Finding a Career You Love with Anish Majumdar

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Come on

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one weapon, this is George G. The time is right. welcome today’s guest strong, powerful initial Majumdar on this show, you’re ready to do this. I’m ready, George. All right, let’s go. And this is a career coach and hidden job market expert. He’s helped over 2000 people break out of job search hell and find careers that are rewarding and pay well and appropriately. And so tell us a little about your personal last more about your work and why you do what you do? Well, I appreciate the opportunity. I’m a career coach, I’ve been one for over 12 years.

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Before that I was a journalist, for many years, an author and an actor in my 20s. I’ve had a, I think, like many people a really long and winding road, why I’m doing what I’m doing is because I realized versus a job seeker, that it doesn’t matter whatsoever, what accomplishments you have out there. If the only way that you’re going to get ahead if you George, if if your future is if I let’s say took away your livelihood. And I said, Okay, fine, can you go out there and get something better, if the only way you’re getting to do that is to try to impress a bunch of fear based gatekeepers, for example, who are looking at everything unique you’ve done as a vulnerability, something that they have to defend as opposed to an asset, you’re never gonna get anywhere. And so I was trying to support a family. And I realized that I needed some kind of a different approach. Before I taught anyone else. I studied with every entrepreneur, business development expert, I could on the hope and the faith that there was another way to actually get roles, opportunities that doesn’t involve

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killing yourself on Monster. And indeed, that is exactly what we found. And today exactly like you said, 2000 people, not us, the people that we’ve taught, who have gotten sick and tired of this, of wasting four plus years of their life, on this crap. We’ve taught them and end to end a way that allows them to completely skip all of that crap, and actually move into a place where George is working for what George wants towards his goals. And he actually has the power to actually stand on his own two feet and negotiate with absolutely anyone, especially large corporation. So I do it because I see a need. And I do it there. Because, look, no one wants to, I’ll be honest with you, no one wants to get up and says, Hey, I want to work with a six foot one Indian career coach, but the reason I do it is because no one else is doing it. And most of the advice I see out there is being given by shills and corporate hacks, that that not only is not going to help you, all it’s going to do is gonna, it’s gonna make you more good cannon fodder for a lowball offer. And I know that because I’ve also been on the other side of that hiring process. So that’s why I’m doing it out of urgency and out of a sense of mission.

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Love it.

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So why is the system the way that it is? I can’t answer that.

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What I can tell you is,

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people have always, since time immemorial, have tried to ignore that the best way forward is by putting your faith into individuals and putting your trust into doing business with individuals. The second you have cowards, the second you have people without courage, who say, hey, you know what, let me use an ATS system to offload that let me use a third party to offload that you take the human element out of it. The problem with that, the dirty secret is that not only does none of this work on the job, seeker side, all of this automation and all of that has done nothing but have negative impacts on worker retention rates, worker performance rates, everyone now has to be a mercenary. It’s being a company man is a is a bad thing. So it’s up in the whole, you know, corporate world basically went down an erroneous thing and and just like a war, lead our country recently got out of instead of just you know, admitting that it’s a boondoggle. What’s happening is they’re continuing to say, hey, no, no, it’s fine. It’s fine. It’s fine. It’s fine. It’s fine. When you need a job, that’s what you need to do when you need a job. That’s just the sacrifice you have. Yes, there’s no guarantees about what’s there, but keep doing it. And meanwhile, not only are a certain subset of job seekers, executives, high performers learning Hey, this is it’s a dead it’s a dead area. I’ve got to find another way. companies themselves, where they’re putting their money where they’re incentivizing is their internal networks is their executive suite to say listen, George, your strategic partner to the business. The last thing I want to do is tell an HR person that some some sob story about about about, you know, and get a deluge of resumes, who do you know, who do you know, who actually get shares a little bit of our perspective of what we’re trying to do? Who shares a little bit of our ability and the funny thing is, anyone can do that anyone can place themselves earlier into this situation where they’re identifying what’s happening, they’re having dialogue as an equal and

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they’re putting themselves in a position to what align with pain, not be the best candidate for a job to align with the pain that is there. And to help as only you can. That’s it sounds like a small shift. But if everyone out there listening made that their number one goal to say, Hey, what is the kind of pain that only I solve? Who are the people who are who are feeling the deepest possible manifestation of that pain at the highest possible level? And how can I build relationships with them as an equal to start understanding what is going on and to start identifying that you do that you’re gonna get into the the lion’s share of these roles, 80 to 90% of them which are never going to make it to the job postings. Anyway. Um, it’s one of these things where I think, you know, the highway looks very appealing.

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And, and we’re at a place now where literally, every Tom Dick and Harry is on that highway, and it sucks to be on that highway. It is not a place for a human being to be, especially not when for those who have a little bit of courage and vision, you can roll down your window, and hey, guess what? I’m a mountain biker, there are trails, there are roads, there are bridges. There’s a whole infrastructure, known as people known as everywhere who actually desperately need your help. But if you’re

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if your ability and your desire and your commitment for a better life stops and ends at sending a dumb resume, through a job posting, you’re never going to find it.

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That makes sense. Thank you. Hello, don’t we already know this? I mean, I mean, I’m verbalizing it, because I deal with it. And I see people every day. But George, do I really need to tell you this Do don’t we? Haven’t you sense that it how undignified it is? How embarrassing it is? Don’t you feel a little ashamed for yourself that the only way that you can support your family is to go through this thing? And like haven’t Hasn’t anyone ever asked themselves? Like, isn’t there another way? And

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what have we been told networking? Yeah, you got to network. But we all know that. Unless you actually figured out a way to do that. What is it right? No one’s gonna do it. Because it sounds desperate. Right? It sounds like I’m going to you know, schmooze people at a at a restaurant people I don’t know, to get something that I want. Right. But that’s not what networking is. That’s not what building relationships. But I was taught that, you know, I mean, not, it’s not a mistake, but I come from well intentioned, Indian immigrants, middle class people, they don’t tell you this stuff, they don’t tell you that there’s a whole other world that that is open and free to all that requires a different way. And it requires putting out different signals, you know, so hopefully, we can get into some details here. About some of that. Let’s just do that. Yeah, I think that’s awesome.

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So what would you like to know? Where do we start in all of this? Yeah, I think that that’s No, you know, you listen, you know, your audience a heck of a lot better than I do? Well, so so we can talk about, we can talk about the mindset, we can talk about the branding, we can talk about the different way to approach the actual interview, we can talk about getting leverage there, we can talk about utilizing LinkedIn and scaling up the messaging and the outreach, we can talk about every aspect of that. So So you tell me where you want to go with this. When you talk about aligning the pain that is there. Why do people resist resist that? Because they don’t want to pigeonhole themselves? Do they have have they never thought about that?

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I think I think the what when you start out in your career, you’re trying to align to things that are already there. So whether it’s a job posting, whether it’s a job, you’re trying to, you know, mimic that. And what I see over overwhelmingly, is people not getting the message that, you know, as you know, once you’ve been in the field, for in whatever field it is, once you’re getting even a couple of years of experience, you’ve got to start thinking around a process because if you don’t, the only thing you have in your brand is either skills trading, right, which is basically, hey, I’m ready for a CTO role, because I’ve got a mix of SAF skills here and this and this and this and this, but that’s not what, that’s not that that may be what we wanted from an IT manager. But from a CTO, we want a strategic partner who can speak my language and don’t even bring tech into it. Right. So so so I see skills training. And the other thing I see is people using second hand brands as a crutch for not doing the work and figuring out what they’re actually paid for. So in other words, let’s say I’m, I’m a marketing expert, right? And I’m like, Man, why can I get traction here? You know what I mean? Every interview I have, I’ve got 20 plus years of experience. They keep asking me how come you don’t have years of experience in this this? Well, the problem is you’re branding yourself as a marketing executive, right? Many people leaving putting their job down is that they want a CMO than a VP of marketing. That’s just desperate, right? So ask yourself, why would I pay as a CEOs as someone who runs a business? Why am I hiring a marketer? It’s not to market if I can make marketing redundant, obviously I would write what the only thing you really paid for is to Again, align with the strategic goals of this comp.

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Money and to use your magic to help us attain those faster, right? In other words, what is your way of growing this company that incorporates your your past your ability, as only you can do it what’s a right and a wrong way. So if this marketer said, hey, you know what, I’m a catalyst for growth, that’s what really what I do, and no matter what size of a company it is, I can make sure that we have a competitive advantage by not siloing this aspect of our business, bring this in house, aligning it with my ops background, aligning with my analytics. So now there is a right way to do it. And then there’s a way that 95% of marketers out there are doing it. Now, if I branded myself around the process, if I if my resume if my LinkedIn if the pretext of me talking with you for 20 minutes out of my day, to have a professional dialogue, if it’s not, because hey, desperately, maybe you can help me out with a job. But if it’s like, look, we’re getting to know each other. Why don’t we jump on the phone for 2030 minutes, let me see if I can get to know you. Let me see if I can better understand what you and your team are up to. And let me see if I can essentially filter your circumstances through the lens of what I’ve seen out there and see if it helps. And if I can help you great. I’m not I’m not here to bamboozle you for anything or anything like that, this is truly the payoff for what’s there. But if we identify the kind of pain that I solve, and we want to go deeper with this, that’s the shift in that is unbelievably strong, because, guys, I want everyone to think about this,

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I see people getting hung up because oh man, I want to make a 15% jump or a 20% jump in salary, whatever your number is, from the point of view of let’s say, the five or six priorities I have in front of me right now that I need to solve, that are big, that are large, coming up with the funds for the corporate funds for someone like you. And thereby skipping the hiring process, skipping all of that directly, enabling you to get right into the strategic aspect and knowing that you’re the best person because in our minds, the person who can who can correctly identify the problem, who can correctly enable us to see this in a way that we haven’t and show us, Hey, here’s a way forward here. And I’m willing to hold myself accountable to moving this forward. That’s usually the person that we trust to move it forward. That’s the person who has gotten in and has and has created something for themselves. And from from that point onwards, whatever the job title is, whatever that

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you don’t need to get hung up on those late stage things, what you need to get hung up on is sharing your light, figuring out what a process is, there’s 3040 50. And you might ask, hey, what if someone doesn’t agree with the process, it’s a misunderstanding of human human nature. I don’t have to agree 100%. With your process, I just have to have faith that you have faith, and you have expertise in it. And I have to know beyond beyond a reasonable doubt that this is the best way forward. Now the beauty is, if you actually have the courage to start building some of these relationships, which is a lot easier than it sounds, by the way, if you start doing that, the pressure is immense. Because if I say okay, look, we’ve identified this this massive thing that has has has caused all this, you know, disruption our company has gone by? If I say no, I’m not saying no to George, the candidate, one of 15, or 20, or 30 that I’m hiring for? If I say no to you at that stage, I’m saying no to solving this thing in 2022. Right, because I’m not doing anything with it. What am I going to do? I’m going to find another person like you who can even talk to me identify figure this out? I’m not right. So the stakes of passing on you the stakes become am I going to solve this as a leader? Or am I not? And that’s the place that everyone wants to think about being that’s the place where you have real leverage over the situation, right? Or at the very least you’ve got something to work with. Yeah. So a process, you know, just to close that out, you know, you can think about this in terms of I help companies or I help business leaders achieve x x being not some brilliant, unique thing from you. We don’t need that. But just think common sense. Like what are those like four or five big things that people are looking for? And then ask yourself using what process using what mix, right of what I’m bringing to the table, right? Have some fun of this play to the things that have made you an odd man out, play to the things that in the past, you’ve felt like you’ve had to hide, you’ve had to discard? I’ve heard people say, I’ve chopped up a 10 years of experience because that’s not relevant. No, it is irrelevant. It’s not relevant from an employer’s point of view, because it’s easy for me to lowball you if you know you’re a 50 year old who has the experience of a 25 year old right or a 30 year old, but your challenge, the challenge for you to get the outcome that you want is to make sense of that is to say hey, what’s a way that I can actually move and engage in this that incorporates the whole thing?

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I love it. All right. So it’s essentially switching the the the traditional job search process where my old job search was, oh, I need a job. I’m gonna go on Monster and look for

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Are Available Roles and then try to tell them what they want to hear. It’s, this is what I’m really good at, this is the one I’m going to bring the table, my strengths, the pains that I’m going to solve, here’s how I’m going to do it. Now let me go and find an organization that I think will be a good fit or is a need of the thing that I do and how I do it, I would go I would go even further than that. And I would say,

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what it’s about is to say, hey, look,

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if I stand for a process, if I stand for a form of change, what is every way that I can start the process of doing that right now, including the relationships. So in other words, I’m taking what I’m looking for out of the equation, I’m just going to start the process of helping people. So in other words, for me, if I didn’t have one client,

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this business of trying to free as many people from the matrix as I possibly can, those who are willing, that would continue, it doesn’t really make much difference, whether it’s a video I’m recording a webinar, or whether it’s a one on one with a prospect or a client, the actual standards of what I’m looking for the standards of what I’m going to hold you to the standards of what I see does not change one iota, I’m going to start the process of helping you right now. And what I’m going to do is I’m going to have faith that as I not only get to know people, but as I take that easy carrot off the table, and I start helping I start understanding also, hey, in this target industry, right, as I’m getting to really have these conversations, not from a defensive up position, but uh, but an equal to equal position. I’m helping, are you looking for a job? Look? Am I looking for a way to maximize the impact of what I do? Absolutely. But am I here for these 30 minutes to bambbles you for a job, of course that I wouldn’t know where to start, I have no idea what it is, right? Here’s what I would like to do. What what I would encourage everyone to do is use those initial interactions, use those relationships you’re building to offer value. In other words, offer two or three moments where you don’t, don’t think of it as proving forget about proving, forget about pitching, forget about presenting. Anytime you do that, anytime you come in with a slide deck, Powell, I’m the authority in here, okay? So you don’t want that, okay, what you want to do, okay, you honestly want to listen, you want to respect, you want to understand what’s there and find those two or three moments, whether it’s George, I gotta call BS on that, you’re wrong on that, whether it’s you know what, let’s go deeper in that because you just skip through that this is what I specialize in, alright, because I know, let’s go to whether it’s find those two or three moments, if you give those two, three moments in that conversation, there’s a relationship, there’s value. And if you do it the right way, for the people that we train, we train them on an entire way to approach that first conversation. That is outcomes driven, that allows you to use the brand that you’ve developed and use the messaging and position you’ve developed to go into what’s called an uncovered conversation, you frame it. And then basically, you use the majority of the conversation, to ask the right types of questions to lead them down the primrose path for you to identify what’s going on. In essence, you’re listening most of the time, you’re proving your credibility, your authority through the types of questions you ask and the standards that you have, you are essentially guaranteeing a level of challenge and value in every interaction.

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And the rest, you’re going to

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you’re going to use based on what’s there. But there is no rest from the point of view of you’re not going in there with a resume, I wouldn’t recommend that you’re not going in there to say anything like that, you know, when you decide to jump into an offer, it’s because pain has been identified, you’ve done a follow up and in that follow up, you’re just going to answer what do you need to do to get started here? You’re not going to, in any interview, go into anything having to do with implementation, okay, you can talk about the what, as much as you want. If we’re talking about the how money needs to change hands, right? There’s nothing wrong with saying, George, this is the time where we need to stop with this. Because all the follow up questions you have here, this is just now fear, we need to either get started on solving this or not, and tell me where you want to go because I’m now in late stage discussions with two other employers here. And my number one criteria is not the job title or the compensation level, it is commitment from those I work with. So you tell me right now, how badly you want this, right? I’ve said this to me, many a person I’ve worked with everyone wants a better job, everyone wants a thing? Are you willing to change a little bit about yourself? Are you willing to change some of your behavior? Are you willing to let go of certain things? Most people are not.

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So that’s not going to change whether you whether you’re a paying client of mine or not. GEORGE That’s That’s your in my world when you’re talking about careers. I’m a big dog here and what I do so you better believe if I if I’m recommending that you do something, you’re going to do it or we don’t really have anything to talk about doing right? People aren’t doing this kind of stuff, right? People aren’t people aren’t. But we need to start, like breaking down these artificial labels of entrepreneur, consultant, all of this stuff, right? Just start

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Helping people stop asking for permission and start helping people because no one else will. Right? And if you ask yourself, what gives me that right? Go back to your offer. Go back to your process. Go back to your why behind this right? What are you doing? Why are you doing this? Right? If you have no other answer, aside from I want a better job, you don’t deserve to be in the top level anyway, as far as I’m concerned.

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I love it. Stop asking for permission to start helping people to start helping start helping they’re they’re just people there. And the truth is, the more risks you’ve taken, whether you’re a mom reentering the workforce after making the decision to support your family, I don’t care what it is. Leaders, people who are are up there, I found they’re far more empathetic understanding of that, because they had to take risks themselves to get there. I found far more allies at the top levels, right. It’s kind of like, you know, when I was in high school, you know, I had a good friend and we used to always look at these like, beautiful, beautiful girls, and

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we always want to ask them out. Never could I overthink it. What the heck is the right thing to say? What do I do, man? I basically just have drinks with my with my friend and I go home, right. And you have these other people who just date one after the other blowhards, idiots, and we’re like, what’s going on here? What’s going on? What what is it? I couldn’t understand it. It’s the same concept. When it comes to these executives were like, Oh, God, I need a I need a recommendation from the VP. I need this. You know what they need help to, you know, they could use someone who’s not on their payroll, who actually cares enough about their situation to even listen for 20 or 30 minutes and try to help but no one does it. You know, it’s like Charlize Theron. It’s not Charlize Theron, over there. It’s just a human being just like you. So you can either decide to help. And I promise you that will resonate one way or the other, it may not resonate in exactly the way that you want for exactly the person. But you know what, you can’t control that in job searching, either. But what I can tell you is this path will open up things like you are never going to believe because people want to help other people. People want to do business with other people. They want to work with people that they know, like and trust, they don’t really want to work with someone who grinded out a seven month interview process, had no other way to get in, aside from that. And finally, begrudgingly, I said, Yes, I’m going to micromanage the heck out of you, you know, out of that, you know, so so it really is a question of helping and I think it’s, it’s, it’s, instead of chasing the titles, instead of chasing the company’s

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Chase impact.

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Chase allies, chase people who need your help, and let the chips fall where they may,

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I think you’re gonna find I think anyone is going to find that

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the outcomes of doing it that way are just in the last three years, our clients have generated 650 million plus, as of as of the recording of this, all on their own, mostly through offers that were never there, just through talking with people just through implementing a strategy, right? Anyone can do this. And trust me, I don’t I’m a I’m a theater school dropout. If I could figure this out, you know, with a desperate Toshiba laptop. Imagine what what people like you imagine what people listening can do when you don’t have to deal with that, that trial and error. It’s all there. It’s waiting. It’s still, it’s still a goldmine out there. It’s like, the thing is, they just sort of hit it. And they told you, hey, you know what, the gold is only available in this one tiny little store out in the middle of nowhere. Meanwhile, they’re getting fat. You know?

Unknown Speaker 23:43
I love it.

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On this, thank you so much for coming on. Where can people learn more about you? How can they engage with you? Well, I appreciate it. I appreciate the conversation as well. If you want to go deeper with me, there is a special link I’d love to share called Tap the hidden job period market forward slash ASAP. For those who are interested, that’s about a 15 minute class I put together with me and my team, where if you want to learn the full strategy that we teach our clients, you can actually learn it right there, you can start implementing changes right there. And if you want to go deeper with us, that’s a way that you can book a call with us completely free and we can actually have a one on one about what you’re actually experiencing. See if you know are working together might be helpful. If not, again, just like we’re talking about, we’re going to help regardless if you want to go deeper into the career trainings, hello initial.com is where you want to go and I guess the final one, LinkedIn if you’re on LinkedIn, put in a niche put in career not that many brown guys doing it, but I promise you you’re gonna get some value out of out of the follow. Awesome. What’s the website it’s tat, tap the hidden job dot market slash ASAP. That’s one. Love it. Well, if you enjoyed as much as I did, showing us your appreciation and share today’s show with a friend who also appreciates good ideas go

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to tap the hidden job dot market slash ASAP, and take advantage of the training that goes over the process that we’ve been talking about here. Go to Hello inish.com It’s Hello a nish.com and then find him on LinkedIn as well list all those the notes of the show. Thanks, guys. Thank you, man. And until next time, keep fighting the good fight. We’re all in this together.