By Jeff Altman, The Big Game Hunter

The news from football was focused on “deflate-gate” or “ball-ghazi” this week instead of the Super Bowl. Is there something job hunters can learn about cheating and playing by the rules from this? (From the archives)

So, you know, we’re approaching the Super Bowl next week in the United States, and this past week this huge sports scandal came about. And the scandal is being referred to—it’s got two nicknames. The primary one is “Deflategate.” Ooh! The other one, which I think is hysterical, is called “Ballghazi.”

The idea behind here is whether or not the New England Patriots football team that’s going to be playing in the Super Bowl next week did things to deflate footballs after they were initially inspected to bring them to a level of pressure lower than they should have been because it’s more comfortable for their quarterback.

Now, I have no idea as to whether this occurred, and I’m not going to even speculate on it. But I want to use it as a metaphor for certain things in job hunting, because I think there are always things that you can learn from sports.

Now, you know, let me just begin right off the bat by saying cheating is wrong. Whether it’s in football or in job hunting, if you exaggerate your knowledge, if you exaggerate your experience or abilities, it is the wrong thing to do. Ultimately, you are stealing from your employer. They will find out, become disappointed in you. It’s going to impact their organization.

And I know you don’t think that way, but, you know, as long as you’re accurate about what you know, I’ve got no problem with it. But it’s when people cram knowledge in that you know they’re going to forget, that suddenly my red flag goes off. And I’ve just heard too many stories from employers over the years where they’ve made mishires because the person crammed for an exam, in effect, and wound up cheating them for a period of time before they were—and I want you to hear this—before they were fired.

On the other hand, there’s the notion of playing by the rules. And I think a lot of people believe that in job search you need to play by the rules. But the rules are flexible.

You know, the biggest rule that people make the mistake of doing is applying through applicant tracking systems, applying through human resources, doing things through the front door, through the prescribed channels that allow them to contact an organization through “official” means. Now, if you couldn’t watch my fingers there, I was putting quotation marks around that voice, “official means.”

And the mistake in that, frankly, is the systems aren’t really set up for you as the job hunter. The systems are being set up to process data for government reporting, to have you, like a piece of sausage, come through their system, get processed, get massaged in a methodical way, without any intent to determine whether or not—at least on the—in this model that I’m working with, without any intent to determine whether you’re exceptional or not. You are just another piece of fatty pork or fatty beef being stuffed through that sausage machine. It sucks, doesn’t it?

So, why do you play by the rules? Seriously, why are you playing by the rules? It doesn’t work for you.

So, you know, I always encourage people that if you’re not getting success doing things the way other people are telling you to do it, change. Change the system.

There was a classic story from Star Trek where Captain Kirk was the only person who ever defeated this one huge computer model. And what he did was reprogram the system so his solution would work. He didn’t accept the notion that you had to do things in a particular way.

Why are you doing things that fit the corporation, but aren’t working for you?

At the end of the day, I will tell you point-blank that if you keep doing the same thing, you will get similar results.

So, you need to change how you approach an organization. You need to think differently and more creatively about contacting a firm.

Now, you know, again, I want to be clear. I’m not asking you to cheat. You know, firms hire this way all the time. But you’re taking the lazy person’s approach and getting turned into sausage.

And instead, what you need to be doing is the real aggressive approach that basically says, “I’m going to do certain things differently. I’m going to do things and make contacts with organizations, with hiring managers, instead of with the front door, in order to get results.”

Now, you may know I host another podcast show called “Job Search Radio.” It appears on Web Talk Radio. It’s in iTunes, Stitcher, a whole bunch of other podcast directories. It’s really my flagship show. I get thousands and thousands of downloads a week. It is terrific.

And I interviewed someone for the show last Friday whose name is Chance Tareau. That’s Chance, like C-H-A-N-C-E, Tareau, T-A-U-R-E-A-U.

And along the way in the show, he said something I thought was wonderful. And to quote him, “We are what we repeatedly do.”

So, if you keep failing doing what you’re doing, why are you keeping on doing it? Because, at the end of the day, you’re getting these results. You deserve to be beaten down by the system if you’re not going to be more aggressive about it.

So, change the approach. Start approaching people in these organizations through LinkedIn, for example.

So, you know, I’m going to just do a quick thing. I’m just going to pick a profile at random on LinkedIn, other than my own. So, come on, come on. So, this woman just contacted me yesterday, and I’m not going to identify her by name.

But the first thing I see right off the bat, if I look in the right column, is there are people similar to her who other people searched for at the same time that they looked at her. Good, but not great.

But let’s say she works at a firm I want to target. So, what I do is I go directly under her title, and I click on the employer that she works for.

So, you can search by employer name, first of all. And then next, you can see how you’re connected to that firm. So, for example, in this one example I’m looking at, I’m seeing that I have 11 first-degree connections into that organization, about 6,700 second-level, and that they have about 50,000—more than 50,000 employees on LinkedIn.

So, I start going through my connections to see if any of them might in some way, shape, or form have a connection into that business unit, or that part of the firm where the hiring may be going on, and reach out to them through LinkedIn to determine that.

Now, you may not have a lot of potential for InMails or connection requests. So, here’s two tools I want you to download that I believe will help you do that—actually three.

So, the first one, the first tool, is called Connectifier. That’s Connect followed by I-F-I-E-R, Connectifier. It’s a Chrome extension, and thus, when you go to the page of the individual that you want to connect with, often it will provide you with an email address, a phone number, their LinkedIn link, perhaps some other way that you might be connected to them, or be able to see how to connect with them in another venue.

Another tool, which I’ve been finding recently has been even more effective than Connectifier, is called Prophet, P-R-O-P-H-E-T. Again, another Chrome extension that lets you identify—I’m sorry—email addresses for people that you might want to connect with. And when they’re not sure, they take an educated guess, but when they are sure, next to the email address there’s a thumb up to let you know that this is a verified email address.

You reach out to these people directly and say, you know, “I’m looking for a position. I saw your firm’s trying to hire someone. Want to see whether or not you might know who the hiring manager is or might be able to point me there, because, frankly, my experience with contacting human resource organizations for positions hasn’t been particularly good. So, what I’d like to do is see if we—I might be able to network. If you don’t know who it is, maybe you could point me to someone who might be closer to it.”

So, the idea is don’t go through the front door. Start doing networking to get yourself there. Do things that are going to allow you to be noticed by this firm instead of being massaged like sausage meat through their machine. 

By the way, the third tool I want to encourage you to download, again, it’s a Chrome extension, is called Connect6.

Between these different tools, what you’re going to find is that you’re going to be able to transcend the number of InMails that you have access to in order to connect with that organization. And that’s really what you want to be doing. You don’t want to be massaged by sausage, like sausage, nor do you want to be cheating here, but you want to be using effective mechanisms to get into those organization—those organizations and get more than your “fair” share.

I was listening to President Obama last week, and it was driving me crazy about fairness. I don’t want to be stuck in the middle, do you? I don’t want to be just another ordinary individual, do you? I think you want to get what you want in life fairly, but, you know, to do that, I believe you have to take extraordinary means and exert yourself effectively in order to accomplish your goals.

So, cheating, playing by the rules, going for the gusto. I want to encourage you to go for the gusto.

So, I’m Jeff Altman. I hope you found this show helpful. Also want to encourage you, come over to my website, which is thebiggamehunter.us, and go exploring, because I have a lot of content there that you can watch, listen to, or read that will help you find work more quickly, as well as search positions I’m recruiting for. So, again, come over to thebiggamehunter.us and go exploring.

A few more things. Number one is if we’re not connected on LinkedIn, send me a connection request at linkedin.com/in/thebiggamehunter. I accept connection requests from people worldwide, except if you look like a spammer or a scammer, except if you’re a third-party recruiter.

ABOUT JEFF ALTMAN, THE BIG GAME HUNTER

People hire Jeff Altman, The Big Game Hunter to provide No BS job search coaching and career advice globally because he makes job search and succeeding in your career easier. 

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