I spent 12 months going on over 50 interviews at places like Google, Uber, Twitter, and more. These are the exact formulas I used to land interviews and offers at these companies, in some cases, without any connections. This resulted in landing the job of my dreams along with a 200% bump in salary. Now I ‘m going to teach you how to do the same! The Worst Feeling Looking for a new job? Maybe even the job? Raise your hand if this has happened to you… After weeks of searching you finally found it. The one. The day-to-day is perfect, the salary is a big step up, the hours are flexible, and the benefits are amazing (not to mention it’s less than 10 minutes from your place!). You head over to LinkedIn looking for connections and….they are all 3rd degree with your mutual being that weird kid from high school you haven’t spoken to in 8 years. Ugh… We’ve all been there – the feeling of defeat washing over you before you’ve even had the chance to get started. So what do you do next? What anyone else the 21st century would do – Google it! “Go to large meetups and network with as many people as you can!” “Join professional organizations with like minded people in your field!” “Just email people and ask!” These are all suggestions that popped up when I searched for “how to get a job” (man, most career advice on the internet is really bad). You know where you won’t find top performers looking to hire the best talent for Google, Facebook, or Apple? At networking events and meetups. They just don’t have time for that, and neither do you. Most of the people at these events are not very influential within their industrial niches and therefore aren’t going to do much for our cause. [Image: How To Get A Job Anywhere With No Connections - Networking Event] Which one of you is Tim Cook? What about emailing and asking? Well, how would you feel if some stranger emailed you and just asked for a job? You’d probably laugh them all the way to your spam folder. You probably also noticed that I didn’t mention submitting your resume online into what I affectionately called the “Black Hole of Doom” (where resumes go to die). That sounds harsh, I know, but how many people do you know submitting 20 applications online hear back? It’s simply not a good use of your time. So how do you get your foot in the door? In this article I’m going to show you the exact process you can use to get a job interview at your dream company even if you don’t know a SINGLE person there. How do I know it works? Because these are the exact steps I used to get job interviews and offers at companies like Google, Uber, Twitter, and more. Referrals Are The Most Effective Way To Get Hired If looking for mutual connections was your first thought when looking for career opportunities, then you’re on the right track. Referrals are easily the most effective way to secure a job interview and land the offer: 40% of hires come from referrals, the next largest channel is via career sites at 21% (almost half as many!) Referrals get hired in an average of 3 weeks while other applicants take up to 7 weeks Referrals get paid more on average than cold applicants [Image: How To Get A Job Anywhere With No Connections - Jobvite Referrals Infographic] 40% of hires come from referrals (courtesy of jobvite.com) Ok, all of those things sound great to me, so how do we make it happen? You said you don’t know anyone at this company right? Not to worry, I’ve got you covered. Want To Land A Job Referral In The Next 14 Days? My free Job Referral Toolkit covers all of the tools and steps you need to make connections and land a referral at your dream company. Click here to get the Job Referral Toolkit totally free! Part 1: How To Get A Job Interview When You Don’t Know A Single Person At The Company Ready? Let’s dive in. Know Your Role (And Find It!) The first step is having a solid idea of the specific role you are looking for, down to the company and title (if possible). Next, you need to make sure that role is available. For today, let’s assume that you want to be an Account Manager in the Technology B2B vertical at Google. Nice! Looks like a spot is open in New York (where you’re from in this case): [Image: How To Get A Job Anywhere With No Connections - Google Job Posting - Account Manager, New York, NY] Locate Potential Influencers Now you are going to find someone who not only knows about the role, but could potentially have an impact on hiring for it. Time to fire up LinkedIn. In the search bar, I want you to plug in the company name + all of the information I highlighted above (title, vertical/industry, preferred city). However, before you hit “Search,” we need to remember that you are looking for someone who can influence the hiring process. With that in mind, I usually use a title that is one level up from the position that I’m looking for. If you’re not familiar with title hierarchy structures in the corporate world, here is a quick guide (if you are already familiar with how titles are structured, feel free to skip this section): ~ Sidenote: A Brief Guide To Company Organizational Structures By Title ~ Every company has a hierarchy starting at the top with the CEO/Founder all the way down to the entry level employees. When researching companies, especially people to speak to within those companies, it helps to know where certain titles fit in the food chain. That way you can ensure you are talking to the right person. Here is a general list of titles that fits almost any company, starting at the top: C-­Level (CEO, CTO, CFO, COO, etc.) Vice President (VP) Director Senior Manager Manager Coordinator (Entry Level) Associates, Executives, and Seniors In many companies, the above titles have some sort of variation that allows for greater segmentation within that level. The most common forms of this are Associate, Executive, and Senior. Here is what those mean: Associate: this title is usually given to someone who is halfway between positions for some reason (maybe there is typically a 4 year gap between levels and they are 2 years in). A person with Associate in their title is usually one notch below a person with the original title. For example, an Associate Account Manager would most likely be one level below an Account Manager. Senior: ­this title is the more experienced version of an Associate. People with Senior in their title are usually one notch above the original title. For example, a Senior Account Manager would be one notch above an Account Manager. Executive: ­this title is usually given to people who are very senior, or around the level of Vice President. The two most common cases are Sales Executive/Account Executive (synonymous terms for a senior salesperson) or Executive Vice President who is two notches above a Vice President and one notch above a Senior Vice President. That should be all the info you need to make an educated decision around where people stand within the company you are researching! ~ End of Sidenote ~ Now that you’re familiar with the company structure, let’s get back to finding that influencer who can help you land a this job. Since we are looking for an Account Manager role, the next step up would be Senior Account Manager so your LinkedIn search would look like this: [Image: How To Get A Job Anywhere With No Connections - LinkedIn Search "Google Senior Account Manager B2B New York"] Our first result? A Senior Account Manager who works in B2B at Google – nailed it! [Image: How To Get A Job Anywhere With No Connections - Influencer On LinkedIn] Obtaining Contact Info Now, we’re going to reach out and set up an in-person meeting. What’s that? You don’t have their email address? I got you covered! Here are 3 strategies you can use to find almost anyone’s email address: LinkedIn This one is obvious, I know, but it’s a big time saver and definitely worth the 10 seconds it takes to check. On the person’s profile, right under their picture, there can be a button labeled “Contact Info” (I say “can be” because people have the option to remove it). Occasionally, people will have their email address listed right there – voila! If not, let’s move right along… Reverse Lookup Head over to Voila Norbert and enter the first and last name of the person you are searching for, as well as their company’s website. For example, if we were trying to find Larry Page’s email, our form would look like this: [Image: How To Get A Job Anywhere With No Connections - Voila Norbert Email Finder] Once it spits out their email you can confirm it using PeopleSmart or MailTester. Matching Formats If that doesn’t work, you can try finding someone else’s email at the company and use that format reverse engineering your target email address. For example, using Larry Page again, if I know that my buddy John Smith’s email is [email protected] then I can assume that Larry’s email is [email protected] (it’s not, sorry). The easiest way to get a hold of a company email address is to reach out to someone in sales or media because both of these departments usually have inbound lead forms and people on the other end ready to pounce on those emails. We can also use our LinkedIn method here and target salespeople. Salespeople almost always have their corporate email listed on their LinkedIn because it’s a free win for them. If someone is looking for their product and then finds them on LinkedIn, boom! They just got an effortless inbound lead. Once you have the format, you can use the same two resources (PeopleSmart or MailTester) to confirm your target email address. Research, Research, Research Now that you have your potential influencer, it’s time to do some research so you can effectively reach out and build that relationship! Start with the usual suspects – LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc. and look for common points of interest. To be honest, most people are better at this online research thing than I am, so I’ll get back to the meat here. One thing I will say is, don’t skimp! The more you get to know this person beforehand, the better your chances of landing a referral from them. Some people have said to me, “Austin, isn’t this a little weird? I feel like I’m kind of stalking this person.” I totally get it. However, this information is critical for quickly building a strong relationship and getting that referral! Also, in my experience, people tend to expect that you’ve done some research on them. The key is to understand what is kosher to bring up out of the blue and what isn’t. People are OK with you checking out their LinkedIn, but they may be a little weirded out if you mention that picture from Saturday’s Bar Crawl that you saw on Facebook. My general rule of thumb is this: if it exists on LinkedIn, it’s fair game to bring up. If you found it somewhere else (Twitter, Facebook, etc.) use a different method. For example, if I see that my influencer is a skiing fanatic, I may bring up that I went on a ski trip a few weeks beforehand. Sending The Email Now that you have your potential influencer and their contact info, it’s time to reach out. Not only is this one of the scarier parts of this process, it is also one of the most pivotal. To help you get past that hump, I’ve included the exact email script that I used to reach out to people. In this case, I’m reaching out to Tim who works at Google: Subject: Quick Question Hi Tim, My name is Austin and I currently work at Cultivated Culture. I was browsing through LinkedIn and came across your information – I hope you don’t mind me reaching out of the blue here. I saw that you have extensive experience in Google’s Technology B2B vertical and I’m very interested in learning more about that space. I would love to have the opportunity to run some questions by you, as well as tap into any advice you may have given your knowledge of the industry. I know that your time is extremely valuable so please don’t feel to need to respond in depth. If you do have 5 minutes to chat, I would really appreciate it. Best, Austin There are a few key points to the email above: Address the person you are emailing by name State who you are and make it personable Include some flattery that positions the person as an “expert” As for the subject, Fast Company did a study where they emailed 1,000 C-level executives from Fortune & Inc 500 companies. They found that the subject line “Quick Question” made up 66.7% of total replies. That was good enough for me so I tried it out and saw similar results. All of this said, the script is just a framework. You will most likely need to tweak your emails to fit the situation. When that time comes, I recommend checking out Sam Parr’s incredible guide on how to cold email like a boss (Sam has started conversations with Jeff Bezos and Brian Lee (aka Jessica Alba’s co-founder) via cold email!). It’s the same guide I used to help craft my email templates. Now hit Send! Prepare For Your Meeting In order to prepare, we have to know what we’re preparing for. The goal of your meeting is to position your influencer as an expert, make them feel special, and build a relationship. You will not and should not mention anything about the opening at their company. People innately enjoy helping others and if you follow the steps above, they will bring this up naturally. You will want to prepare a list of questions that gets them to open up about themselves and the company. I like to ask them several softballs to get things warmed up and then hit them with a few questions they are guaranteed to remember. Here is a quick set that I’ve had success with in the past (I’ve found the last one really seems to stick): I saw you worked at [Previous Companies]. How did you end up going from [First Industry] to becoming interested in [Current Company]? You hear a lot about [Current Company] in the news, but I’d love to hear more about why you love working there. What’s your favorite part? What is one totally unexpected lesson you’ve learned from working at [Current Company]? The “Million Dollar” Question Regardless of the questions you choose, there is one that you must always be sure to ask : “What is the biggest challenge your team is facing right now?” Really dig in here, get them to be specific. This information is going to be critical in helping you land a referral from this person, as well as getting the offer further down the road. Your Homework: Adding Value (In A Big Way) Okay, so you met with your influencer, things went great, and you identified a major pain point that the team is having. Now we’re going to focus on that last part. Over the next week you are going to research the crap out of your influencer’s problem. Then you are going to come up with a solution and draft up a proposal for how you would solve it. Your proposal should include: A summary of the problem (to illustrate that you understand their pain) A step-by-step framework of how you would solve this problem A brief outline of how your skill set positions you as an asset to implement that solution Truthfully, this process deserves a post of its own (I am drafting it now – stay tuned!) but this should give you a good idea of what you need to do. If you’re the type of person that likes concrete examples, check out this guerilla usability test Raghav Haran ran for Airbnb. Once you have all of this information, consolidate it into a Word document, head over to Upwork, and hire a graphic designer to make your proposal look amazing. If you’ve never hired on Upwork before, here is an amazing guide by Dave Nevogt on how to do it right. Following Up With Your Proposal Now we’re going to reach back out to our influencer with the proposal. Here’s the template I used: Hi [Influencer], Thanks again for taking the time out to chat last week! I spent a lot of time thinking about what you said regarding [team’s biggest challenge]. In fact, I created a short framework that should help you solve it! Please find that attached. If you have some time, I would love to chat about it in more detail. Please let me know if you have any questions, I’m looking forward to hearing your thoughts! Best, Austin It’s very important that you do not mention the open position in any of your emails or the proposal. Be patient and wait for their response. When they do get back to you, they will not only bring up the opening but they will ask you if you’re interested. Kindly accept and play it cool. You’re in! But What About My Resume & Cover Letter? Resumes and cover letters are definitely an important part of the job search, but people tend to place too much emphasis on them. If you’re following the steps in this article to build relationships and add value , your resume won’t matter nearly as much because your contact will already have a full understanding of the value that you bring to the table. That said, you should spend some time optimizing your job search materials so they’re ready to go when your contact offers to refer you in. To help make sure your resume is on point, check out my guide on writing resumes that will actually get you hired. That will give you a great foundation and you can build off of it with these articles on writing highly effective resume bullets, accurately conveying your skills on your resume, and writing a resume objective that will boost your chances of getting hired. Finally, this guide on writing cover letters will help you spin up a final draft in less than 30 minutes so you can move on to the next part of the process – interview prep. Want To Land A Job Referral In The Next 14 Days? My free Job Referral Toolkit covers all of the tools and steps you need to make connections and land a referral at your dream company. Click here to get the Referral Toolkit totally free! Part 2: How To Breeze Through The Interview Process Ok, now we’ve got the in. Our influencer passed along our resume to HR and they reached out to set up a phone screen. Once we get past that, we’ll be on to interviewing with the team, and then getting the job! Easy though, we still have a lot of work to do. [Insert Company Name] Interview Template Interviews can be daunting, especially at companies like Google, Amazon, or Uber. I’m sure you’ve read the horror stories about crazy questions they ask people like “Quick! How many golf balls can fit inside a school bus,” or, “how many gas stations are there in Manhattan?” The truth is, most of these companies have done away with those questions. They crunched the numbers and found that the answers didn’t correlate with high employee performance (shocker, I know). In fact, Google’s own Senior Vice President of People Operations called them a “complete waste of time.” These companies have since reverted back to the standard style of interviews, which is great for us because it makes it much easier to identify patterns. We can essentially “guess” what questions will be on the test and prepare answers that will blow our interviewers away (it works way better than it did in college, I swear). Here is the process I used to prepare for each interview: Nailing The Basics: Questions You’ll Get In Every Interview According to renowned career guru Penelope Trunk, one of the easiest ways to be a better interviewer is to prepare for the most obvious questions. You may be saying “well duh,” but you’d be surprised by how many people spread themselves too thin by trying to prepare answers to every possible question. 99% of the interviews you go on will follow the exact same template. If you can master the format, your confidence will skyrocket and you’ll be prepared for almost any situation you get thrown into. The Universal Job Interview Format: Tell me about yourself (your experience, why you are interested in this role, etc.) A mix of behavioral questions, which we’ll dive into shortly What questions do you have for me (the interviewer)? Let’s tackle each individually. Tell Me About Yourself! This is your first impression. More importantly, it’s the only part of the interview that you totally control. Do NOT rattle off your resume like a grocery list. In order to nail this part you need to craft an interesting story – your story. You want it to be concise (around 2-3 minutes) and you need to think about what you want to convey. I recommend: Choosing 2-3 themes to build your story around (for me, those themes were Persistence, Agility, and Success) Including quantitative metrics whenever possible Addressing the question of why you want to leave your current position (they are going to ask you this anyways, addressing it early shows that you’re aware it’s a concern of theirs and helps put them at ease) To help get you started, here is what my story looked like. To give you some context, I was a biology major who was interested in landing a job in digital marketing: Growing up, like most people, I wanted to be a doctor. I went to [college] where I majored in biology and planned my course to medical school. Not long after, I decided that pre-med wasn’t for me. I wanted to get into digital marketing, and I wanted to be in New York. I set my sights on this goal and created a plan that would get me there. In 2013, I graduated with my biology degree and took a job in medical device sales where I worked from 5:30am – 12:30pm covering surgical cases in the operating room. Then, every day, I would come home and study digital marketing until 8:00pm. In order to gain relevant experience, I got certified in Google Analytics & AdWords and created my own consulting firm that focused on using search engine marketing to generate leads for private golf communities. We were able to increase home sales by an average of 20% while reducing the cost per lead by around 10%. Armed with my new credentials, I began to look for positions in New York. Eventually, I was offered a position at my current company (a promotional analytics company in New York). During my tenure there I have grown my book of business by 467%, spearheaded the creation of an internal group dedicated to marketing the company on the internet, and helped close the 2nd largest deal in company history. However, the company has restructured several times since I was brought on. I’ve had 3 different managers over the past year, as well as 3 titles with different sets of responsibilities. I’m looking for something a bit more stable and has been somewhere that I have wanted to work since I got into this industry. I’m really excited to have this opportunity. Pro Tip: You are telling a story. Don’t be afraid to embellish a bit. I’m not saying you should lie or make up stories, but you want to sell yourself and you can bet your butt that your competition isn’t afraid to inflate their credentials. Kathryn Sollmann says it best, “we can all say anything [we want], but it just registers as “blah, blah, blah” until you wake someone up with impressive results.” Behavioral Questions Next up is the dreaded set of behavioral questions. The ones meant to tease out your thought process and your ability to be a “team player.” This is the part where our educated “guesses” are going to come in handy. The behavioral section is broken down into two parts that I call Standard Questions and Company Specific Questions. Let’s start with the former. Standard Questions You are going to be asked a variation of one, if not all, of these questions in every single interview you go to: Why do you want to work for us? Tell me about a time you exhibited leadership Tell me about a time where you had to work as a team Tell me about a time you’ve had to work with a difficult person, or difficult people Tell me about a time you failed Tell me about a time you overcame an obstacle Tell me about a time when you had success If you can answer these 6 questions, you could handle 9 out of 10 interviews with no other preparation and be totally fine. Just follow the same set of rules I mentioned above in the Tell Me About Yourself section: Craft a concise story Make sure to include quantitative metrics that illustrate your success Anticipate and address objections Company Specific Questions These are questions that fall in the middle of the 7 listed above and “why are man hole covers round?” Never fear though, we can anticipate these too. Head over to GlassDoor. If you’ve never heard of GlassDoor, it’s a great resource for any job seeker that includes salaries, reviews, and interview information for almost any company in the world. First, you are going to search for the position you’re applying for. In keeping with our theme, we’ll search for “Google” under Companies & Reviews: [Image: How To Get A Job Anywhere With NO Connections - Google Glassdoor] Next, we’re going to click on the “Interviews” Tab: [Image: How To Get A Job Anywhere With NO Connections - Google Interviews Tab] Then scroll down and click on “Filter Interviews” which will bring up some advanced settings. Here we’ll type in the title of the job we want (Account Manager, in this case) and the location (New York, NY). We’ll also select “Received Offer” because the people who didn’t receive offers tend to be slightly, ahem, biased: [Image: How To Get A Job Anywhere With No Connections - Candidate Interview Reviews] This will pull up a list of reviews from everyone who interviewed and received an offer for that position. The general comments are really helpful, but we want to focus on a section called Interview Questions towards the bottom. I usually comb through 10 – 15 of these and add all of the interview questions into a Word doc so I can answer them later: [Image: How To Get A Job Anywhere With No Connections - Account Manager Interview] Now you have your second set of questions to prepare for! What Questions Do You Have For Me? Finally, once they are done peppering you with questions, your interviewer will ask if you have any questions for them. In my opinion this is the most crucial part of the interview. Why? Because so many people neglect it. If you can ask some questions that are even slightly outside of the box, I’ve found that really sticks with the interviewer more than any other part of the meeting. After every interview I’ve been on, I asked for feedback. Without fail, the interviewer made a positive comment about the questions I asked. The good news for you is that I asked the same exact questions in every single one! Here they are: What is your favorite part about working here? What is the biggest challenge you are facing right now? Let’s say that, in one year, you are looking back on this hire. What has that person done to exceed expectations on every level? Ask about a current event (for example – I saw that [Competitor X] came out with this product. How do you see that affecting your business?) What is the most unexpected lesson you’ve learned while working at ? Tell me a little bit more about you, what do you like to do outside of work? The first four are fairly standard questions, but the last two really seal the deal. Don’t be surprised if you get a “wow, I’ve never been asked that – give me a second” when you drop the unexpected lesson. The final question opens up a personal dialogue with the interviewer that allows you to establish a connection that moves you up from “interviewer-interviewee” status to “personal conversation” status. Plus it will give you great content to put in your thank you email. Say Thank You! While we’re on the subject, be absolutely sure to send a thank you email to everyone you interviewed with. Also include a personal touch to each one (something that you gained from that last question). Many people I talk to say “but I don’t have their email Austin!” Ask for it!! At the end of every interview always, always ask for a business card or write down the person’s email in your notebook (you did bring a notebook, right??). If you do end up in that bucket, try using the techniques I outlined above for finding people’s emails and you should be fine. Want To Land A Job Referral In The Next 14 Days? My free Job Referral Toolkit covers all of the tools and steps you need to make connections and land a referral at your dream company. Click here to get the Referral Toolkit totally free! Part 3 – Following Up & What To Do If They Say No I Haven’t Heard Back In 3 Days! Whoa, whoa easy there. This is one of the most common mistakes I see from job applicants. I understand how nerve wracking it is to sit there and wait while everything is completely out of your hands. One of the toughest things I had to learn throughout my interview process was that, while this is a HUGE deal to you, it’s really just another agenda item on the hiring manager’s schedule. They will get back to you, and if they don’t? You don’t want to work for someone who doesn’t have the courtesy of replying to the people they do business with. So When Can I Send Them A Reminder? The rule of thumb is one business week. If you interviewed on a Tuesday, wait until the next Tuesday to email them (as JT O’Donnell says, never send a nudge on a Monday!). When you do, don’t push or be blunt. Keep it short and sweet: Hi [Interviewer], I hope you had a great week! I wanted to quickly follow up and see if there was anything else I could help with regarding the application process. If so, please let me know! Best, Austin That’s it. If they don’t respond to that after another 3-4 days, you have your answer and it’s time to move on. What Happens If They Say No? Ugh. The worst case scenario. Don’t get down just yet though, we’re not done here! I have this quality where I have trouble accepting “no” as an answer. When I was interviewing with Google, the initial screener told me that she wasn’t going to put me through because she “didn’t think I was qualified, and didn’t want to waste the team’s time.” I was not happy. So I sent her this: Hi [Recruiter], Thank you again for carving out the time to speak this afternoon. I really appreciate your feedback, and I wanted to add one final note: I completely understand your concerns regarding my experience with [skill]. You are correct that I didn’t have much experience with that at [previous company]. That said, this doesn’t stem from an inability to produce results, but rather a lack of opportunity to do so. While my experience on paper may not match up to the initial expectations of the position’s description, I have do have two qualities that work in my favor: I am an extremely efficient learner, and am also very effective at translating those learnings into practice. Second, I’m much more tenacious than your average individual. My career has hinged on these two qualities. I left college with no digital experience and a biology degree – all of my digital knowledge was obtained through self study. I spent 8 months selling myself without the on-paper experience to back it up. When I was finally given the opportunity to apply my knowledge in a business setting, I playing a critical role in landing the company’s 2nd largest deal in history. I am confident that I can have the same success in this role. I have the resources necessary to learn what I need in order to be successful at , and am prepared to do whatever it takes to make that happen. I understand that interview process is extremely challenging, and that only the top talent ends up with an offer letter at the end. I also believe that I am worthy of a shot at that letter. [Company] is known for hiring people who excel at the intangibles, as well the ability to learn new things and apply them to existing knowledge. That is my forte. I am not asking for an offer. I am simply asking for the opportunity to speak with the hiring manager to make my case for the position. I’m sure you will find the best person for the position, I would just like to have a legitimate shot at being that person. If you give me that chance, my next set of answers will not disappoint. Thank you again for your continued consideration. Best, Austin Nowww that may be a little aggressive… Ok, it was pretty aggressive. But she wrote me back an hour later and pushed me through to the next round! Mission accomplished. The moral of the story here is, don’t give up if you get a “No.” Try to identify why you were turned down and then send a note to hiring manager addressing those items (feel free to copy mine!). Now, What Are You Waiting For? There you have it. The exhaustive, step-by-step guide to landing an interview and then getting an offer from the company of your dreams. What are you waiting for? Get out there and start researching! If you have any questions at all, please feel free to reach out
wk- the ladders work 10 things smart people never say theladders.com/career-advice/ten-things-smart-people-never-say Looking for an inspiring way to start your day? Sign up for Morning Motivation! It’s our friendly Facebook robot that will send you a quick note every weekday morning to help you start strong. Sign up here by clicking Get Started! I’m not talking about shocking slips of the tongue, off-color jokes, or politically incorrect faux pas. These aren’t the only ways to make yourself look bad. Often it’s the subtle remarks — the ones that paint us as incompetent and unconfident — that do the most damage. No matter how talented you are or what you’ve accomplished, there are certain phrases that instantly change the way people see you and can forever cast you in a negative light. These phrases are so loaded with negative implications that they undermine careers in short order. “This is the way it’s always been done” Technology-fueled change is happening so fast that even a six-month-old process could be outdated. Saying this is the way it’s always been done not only makes you sound lazy and resistant to change, but it could make your boss wonder why you haven’t tried to improve things on your own. If you really are doing things the way they’ve always 11/07/2019 10 things smart people never say https://www.printfriendly.com/p/g/3TxfjN 2/3 morning. Will that work?” Instead of “I can’t run those numbers,” say “I don’t yet know how to run that type of analysis. Is there someone who can show me so that I can do it on my own next time?” “It’s not fair” Everyone knows that life isn’t fair. Saying it’s not fair suggests that you think life is supposed to be fair, which makes you look immature and naïve. If you don’t want to make yourself look bad, you need to stick to the facts, stay constructive, and leave your interpretation out of it. For instance, you could say, “I noticed that you assigned Ann that big project I was hoping for. Would you mind telling me what went into that decision? I’d like to know why you thought I wasn’t a good fit, so that I can work on improving those skills.” “That’s not in my job description” This often sarcastic phrase makes you sound as though you’re only willing to do the bare minimum required to keep getting a paycheck, which is a bad thing if you like job security. If your boss asks you to do something that you feel is inappropriate for your position (as opposed to morally or ethically inappropriate), the best move is to complete the task eagerly. Later, schedule a conversation with your boss to discuss your role in the company and whether your job description needs an update. This ensures that you avoid looking petty. It also enables you and your boss to develop a long-term understanding of what you should and shouldn’t be doing. “This may be a silly idea/I’m going to ask a stupid question” These overly passive phrases instantly erode your credibility. Even if you follow these phrases with a great idea, they suggest that you lack confidence, which makes the people you’re speaking to lose confidence in you. Don’t be your own worst critic. If you’re not confident in what you’re saying, no one else will be either. And, if you really don’t know something, say, “I don’t have that information right now, but I’ll find out and get right back to you.” “I’ll try” Just like the word think, try sounds tentative and suggests that you lack confidence in your ability to execute the task. Take full ownership of your capabilities. If you’re asked to do something, either commit to doing it or offer an alternative, but don’t say that you’ll try because it sounds like you won’t try all that hard. “This will only take a minute” Saying that something only takes a minute undermines your skills and gives the impression that you rush through tasks. Unless you’re literally going to complete the task in 60 seconds, feel free to say that it won’t take long, but don’t make it sound as though the task can be completed any sooner than it can actually be finished. 11/07/2019 10 things smart people never say https://www.printfriendly.com/p/g/3TxfjN 3/3 “I hate this job” The last thing anyone wants to hear at work is someone complaining about how much they hate their job. Doing so labels you as a negative person and brings down the morale of the group. Bosses are quick to catch on to naysayers who drag down morale, and they know that there are always enthusiastic replacements waiting just around the corner. “He’s lazy/incompetent/a jerk” There is no upside to making a disparaging remark about a colleague. If your remark is accurate, everybody already knows it, so there’s no need to point it out. If your remark is inaccurate, you’re the one who ends up looking like a jerk. There will always be rude or incompetent people in any workplace, and chances are that everyone knows who they are. If you don’t have the power to help them improve or to fire them, then you have nothing to gain by broadcasting their ineptitude. Announcing your colleague’s incompetence comes across as an insecure attempt to make you look better. Your callousness will inevitably come back to haunt you in the form of your coworkers’ negative opinions of you. Bringing it all together These phrases have a tendency to sneak up on you, so you’re going to have to catch yourself until you’ve solidified the habit of not saying them.......

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