Three Obstacles to a Career Move

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By presenting specific instances in which you improved productivity, your résumé showcases your brand through measurable results and makes your résumé stand apart from a generic COO resume.

Whatever your career stage or career level, this branding strategy can help you stand out from the competition. If you're in an entry-level, customer-service position and you're the go-to person for handling unreasonable customers and fulfilling unreasonable, last-minute demands, showcase that with accomplishments that show different kinds of customer-service results. Branding is an effective strategy for anyone, and the sooner you master it, the more help it can provide throughout your career. Employers are rarely looking for generic employees. Branding ensures that you don't inadvertently create a generic résumé.

Tell me what else people do wrong.

Many clients have made their own efforts to find work they love but they focused on the wrong things or did the right things the wrong way and ended up stuck in place. They mistakenly concluded that they weren't marketable and gave up. The problem wasn't with them, it was with their focus.

Despite the temptation of the Internet with its lure of a great new job only a click away, the fact is that 70% to 80% of jobs come through contacts, particularly for more senior people. There's a huge opportunity cost in emphasizing the Internet for your job search, because, while it takes little time to apply for a particular job, it's time that could be more profitably spent with your network.

Search consultants provide an alternative, but their clients generally direct them to identify candidates who have done the same job elsewhere, a problem if you're looking to make a change.

So how do we focus on our network?

By making it a priority to do outreach to a broad array of your contacts, whether or not they're in your target profession or location. While your network is likely to be the source of your dream job, it's the hardest job-search strategy to pursue. Many people are so busy with their jobs that they've let their networks languish.

Even people with active networks are reluctant to ask others for assistance. You can overcome this reluctance by remembering that you have something valuable to offer as a candidate, and also by looking actively for ways to reciprocate. That's how you can turn networking into an enjoyable and valuable part of your search.

Can you give me an example?

I recently had a client, a very intelligent, talented executive whose company had no room for him higher up the pyramid. He was frustrated and had been looking on his own for months, getting close to some interesting jobs but never getting the job. His company hired me to work with him, and a mere few weeks into our collaboration, he landed a dream job with a famous Silicon Valley company.

From the outset, his future boss tried to sell him on the [unadvertised] job. Why? According to the boss, the combination of a terrific résumé and a personal endorsement—from a not-very-close colleague—were enough to grab their attention, and then my client closed the deal by his personal presentation through the interview process.

By making a career move to a different kind of company and role, in a highly sought-after company, he demonstrated how overcoming the three obstacles of mind, brand, and focus can lead to a great new job. Watching others turn seeming impossibility into possibility and dream jobs—I've got the best job in the world!

Thanks for these tips. I think that any of us can benefit from reviewing how we may be creating our own obstacles of mind, brand, and focus—and how we can overcome these obstacles in our own lives.

Marshall Goldsmith is the New York Times best-selling author of What Got You Here Won't Get You There—a Wall Street Journal No. 1 business book and Harold Longman Award winner for Business Book of the Year. His newest book, Succession: Are You Ready?, has just been published by the Harvard Business Press. He can be reached at Marshall@MarshallGoldsmith.com, and he provides his articles and videos online at MarshallGoldsmithLibrary.com.