HOW TO GET

ANY JOB
YOU WANT
SOME ADVICE FOR YOUNG CAREER SEEKERS

EDITED BY DEREK MAGILL

LEARN MORE: DISCOVERPRAXIS.COM
YOU NEED A VALUE PROPOSITION,
NOT A RESUME BY DEREK MAGILL
Picture this — two people want a job at a growing startup.

Person one sends in his application and resume. He’s confident,

because he’s put hours into it, digging up every award, achievement
and accolade to his name since high school. He’s confident because
on paper, he looks like the ideal candidate. He was the captain of
his sports teams and the senior class president. He made excellent
grades in college and he studied abroad. He interned for a political
campaign. He’s a natural leader, his resume says, and he works well
with others. He’s a shoe in, everyone tells him.

But he doesn’t realize that hundreds of others applying have the

same, or similar, resume. They’ve all jumped through the hoops,
played by the same rules, interned here and there. They’ve all been
told their entire lives that they’re the best and brightest — their
resumes speak for themselves, they think.

Person two sends an application, but it’s different from all the others.
The resume is there, but it’s restrained. He included only enough to
let the team know about him, but not enough to distract them from
what he wants them to focus on — his value proposition. He spent the
days leading up to the application learning about the business, its
industry, its digital presence, its successes and its failures.

He asked himself, “What can I do, Day 1 on the job, to create value
for this company? What can I do long term that justifies bringing me
on board?” He’s not afraid to tell them, “Here’s what I would be doing
differently. Here’s how I would do things better than you’re doing

HOW TO GET ANY JOB YOU WANT 2

them now.” He identifies and outlines a few of these and offers some
relevant skills he has and steps he would take towards accomplishing
them.

His application is NOT just about him, it’s about them. It’s about the
things they know they need and the things they don’t yet know they
need, and how he would create both if he were on the team.

Who do you think gets hired?

Here’s the thing…

Your resume doesn’t mean as much as it used to.

The credential you paid hundreds of thousands of dollars for? Most

people applying have one.

That study abroad semester where you partied your way across
Europe? You aren’t unique.

That “A” you got on a term paper? So did the other applicants.
You did Greek life? Great, that tells me very little.

We live in a period of resume inflation.

When you apply to a job, you’re competing with hundreds, if not

thousands, of people who are, on paper, just as qualified as you.

So if you want that job, if you want to stand out, if you want to be the
person that is “a shoe in,” you don’t need a resume, you need a value
proposition.

HOW TO GET ANY JOB YOU WANT 3

HOW TO GET A JOB WITHOUT
FORMAL CREDENTIALS BY DEREK
MAGILL
Since I dropped out of college about a year and half ago, I’ve had
the opportunity to speak and work with tons of young professionals
in the process of applying for their first job. Often, in fact most of
the time, an employer’s decision to hire them has little to do with
formalized credentials, and everything to do with the approach that
person takes during the application process.

Here is an example email, written by a friend/client of mine who

doesn’t have a college degree, to a potential employer, with 5 tips on
how to get a job by me at the end. Whether you have a degree or not,
there is a lesson to be learned from this.

Hi Jack,

I hope you had a great weekend.

As you said, you’re looking for someone with a bit more experience for
the position, so I have a proposal:

I want to work for you. Let me start at half the price of what you are
offering — I’ll create a curriculum for myself outside of the job to get
myself caught up to speed. If you don’t see me operating at the level you
want within one month, let me go.

I’ll also develop your social media presence, which if you don’t mind
me saying, could use some help. I’ve had some good experience in
this, and I’ve built both the Facebook and Instagram accounts for the

HOW TO GET ANY JOB YOU WANT 4

company my father works at and for an annual conference I marketed.
I’ll develop a regular posting schedule and ensure a stream of custom
content using tools like Canva and Adobe Illustrator. I also think the
customer service department could benefit from being on social media,
and I’d like to create a strategy for how we could implement this. I’ve
seen quite a few big name companies doing it with a ton of success.

I think this can be a win-win for both of us. You’ll be getting a

hardworking young person at half the cost of anyone else, and I’ll be
getting the opportunity to prove that I can create a hell of a lot of value
at your company.

Please let me know how this sounds and/or if there is any other way
that we can make my working for you possible.

I appreciate your time.

###

He got the job (At full salary). Here are five reasons why:

1. He took an entrepreneurial approach to the situation and created

his own work proposal to which his potential employer would have
to respond. His employer hadn’t even considered this as a potential
option.

2. He offered to take lower pay as a way of competing with people

who have more formal credentials and/or more experience. (He’s
able to do this because he doesn’t have student debt)

3. He delivered a clear value proposition by offering to develop the

social media channels for the company, something the employer
hadn’t thought of, and he showed an interest in the overall success of

HOW TO GET ANY JOB YOU WANT 5

4. He gave the employer a clear timeline in which he was to deliver
the results he wanted and an agreed upon exit if he couldn’t meet the
expectations.

5. He demonstrates, through this email, that he is driven, bright,

creative, and confident in a way that a resume never could. This was
intentional.

Naturally, there are more things you can do, but the above 5 tips
should be considered a good starting point for anyone looking to get
a job without a degree or certification.

HOW TO GET ANY JOB YOU WANT 6

ADVICE TO AMBITIOUS YOUNG
PEOPLE: JUST BUILD SOMETHING
BY ZACHARY SLAYBACK
“I’m an ambitious young person who wants to always be moving
forward in my education and career. What should I be doing?”

Building something.

The best thing that an ambitious young person can do at age 18, 19,
or 20 is to be building something. They should be spending as much
of their free time as possible actively contributing to a tangible, real
project that is completely outside of the school setting.

Actively building something is the best thing an ambitious young

person can do for their personal and professional development.
It makes them better people, sets them up for better career
opportunities, and sets in process the long and worthwhile goal of
becoming a creator who is motivated by their own desire to control
their lives, not simply one who creates to pad a resume or get offered
a job at a major corporation.

“But I just spent the past couple of years building up my personal

accomplishments and resume so that I could get more opportunities…
how is your advice any different?”

If you were like me when I was in high school, a good chunk of your
time “building” was devoted towards activities and extracurriculars
you were hoping would bolster your resume for applying to elite
colleges or programs. Sure, you may have really liked some of them,
but your time was likely split between a half-dozen or more of these.

HOW TO GET ANY JOB YOU WANT 7

Even if you were president of your FBLA chapter, a debater on your
student congress team, and a member of your Science Olympiad
team, you spent so much of your time curating a diverse resume that
it was hard to really become an expert at building in any given area.

Or maybe you participate in a few hackathons a year where you build

apps and programs within 24 hours in the hopes of beating out other
teams and the recognition brought with that. Developing the skill set
necessary is itself an astonishing tool and one you can use to build
even better and more diverse projects at the end of the day. But why
are you building? Are you building for the satisfaction of engaging
in meaningful work? Or are you building for the approval of some
outside authority?

An app, a book, a blog, a podcast, a building, a program — whatever it

is, starting (or joining) a project that allows you to actively build is the
best thing you can do for yourself and your future. If even as a side-
project during school, in the summer, or outside of your full-time job,
starting to build can be the best action you can start to make yourself
a better person, student, and creator.

Personal Development: Building is Hard

Engaging in the active pursuit of building is not something easy.

Waking up and committing to making some headway on a project
that you started in a fit of inspiration is easy in the days immediately
following the genesis, but becomes increasingly difficult a week,
month, or quarter after you started.

Even more, we must develop the standards for success (and failure!)
of the building ourselves. Each major decision can be taken dozens of
ways, each one bringing with it a set of different outcomes (seen and
unseen) and other decisions to be made down the road. It is unlikely

HOW TO GET ANY JOB YOU WANT 8

there will be obvious “right” and “wrong” options. Some provide more
favorable predicted outcomes than others, but how we determine
which outcomes are more favorable and likely than others is a
decision to be made by our own judgment.

When we are in school or a hierarchical workplace, we have people to

check our progress and provide a rubric for success. Multiple choice
tests provide keys to tell which answers are clearly correct and
incorrect. Even open ended answers have rubrics to assist in grading.
Answers with certain clear elements are more right than those
without these elements.

Building your own project doesn’t bring with it these same checks.
You have to build them yourself. You have set the standard for
success and failure and be prepared to adjust accordingly in light of
new information that you determine is worth paying attention to.

This takes responsibility and drive. It takes the ability to develop a

habit of creation and success. It takes being willing to do something
very difficult.

Even if your project is a flop, your undertaking the project will not be
a failure if you actively follow the self-guidance of creation — setting
goals, checking those goals against self-set standards, and actively
working towards building every day.

Professional Development: The Age of the Credential is in its

Twilight

Most of the building that ambitious young people do in their youth

is in pursuit of some kind of credential. The credential, it is believed,
will show that they know their stuff and ought to be trusted to create
and build — either by joining a company or by joining the next tier of

HOW TO GET ANY JOB YOU WANT 9

higher education.

This mythos is growing weaker by the day. The importance and

weight of actually building a project is stronger than ever with the
advent of the Internet and the ability to see for yourself what people
have built and the quality of their work with a simple Google search.

Career pages at company websites echo this assertion. Portfolio and

experience requirements are posted in lieu of BA requirements. “BA
or equivalent work experience” is found when just years ago “BA”
would be all that is listed.

Employers and potential colleagues are looking for your ability to

identify a valuable pursuit, cut your losses when necessary, launch a
project in line with that pursuit, carry through, and develop the skills
and responsibility necessary to finish that pursuit. An actual track-
record of creating speaks more than a simple credential ever could.

Motivational Development: Creation Begets Creation

“Okay, but where can I start? What if I don’t have a great idea for a
project I want to build?”

Just start building.

Author Steven Pressfield writes of the morning routines of the best

writers in his book The War of Art, noting that the “professionals”
don’t wait for inspiration to strike and then start working. They just
start working. Creation begets creation. Building begets building.

Start building by blogging every day. Start building by learning a new

skill set. Start building by devoting yourself an hour to sit down and
write no matter what — even if you don’t have a topic. You’ll find in

HOW TO GET ANY JOB YOU WANT 10

motivation to learn the skills you need.

Engaging in meaningful work motivates the individual. It creates

a feedback loop by which we become more motivated to better
ourselves in the pursuit of our work. If we find creating an app to be
fulfilling and meaningful but require a new coding skill set to get to
the next phase of the project, it is astonishingly easier. to pick up this
skill set than if we just decided to learn it in a vacuum.

If you find yourself agreeing with the advice to just be building but
have no idea what to build, then just start on the path of building
something. You’ll be amazed at the motivation and creativity you
unlock in the pursuit of building.

HOW TO GET ANY JOB YOU WANT 11

HOW TO GO LEVEL 5 IN YOUR JOB
SEARCH BY ISAAC MOREHOUSE
A lot of people are looking for jobs. The thing is, not all job searches
are equal.

“Looking for a job” might actually mean hoping someone finds your
resume online, shooting out a few emails, or posting unsolicited
comments on Facebook pages that say, “Are you hiring?”

If you want a job — really want a job — you’ve got to go level five with

your job hunt. And call it a hunt, not a search. You’re not hoping to
stumble into a pot of gold, you’re tracking your prey and bagging it.

Let’s take a look at how to do it.

Level 1: A Good Resume

While most of the best jobs you’ll get in life will be gotten without a
resume, if you’re job hunting you should have one on hand. I don’t
particularly like them, but a lot of people expect them. A good resume
will never get you a job, but a bad resume could lose you one.

For a resume to actually convey something, serve as a starting point

for interview questions, and keep you from being dismissed out of
hand, there are really just two main features: Nice appearance and
outcomes-based content.
For appearance, keep it simple, clean, a single page, uniform use
of line breaks or bullets, not too many indents and sub-sub points,
and a clear order top-to-bottom of what’s most important. (Hint:
experience is more important than education to most people, even if

HOW TO GET ANY JOB YOU WANT 12

you assume otherwise). Oh, and get your spelling and capitalization
triple checked.

For content most people simply list credentials they have and
activities they engaged in. This is boring and conveys a lot less
about your ability to create value than what kind of outcomes you
produced. Don’t just list that you were a digital marketing intern and
ran email campaigns. Show that your A/B test improved open rates
by 10%.

Even if you were waiting tables, see if you can demonstrate value
created. “Server at Applebee’s” is less interesting than, “My section
consistently brought in 15% more tips than average sections.”

Anyone can have a title and do a task. The good ones create value and
can show positive outcomes.

Level 2: Good Profiles on LinkedIn, etc.

Whether you like it or not, LinkedIn is hugely valuable in the working

world, especially for those making hiring decisions. Have a profile.
Have a decent headshot that actually looks like you. Have accurate
information. Keep it up to date.

Your LinkedIn profile should be consistent with your resume, but it

is not the same thing. It allows you to go a little deeper into who you
are, what drives you, who you’ve worked with, what you did. Same
goes for Twitter, Facebook, and whatever else you kids are using
these days. Be you, but use good judgement. If someone only ever
found your online accounts, would they have an accurate idea of who
you are and what you want to be known as?

Many people fear all social media and online presence because they

HOW TO GET ANY JOB YOU WANT 13

think of it as a liability. Some people try to stay undiscoverable online
as a protective measure.

This is a terrible idea.

First, always assume if some hacker wants to find your stuff bad
enough they’ll find a way, regardless of your settings. But more
importantly, seeing social media as a liability blinds you to the fact
that it can be a huge asset. There is no neutral. It’s either helping you
or hurting you. Being completely anonymous online hurts you. Take
charge of your online presence and make it an asset.

Level 3: A Personal Website

It’s easier than ever to setup a personal website. If you’re serious

about finding a great job, just do it. Go over to WordPress and get
started. In a few hours you can have a clean, simple website that
serves as a repository of all the things you enjoy and want to be
known for.

A personal website gives you far more control than profiles on third
party sites. You can feature whatever you wish, you can blog, share
video, include a longer bio, express aspects of yourself you wouldn’t
cram into a LinkedIn profile, and really use the blank canvas to create
whatever you wish.

But more than what you have on your site is the fact that you have
one. Anyone who has put together a basic, neat, up to date personal
website stands out. Not many people do, despite how easy it is, and if
you do you’ll have something that gives you far more cred than just a
decent resume in a pile.

If you really want to gain an edge, overcome fear, build confidence,

HOW TO GET ANY JOB YOU WANT 14

and become a better communicator and thinker then take the next
step and blog on your site regularly. I recommend blogging daily, but
if that’s daunting, try weekly. You can always hide bad posts, but the
act of doing it and knowing it can be seen by others will do more for
your creative capacity and productive power than any other simple
activity I know of.

Level 4: A Portfolio of Projects

If you’ve already setup your personal website here’s a way to really

beef up the value. Beyond a nice homepage and about page with a
bio, your website can feature projects you’ve completed.
Remember when I said the resume should show outcomes instead of
just telling about activities? A portfolio allows you to show in much
greater detail what you’ve created. It’s especially easy for those with
skills in art or coding or engineering to share publicly what you’ve
produced. You may think that your management or communication
or sales skills can’t really be put into a portfolio that shows what
you’ve done, but it can.

Go to a freelancer website and pay someone $50 to design a nice

one-pager that shows the results of that event your organized and
executed. Have someone build an interactive graph tracking your
fundraising or sales campaign. Show articles you’ve written and clicks
they received.

If you can think of nothing tangible that you’ve completed to put

in a portfolio it’s a good sign you should get cracking! Writers and
photographers know that their portfolio of work is what really
matters. If they have none, they start out just doing things for free to
build it up. You can do the same. Just get started creating something
and share the results. Do projects for free that will help you get
something under your belt.

HOW TO GET ANY JOB YOU WANT 15

The great thing is, the success or failure of your projects is less
important at this stage than that you completed it. I’ve talked with
tech companies who say they’d rather hire someone who built a
cheesy, non-innovative notepad app than someone with a stellar
resume who never built and “shipped” anything at all.

Level 5: Unique, Stand-Alone Websites, Videos, InfoGraphics for

Your Target Company

Here’s where the great stand apart from the very good. If you really,
truly, deeply want to work for a company why not devote yourself to
studying them in depth and presenting your unique take?

Remember Nina, whose resume was lost in the heap at AirBnB? She
went level five and became internet famous. She put together an
impressive site that deserved attention, still it’s telling of just how low
the bar is among job-seekers that a simple website was such a viral
sensation. No one is doing this. But you can.

One thing employers will tell you when sifting through job
applications is that too many people talk about themselves and too
few talk about the company they claim to want to work for. “I’m
Joe and I’m great at XYZ” tells me nothing about why Joe applied
specifically for my company. Does he just want a paycheck, or is he
passionate about my business? Does he even know what we do and
what we value?

There’s no better way to demonstrate your knowledge and passion

for a company than to dig into the industry, business model,
customer base, competitors, and build something unique that
describes what you love about and what you would do for the
company. Don’t think about what would make you look good, think

HOW TO GET ANY JOB YOU WANT 16

about what would actually be valuable to the company.

I guarantee spending 30 days doing a deep dive on your target

company will be more valuable than spending an entire year getting a
second major and more clubs to list on your resume. If you can create
something of value to the company before you’re even working for
them that sends a strong signal that you’re a person they want on
board.

What Are You Waiting For?

One of the reasons I launched my company Praxis is precisely

because so few young people realize that they have the power to
create their own professional future. There are more tools available
than ever and more opportunities but so few realize it. You can’t sit
on the conveyor belt and expect it to drop you at a fulfilling job.

Look, I’m not saying it’s easy. But don’t tell me there’s no way to get a
great job if you aren’t willing to push yourself to level four, or ideally
level five. You can probably think of ten more things I didn’t even list
here if you really try.

The days of buying a degree and hoping it buys you a job are over. Be
your own credential and prove through the work you do that you can
create value

HOW TO GET ANY JOB YOU WANT 17

YOUR RESUME IS BORING, DO THESE
FIVE THINGS INSTEAD BY ISAAC
MOREHOUSE
The resume is supposed to be a relatively quick way for someone
to get to know your personal and professional accomplishments,
skills, interests, and the potential you have to create value in a given
setting. The thing is, it’s pretty outdated.

In fact, it never worked all that well, evidenced by the fact that most
people do not get jobs because of a great resume but because of a
personal connection. Resumes have always been a poor substitute for
other, more robust ways to get to know someone. There just weren’t
too many other ways once upon a time. But things change.

Today we have so many ways to paint a picture of who we are,

what we love, and what we can do than we ever did before. It’s time
to stop leaning on a sheet of paper with boring bullet points and
begin building better ways for people to see what you’re all about.
When I get resumes now I barely look at them. A quick scan, then I
immediately jump on Google to find the things that give me better
signals. Here are five of them.

1. Create a personal website.

This might sound daunting, but it’s doesn’t have to be. Go to

WordPress, get a domain with your name in it if you can, pick a basic
theme, complete an “About” page with a few photos and a bio, and
write a few blog posts on what you care about and what you do.

Update it at least once a month so it doesn’t look dead. Don’t feel

HOW TO GET ANY JOB YOU WANT 18

too much pressure if you’re not a great writer. The content is less
important than that you have a site. Someone who has taken the time
and developed the basic skills to set one up has already set herself
well above the crowd.

2. Have a LinkedIn profile.

Most young people hate LinkedIn. So do most of the adults they

spend most of their time with — teachers and professors. But in
the professional world outside of academia, LinkedIn is gold. It is
everything your resume is but far less boring and with several added
benefits. You need to have a profile there. It can house all your basic
experience and skills and other stuff that goes on a resume, but
it also has some color, endorsements, and a way for people to see
shared connections, what kind of articles you’ve liked, and more.
When you send a resume to someone they are going to look for you
on LinkedIn whether you like it or not. If you’re not there, or if you
have a shabby, out of date profile, your stock will drop.

3. Make use of Facebook and other social profiles.

Everyone uses at least one social platform. Most are on Facebook, or

Twitter, or Pinterest, or others. My advice here is controversial, but I
stand by it: make your social media pages publicly viewable.

Look, if you have something really incriminating on there someone

could find it anyway if they were motivated enough. Making your
profile public is a good way to keep a check in your mind on what
kinds of things you may and may not want to share. This doesn’t
mean your entire Facebook presence needs to become whitewashed
of anything personal or fun. Far from it. That’s good stuff, even to a
potential employer, and a completely polished presence is slightly
disconcerting. But if you’re constantly in name-calling flame wars

HOW TO GET ANY JOB YOU WANT 19

over political issues on Facebook, for example, that’s probably not
good for most jobs and probably not good for you.

Let the world see a little bit of the real you, and let that be a you
you’re proud of. Again, when you send your resume people are
going to look for you on social platforms anyway. They tend to get
frustrated when they can see that you exist but can’t view any details
without a friend request. Let them in. They’ll get a flavor for so much
of the richness that a resume simply cannot provide.

4. Review books on Amazon.

This is an underutilized gem. Amazon has a wonderful reviewing

community, and reviews you post there under your real name have
pretty decent search engine results. One thing that’s hard to gauge
from a static list of activities is a person’s intellectual depth and
passion for learning new things. Curious, interested people are
people employers want to hire. Everyone does a few classes and
clubs, but how many people read interesting books and take the time
to write a review? It’s a good practice in general for your writing and
thinking skills, and it really gives you an edge in demonstrating your
interests and abilities.

5. Build something.

Anything. Outcomes are more valuable than inputs. Products are

more valuable than paper. Everyone can list activities they’ve done
from date X to date Y. But what did it result in? What did you create?
The ability to build and “ship” something is rare and valuable. Most
people get stuck thinking about the article they want to write,
the app they want to build, the event they want to run, the group
they want to launch, or the painting they want to do. It takes guts,
discipline, humility, and grit to actually finish it. Think of projects

HOW TO GET ANY JOB YOU WANT 20

you care about that have a tangible, demonstrable result you can put
out there for the world to see (another great use of your personal
website). Saying “I worked here” is so much less powerful than
showing “I built this.” Showing beats telling, so find more things you
can show.

If these sound like interesting ideas but you’re a little overwhelmed,

take them one at a time. And, of course, you can join Praxis, where we
have one-on-one coaching and an intensive educational experience
focused on helping you learn how to do these things and do them
well.

HOW TO GET ANY JOB YOU WANT 21

5 COLLEGE AND CAREER FALLACIES
YOUNG PEOPLE SHOULD AVOID BY
ISAAC MOREHOUSE
It’s possible you’re preparing for an economy that no longer exists.
Let’s explore five common myths and mistakes when it comes to
getting educated, building a resume, landing a job, and starting off on
the right foot in the professional world.

Fallacy #1: You can’t turn down “free” opportunities

Things too good to resist can be dangerous.

So many young people suffer through stuff they don’t like with
no clear future benefit just because everyone else calls it a great
opportunity, or something they’d be crazy to turn down. “If you get
in to an Ivy, you go!”, or, “If Goldman offers you a job, you take it!”, or,
“If your parents will pay for this expensive education, you can’t walk
away from that free experience!”.

But it’s not free. Every action has an opportunity cost – what other
things you’re giving up in order to do it – and money is the least
important. “Free” comes with strings attached, just like your parents
money. Most unhappy young students and workers are unhappy
because they feel like they can’t turn down something someone
offered them. You can. In fact, you probably should.

The more skin you have in the game, the more likely you are to
succeed. Watch students who are paying their own way through a
school or educational program.

HOW TO GET ANY JOB YOU WANT 22

Watch people who pay to go to conferences or professional
development trainings out of their own rather than their companies
pocket. Consider books you buy for yourself vs. those gifted to you.
Which do you get more out of?

There’s a reason Bruce Wayne couldn’t climb out of the prison until
he tried it without the rope. There’s a reason Vegas is better than
experts at predicting sports outcomes. When you have something
of your own to lose, you sharpen your focus and perform your best.
Place a bet on yourself. Put yourself in positions where you stand to
lose or gain based on your failure or success.

Don’t do things you don’t like doing just because they are “free”. It
can tether you to the expectations of others and make you a worse
decision maker.

Make it a goal to become independent of the goodwill of others and

dependent on your own success as soon as possible, even if that
means turning down opportunities others would salivate over. They
don’t have to live your life. You do.

Fallacy #2: You major matters

What you know matters. What you study in school not so much.
(With the exception of legally required majors for heavily regulated
industries).

All the most valuable things you’ll learn in life won’t come from a
classroom. How to walk, talk, drive, use Google, navigate social
situations, and creatively solve problems are learned by doing. The
most important ideas you’ll deal with are more likely to come from
your own experience, reading, and discussing than from assignments.
You can’t outsource the development of knowledge to a department,

HOW TO GET ANY JOB YOU WANT 23

program, or credential.

Studies and majors won’t automatically grant you useful knowledge,

nor will they provide a deep and rich network. We all need one. A
pool of people with whom we’ve established social capital, and who
we can work with and call on for resources, expertise, and support
is indispensable. It’s not uncommon for a university experience
to provide you with some friends and future associates, but never
assume just being around a bunch of other students with similar
interests is enough. That’s a recipe for building a horizontal network,
not a vertical one. You need both.

A network of people mostly the same age with mostly the same
interests at mostly the same skill and experience level is a start, but
only a very small start. You need to step outside the institutional
setting and build a network that includes retired pros, middle-aged
managers, young investors, old experts, and an array of people up
and down the world of enterprise across a diverse set of industries.

Fallacy #3: “Leadership” is a skill

In the real world product beats paper every time.

I read a lot of resumes from people who clearly obsess over

them. They are spattered with a diverse array of activities and list
vague skills like, “Leadership”, and “Integrity”. These don’t indicate
anything but an obsession with credentials and titles. You’ve got to
demonstrate value creation.

Resumes and degrees are signals. Their only purpose is to let you
broadcast that you pass some minimum bar of intelligence and
ability. They can’t do much more, and increasingly, they don’t even do
well at that minimum signal. Activities are not outcomes. Anyone can

HOW TO GET ANY JOB YOU WANT 24

join a club or be named treasurer. Few can actually create value in a
demonstrable way. The latter crushes the former every time.

Can you show something you’ve actually “shipped”? Do you have an

easily verifiable reputation for getting stuff done? Show, don’t tell.
Show them the website you built. Show them the number of new
page likes your Facebook ad campaign generated. Let them see the
customers you served, the money you raised, the newsletter you
produced, or the app you launched.

Whether any of these tangible creations succeeded is far less

important than whether you finished them. Everyone can sign up for
stuff and spout about ideas.

Everyone can pass a class. Very few can deliver results on time.
Almost no one can conceive an idea and bring it to life without being
forced to be some authority figure.

Focus less on the resume and more on the product.

Fallacy #4: There is one right path

Most likely your future job doesn’t exist yet. Don’t stress about it, this
is a good thing.

It’s ridiculously painful to decide what your calling in life is, and what
educational and career steps you must take to live it.

Relax. There isn’t a single path that, if missed, will doom you forever.
You’re travelling to a largely unknown destination.

How can you plan for that? Simple: don’t try to do what you love, just
try to avoid what you don’t.

HOW TO GET ANY JOB YOU WANT 25

Make a list of things you really don’t like, aren’t good at, and don’t
even really want to be good at. Anything not on that list is fair game.
Go try it. When you discover through experience more things you
dislike, add them to the list. Pretty soon the field of viable options
will begin to narrow. Any step within that field is a step in the right
direction.

Fallacy #5: You are an employee

Machines and software are better employees than humans. So what.

You’ve got one amazing advantage: humans are wonderfully creative

and adaptive. Use it. You can’t afford the employee mindset, where
you simply specialize, follow orders, and expect your company to do
the heavy lifting when it comes to your financial support, happiness,
and reputation. You are your own firm, wherever your paycheck may
come from.

You’ve got to think like an entrepreneur.

Take ownership of the company vision, whether you created it or not.

Understand that you’re not just laying bricks, but building a cathedral.
Ask questions. Look for ways to improve, even things outside of your
department or direct control. Do one thing to add value to yourself
and your company every single day.

This doesn’t mean you should ever consider yourself too good for old
fashioned grunt work. Ask any entrepreneur if they’ve ever done their
own data entry or toilet scrubbing. They have. It does mean you have
to adopt a big-picture mindset and don’t wait for assignments, but
look for ways to create value. Whenever possible, just do them rather
than asking permission.

HOW TO GET ANY JOB YOU WANT 26

As the market changes demand for whatever specialized skills you
have may grow or shrink. The one thing that will always be in demand
is creative problem solvers who think big and act swiftly.

Conclusion

What does combating all these myths have in common? You can’t
wait around for other people to confer status, knowledge, or success
on you.

You’ve got to take the reins and build your own education and career,
and it all begins with a mindset shift.

A QUICK TIP FOR INTERVIEWS BY

ISAAC MOREHOUSE
It’s not about getting it right, it’s about getting to know each other.

When asked a question in an interview the instinctive reaction is

to scan your brain for the “right” answer. The one that is truthful,
but also most likely to give what the interviewer wants to hear.
Interviewees search for subtlety or hidden meanings in the question,
or ways in which the most obvious response might not do the trick.
Relax, you’re over-thinking it.

Let me give just one example. I often ask an interview question

that presents two types of people. I describe the extremes on
both ends of a continuum, then I ask which end of the continuum
the interviewee falls closer to. No one, and I mean no one, simply
responds, “I’m definitely closer to X”. Everyone says something like,
“I’m probably closer to X, but I understand the importance of Y, so I

HOW TO GET ANY JOB YOU WANT 27

try to balance it and in situations where Y is really important.” It’s a
boring response. It tells me little about the interviewee except that
they fear giving a wrong answer. The thing is, there is no wrong
answer. It’s not an absolute question, just a relative question about
general tendencies. It’s not even about discovering the tendency
itself as much as it is the level of self-knowledge and self honesty.

Most people actually know pretty quickly, but they pause and give a
hedged answer, so as not to appear extreme. It ends up making the
whole thing very un-enlightening for both parties.

Here’s a trick that I think improves the outcome of interviews: when

faced with such questions, imagine you are being asked by a friend in
a purely social context, because they genuinely want to get to know
you. If a friend asked you, “Are you more of a thinker than a feeler?”,
or, “Are you more action biased or analysis biased?” how would you
answer, if your goal was for them to really understand and know the
real you? Do likewise in an interview.

Remember, an interview is not just a way to rattle off a checklist of

specific skills and experiences. A resume or LinkedIn profile can
do that. It’s a chance to let the interviewer get to know you, your
personality, what motivates and makes you tick, what you do and
don’t enjoy. It’s also a chance for you to get to know them and their
company in the same way. The goal is not to get it right so they pick
you, but to get to know them and let them get to know you, so that if
it’s a good match, it will almost seem inevitable.

HOW TO GET ANY JOB YOU WANT 28

WHY YOU SHOULD WORK FOR FREE
BY JEFFREY TUCKER
With young people nearly shut out of the market by recession
and regulation, I would like to suggest the unthinkable: young
people should work for free wherever they can and whenever they
can. The reason is to acquire a good reputation and earn a good
recommendation. A person who will give you a positive reference on
demand is worth gold, and certainly far more than the money you
might otherwise earn.

Many of the essays in my book Bourbon for Breakfast turn out to

have forecasted both the current mess and this solution. But first
let me tell a story of two cases in point, the first an example of the
worst possible kind of worker, and the second an example of brilliant
foresight.

The first case comes from a job I had in my teens. I was standing
around with a few other employees in a clothing shop. The boss
walked by and said to my co-worker: “please straighten these ties on
this table.” My co-worker waited until the boss walked away and then
muttered under his breath: “I’m not doing that for minimum wage.”

That comment seared right through me, and I thought about it a

very long time. The worker was effectively asking for money up
front before working, even though he was employed to do things
like straighten ties. This was even worse than insubordination. He
had this idea that the value he contributes to the firm should never
exceed the value of the money he is earning. If that must be true, one
wonders why anyone should ever hire him.

HOW TO GET ANY JOB YOU WANT 29

The goal of every employer is to gain more value for the firm from
workers than the firm pays out in wages; otherwise, there is no
growth, no advance, and no advantage for the employer. Conversely,
the goal of every employee should be to contribute more to the
firm than he or she receives in wages, and thereby provide a solid
rationale for receiving raises and advancement in the firm.

I don’t need to tell you that the refusnik didn’t last long in this job.

In contrast, here is a story from last week. My phone rang. It was the
employment division of a major university. The man on the phone
was inquiring about the performance of a person who did some site
work on Mises.org last year. I was able to tell him about a remarkable
young man who swung into action during a crisis, and how he worked
three 19-hour days, three days in a row, how he learned new software
with diligence, how he kept his cool, how he navigated his way with
grace and expertise amidst some eighty different third-party plugins
and databases, how he saw his way around the inevitable problems,
how he assumed responsibility for the results, and much more.

What I didn’t tell the interviewer was that this person did all this
without asking for any payment. Did that fact influence my report
on his performance? I’m not entirely sure but he probably sensed in
my voice my sense of awe toward what this person had done for the
Mises Institute. The interviewer told me that he had written down
15 different questions to ask me but that I had answered them all
already in the course of my monologue, and that he was thrilled to
hear all these specifics. The person was offered the job. This worker
had done a very wise thing. He earned a devotee for life.

The harder the economic times, the more employers need to know
what they are getting when they hire someone. The job applications
pour in by the buckets, all padded with degrees and made to look as

HOW TO GET ANY JOB YOU WANT 30

impressive as possible. It’s all just paper. What matters today is what
a person can do for a firm. The résumé becomes pro forma but not
decisive under these conditions. But for a former boss or manager to
rave about you to a potential employer? That’s worth everything.

Sadly, many young people who can’t get jobs have no work experience
to show for themselves at all. They have been wildly misled all their
lives about the great glories that await anyone who “stays in school”
and gets great grades. There are innumerable aerospace engineers,
mathematicians, and even lawyers who are in this situation, to
say nothing of sociologists, historians, and people with degrees in
communications and marketing.

Adding to the problem today is the burden of student loans. Kids are
graduating today with six figures in debt that they will immediately
be forced to service if they accept employment. But with no
prospects outside Wal-Mart and Starbucks, they opt to stay in
school and get yet another degree, hoping all the while that the labor
market will turn around. This is a terrible trap. They structured their
lives around the speculation that a high-paying job awaits following
graduation. But there is no such thing. A low-paying job isn’t even
enough to pay the rent plus debt service.

It was a very bad speculation. Their dreams are being killed by a

desperately tight labor market for anyone without work experience
or any kind of work reference at all. Under these conditions,
the solution is to gain that thing of highest value. That means
volunteering. The state can’t come after you to start paying the
student loan debt, and yet you gain people will become your
benefactors later.

HOW TO GET ANY JOB YOU WANT 31

Where to volunteer? A non-profit such as a church or educational
group would be fine. But also fine might be a local plant nursery, lawn
service, mail house or printer, or even at a law firm. You can make an
application informally but be clear that you want no payment. If you
are accepted (not a foregone conclusion), set hours for yourself and
stick with them. Make yourself super useful, super dependable. Get
to know as many people as possible. Explain that you are working
only for the experience, which you value. Do this for six months up to
a year. Then you will have something interesting and wonderful to tell
future employers about.

A time will come when one of the people who came to know you will
receive a phone call. They will be asked their opinion of you and your
work. That’s when the whole of your life can change for the better.
Is that six months to one year of volunteer work worth it at that
moment? It is worth everything.

On the other hand, you can spend your life refusing to straighten ties
because you aren’t paid enough to do that. That person will never be
paid to do anything.

LEARN MORE ABOUT PRAXIS

If you want to take the reins and create your own education and if
you have any entrepreneurial urges, I encourage you to apply for
Praxis. Grab your phone or laptop and check out
www.discoverpraxis.com to learn about the intensive 12-month
program designed for young people just like you. This program
will equip you with a world class network, teach you the skills of
entrepreneurship, and give you real world experience in a real job. It
just might be the spark you’ve been looking for.

HOW TO GET ANY JOB YOU WANT 32

HOW TO GET ANY JOB YOU WANT edited by DEREK MAGILL

HOW TO GET ANY JOB YOU WANT 33