’t get the job. Doing this allows you to maintain a high level of self-esteem no matter what the result, necessary to be able to continue to work the plan rather than be paralyzed by excruitating inertia, derailed by a lack of motivation and confidence.
While Carl’s talk addressed job seekers, it applies to everything we do, a foundation for ongoing success in life. Karen challenged all in attendance to take action: develop a plan, commit to it publicly and follow up with a cohort in a week’s time to ensure you stay the course. And with that, I return to my PARS, my small step necessary to improve my specificity during interviews.
If any of this resonates with you, please visit Carl’s website, or pick up his book. Thanks to Karen Burke, owner of Mobius Coaching LLC, through which Karen provides one on one and group coaching to business owners. And also to organizational development consultant Lila Kirschbaum who suggested Carl.
