The Magic (and Math) of Getting a Job

Optical Illusions in the job hunt

We’ve all seen optical illusions before - and they exist in the job hunt, too. Try this one: “summer has started”. For those still job hunting, the illusion is that there’s no more time left to get an internship or job. Then decisions are made not to try, or to double down on summer academics. Meanwhile, the start of summer was just a bit optical illusion.

This summer, I say let the illusion work in your favor. And if you’re a fan of magic, let the magic work in your favor, too. With so many companies out there, all needing to solve problems, the opportunities to get hired are endless. When action is taken by you, the job hunter, things happen unexpectedly all the time in the job hunt which simple math does not explain.

Try this one: messaging someone with a nice script result in suddenly getting invited to an interview. All you did was send a quality templated message and an...

Why you shouldn’t be afraid of meeting people on the job hunt

The excitement of meeting new people has got to be probably the thing that makes work-life interesting.

Finding new friends and colleagues should be easy, so what is it about reaching out to new people that is so scary when we know that's what we want to do anyway? 

You need to change your mind from: 

“Hey, no one would reach out to me or be willing to contact me.”

>>> TOWARDS >>> 

“Now I'm going to change my mind and try something new.”

It’s time to change your mind on this! 

One of the aspects of the StuartSystem is that all of my courses are focused on us generating our own job hunt data -  not being so quick to believe this or that negative thought which data won’t support. 

Let's go out and collect some data that really matters - like having a sequence of messages that you can depend on to start networking or following...

If you “love data”, start by loving your own job hunt data

Are you interested in data and data analytics or doing investments and crunching numbers? If you are, you're interested in data, but one thing that people don't ever consider is the data that supports their own opinions and their own ideas about things. 

Just take a moment the next time you have a stressful thought about your job hunt and ask yourself: “do I have data that supports that opinion?” 

I’m going to be that you don’t. 

Let me give you a really simple example. 

There is a person who I think wouldn't want to talk to me. I reached out once to that person over LinkedIn and they never responded. I conclude, “people must not wanna talk to me”. 

This is one data point. How often does one data point reflect a population? (and how often do people get busy, miss messages, or prefer you to follow up over email?)

It’s interesting in the job hunt:...

Learn The In and Out's of Career Coaching

What Is One-On-One Coaching?

One-on-one coaching is focused on you. It’s about helping you achieve clarity in your job hunt and then helping you stick with a plan - both identifying what the career goal is - and then working with you step-by-step to achieve it.

A simple example: how best to organize your time? Recently I worked with Harry to help him figure this out, and what a well-organized morning looks for him now: 

Here’s what we solved for:  How to get the most out of each day? What if you’ve got BOTH classes AND a job hunt to attend to? 

Since job hunting is a sustained daily effort, now he knows when and where in his Monday and Tuesday mornings to work on things. 

It doesn’t matter if you are an aspiring data scientist with the Big Four, or you want to work with a nonprofit organization in marketing OR if you want to work in an investment bank: you can get those great jobs and it...