All That I Know About Job-hunting I Learned from ... The Apprentice ??

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All That I Know About Job-hunting I Learned from ...
The Apprentice ??
November 18 - November 24, 2004

Parachute Newsletter
by Richard N. Bolles

No, I’m just kidding. Sort of.

Truth is, I don't watch TV much. I do hear gossip about this TV series or that, from time to time, but basically they go their way and I go mine. They come. They go. And, so do I.

But then last January 8, along came a series that my friends told me I just had to see. It was called The Apprentice, and described itself variously as The Ultimate Job Hunt, or The 17 Week Job-Hunt, or whatever. Inasmuch as The Job-Hunt is the field in which I have toiled or danced for the past 35 years, of course I did watch the series.

So did a lot of other people. The Apprentice - - now in its second season, hence: The Apprentice 2 - - has been wildly successful. It was the most watched show on television the first week that it launched. It has continued to enjoy ratings that advertisers love. It's so valuable to NBC that the network moved it to a new day when it looked like The Apprentice would get trounced by "American Idol." Its audience is made up of young, ambitious, upwardly mobile young people, plus your basic Survivor ‘target population’: millions of people with their nostrils still flaring, hungering for more elimination contests, grief and rejection

It’s a huge hit. To give you an idea of how huge: during its first season (January 8 – April 15, 2004) an average of 20.7 million people watched each week. It was NBC’s #1 series of the season. In its second series, the show has a lower viewership (15.7 million a couple of weeks ago) but that’s still a lot of people.

It’s category is entertainment. After all, its Mark Burnett. And, Donald Trump. It's Survivor - - in a new dress: set in the jungle of the business world. It’s two teams - - 16 contestants in its first season, 18 in Apprentice 2, competing against each other, with one team losing, one contestant eliminated, at the end of each episode. And the last to be left standing, is the winner of The Big Prize, a long-lasting (maybe even lifetime) job, paying six-figures, with The Donald and his organization. It’s Donald Trump himself saying, to some hapless contestant at the end of every episode, “You’re fired.”

But, the show isn’t pure entertainment. It’s edutainment -- entertainment mingled with some education in part. The Apprentice is always teaching, teaching, teaching, whether it intends to, or not. After all, these contestants are real people, facing real problems and challenges. As you watch the teams being set the task of, say, remodeling a house so as to raise its appraised value, you have to think to yourself, How would I have done this?

As I said, it is partly education. Unhappily, it’s education primarily by bad example, and by way of warning. The Apprentice’ teachings are mostly in the form of “here is what not to do”. So, I’ve turned that around, and my summary here is in the form of what you should do, if you’re looking for a job.

Here is all I have learned, or re-learned, from watching The Apprentice:

1. Never Have Just One Target. A really good job hunt is one where the job hunter, from the beginning, has alternative "targets," which is to say, alternative employers, in mind to choose between, ranked in order, so if the top one doesn't pan out, they can turn to the second. And then to the third. And the fourth.

Unhappily, in The Apprentice, the one and only target is a job with Donald Trump.

2. Treat the Whole Job Hunt as a Research Project From Beginning To End. There are two questions to be answered in any really good job hunt, once you’ve chosen a target: The first is obvious: Do they want me? But the second is equally important: Do I want them?

A pioneer in the job hunt field, Dr. Nathan Azrin, was the first to observe that hiring is more like the dating game than it is like buying a new car. In the hiring process, as in the dating game, both parties get to say whether this is someone they want to spend the rest of their life with.

If you are conducting a good job hunt, the would-be employer is always on trial with you, just as you are always on trial in the eyes of the employer. It’s a two week street. You thought this was your dream employer. Maybe he is. Maybe he’s not. Therefore, every new encounter (and that includes the hiring interview or interviews) with him or her should be another part of learning whether or not you want to work for them..

Unhappily, in The Apprentice, the question, “do I still think this is the job that fits me best?” is never even asked. It is assumed that if it is with Donald Trump, the job has got to be fantastic.

3. Always be an information-gatherer. A really good job hunt is one where job hunters have taken time to research the job they are seeking. - - on every step of the way If you hire a sub-contractor, you should ask a lot of questions first. When assigned a new project, a little information-gathering first before taking action, is mandatory. .

Unhappily, in The Apprentice, fools rush in, where angels fear to tread. They see themselves as men and women of action, rather than first researching the task at hand. And the ultimate question, “do I still think this is the job that fits me best?” is never even asked. It is assumed that if it is with Donald Trump, the job has got to be fantastic.

4. Don't Think of Yourself as 'A Job Beggar. A really good job hunt is one where the candidates think of themselves as "resource persons" rather than as "job beggars." They approach an employer in order to offer themselves as a resource for the tasks that employer needs to have done, rather than as one who is desperate for just any old job there.

Since the candidates on "The Apprentice" don't know what the tasks of the Ultimate Job will be, it's impossible to act as anything but job beggar. True, the candidates might guess that the tasks will involve selling, hiring, advertising and negotiating/buying, but they can't be sure. They are essentially shadowboxing in the dark.

5. While Job-Hunting, Be Aware of Who Your Competitors Are. Competitors? Who has competitors? Well, you do - - if you’re job-hunting, or soon will be. Your competitors are other job-hunters who are going after the same job as you are.

It was discovered quite some time ago that the most successful job hunts are conducted by people who are job-hunting with other job hunters. The concept was invented by Dr. Azrin (again), and is called "The Job Club." It has been widely copied ever since. The idea is that if you and others are job hunting, you could and should band together, tell each other what kind of job you are looking for (in detail), and enlist the ideas and contacts of those other job hunters (just as they enlist yours). It's the old "one hand washes the other" theory of human relationships. It works, and it works well, because all the job hunters are looking for quite dissimilar jobs.

So far, so good. But, what we have in The Apprentice is a warped, fun- house-mirror version of this idea. These are not people trying to help one another find complementary jobs. These are 18 people -- nine on the Apex team, and nine on the Mosaic team – all of whom are after the same job and with the same employer. Team members may be pretending to work together with each other toward each episode's goal, but in the end they must do their best to eliminate each other. If you have no idea what I'm talking about, because you never watch, just remember the principle in real life: Job hunters or candidates work best as a team or job club. On such a team, you need others' help; they need yours, if all are to emerge not only with a job but also with their humanity intact.

Incidentally, the thing about this series that I found most amusing was something Donald Trump said when he appeared on "The Tonight Show" at the end of the first season. He was explaining to Jay Leno that the producers had told him The Apprentice: The Ultimate Job Hunt would only require three hours of his time each week. Instead, he complained, it was turning out to be more like 30 hours per week. I laughed out loud. Apparently, even bosses need to do more research before they agree to something.
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