Job Descriptions are Holding You Back

Think of a job description as a square hole that a company wants filled.

All of our lives we’ve been taught to cater to these job descriptions. That’s why you tailor your resume to make it look like you're the perfect fit. You strive for those extra credentials that will make you "stand out." You go to the right schools to be the perfect candidate.

And then comes a recession, and you may be 99% the perfect fit for a job, but someone else fits better. You are told over the phone that out of a thousand candidates, they only offered ten positions and all accepted. Of course they accepted.

Surely this is enough to make you angry. You’ve spent your entire life working hard in good schools, holding jobs and going to school at night, honing your skills, honing your resume to fit the job description that Corporate America puts on their websites.

Waiting for Corporate America to give you a chance is self-demeaning. Behind that web-site, behind the lavish corporate lobby is a person, aged anywhere between 25 and 35, saying yes or no. You are nothing more than a number. He doesn’t know who you are. He doesn’t understand the intangibles that you would bring the firm. You’re just another desperate face, assuming someone sees your face, trying your hardest to be what they want you to be.

I’m going to suggest that you forget about job descriptions and just be you. Stop begging firms to let you in. If you’re already seasoned in your industry and a firm won’t let you in, take their clients! You can give their clients more attention, and you can do it for a cheaper price. If you’re not a seasoned player yet, think wide. What venture can you start or join? What do you like to do? Corporate America won’t have you? Too bad for them. Go make something happen ON YOUR OWN.

By the way, there’s no shame in holding a crappy job while your working on getting other things going. Don’t believe the people who say you have to “dive in full time or don’t do it at all.” The reality is that you still need to eat while other things develop.



This will be my last entry for a while. I may write some here and there, but the flow of a new post once a week is going to stop. A couple of side projects, like I was talking about above, have started to come to life and require massive amounts of attention. I enjoy writing so I won’t be gone forever. Thanks for reading.

Competition vs Collaboration

I had the pleasure of hearing Derek Neighbors, of Gangplank, and Kristie Wells speak on a panel at SXSW about their philosophy on collaborating with others. Someone in the audience asked the panel, "at what point is it okay to tell others about my business ideas."  The fear being that someone might run off with them and make a lot of money.

Kristie Wells answered that if you wouldn't have the person over to dinner at your house, then be cautious.

Derek had a decidedly different answer.
Know what you want,
know where you’re going,
and always look for people who can help you along the way.

Then the panel asked the audience to turn to someone they didn't know and introduce themselves. Afterwards the panel asked if any connections had been made. A guy close to the front stood up. "Yeah, this guy is in my field and he's exactly who I needed to meet at this conference."  Everyone loved this.

My opinion lies somewhere in the middle. Be selective with whom you share vital details, but spread the word about the mission you're on. With tools such as Linkedin, networking is more powerful than ever. But there are plenty of sharks out there, especially when money is involved.

Your Tribe is Shrinking, You Have Three Options, Choose Wisely

You share 99.99% of your genes with people who lived 10,000 years ago. These people were hunter-gatherers. They banded into tribes of thirty to fifty, and could support no more. Everyone sought food, every day. They stayed lean and mobile to go where the food was.

Today, 99.99% of your genes are still in a tribe looking for food. But things have changed. There is abundance. People can remain in one place now. There is time to organize and specialize. And tribes have grown much larger. Your company is a tribe, accumulating wealth by meeting a market demand.

But over the past few years the food has been drying up in your area. Your tribe was built on the assumption of abundance, so they are unable to move. To survive they kick people out of the tribe. You are faced with three choices.

• You can live in fear of being sacked and continue with your tasks of seeking ever scarcer food.
• You can make a dash for another tribe.
• You can strike out on your own, seeking food without a tribe.

Tough decision. There are a couple of things to keep in mind. Your tribe does not act in your best interest. Many other tribes are also shrinking. And the data says that a first time entrepreneur has a 20% chance at success.

Who knows which option will work. But there’s only one where you are the master of your own destiny.

Which Kind of Entrepreneur are You? - A Visual Exercise

Do you consider yourself an entrepreneur? If you do, are you an analyzer or a doer? Probably both, yes? There are two extremes in the entrepreneur world. There are the people who have great ideas, but research and plan until the idea is rationalized into the “this won’t work” trash bin. These are the “aim, aim, aim,” people. Then there are the extreme doers, who dive into initiatives without proper due diligence. This second group is the “ fire, fire, fire,” group.

Confirmation bias allows an aggressive entrepreneur to rationalize greater expected returns and lower costs of failure. Therefore, they are more likely to pull the trigger sooner in the research process. At the same time, an over-analyzing entrepreneur will rationalize themselves into lower expected returns and greater costs of failure. They will spend much more money on research before going to market.  Let’s look at three graphs showing the decision process of three market actors; the “fire, fire, fire,” the “fire, aim, fire,” and the “aim, aim, aim.” The purple square is the point of indifference.

In large fixed and variable costs industries, the car business for example, somewhere between “Fire! Aim! Fire!” and “Aim. Aim. Aim.” is clearly the way to go. Mistakes are extremely costly. But with the low fixed and variable costs of much of the social technology industry, “fire, aim, fire,” is the way to go. Here are two reasons;

• Low barriers to entry allow anyone and their dog to put business models to the test. Thus speed to market is critical.

• The costs of failure are low enough to allow an entrepreneur to quickly recover and try something else.  This means that you have tons of competing initiatives any any given point.

At the end of the day, the power lies in knowing yourself.

Which type of entrepreneur are you? And is that the winning strategy?