Snow, Ice, and Authenticity

It was cabin fever, the need for a broader view of world than the one of the bird feeder outside my office window, that gave me the idea of going away for few days.

The destination I chose was the port city of Salem, Massachusetts, with its abundance of historical sites and excellent museum. But I ended up seeing none of them.

The snow began the afternoon I arrived, and by the next day, over a foot and half had fallen on Salem, with layers of ice and freezing rain for good measure, in effect closing down the town. The new snow fell on top of an already substantial buildup from earlier storms, causing unexpected problems, such as what to do with all the additional “white stuff” (it’s against the law to dump it in the harbor) and roofs that collapsed from excess weight.

Watching people laboring to shovel a path between snow banks almost as tall as they were, or improvising a solution by hanging out a window to clear off a porch roof with a rake, it struck me that their efforts had a lot in common with long-term unemployment. The work is arduous and all too familiar; “caving in,” i.e., giving up, is a real danger; and it feels like spring will never come.

They overlook the importance of authenticity, knowing absolutely that you are just the right person to do a particular kind of work. They don’t see that it gives them a much stronger platform to stand on while they are searching, and the best possible competitive edge when they are being considered for a new position.

Like the long New England winter, unemployment takes a lot out of body, mind and spirit.

The person who weathers it best is the one who is able to look inside himself to discover the skills, attributes and aspirations which make him unique, and then set out to match his value to the needs of the marketplace. He does not expect a prospective employer to figure out where he belongs. He digs himself out!

GOING INSIDE
What I learned from being stranded in Salem is that there are two aspects to bad weather.

First there’s the part where you’re out in it, trudging through the snow and fighting the bitter wind, trying to find someplace open where you can get cup of coffee.

Then there’s being back inside with little to do except look out the window.

The same two modes exist for job searcher. There’s the staying busy part—looking for openings, submitting resumes, etc.—and then there’s the stuck-at-home, what-do-I-do-with-myself-now part.

At first, as I looked out at the snow piled up on the House of the Seven Gables, literally across the street from where I was staying, all I could think of was how disappointed I was that this place which I had so hoped to visit was closed to me.

Of course, it was closed to everyone else, but I took it personally, just as a job seeker in darker moments may feel the world of work is closed to him.

But then I had an important insight. I couldn’t physically enter where I wanted to be, but I could still engage.

I went to my computer and downloaded the Kindle edition of The House of the Seven Gables and spent the next two days reading it.

Denied access to the site which inspired Nathaniel Hawthorne’s second novel, I fed my sense of identity as a lover of history and literature in another way. By the time I finished the book, I felt I’d gained more from it than by taking the tour of the house. I’d used the opportunity of unstructured time to learn about myself.

One of my clients, who recently found a job after a year and a half of looking, had kept her confidence up during the search by regularly getting together with former colleagues, taking refresher classes, and attending a business book club, activities which allowed her to constantly refine how she presented herself. Before doing these things, she had found herself in subtle ways becoming tentative about her performance, apologetic about being out of work, and disconnected from her own professional competency and energy.

Judging from what I see, read and hear, many people who are desperately seeking employment do not know how to take advantage of a stretch of economic bad weather. It makes them see themselves as an outsider because they have not found ways, like my client, to sustain and grow their sense of professionalism, even while out of work.

COMPETITIVE NECESSITY
When there are five or six people competing for every job opening, you simply cannot be competitive unless you have are willing to engage in an extensive self-exploration process to sharpen your appreciation for what you have to offer and develop your ability to articulate it spontaneously (not as if it were an elevator speech) and with enthusiasm because you know in your bones that every word is true.

Back in the eighties and nineties, in better economic times, clients would complain to me of feeling restless or unfulfilled in the corporate world, and when I suggested exploring other options, many of them saw the idea of doing something for a living that better matched their authentic self as a “luxury.” From their perspective, being on a secure career track, which was more the norm than the exception in those days, compensated for the sacrifice of authenticity.

Nowadays, people in the opposite situation, people who are dealing with a very high level of insecurity about work, are making the same mistake. In their urgency to find a job, any job, they don’t take the time to discover and fully own the best they have to offer.

They overlook the importance of authenticity, knowing absolutely that you are just the right person to do a particular kind of work. They don’t see that it gives them a much stronger platform to stand on while they are searching, and the best possible competitive edge when they are being considered for a new position.

A colleague recently told me about a candidate her staff had interviewed who stood head and shoulders above the others in a field of equally qualified contenders. The candidate had provided a chart outlining her understanding of the needs of the organization and the ways that her strengths and values matched those needs, and the alignment between what they were looking for and what she had to offer was so strong and clear that everyone in the room instantly wanted her.

This is the reward of bringing yourself up-to-date, gathering enough inside data about your product, i.e., you, and enough outside data about a role you are pursuing to be able to say with definitive surety, “I am the person to do this work.”