You Can Be The Best You Can Be.

I came up with a simple and powerful tool the other day. I was standing in my office in front of a large Post-It notepad sheet with a red sharpie in my hand (red delivers intention!) — and the ideas just flowed. What did I come up with to help you be the best? To be the best you can be, there are four stages to success — Find Me, Want Me, Sell Them, Close Them. This works for the corporate executive, to the aspiring entrepreneur, all the way to the person in transition. It's simple, it's direct, and it works. Let me explain each one:

STAGE ONE: FIND ME

We go through our lives partially hidden to key influential people and once-in-a-lifetime opportunities. We either sit at our desk toiling away, make cold calls to people who don't want our services, or hide at home and send out electronic résumés to closed positions. And we wonder why we aren't moving up, getting the best clients, or landing that dream job. It's frustrating.

The best businesses are easy to find - a big sign, the best location — the ability to stand out and be a billboard so millions of people can see you:

• Executive: When was the last time you introduced yourself to the leaders in you organization? Do they know you?

• Business Owner: New signage, new website, new branding — getting out and touching lots of people?

• Transitional: Keywords on LinkedIn, writing articles, hitting industry meetings, hitting the library?

STAGE TWO: WANT ME

Okay — now we are being seen by the powers that be. What do we do now? We want them to WANT US. How do we do that?

You need to develop your own personal brand that will engage your audience and get them to see your ability, your product, and your talents:

• Executive: What can you do to really help your company? If you've done it, do you brag about it? Be bold.

• Business Owner: What one thing do you do that can change people's lives or fill a hole in their life? Spotlight your brand.

• Transitional: Polish your image and brand - hit the gym, change your fashions, and show them what you can do for them. No begging.

STAGE THREE: SELL THEM

They've seen us and they want us. It's time to sell them and show them we are the best choice (this is where most fail).

You need to develop an iron-clad delivery that will make them better understand what you can do for them and that you're the only person on this earth who can do it. Find the BURNING issue that keeps them awake at night and show them how you will solve it.

• Executive: Think big - what are the real issues your company/industry are facing right now? Figure out some powerful solutions.

• Business Owner: Who are your biggest/best customers? What aren't you doing for them that will change their life?

• Transitional: It's not what you did - it's what you can do for them RIGHT NOW. Pinpoint what that is and deliver it.

STAGE FOUR: CLOSE THEM

Everyone forgets this one. They market, produce the itch, and make the sale — then they forget to close or leave them hanging.

Once you've sold them — get them to sign on the dotted line. Don't feel that it's their job to jump into the boat after you've hooked them — take them off your line and place them nicely in your cooler.

• Executive: Once they are interested in you — try to offer yourself to help them with a major initiative or pitch. You have the time.

• Business Owner: Once they are sold — make the closing process simple, easy, transparent, and fluid. It should be pleasurable for the customer.

• Transitional: Ask for the job. Get them to commit. Show them that you can leave for a better opportunity. Sign on the dotted line.

If you stick to this method and produce key deliverables for each stage — I promise you — you will be THE BEST YOU CAN BE.

Don't Have A Job? It's YOUR Fault.

I'm not pulling any punches here. Why? Because I think most people who are looking for a job need a dose of reality instead of 'good thoughts' and 'quick tricks'.

Here are Rich Gee's 10 Commandments Of Looking For A Job:

1. It's going to be HARD.

You will push yourself farther than you've ever pushed yourself before — into areas that are uncomfortable — networking, connecting, selling, negotiation, schmoozing, etc. Get used to it.

WHY? Most job-seekers are afraid of the process. They want the limo to pull up to their house and whisk them off to their next position. Guess what? It's NEVER going to happen.

2. You must work 30-40 hours a week on your search.

It's a job to find a job. Any less is just fooling around. You have to put serious time into your search — if you don't you will just prolong your unemployment — turning it from a 3-6 month process to a 12-18 month ordeal. I have my clients do a simple math equation: Take your yearly salary and divide it by 12. That is how much you are costing your family for each month unemployed. Stop focusing on your severance package — go out and find a job!

WHY? Clients that dive into their search and spend a reasonable amount of time (30-40 hours a week), get a job. It's that simple.

3. Stop the whining.

Okay, you lost your job — get on with life. Stop navel-gazing and blaming yourself.

WHY? I encounter a number of clients who are wounded and use their loss as an excuse to bypass the difficult actions of a job search. If you are so damaged, it's time for you to seek help with a therapist. If not, get off your ass and move on. You're an adult and you have bills to pay and mouths to feed. Stop the pity party.

I hate to be blunt here — but you're an adult with responsibilities — get out there and make things happen!

4. Don't focus on your résumé every 5 seconds.

Get it done, keep it concise and powerful (and well-written). If you need help — spend the money and have it written for you. You can modify it for certain positions, but don't obsess about what other people say.

WHY? People get so attached to their résumé. They ask every friend and recruiter for advice and guess what? They tell them it stinks and that they have to totally modify it. Get it done and get it out. Stop looking for distractions.

5. Get out and meet people.

If you stay in all day and surf the web, that's not looking for work. It's vacation. To find that perfect position, you must be visible and expose yourself to A LOT of people.

WHY? It's a very simple equation: If you meet new people, you will make new opportunities, you will connect with hiring managers, you will be introduced to hidden positions, you will be offered a job. On the other hand, if you don't meet new people, less opportunities, less hiring manager interaction, less position options, and less job offers. It's that simple.

Hit the library. Make friends with the librarians — they can help you find information on organizations, industries, and people not found on the web. And it's fun — they start rooting for you to find that next position AND it gets you out of the house. One suggestion — try the smaller local libraries — they tend to focus on the serious researcher and not have a 'get em in/get em out' attitude to the masses.

6. Make yourself extremely marketable.

Hit the gym everyday. Eat well. Get an up-to-date haircut. Get new glasses. Dress in style and dress up every day. Act as if you are going out on a first date — first impressions are SO important.

WHY? Be Your Best — you are selling a product . . . YOU. You have to polish it until it shines and catches the light. Any less and you might be passed over for a single errant, inconsequential reason that you could easily fix. Take a few dollars and improve your wardrobe, your body, and your look. You want to hit them hard when they first see you.

7. Study your industry and market.

Don't sit around and surf. Immerse yourself where you're looking for a job. Learn what has happened, what is happening, and begin to predict what will happen. So many job-seekers look for positions but neglect to fully understand what's happening in their industry. When you have a job, you live in a bubble. Take the time and seriously dive into what is happening out in the world. It will come in handy during interviews.

WHY? People forget that this time is for you to apply and work for a BETTER company.

8. Pick companies you would LOVE to work for.

I get so much grief for this one. When looking for a job, so many people give in and make themselves like a company/position rather than targeting organizations they would kill to work for.

WHY? It's easier to find open positions than to LOVE a company, target key individuals, and build your own position.

9. Learn how to interview, ask questions, and negotiate.

Don't wing it. You need to practice and get out there and interview. The more you hone your image, your patter, your answers, your body language, your questions, and your negotiation skills, the faster you will land that primo position.

WHY? So many applicants feel they can rely on their strengths and forget when they're in tense situations, their weaknesses start to show. You need to be 'buttoned-up', secure, and ready for anything a key interviewer throws your way.

10. Be Positive, Smile, and Watch Your Body Language.

This is a big one. Get up every day and start out by rewarding yourself with a motivation.

HOW? Work out, listen to music, do yoga, read, meditate . . . anything. You have to begin each day with a positive mindset. Too many job seekers hit the snooze alarm or get indexed into multiple family responsibilities (not that it's a bad thing) in the morning. Make sure you have time for yourself. Get up early (I get up at 4-4:30 every morning) and make time for yourself — stop staying up late and watching reruns of The Mentalist. Go to bed early (I hit my pillow at 9:30 PM) and get in some real sleep time.

Smile! Stop frowning at everything — remind yourself frequently to smile with people, on the phone, and in unexpected situations. You'll find it brings up the good juices within and you actually feel more positive.

Take an proactive stance on your body language. Walk 20% faster (catch any Bourne Identity movie - watch how Matt Damon walks) - it livens up your system and tells everyone you mean business. Lean forward when you speak and use your hands — it engages the listener and shows them you are passionate about what you do.

11. Surprise! Extra Credit.

Focus on four areas. What are they?

1. Job Boards/Company Sites - This is the easiest area to attack and the most frustrating area to encounter. There might be jobs here, but most of the time, it's a major time-suck for higher level positions. But don't discount it — do it — but don't hold yourself back — access all four areas.

2. Recruiters - Reach out to them, but don't expect a lot to happen. They are focused on obtaining the best employed candidates, poaching from the competition, and keeping their retainers healthy and growing. There might be a perfect alignment of your need and their deliverable, but it rarely happens. I'm not down on recruiting, just don't put all your eggs in this basket. And don't get frustrated when they don't return your calls — it's the nature of the beast.

3. Connecting/Networking - As I said before, a good bet is to reach out to strategic friends, family, and colleagues who might connect you to the right people. You need to move up the food chain and play tennis with the big boys and girls. Don't make all your stops with unemployed networking groups — you're trying to sell a car when everyone else in the room are selling cars too. You need to mix with accomplished, employed, and upwardly mobile people who GET IT. You've hit a road bump in your career (we all have), stop holding yourself back and reach for the gold ring.

4. Targeting - You need to pick the best companies that you would LOVE to work for (remember this?). Act like a private investigator — research what's going on, who's making headlines, where they're going, and who you need to target. Then build a dossier about that person — where they went to school, what do they do, where they worked, are they on social media, etc. Then go after them and introduce yourself to them. Now the hard part begins.

I know this has been a rough post to read — but my goal isn't to sugar-coat my coaching, but to tell the truth and get you to take action ASAP. Let me know if you found it useful.

Basic Résumé Structure For Success.

Many of my clients frequently ask me for my opinion on the do's and don't's of a good résumé. Let me begin by saying résumé advice is highly subjective. Everyone has an opinion and everyone will find fault in your advice. I am going to go out on a limb and let you in on what I think is a basic, generalized format (IMHO):

Contact Info: Name, Cell, Email, Address, LinkedIn URL (this is new - make it like www.linkedin.com/in/richgee)

Summary Statement: 1-2 sentences that clearly define who you are and what you're looking for. Feel free to add a few bulleted items - not a lot. It needs to be powerful and slightly provacative.

Experience: Company/Location/Duration/Title - then have a few critical bullet points that focus on what you delivered and the result. Pick the best ones - throw out the fluff.

Education: Keep it short and sweet. Add in any related experience, workshops, seminars, etc. That's learning.

Activities: One line, make them interesting. A good hiring manager is looking for enthusiasm and fit - give it to them.

Optional: If you have room - add a testimonial or two from important people you've worked with. You can grab them from LinkedIn. I have a client who had two testimonials from the presidents of both companies they worked for - I told her to showcase them!

Length: 1 Page - New to the workforce - 1-2 years out of school. 2 Pages - Normal - 3-10 years in the workforce. 3 Pages - Experienced - 11-30 years in the workforce. 4+ Pages - C-Level Executive.

Format: Font: Helvetica - don't play with serif fonts (my opinion) Columns: 1 inch either side - give it space Leading (space between lines): 1.2 - give it space Size: 10-12 point - normal reading font size Footer: Your name and 'Page 1 of 3 Pages' (it helps) Delivery: PDF (Word attachment if asked) - it keeps the format

Again - this is my opinion and can be seen on most résumés. Remember, most recruiters and hiring managers are going to initially spend 8-10 seconds scanning your résumé. The more you make your résumé unique, the harder it will be to absorb key info and they'll toss it into the circular file cabinet. Keep it simple, concise, and easy to read/scan.

If you are in a specialized industry, you will (of course) modify what I've listed above.

• Creative - add a bit more color, font use, even a subtle graphic (photo).
• IT/Engineer - add more areas for tools/software etc.

If you have any more questions, call me anytime. - Rich 

How To Take Charge Of Your Job Search.

I've worked with hundreds of job-seekers and presented to thousands about searching for a job. A lot (and I mean A LOT) of people derail their job search for one simple reason: You're scared.

It's not a horror movie scare where the monster jumps out at you in a dark room. It's a pervasive and creeping scare that festers and grows in the back of your brain.

You slowly disorient yourself, knock your game off a bit, throw obstacles in the way and ultimately, cower and hide in your house.

And it all comes down to ONE simple reason — you are doing something totally alien from what you've done all your life. Looking for a job is completely different from having a job. Why?

• You have to self-assess your qualifications, experience, and abilities.
• You have to write in a marketing style using your self-assessment.
• You have to go out, introduce yourself to strangers and meet new people.
• You might have to change your style and how you present yourself.
• You will be meeting people who are highly critical and will ask you questions which will obliterate your confidence.
• You will have to quickly ramp up your interview game with improved body language and talk tracks.
• You will have to sell . . . Yourself . . . every day. A lot of people compare it to professional begging.
• You have to be totally organized and follow up with key prospects (and laggards who don't get back to you).
• Finally, you have to be extremely professional, happy, motivated, energized, and focused during the whole process.

Now you know why many people in transition hire coaches. It's hard to find a job.

But I find being scared is the #1 reason why most people procrastinate and fail at their job search. You get laid off, you take a week or two (or three or four) to recover and get down to business. You get your résumé done, you begin searching web sites for job postings and you even might apply to a few. You don't get any responses, so what do you do? You apply to some more. No responses? Reach out to a recruiter and watch as they demolish your background, your résumé, and any self-esteem left over from your last departure (okay, not all recruiters). Throw in some lunches with friends and family who hurt you more than help and suddenly, you're this person:

• You walk your dog every morning, for hours.
• You have the best looking yard on the block. The best.
• You surf political/interest/financial/news sites frequently, "To keep up on what's happening".
• You get up later and later. You stay up later and later.
• You begin to help out in the household — shopping, repairs, service people, etc.
• You begin to spend more and more time with your kids (picking them up, taking them to activities). Not a bad thing, but you have to look for work too.
• You might start eating or drinking a bit more. "You deserve it."
• And you start acting like you really don't need a job. (this is the death knell for jobseekers)

And the whole time, you're building a 'facade of fear' brick by brick until it becomes a wall 100 feet tall. Nothing is going to help you break through.

And then . . . you give up. I've coached people who have gone without work for 2, 3, 4 years! This is how their year flies by:

• January 1 to March 31 — It's a new year! Have to get a job! Send out resumes, get some interviews, play phone tag for months.
• April 1 to May 31 — Slightly power down search, depressed about the lost opportunities, frustrated about the process. Begins to work on yard — Spring is here!
• June 1 to August 31 — It's summer! No one looks for jobs now! I get to take off the summer and tell people I will dive right in September 1. I can spend time with the family!
• September 1 to November 15 — Have to restart that old job search engine! Review all my old searches, reach out to new people, and the first objection shuts me down again.
• November 16 to December 31 — Holidays! No one will be at the office (they're empty!) and no one wants to talk to me. Let's wait until January 1 to power up again.

Does this sound like you? I coach businesses and executives too and they think the exact same way. They know they need to change, but the year flies by too fast and suddenly, it's November 16th!

How to you lessen and conquer your fear? First, you have to be very truthful with yourself and diagnose your fear:

• Do you feel you are inadequate? Unqualified?
• Do you feel you've fallen behind in your career? Industry?
• Do you read job postings and find many terms new and unfamiliar?
• Do you have a hard time promoting yourself?
• Do you have a hard time meeting new people?
• Do you not want to change how you comport and promote yourself?
• Can you not take constructive criticism from people without it destroying your self-esteem?
• Do you not like to sell? Cold-call people?
• Do you have a hard time with organization, time management, and follow-up?
• Are you too old/young? Too fat/skinny/bald/ugly/unkept?

Guess what? Many of these might be true. But here's some sunlight at the end of the tunnel — they're all fixable. Except for the bald part, I've tried.

And here's the best part — most of them are only partially true, or not true at all. Why? We are our own worst enemy — our own worst critic — and when we spin each of these 'dysfunctions' around in our brain, we make them worse and worse as time flies by. I tell clients we all have a small Stephen King in the back of our brains, spinning horror stories about our problems, our dysfunctions, and our inadequacies.

Fear is the most powerful destabilizer I know. Your fear of the future can knock you off your feet and cripple your job search for months. But I have a SOLUTION. Follow these steps:

1. Your middle name from now on is ACTION. If you stand still and worry, fear will overcome you. ACTION will eliminate your fear. Trust me.
2. Get on a strict schedule Monday through Friday. Make a pact with yourself to work at least 30 hours a week on your job search (40 is optimal).
3. Get up early (sorry sleepyheads). If you start your day early, you will get a lot more done.
4. Time-block your schedule. Account for every hour every day. Fill up your schedule with important items — calls, meetings, research, etc.
5. Make sure you get out of your house once a day. Go to the library, Starbucks, the park. Anywhere except your house.
6. Make sure you keep your body moving. Work out, walk, run — do something to keep you fit and healthy. Eat less, eat the right foods, and tone up your body. You have to package your look in the best way possible.
7. Get out and meet people. Reach out to old friends, colleagues and meet for coffee. Pick out the ones that energize you. Ask for help.
8. Network. Go to events, meetings, conferences, charity events — meet people, shake hands, learn about what they do.
9. Hit the Three-Legged Stool of Search. Check out the company boards, reach out to recruiters, and most of all, research and reach out to companies and key people who might hire you.
10. Push yourself. Try something new every day. What will be happening in the next 5 years in your industry? Figure it out.
11. Buy a new suit/shirt/blouse/tie/shoes. Look good. Hire a style consultant or walk into Nordstroms/Brooks Brothers/Other and have their style person help you.
12. Track, Track, Track. Keep a list of all your prospects, interviews, people, etc. Look at it every day and move the ball forward.
13. Keep a sunshine file or wall. Fill it up with powerful/memorable items on it. When you're down — look at it.
14. Motivate yourself every day. Listen to motivational speakers on your smartphone. Listen to music. Work out. Do something!

Just keep moving. If you slow down, think of something else you can do. Fear is the ultimate destabilizer and can derail your search for months (and even years!). The faster you find a job, the better you'll feel.

And if these items don't help — let me add a bit more gasoline to your fire:

Let's say you made $120,000 a year. That's $10,000 a month. If you are unemployed for one month, you've just cost your household $10,000. That's $2,500 a week. Or $500 every workday you don't work.

So if you goof off for ONE DAY — that's $500. So go to the bank, take out $500, and put each bill into your shredder. Because when you are not looking for a job, your shredding money.

It's that simple.

POST YOUR QUESTIONS OR COMMENTS BELOW

P.S. Need help with your fear? Let’s talk. I’ve worked with hundreds of people who wanted to take aggressive steps and re-start their job search — call or email me to schedule a complimentary session.

Image: Royalty-Free License from Dollar Photo Club 2014.

Top 10 Reasons Why You're Not Getting A Job.

As a business and career coach, I run into so many different people every day. I attend conferences and events, I run workshops and webinars, and I host team masterminds for all types of professionals. And guess what? When I talk to the unemployed, I've heard all the excuses why you don't have a job. Here are the top ten realities of your job search today:

1. You're waiting for the phone to ring or the limo to pull up to your house and whisk you off to your new position.

This is my #1 pet peeve when I host job-search workshops. People say they are busy, they're sending out resumes, but the reality is they are mentally waiting for a knight in shining armor to whisk them away to a new cushy position. Guest what . . . it's never going to happen. NEVER.

Unless you're a recently fired CEO with massive connections to firms who want to hire you and subsequently ruin their company, no one is going to call and no one is driving up with a black stretch limo. Once you realize you are on your own and only YOU can change your situation, it's time for a mental ass-kick to get your head on straight.

What To Do: You want an mental ass-kick? Start listening to motivational speakers to keep your mental energy level up and constant. Check out Zig Ziglar, Dale Carnegie, Jeffrey Gitomer, and my favorite Bennie Hsu at Get Busy Living Podcast. He's the best!

2. You rarely go out.

You get up at 9 AM, you probably don't take a shower, you get dressed in your old geriatric Adidas sweatsuit, and sit in front of your laptop. WRONG!

What To Do: Get up at 5 AM, go for a walk/run outside, take a shower, and get dressed in real clothes. You don't like it? TOUGH. This is your workday and for the next 8-10 hours, I am your drill sergeant and you will deliver 110% looking for a job every Monday through Friday. Set up a schedule which takes you outside every single day. Meet people for coffee, hit the library, go to the gym, walk around the park. Strike up conversations with people — you never know who you will meet.

3. You check the web for postings, send out a few resumes, and watch Ellen, Rachael, and Jerry the rest of the day.

Unemployment is not a vacation. You have to attack your job search like any project you've ever delivered at work.

What To Do: You have to:

• Focus on the marketplace - What companies are doing well? Where are the growth areas? Who are the movers and shakers?
• Analyze your attributes against your competition - Do a SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats) analysis on YOU. Figure out how you leverage your strengths and opportunities.
• Develop key targets to go after - Analyze your commuting radius, find out all the potential industries and organizations within your circle, and begin to make a hit list.
• Execute - Go after each one incrementally in a cascade pattern to ensure you are not inundated with tasks, but your search is progressing in a healthy fashion.

4. Your industry has changed.

You actually thought people were going to buy slide-rules FOREVER. Yes, that's right, you're industry is changing. And guess what? Everyone's industry is changing. Some are morphing into other forms, some are merging, many are shrinking, and a lot are just plum going out of business. If you thought you could keep your job or profession for 30 years, I have a DeLorean to sell you.

What To Do: Figure out where your industry is going and either stick around for the very bumpy ride or jump off at the station for the next train. Get to thee library, my dear young minstrel and start understanding what is really happening in the marketplace. Read the WSJ, Medium, BusinessWeek, Fast Company, Inc, and Foundr. Also meeting with industry luminaries doesn't hurt either.

5. You're too old.

Where did the time go? You were having so much fun as an executive in a corner office working on strategy and mergers, you never saw the axe coming for you until it was too late. Now you're 55 and no one wants you. Let me rephrase that — no 20-year old in HR wants you. The minute they do the college graduate math in their head (or on their calculator), your résumé is flying faster than a 767 into the circular file. And the funny thing is you keep doing it.

What To Do: Stop repeating something which doesn't work and expecting something different. You have to get out of the HR/Recruiter trap and move up the ladder and meet/engage/schmooze the hiring managers. Go to industry events, reach out to them via LinkedIn/Twitter, and google their name to get to know them. Then reach out and try to meet them.

6. You're too young.

Where did the time go? You were just in college wowing them with your 4.0 GPA and now no one will take your calls because you have no experience.

What To Do: It's time for you to get some experience! You need to call in every chip on the poker table of life and have them connect you with possible paid intern/entry level positions. Let's get real — you might have a little bit of knowledge, but your don't have the experience to hit deadlines consistently, run a meeting, handle an angry client, manage a boss, or run a complex project. You have to take a small hit position/salary-wise and build up those talents before you really hit the big leagues of life.

7. You're unrealistic about your position and your salary.

"Look, I was Vice President of Strategic Initiatives with a yearly base salary of $275K. Why doesn't anyone want me?"

What To Do: There are a finite number of positions out there which might fit your position/salary requirements, but you will never find them in time. I know, you might run into them, but most likely, NOT. You have to be a bit flexible on the Who/What/Where/How Much in the current marketplace. Try to broaden your scope and see what else is out there. It might not be a VP position, or one drowning in strategy. It might be a bit lower than $275K a year — but then again, it's higher than the $0/year you're pulling in now (great tax benefits though).

8. You have a glass-half-empty mentality.

No one likes a whiner. I just spoke with a prospect this week who could not stop talking about all the bad bosses and decisions they've made in the past 10 years. The first rule of your job search: Never, ever, say bad things about your past. Not only does it cloud anyone's opinion of you, it brings your mental state down into the basement.

What To Do: Start imagining what life would be like if you had that wonderful position RIGHT NOW. Where would you be? Who would you be working with? What would you be doing? How would you get there. Stop thinking and feeling guilty about the past and start preparing for your glorious future. Get your head half-full immediately.

9. You're afraid of Thinking Big and reaching out to the real power-brokers.

No one is going to think big for you (except me). You hamstring your search and actions by being risk-averse. You're afraid of rejection and will never put yourself in a position of actually touching key movers and shakers in your industry. No . . . you will continue to interview with 20-year-old HR reps who text more than they think and wonder why you don't have a killer position.

What To Do: Get a piece of paper and write down what would be your PERFECT job. Now actualize it in your universe — find those companies who fit the bill and reach out to the key people who run those positions. The funny thing is . . . these same people are always on the lookout for new talent. You're just not putting yourself onto their radar.

10. You've given up.

You've tried again and again to get a job offer, an interview or even a solid connection and it seems the cards are stacked against you. It's been years since you've worked and you're draining your savings account to keep your household afloat.

What To Do: You can always try again. Take a different tack, work on an alternate strategy, reach out to new people. In fact, I just worked with a client who was unemployed for two years and within three months, he had a number of offers and took an incredible job. You never know where your next break will occur.

Free image provided by iStockPhoto.

The Real Reason Why People Aren't Getting Hired.

I'm angry. VERY ANGRY. But I'll try to maintain my composure during this post. Over the past month, I've coached a number of clients and have presented to an even larger number of out-of-work executives. They have all been out of work now for 6-12 months and have little-or-no direction moving forward. When I keynote my workshop or coach them one-on-one:

1. I help them target exact companies that they want to work for.
2. I show them a strategy how to reach out and touch decision-makers.
3. I follow up with them on how they are progressing.
4. WASH - RINSE - REPEAT. It's that easy.

And guess what? Many of my clients immediately get interviews and some get offers (like this morning!).

But there is another group of clients. They've done NOTHING. No phone calls, no meetings, no real opportunities.

All they do all day is send out a few emails, check the job boards, tighten up their resume. That's it.

Here's a dose of REALITY folks: If I haven't said it enough — YOU NEED TO GET OUT AND MEET PEOPLE.

• If you are searching for a job in your sweats, YOU ARE NOT LOOKING FOR A JOB.
• If you are not getting out DAILY and meeting key movers and shakers, YOU ARE NOT LOOKING FOR A JOB.
• If you spend your day surfing on the web, sending emails to a few friends, and watching TV all day, YOU ARE NOT LOOKING FOR A JOB.
• If you are landscaping your yard, shopping for groceries, driving the kids to and from school, YOU ARE NOT LOOKING FOR A JOB.

YOU ARE AVOIDING GETTING A JOB.

I honestly think that many of these people have worked so long in one company or one vocation, they've "COCOONED" themselves into a mental corner that they are unable to get out of. Even when they are given a map and shown the way out — they still stay in the corner waiting for someone to come along and give them a job.

Here's the TRUE REALITY: That's never gonna happen folks.

Get 'real' with your situation. If you've been unemployed for more than 3 months without a viable interview or job offer, something isn't working. You need to change your strategy. Unfortunately, for many people out their, many of their obstacles are in their head.

Sorry about the vitriol today — but sometimes people just need a good kick in the butt to see reality.

Image provided by Family O'Abé at Flickr.

"I Can't Find A Job!"

The title of this post is so often repeated in the media — all the way from college students who have just graduated to middle managers who have lost their job to workers in the sunset of their career. "I get up — I check out the job market — I send out a few resumes — and I never get a call back!" "What should I do?"

TAKE CHARGE OF YOUR LIFE.

It's easier said than done. But the reality is, there are more workers than jobs out there right now. And the premium jobs (management) are disappearing at a rapid pace due to productivity gains, technology, and the current economy. Check out this article.

BUT WHAT CAN I DO?

One option is to start your own business. It's never been easier in the history of people working. To start your own business, you need to clearly understand a number of areas:

• Knowledge of the Marketplace - is this needed?, is there a market for this?, are people willing to pay you for it?
• Drive & Hustle - a 'get off your ass' attitude to make it happen AND a drive to help you through the hard and complex times.
• A Vision - what is the future of this business?, where is it going?, who is your competition?
• A Mission - what are you going to do . . . exactly?
• A Plan - what are the steps, the timing, the resources, - the who, what, where, when, why and how?

Now you might say — "Start a business? How will I make money?" Let me give you an example:

There's a small shop in Kentucky called Gil Hibben Knives. You might have heard about them. Gil makes knives. Really good knives.

In addition to manufacturing his own knives, he runs classes where he teaches people to make their own knives:

• It's only offered once a month.
• The class runs for one week, each day from 9 AM to 5:30 PM.
• He only allows four people in each class. (he can probably run the class by himself)
• The classes are held at his shop in LaGrange, KY. (hotel, travel, food, etc. are your responsibility)
• He charges $995 for each participant.

The classes are FULL for the rest of the year.

Let's do a little broad math here: $1000 X 4 Students X 12 = $48,000/year.

And that's only working one week per month! This model allows him to work on manufacturing and other projects the other three weeks of the month! And let's be honest here — his site is pretty basic — it does the job, but anyone can do the same thing to market their services and wares. What I'm really saying is that it's pretty easy — don't let your mind develop obstacles.

And let me hazard a guess . . . he probably LOVES what he does.

So if the corporation work environment is slowly collapsing/changing — maybe you should strike out on your own and start that business?

It will be hard — it will tax you — but in the end, it will be well worth it.

P.S. I know there will be commenters who will say, "He's a famous knifemaker!" or "He's had his business for years!" or "Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah". You may be right, but from my viewpoint, they're just more obstacles you're putting in your way — moving you from success to mediocrity and failure. Get out there and do something!

The Rules Of Job Hunting Have Changed.

Bob Weinstein, a reporter who has interviewed me a number of times on job search, business, and career issues, has hit another home run again yesterday in the Connecticut Post, one of CT's largest newspapers. A whole article about job hunting rules from ME (click image or here to enlarge).

Bottom line:

• Take stock of all social media sites where you have been posting information.
• Step back and view each site with a laser focus — is there anything unprofessional?
• They are looking — especially LinkedIn, Facebook, Google+, and Twitter.
• Use these sites to enhance your professional image and stature in the industry. 

A big shout-out to Bob — he's in a rarefied class all by himself - professional, understanding, and informs readers with solid and clear advice.

10 Reasons Why 2013 Will Be The Year You Quit Your Job.

As a general rule, I read 75-100 business/career articles each week. But once in awhile, I come across a powerful and ground-breaking idea, I just have to share it. Yesterday while reading TechCrunch, I ran across one of these articles by James Altucher.

In 10 very simple, scary, and true reasons, James lays out why you HAVE to quit your job. Basically,  The myth of corporate safety is over and here is how it currently lays out:

1. The middle class is dead. You know it and everyone else does - time to make your next move.
2. You’ve been replaced. Technology & robots are the new middle class.
3. Corporations don’t like you. They never have and are getting worse by the day.
4. Money is not happiness. Looking for that promotion or bonus? That won't make you happy.
5. Count right now how many people can make a major decision that can ruin your life. They can fire you in an instant.
6. Is your job satisfying your needs? It's Monday - are you really happy to hit your job (I am).
7. Your retirement plan is for shit. We're living longer and no amount of savings is going to last.
8. Excuses. Stop making excuses to leave the rat race. Do it today.
9. It’s okay to take baby steps. Move slowly and take small steps toward your goals.
10. Abundance will never come from your job. You have to build it within you.

To read the entire article (and I advise you to), click here.

It's a wake-up call for your career. I came to this conclusion 12 years ago and made my move — I've never been happier.

Also, please visit James' site - he is writing and doing great things.

Is Your Career Dying?

Not in the Hollywood sense of dying, where Bruce Willis finally kills you in a fiery crash or fall from the top of a skyscraper. I'm talking about the slow drip-drip-drip death as you watch your career eke away and there's nothing you can really do about it.

I run into this all the time. I have clients who own their own businesses and suddenly realize for the past 4-5 years their revenue and profits have been going down-down-down.

Or the executive who lives in a corporate hole their in working for an asshole, in a department of do-nothings, for a company who hates their employees (and loves the almighty dollar — but it doesn't go to the employees).

Sound familiar? 

People's careers are dying all around us. It's due to a number of factors:

1. GLOBAL - The world is changing faster & faster. Institutions we thought were going to last forever are either no longer there or are on their way to disappearing. Publishing, media, technology, transportation, education, advertising, manufacturing, and medical just to name a few.

2. COMPANY - Focus on short-term profits vs. producing quality products. Top management has one focus — how to please Wall Street. They gear ALL of their decisions on hitting their targets and they quickly forget the product, the customer, and their employees in the process.

3. PERSONAL - People have lost their enthusiasm, drive and energy for what they are doing. They've been doing it so long it becomes a chore or they realize they have changed and are interested in more important things.

How do I diagnose and treat this situation? I ask a simple, three-part question — Do you want to:

1. Stay and do nothing? (not a good idea)
2. Stay and change the dynamic to make it better?
3. Leave and/or do something else?

When your decision point drops down to this simple diagnosis — it instantly clarifies your situation and it sometimes scares people.

Most clients instantly recognize they've been doing #1 for many years. They've been sticking their heads in the sand and hiding in their cubicles waiting for something to change. Some knight in shining armor to whisk them off and save them. But it never does.

The truth is: YOU are the only one who can help YOU. You are in charge of your career and you need to stop waiting for things to happen to you and start directing your life (and explore your limits).

Step One: Get off your ass and stop living in #1. Start doing SOMETHING.

Step Two: Change the dynamic where you are. Start meeting new people, understand where the hot areas of where you work really are, and move towards that light.

Step Three: Get out and start meeting new people outside of your sphere. Open yourself up to new ideas and new ways of doing things. Start pushing yourself way out of your comfort zone.

By the way, I cover all of this in my award-winning workshop, "Bulletproof Your Career". Early next year, I will also be launching my personalized coaching program specifically geared towards bulletproofing your career. Stay tuned!

Happy With Your Career? Not For Long.

One of my favorite quotes from Bruce Lee: "If you alway put limits on everything you do, physical or anything else — it will spread into work and into your life. There are no limits — there are only plateaus and you must not stay there — you must go beyond them."

What is Bruce really saying when it comes to your career or business?

Everything in your life is a plateau on an endless mountain. You work hard — you move up — and make it to the next plateau. You get settled — you enjoy that plateau — and then you make plans to move from that plateau to the next plateau on the mountain.

And I promise you — if you stay at that plateau for a long time — one of three realities will occur:

1. You WILL get bored of that plateau and start self-sabotaging behaviors.

I see this happen all of the time. We get comfortable and we get to know our responsibilities, our deliverables, our customers. Unfortunately, a career without challenges tends to become predictable and boring. And when things in our life become predictable and boring — we tend to take them for granted.

We start to let some areas grow fallow — we start to procrastinate on delivering — just a bit at first, but then it becomes endemic. We might start coming in later to work or leave earlier. We might not get back to our best customer as quickly as we used to. We spend a little too much time surfing or sleeping on the job — and everyone begins to notice.

Solution: When you start to get bored — the very millisecond you get bored — start looking for the new plateau to move to and START CLIMBING.

2. Someone WILL kick you off that plateau.

In my Welcome Packet I send to new clients, I have a powerful quote on the front cover: "If you aren’t continually reinventing yourself, your company, or your brand, it’s only a matter of time before you become obsolete, irrelevant, and go out of business." And that's 100% true.

Someone or some company is going to come along and shake your apple tree. You might see the apples fly all over the place and say to yourself, "I have a strong stem — nothing will happen to me."

But you're wrong. Think of what's happening right now in the marketplace — what has happened to the publishing, newspaper, media, advertising, music, auto, banking industries (just to name a few)? If things aren't falling all around you — you might be falling off the number one spot to number two (or three). Or your vocation is changing and YOU need to chart out a new direction for your business to sail towards.

Solution: Keep your peripherals moving at all times — keep looking around and see if anyone (or any company/industry) is going to begin to take over your plateau. Don't get comfortable, get moving.

3. Your plateau WILL disappear and you will fall.

We frequently make the wrong assumption and think, "This is a great job/company, I am challenged every day, and nothing will really change (at least for the time being)."

You're WRONG. 40-50 years ago, you might be right — my father had his position at Electrolux until the day he retired. But stop kidding yourself — those jobs are GONE.

In fact, each year, the market is moving faster and faster. Industries that were booming just a decade ago are now gone.  I'm always in awe when I visit my local cable company (usually to trade in my broken DVR player) and see just 10-15 years ago all the awards on the walls, the photos of all the accomplishments, the parties, the fun that filled all the offices and people there.

Now there are two VERY bored people on the other side of the glass partition who collect cable payments and exchange DVR players. That's it. Everyone else is GONE.

Solution: Sometimes plateaus disappear instantly, but most of the time, it take awhile for them to totally evaporate. So you have time — not a lot of time — but just enough to find that next handhold and start climbing up.

So the only logical decision to be made is to start climbing up. Because you don't want to start climbing down.

There's no time like the present — START CLIMBING.

P.S. By the way, this also applies to your life too. Your marriage. Your friends. Keep it fresh! Keep it growing!

Are You An Egomaniac?

A few weeks ago, I posted one of my most read articles, 'Are You Late All The Time?'. I received a huge response from readers (thank you!), all letting me know they are either mending their ways or will take charge with late people in their life. Here's a little secret about Rich Gee — I am an avid Vince Flynn Fan — I read all of his books. I am currently in the middle of one of his older novels, Act of Treason. Not to get into the story, but there's a great description of people who are habitually late for meetings. I'll quote it in it's entirety (it's so good):

"When someone is constantly late, they fall into three categories."

"The first, he called idiot savant. The type of person who is so smart in his or her field of expertise that their mid is literally elsewhere. In layman's terms he explained that these people were smart in school and dumb on the bus."

"The second category was made up of perfectionists, people who were incapable of letting go of one task and moving on to another. These people were always playing catch-up, rarely rose to any real position of power, and needed to be managed properly."

"The third category, and the one to be most wary of were the egomaniacs. These were the people who not only felt that their time was more important than anyone else's, but who needed to prove it by constantly making others wait for them."

WOW. The only thing I would add to this description — one can share elements of each category. So you can be a perfectionist with a little idiot savant. Or a bit of an egomaniac (be honest, we all are at one time or another) with a dash of  perfectionism.

Or all three. Coming from someone who is maniacally early all the time — it's hard for me to understand habitually late people. Now I do.

Is there a diagnosis for people like me who are always early? Where do you place yourself? I'd love to know — comment below.

Accelerate Your Job Search - Sales vs. Replenishment.

Have you ever sold products? Stood in front of a board of directors and pitched an idea? I have. In sales, there are two types of salespeople — salespeople whose goal is to sell some 'stuff' and salespeople who solve the client's problem. Guess who is more successful?

Why is it then, when most unemployed executives network, connect, and interview, they focus on selling 'stuff' and not solving problems? I call this the Sales vs. Replenishment Model. And it works perfectly when looking for a job.

Replenishment is just what it means - you are there to replenish an open position. And you try your hardest to fashion yourself in a cookie-cutter way to fit into that replenishment model. What happens? You usually fail. Most accomplished account executives know that you can only replenish inventory for so long until your client smartens up (or someone else pitches them a better solution) and cuts/eliminates your order.

True Sales is the ability to listen, learn and understand what issues, problems, and opportunities your clients have and then try to help them solve them with one of your inventory. This clearly applies to your job search. You need to do a massive amount of research prior to your meeting, ask a lot of questions during the initial meeting, and then (and only then) do you present possible solutions to your lunch partner's issues. One might say that this is a cookie-cutter approach to — but there is a lot less shoving a square peg into a round hole.

Bottom line — if you try to replenish, you lower yourself to every other salesperson out there hawking their stuff. If you endeavor to solve one of the company's problems or present an alternate way to do things - you will instantly catch their attention and make a major impression.

Your chances to get that job have now risen dramatically.

Laid Off? Check This Out.

Recommended by Chris Brogan (he's the best!), this message and movement will ROCK YOUR WORLD.

More than 130,000 advertising professionals have lost their jobs in this Great Recession. Lemonade is about what happens when people who were once paid to be creative in advertising are forced to be creative with their own lives.

www.lemonademovie.com

Launching A New Strategy . . .

How is your job search going? Not too good? Why not try something new?

Get Tough! The Best Jobs Are Never Advertised™ is a powerful workshop that will not

only change HOW you search for a new position in this economy, but how to motivate

yourself when you hit the frustrating ʻdipsʼ in your search. You will:

• Understand the critical factors that are impacting your job search right now.

• Access and employ bullet-proofing strategies against the economy.

• Ramp up every aspect of your marketing with techniques that will reshape the

landscape of your search.

How is your job search going? Not too good? Why not try something new?

Get Tough! The Best Jobs Are Never Advertised™ is a powerful workshop that will not only change HOW you search for a new position in this economy, but how to motivate yourself when you hit the frustrating ʻdipsʼ in your search. You will:

• Understand the critical factors that are impacting your job search right now.
• Access and employ bullet-proofing strategies against the economy.
• Ramp up every aspect of your marketing with techniques that will reshape the landscape of your search.

Rich will be working closely with Margo Meeker, Connecticut's premiere Psychotherapist and Life Coach — together they will present a compelling workshop that will deliver clear strategies on how to find a job coupled with ideas on how to break through the simple obstacles that hold us back while unemployed.

Currently scheduled for:

Central Connecticut State University (only Rich) Wednesday, December 2, 2009 5:00 PM to 6:00 PM

Temple Beth El in Stamford (Rich & Margo) Wednesday, December 9, 2009 8:30 AM to 11:30 AM

Fairfield Library in Fairfield (Rich & Margo) Wednesday, January 13, 2010 7:00 PM to 9:00 PM

Give us a call today (203.500.2421) to get this program for your organization or institution.

It's a PROVEN winner.

Tips To Connect With The Executive Suite & Get That Job - Part Two.

In this climate, it’s usually a waste of time to send out resumes. They go to people who can’t actually hire you. You want to talk to people who can. Here's what you do when you finally meet them. See Part One here to learn about how to connect with them. When the appointed day arrives, keep the following in mind:

• Your goal is to begin assembling a network, not to ask for a job. You've told the person you're not going to do that, and for this to work, you really must not.
• Every supervisor is always on the lookout for talent. They never know when they will need someone, so you really are of interest to them.
• The first thing to understand is that even in times like these, PEOPLE ARE HIRING.
• The feedback you can get from each person will move you closer to a job, even if it's just a little bit, so no matter what, the meeting will be beneficial.
• Ultimately, people are hired as much because someone likes them as because they are qualified.
• Each meeting has the potential to bring you one step closer to a job.

When the meeting starts, begin by thanking the person for his/her time. Then begin by asking questions about their background, how they got to that position, how did they come up with the idea of pet deodorant?

Listen carefully and attentively to all responses, and ask follow-up questions. Ultimately, they are going to turn the table and ask about you. You now have them. Tell them what you DO, not what you DID. Answer every question with enthusiasm and always add a positive spin. They will then ask where you are NOW. You then say: “Currently, I’m in transition and looking for opportunities in the _________ area. Do you know of any?”

This is the hardest question — but after you ask it, they usually start rattling off opportunities, companies, or contacts. Let’s get real — they know the game — but you have taken a real interest in them, they will take an interest in you.

At the end the the time, make sure to thank them for their time, and finish with something like this: “Thank you. This has been incredibly helpful. I will definitely [do something they suggested.] Is there anyone else that you would recommend that I talk to?”

Take down any contact information they give you, thank them, and be on your way. When you get home, immediately write (not email) a thank-you note, and in it, mention specifically one piece of advice that was particularly helpful.

If at all possible (without awkwardness) leave the resume. Remember — it is very important that If you follow this plan and all goes well, at the end of the meeting, you've accomplished the following:

• You've made contact with someone who could, potentially, hire you.
• Your resume is on the desk of someone who could hire you.
• You've made them aware of your qualifications, and demonstrated that you are professional, motivated, and industrious.
• You've gotten another name of someone you can speak with.
• You've started, from scratch, a network of people who know you--who have seen your face and your qualifications--and who can advocate for you.

Often, however, you get more than this. Often the person you speak with will either:

• Say they don't have any openings, but they know someone who does, and put you in touch with that person.
• Say they are hoping to hire again soon, and ask that you leave your materials
• Ask if you'd be interested in some part-time work or contract work with the company.
• Start a process by which you can be hired (by asking you to fill out an application, talk to HR, etc.

Sometimes, btw, this happens after they get your thank-you note, since that is such a rare occurrence in today's world.

I want to be clear--this is not a magic potion that will land you a job immediately. But it is a significantly better use of your limited job-searching time than sending out resumes to people who have never met you.

It is scary, especially the first time you do it, but it really does work. My clients average about 1 job offer for every 5 - 7 meetings.

Tips To Connect With The Executive Suite & Get That Job - Part One.

Let's be candid — In this climate, it's usually a waste of time to send out resumes. They go to people who can't actually hire you. You want to talk to people who can. So here's what you do: Step 1: Identify a few companies (start with 3) who employ people who do what you do. Then identify people who supervise those people. It does not matter in the slightest that those companies are not hiring.

Step 2: Do some research on that person. See if they’ve been interviewed anywhere, just received a promotion, or have been connected in any way with the company’s success (new product, release, uptick in stock price, etc.).

Step 3: Carefully construct a letter to each person you identified in Step 1, writing something like this:

Dear Mr/Ms _____________

I just saw your interview in BusinessWeek a few weeks ago and was very interested in your new focus on Pet Underarm Deodorants. It’s quite a new niche for your company and it brought up a number of questions that interest me since I am in a related industry — I wonder if I might have a few moments of your time.

Please understand, I'm not asking you for a job. I'm just looking to talk to a fellow colleague in the marketplace. Your insight would be invaluable and the meeting would be very brief.

I will call your office next week in hopes of scheduling an appointment. I understand that you are very busy. The meeting will take no more than fifteen minutes of your time. I look forward to speaking with you.

Sincerely, [you]

Most important of all, DO NOT include a resume.

When your letter has had time to reach its destination, make the follow up phone call, and pleasantly request the meeting. Reiterate that you are preparing for a job search and are only seeking advice and feedback. Most people are willing to give 15 minutes. (My clients average well over 50-60% of the meetings they ask for.)

If they hesitate, offer to buy coffee at a nearby spot, and remind them how valuable their input would be.

It's that easy. Tomorrow, we'll cover what you do when you actually meet them. Stay tuned!

5 Stages of Grief When Looking For A Job.

Here's a fun list that I saw on Madatoms: Denial I've got plenty of money! I'll start looking next week!

Anger Craigslist and Monster sucks! I've got a college degree! Jobs should be looking for me!

Bargaining I'll just drive around looking for help wanted signs. I hear that Starbucks has health insurance!

Depression Why did I major in Communications? I have no useful skills.

Acceptance I didn't know I qualified for unemployment! I love this country!

Wall Street’s Gambling Soul.

Of all the insulting labels lobbed at Wall Street over the past two years, you wouldn't expect "overconfident" to be the one that hurt. But it has. This week's New Yorker article by Malcolm Gladwell on Wall Street's "psychology of overconfidence" struck a nerve. By Malcolm Gladwell in the New Yorker Magazine.

In 1996, an investor named Henry de Kwiatkowski sued Bear Stearns for negligence and breach of fiduciary duty. De Kwiatkowski had made—and then lost—hundreds of millions of dollars by betting on the direction of the dollar, and he blamed his bankers for his reversals.

The district court ruled in de Kwiatkowski’s favor, ultimately awarding him $164.5 million in damages. But Bear Stearns appealed—successfully—and in William D. Cohan’s engrossing account of the fall of Bear Stearns, “House of Cards,” the firm’s former chairman and C.E.O. Jimmy Cayne tells the story of what happened on the day of the hearing:

"Their lead lawyer turned out to be about a 300-pound goon from Long Island . . . a really irritating guy who had cross-examined me and tried to knock me around in the lower court trial. Now when we walk into the courtroom for the appeal, they’re arguing another case and we have to wait until they’re finished. Then I see my blood enemy stand up and he’s going to the bathroom. So I wait till he passes and then I follow him in and it’s just he and I in the bathroom. And I said to him, “Today you’re going to get your ass kicked, big.” He ran out of the room. He thought I might have wanted to start it right there and then."

At the time Cayne said this, Bear Stearns had spectacularly collapsed. The eighty-five-year-old investment bank, with its shiny new billion-dollar headquarters and its storied history, was swallowed whole by J. P. Morgan Chase. Cayne himself had lost close to a billion dollars. His reputation—forty years in the making—was in ruins, especially when it came out that, during Bear’s final, critical months, he’d spent an inordinate amount of time on the golf course.

Did Cayne think long and hard about how he wanted to make his case to Cohan? He must have. Cayne understood selling; he started out as a photocopier salesman, working the nine-hundred-mile stretch between Boise and Salt Lake City, and ended up among the highest-paid executives in banking. He was known as one of the savviest men on the Street, a master tactician, a brilliant gamesman. “Jimmy had it all,” Bill Bamber, a former Bear senior managing director, writes in “Bear Trap: The Fall of Bear Stearns and the Panic of 2008” (a book co-written by Andrew Spencer). “The ability to read an opponent. The ability to objectively analyze his own strengths and weaknesses. . . . He knew how to exploit others’ weaknesses—and their strengths, for that matter—as a way to further his own gain. He knew when to take his losses and live to fight another day.”

Cohan asked Cayne about the last days of Bear Stearns, in the spring of 2008. Wall Street had become so spooked by rumors about the firm’s financial status that investors withdrew their capital, and no one would lend Bear the money required for its day-to-day operations. The bank received some government money, via J. P. Morgan. But Timothy Geithner, then the head of the New York Federal Reserve Bank, didn’t open the Fed’s so-called “discount window” to investment banks until J. P. Morgan’s acquisition of Bear was under way. What did Cayne think of Geithner? Picture the scene. The journalist in one chair, Cayne in another. Between them, a tape recorder. And the savviest man on Wall Street sets out to salvage his good name:

"The audacity of that jerk in front of the American people announcing he was deciding whether or not a firm of this stature and this whatever was good enough to get a loan. Like he was the determining factor, and it’s like a flea on his back, floating down underneath the Golden Gate Bridge, saying, “Raise the bridge.” This guy thinks he’s got everything. He’s got nothing."

Since the beginning of the financial crisis, there have been two principal explanations for why so many banks made such disastrous decisions. The first is structural. Regulators did not regulate. Institutions failed to function as they should. Rules and guidelines were either inadequate or ignored. The second explanation is that Wall Street was incompetent, that the traders and investors didn’t know enough, that they made extravagant bets without understanding the consequences. But the first wave of postmortems on the crash suggests a third possibility: that the roots of Wall Street’s crisis were not structural or cognitive so much as they were psychological.

In “Military Misfortunes,” the historians Eliot Cohen and John Gooch offer, as a textbook example of this kind of failure, the British-led invasion of Gallipoli, in 1915. Gallipoli is a peninsula in southern Turkey, jutting out into the Aegean. The British hoped that by landing an army there they could make an end run around the stalemate on the Western Front, and give themselves a clear shot at the soft underbelly of Germany. It was a brilliant and daring strategy. “In my judgment, it would have produced a far greater effect upon the whole conduct of the war than anything [else],” the British Prime Minister H. H. Asquith later concluded. But the invasion ended in disaster, and Cohen and Gooch find the roots of that disaster in the curious complacency displayed by the British.

The invasion required a large-scale amphibious landing, something the British had little experience with. It then required combat against a foe dug into ravines and rocky outcroppings and hills and thickly vegetated landscapes that Cohen and Gooch call “one of the finest natural fortresses in the world.” Yet the British never bothered to draw up a formal plan of operations. The British military leadership had originally estimated that the Allies would need a hundred and fifty thousand troops to take Gallipoli. Only seventy thousand were sent. The British troops should have had artillery—more than three hundred guns.

They took a hundred and eighteen, and, for the most part, neglected to bring howitzers, trench mortars, or grenades. Command of the landing at Sulva Bay—the most critical element of the attack—was given to Frederick Stopford, a retired officer whose experience was largely administrative. Stopford had two days during which he had a ten-to-one advantage over the Turks and could easily have seized the highlands overlooking the bay. Instead, his troops lingered on the beach, while Stopford lounged offshore, aboard a command ship. Winston Churchill later described the scene as “the placid, prudent, elderly English gentleman with his 20,000 men spread around the beaches, the front lines sitting on the tops of shallow trenches, smoking and cooking, with here and there an occasional rifle shot, others bathing by hundreds in the bright blue bay where, disturbed hardly by a single shell, floated the great ships of war.”

When word of Stopford’s ineptitude reached the British commander, Sir Ian Hamilton, he rushed to Sulva Bay to intercede—although “rushed” may not be quite the right word here, since Hamilton had chosen to set up his command post on an island an hour away and it took him a good while to find a boat to take him to the scene.

Cohen and Gooch ascribe the disaster at Gallipoli to a failure to adapt—a failure to take into account how reality did not conform to their expectations. And behind that failure to adapt was a deeply psychological problem: the British simply couldn’t wrap their heads around the fact that they might have to adapt. “Let me bring my lads face to face with Turks in the open field,” Hamilton wrote in his diary before the attack. “We must beat them every time because British volunteer soldiers are superior individuals to Anatolians, Syrians or Arabs and are animated with a superior ideal and an equal joy in battle.”

Hamilton was not a fool. Cohen and Gooch call him an experienced and “brilliant commander who was also a firstrate trainer of men and a good organizer.” Nor was he entirely wrong in his assessments. The British probably were a superior fighting force. Certainly they were more numerous, especially when they held that ten-to-one advantage at Sulva Bay. Hamilton, it seems clear, was simply overconfident—and one of the things that happen to us when we become overconfident is that we start to blur the line between the kinds of things that we can control and the kinds of things that we can’t. The psychologist Ellen Langer once had subjects engage in a betting game against either a self-assured, well-dressed opponent or a shy and badly dressed opponent (in Langer’s delightful phrasing, the “dapper” or the “schnook” condition), and she found that her subjects bet far more aggressively when they played against the schnook. They looked at their awkward opponent and thought, I’m better than he is. Yet the game was pure chance: all the players did was draw cards at random from a deck, and see who had the high hand. This is called the “illusion of control”: confidence spills over from areas where it may be warranted (“I’m savvier than that schnook”) to areas where it isn’t warranted at all (“and that means I’m going to draw higher cards”).

At Gallipoli, the British acted as if their avowed superiority over the Turks gave them superiority over all aspects of the contest. They neglected to take into account the fact that the morning sun would be directly in the eyes of the troops as they stormed ashore. They didn’t bring enough water. They didn’t factor in the harsh terrain. “The attack was based on two assumptions,” Cohen and Gooch write, “both of which turned out to be unwise: that the only really difficult part of the operation would be getting ashore, after which the Turks could easily be pushed off the peninsula; and that the main obstacles to a happy landing would be provided by the enemy.”

Most people are inclined to use moral terms to describe overconfidence—terms like “arrogance” or “hubris.” But psychologists tend to regard overconfidence as a state as much as a trait. The British at Gallipoli were victims of a situation that promoted overconfidence. Langer didn’t say that it was only arrogant gamblers who upped their bets in the presence of the schnook. She argues that this is what competition does to all of us; because ability makes a difference in competitions of skill, we make the mistake of thinking that it must also make a difference in competitions of pure chance. Other studies have reached similar conclusions. As novices, we don’t trust our judgment. Then we have some success, and begin to feel a little surer of ourselves. Finally, we get to the top of our game and succumb to the trap of thinking that there’s nothing we can’t master. As we get older and more experienced, we overestimate the accuracy of our judgments, especially when the task before us is difficult and when we’re involved with something of great personal importance. The British were overconfident at Gallipoli not because Gallipoli didn’t matter but, paradoxically, because it did; it was a high-stakes contest, of daunting complexity, and it is often in those circumstances that overconfidence takes root.

Several years ago, a team headed by the psychologist Mark Fenton-O’Creevy created a computer program that mimicked the ups and downs of an index like the Dow, and recruited, as subjects, members of a highly paid profession. As the line moved across the screen, Fenton-O’Creevy asked his subjects to press a series of buttons, which, they were told, might or might not affect the course of the line. At the end of the session, they were asked to rate their effectiveness in moving the line upward. The buttons had no effect at all on the line. But many of the players were convinced that their manipulation of the buttons made the index go up and up. The world these people inhabited was competitive and stressful and complex. They had been given every reason to be confident in their own judgments. If they sat down next to you, with a tape recorder, it wouldn’t take much for them to believe that they had you in the palm of their hand. They were traders at an investment bank.

The high-water mark for Bear Stearns was 2003. The dollar was falling. A wave of scandals had just swept through the financial industry. The stock market was in a swoon. But Bear Stearns was an exception. In the first quarter of that year, its earnings jumped fifty-five per cent. Its return on equity was the highest on Wall Street. The firm’s mortgage business was booming. Since Bear Stearns’s founding, in 1923, it had always been a kind of also-ran to its more blue-chip counterparts, like Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley. But that year Fortune named it the best financial company to work for. “We are hitting on all 99 cylinders,’’ Jimmy Cayne told a reporter for the Times, in the spring of that year, “so you have to ask yourself, What can we do better? And I just can’t decide what that might be.’’ He went on, “Everyone says that when the markets turn around, we will suffer. But let me tell you, we are going to surprise some people this time around. Bear Stearns is a great place to be.’’

With the benefit of hindsight, Cayne’s words read like the purest hubris. But in 2003 they would have seemed banal. These are the kinds of things that bankers say. More precisely—and here is where psychological failure becomes more problematic still—these are the kinds of things that bankers are expected to say. Investment banks are able to borrow billions of dollars and make huge trades because, at the end of the day, their counterparties believe they are capable of making good on their promises. Wall Street is a confidence game, in the strictest sense of that phrase.

This is what social scientists mean when they say that human overconfidence can be an adaptive trait. “In conflicts involving mutual assessment, an exaggerated assessment of the probability of winning increases the probability of winning,” Richard Wrangham, a biological anthropologist at Harvard, writes. “Selection therefore favors this form of overconfidence.” Winners know how to bluff. And who bluffs the best? The person who, instead of pretending to be stronger than he is, actually believes himself to be stronger than he is. According to Wrangham, self-deception reduces the chances of “behavioral leakage”; that is, of “inadvertently revealing the truth through an inappropriate behavior.” This much is in keeping with what some psychologists have been telling us for years—that it can be useful to be especially optimistic about how attractive our spouse is, or how marketable our new idea is. In the words of the social psychologist Roy Baumeister, humans have an “optimal margin of illusion.”

If you were a Wall Street C.E.O., there were two potential lessons to be drawn from the collapse of Bear Stearns. The first was that Jimmy Cayne was overconfident. The second was that Jimmy Cayne wasn’t overconfident enough. Bear Stearns did not collapse, after all, simply because it had made bad bets. Until very close to the end, the firm had a capital cushion of more than seventeen billion dollars. The problem was that when, in early 2008, Cayne and his colleagues stood up and said that Bear was a great place to be, the rest of Wall Street no longer believed them. Clients withdrew their money, and lenders withheld funding. As the run on Bear Stearns worsened, J. P. Morgan and the Fed threw the bank a lifeline—a multibillion-dollar line of credit. But confidence matters so much on Wall Street that the lifeline had the opposite of its intended effect. As Bamber writes:

This line-of-credit, the stop-gap measure that was supposed to solve the problem that hadn’t really existed in the first place had done nothing but worsen it. When we started the week, we had no liquidity issues. But because people had said that we did have problems with our capital, it became true, even though it wasn’t true when people started saying it. . . . So we were forced to find capital to offset the losses we’d sustained because somebody decided we didn’t have capital when we really did. So when we finally got more capital to replace the capital we’d lost, people took that as a bad sign and pointed to the fact that we’d had no capital and had to get a loan to cover it, even when we did have the capital they said we didn’t have.

Of course, one reason that over-confidence is so difficult to eradicate from expert fields like finance is that, at least some of the time, it’s useful to be overconfident—or, more precisely, sometimes the only way to get out of the problems caused by overconfidence is to be even more overconfident.

From an individual perspective, it is hard to distinguish between the times when excessive optimism is good and the times when it isn’t. All that we can say unequivocally is that overconfidence is, as Wrangham puts it, “globally maladaptive.” When one opponent bluffs, he can score an easy victory. But when everyone bluffs, Wrangham writes, rivals end up “escalating conflicts that only one can win and suffering higher costs than they should if assessment were accurate.” The British didn’t just think the Turks would lose in Gallipoli; they thought that Belgium would prove to be an obstacle to Germany’s advance, and that the Russians would crush the Germans in the east. The French, for their part, planned to be at the Rhine within six weeks of the start of the war, while the Germans predicted that by that point they would be on the outskirts of Paris. Every side in the First World War was bluffing, with the resolve and skill that only the deluded are capable of, and the results, of course, were catastrophic.

Jimmy Cayne grew up in Chicago, the son of a patent lawyer. He wanted to be a bookie, but he realized that it wasn’t quite respectable enough. He went to Purdue University to study mechanical engineering—and became hooked on bridge. His grades suffered, and he never graduated. He got married in 1956 and was divorced within four years. “At this time, he was one of the best bridge players in Chicago,” his ex-brother-in-law told Cohan. “In fact, that’s the reason for the divorce. There was no other woman or anything like that. The co-respondent in their divorce was bridge. He spent all of his time playing bridge—every night. He wasn’t home.” He was selling scrap metal in those days, and, Cohan says, he would fall asleep on the job, exhausted from playing cards. In 1964, he moved to New York to become a professional bridge player. It was bridge that led him to his second wife, and to a job interview with Alan (Ace) Greenberg, then a senior executive at Bear Stearns. When Cayne told Greenberg that he was a bridge player, Cayne tells Cohan, “you could see the electric light bulb.” Cayne goes on:

[Greenberg] says, “How well do you play?” I said, “I play well.” He said, “Like how well?” I said, “I play quite well.” He says, “You don’t understand.” I said, “Yeah, I do. I understand. Mr. Greenberg, if you study bridge the rest of your life, if you play with the best partners and you achieve your potential, you will never play bridge like I play bridge.”

Right then and there, Cayne says, Greenberg offered him a job.

Twenty years later, the scene was repeated with Warren Spector, who went on to become a co-president of the firm. Spector had been a bridge champion as a student, and Cayne somehow heard about it. “Suddenly, out of nowhere there’s a bridge player at Bear Stearns on the bond desk,” Cayne recalls. Spector tells Cohan, “He called me up and said, ‘Are you a bridge player?’ I said, ‘I used to be.’ So bridge was something that he, Ace, and I all shared and talked about.” As reports circulated that two of Bear Stearns’s hedge funds were going under—a failure that started the bank on its long, downward spiral into collapse—Spector and Cayne were attending the Spingold K.O. bridge tournament, in Nashville. The Wall Street Journal reported that, of the twenty-one workdays that month, Cayne was out of the office for nearly half of them.

It makes sense that there should be an affinity between bridge and the business of Wall Street. Bridge is a contest between teams, each of which competes over a “contract”—how many tricks they think they can win in a given hand. Winning requires knowledge of the cards, an accurate sense of probabilities, steely nerves, and the ability to assess an opponent’s psychology. Bridge is Wall Street in miniature, and the reason the light bulb went on when Greenberg looked at Cayne, and Cayne looked at Spector, is surely that they assumed that bridge skills could be transferred to the trading floor—that being good at the game version of Wall Street was a reasonable proxy for being good at the real-life version of Wall Street.

It isn’t, however. In bridge, there is such a thing as expertise unencumbered by bias. That’s because, as the psychologist Gideon Keren points out, bridge involves “related items with continuous feedback.” It has rules and boundaries and situations that repeat themselves and clear patterns that develop—and when a player makes a mistake of overconfidence he or she learns of the consequences of that mistake almost immediately. In other words, it’s a game. But running an investment bank is not, in this sense, a game: it is not a closed world with a limited set of possibilities. It is an open world where one day a calamity can happen that no one had dreamed could happen, and where you can make a mistake of overconfidence and not personally feel the consequences for years and years—if at all. Perhaps this is part of why we play games: there is something intoxicating about pure expertise, and the real mastery we can attain around a card table or behind the wheel of a race car emboldens us when we move into the more complex realms. “I’m good at that. I must be good at this, too,” we tell ourselves, forgetting that in wars and on Wall Street there is no such thing as absolute expertise, that every step taken toward mastery brings with it an increased risk of mastery’s curse. Cayne must have come back from the Spingold bridge tournament fortified in his belief in his own infallibility. And the striking thing about his conversations with Cohan is that nothing that had happened since seemed to have shaken that belief.

“When I left,” Cayne told Cohan, speaking of his final day at Bear Stearns, “I had three different meetings. The first was with the president’s advisory group, which was about eighty people. There wasn’t a dry eye. Standing ovation. I was crying.” Until the very end, he evidently saw the world that he wanted to see. “The second meeting was with the retail sales force on the Web,” he goes on. “Standing ovation. And the third was a partners’ meeting that night for me to tell them that I was stepping down. Standing ovation, of the whole auditorium.”

The New Joblessness.

The U.S. economy is not only shedding jobs at a record rate; it is shedding more jobs than it is supposed to. It’s bad enough that the unemployment rate has doubled in only a year and a half and one out of six construction workers is out of work. By Roger Lowenstein From The New York Times Magazine.

What truly troubles President Obama’s economic advisers is that, even adjusting for the recession, the contraction in employment seems way too high. As one administration official said, “This has been a very steep job loss.” One proof, he added, is that the country is deviating from the standard (among economists) jobs predictor known as Okun’s Law.

In the 1960s, Arthur Okun, a prominent economist, claimed to have discovered a mathematical relationship between the decline in output (that is, goods and services produced) and the rise in unemployment. It held up pretty well until recently. But this time around, although the decline in output would have predicted a rise in unemployment to 8 percent, the actual jobless rate has soared to 9.5 percent. So this recession is killing off jobs even faster than the things — like automobiles, houses, computers and newspapers — that jobholders produce.

The Federal Reserve now expects unemployment to surpass 10 percent (the postwar high was 10.8 percent in 1982). By almost every other measure, ours is already the worst job environment since the Great Depression. The economy has shed 6.5 million jobs — nearly 5 percent of the total, far outstripping the 3 percent that were lost in the early ’80s. Economists fear that even when the economy turns around, the job market will be stagnant. Keith Hall, the commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, sums it up as “an ugly picture out there.”

Explanations for the collapse of the great American job machine begin with the marked absence of what is called labor hoarding. Usually during recessions, firms keep most of their employees on the payroll even as business slows, in effect stockpiling them for better days. In the current downturn, hoarding seems to have gone into reverse. Not only are firms laying off redundant workers, but they seem to be cutting into the bone. Hall says the absence of hoarding means that firms do not expect business to pick up soon. This is supported by other evidence, like a doubling in the number of involuntary part-time workers (there are nine million of them) and the shrinking workweek, now 33 hours — the shortest ever recorded. Presumably, before companies start to rehire laid-off workers, they will ask their current employees to work more.

Those who hope for a rebound argue that employers, frightened by the financial shocks and the credit crisis of last fall, effectively panicked. That is, they cut deeper than necessary. And that may be.

But layoffs are only part of the story. The problem isn’t just that so many workers have received pink slips but also that companies are failing to hire. And this, unfortunately, has been a trend for most of the past decade (unnoticed, perhaps, because the mortgage bubble was papering over latent weaknesses). At the end of the Clinton era, which also marked the end of a decade-long boom, companies that were opening or expanding operations added nearly 8 workers for every 100 already on the payroll. During the recession of 2001, the figure dropped to 7 per 100: optimistic firms were a bit less optimistic. The surprising fact is that when the recession ended, the percentage stayed at 7. “We never got our groove back,” asserts Mark Zandi of Moody’s Economy.com. In the current recession, the rate has fallen to 6 per 100.

It’s hard to give a definitive explanation for this trend, but among the reasons are a decline in innovation in the aftermath of the tech boom, leading to fewer new businesses, and the aging of the population. More people have dropped out of the work force, and a smaller work force tends to dampen job totals. The percentage of adults who are working has fallen from 64 at the end of the Clinton era to only 59.5 now. Some of those dropouts are retirees, but some may be responding to the economy’s declining dynamism. Traditionally, it was a mark of Americans’ resiliency that, when times were tough, they relocated from state to state and region to region. Now, according to the Census Bureau, mobility is at an all-time recorded low. Perhaps people with underwater mortgages cannot afford to move. Perhaps the areas they used to move to, typically the Sun Belt, are too devastated by foreclosures. But the vaunted ability of the U.S. economy to renew itself seems a little tarnished. Maybe it’s no accident that this time around, folks on the unemployment line are staying there longer.

In terms of its impact on society, a dearth of hiring is far more troubling than an excess of layoffs. Job losses have to end sooner or later. Even if they persist (as, say, in the auto industry), the government can intervene. But the government cannot force firms to hire. Ultimately, each new job depends on the boss’s belief — or hope — that sufficient work will materialize. It’s a bit of black magic also described as confidence. Over the years, it is why America has not only attracted immigrants (whose arrivals are now slowing) but also generated more opportunities and — favorite word of politicians — hope for those born here.

The administration’s tilt toward so-called sustainable new jobs, in green energy and such, shows that it understands what is at stake, both for the country and for its political fortunes. Whether its plans will bear fruit is, of course, another matter. Along with double-digit unemployment, the country is facing a second potential scare headline: falling wages. Even during recessions, businesses don’t like to lower pay, because it reduces morale. But layoffs are also a downer. And in this recession, employers ranging from the State of California to publishers (including this newspaper) have cut back on pay. In effect, job losses have been so severe that businesses have been forced to spread the pain. In June, overall wage growth was zero. Zandi thinks the United States could see negative wage growth.

How would Obama, not to mention Congress, respond to declining employment and falling wages? The pressure for another stimulus (and greater deficits) would be intense. So would that for demagogic solutions like trade barriers. Robert Reich, the former labor secretary, says most lost jobs are not coming back. The huge question is when — or whether — new ones will take their place. Roger Lowenstein, an outside director of the Sequoia Fund, is a contributing writer for the magazine.