How to Ask for a Job (Without Asking)

this is a nice question and I'm I'm excited to answer it zann hjin racing Zayn hajen racing says that they are a young professional having graduated in 23 from college and looking for advice about tips for talking to people that you want to work for I have temporary employment where I can gain valuable corporate office experience in multiple areas but is not what I want for my long-term career I'm an avid car Enthusiast and want to work in the class at car industry and I've met several successful people with their own small businesses in the

industry and I'm planning to reach out to them to have lunch or coffee with the aim of getting a job what advice do you have for conversations where I want to ask for a job without actually saying something like can you please give me a job yeah okay there's another thing later that I also let's see here we go okay this feels like part of the same question dread pirate. Robert says what advice would you have for someone primed for a big promotion and wanting the big promotion and scared to death at the same time

and what I wrote there is if you like the company that you're working for and your bosses are thinking about promoting you you could rest in the knowledge of being less scared because if your bosses are going to matriculate you up to a position it's likely that they know that you can do it I have definitely put people in positions that they didn't know they could do and I knew that they could do it so I wrote there trust the process um now that's a lot of ifs but and you know I spend a lot

of time on antiw work so I know how many like promotions get taken away from people but like if it's a reasonable work environment and your your your your higher ups are going to move you up I think you can trust them that they can see that you've got what it takes um going back to uh Zay hodin racing one of the things that someone gave me advice about doing and I did this with Ideo back in 200 2201 I was working for ilm but they the work wasn't consistent and I needed more money uh

and I you know I'm freelance I was freelance I've always been freelance and so I just wanted to know if there was other work out there and someone said to me who said this Bob caran uh said this he's like call up a company you want to work for and ask for an informational interview tell them you're in the industry adjacent to theirs and you'd like to just talk about what they hire for and why and so I did I cold called and got a really lovely person who set up an hourlong meeting with a

couple of supervisors at Ido and they talked to me specifically about their hiring practice that ID had at that point they may still a corporate philosophy of hiring what they called mushroom shaped people so people with a a strong foundation and the thing that they were good at that's the stock of the mushroom and then a lot a wide range of interests to stuff adjacent to that right like so it spreads out the N the the desire for knowledge spreads out um that's a long way of saying that like slightly specialized generalists and I had

a lovely illuminated in conversation with those folks it did not lead to work at Ideo but let me tell you about being a supervisor because people come up to me in many different social interactions wanting to work for me and the reason I'm joining this with the trust the process question from dread pirate Roberts is you may think you know that you want to work for someone but that doesn't matter if they can't use you I know that sounds like dumbly axiomatic but bear with me here I'm looking for a particular kind of mindset in

a shop assistant when I'm thinking about it and it's not necessar neily what you'd think and I'm not even sure I have articulated the kind of person that works here and of the half dozen or show shop assistants I've had in this space over the past 12 14 years um there I it's not like there's a specific Criterion I'm looking for um but there is a Vibe there's a real Vibe and um what I'm going to advise you to do is not think about wanting specifically a job with the person you're talking to if you

let go of that it removes a whole bunch of tension from the conversation people are empathetic we can read each other's body language and our inflection and our voices and when someone's sitting across from you and they want something from you this is happening in that conversation it's a pull and okay I'm going to I'm going to add another category to people who want something from me some people come up to my table at cons and they want to tell me about their skill set and only after the fact I realized oh I think they

were kind of interviewing for a job with me um I'm sort of slow at that but then there are some people that come up to my table and they think they've seen me respond to somebody else's object and they've seen me do a video about that object and they've seen that they have this idea that somehow if I saw the thing that they make I would trumpet it and all their problems would be solved it it really feels like some people come to me with a plan that's that Loosely formed like we just got to

get this under Adam's nose and then it'll all be smooth sailing and I got to tell you I can smell that I can really smell that when when you think that I'm going to solve your business model I can smell it and I don't want that responsibility um so if you are sitting down with people for coffee instead of thinking to yourself I'd like a job with this person try it this if I'm what this person is looking for I would like them to hire me that's a very different mindset and it's much more open

and I suggest that you will learn more about the industry and the particular kind of skills required for that job than you would if you're sitting there wanting the whole time doing this business um you graduated in 23 which tells me that you may be the tender young age you graduated from college in 23 you might be as young as 22 23 years old and honestly to an older person a 23-year-old is just like um all of a 23 year-old's thoughts are sort of apparent to an older person not all but like you know we

can see your Youth and your ambition and your drive and we can see the way you think the world works and um it's just you're going to get farther not overthinking what you want out of a conversation um yeah and then the other thing that I would imagine is if you have temporary employment where you can gain valuable corporate office experience and multiple areas valuable corporate office experience is valuable it is I want to just counsel you one other thing which I love telling people to do which is prioritize being easy to work with that

is definitely a vibe that I'm smelling for and I don't know what are the list of things that make somebody easy to work with because it's all over the map but like I do know that people who are easy to work with tend to take drama out of a situation rather than put it in people who are easy to work with uh tend not to qualify when they're helping you out they tend to uh they tend to spot problems but their ego is not tied into their output uh people who are easy to work with

pay attention to the bigger picture and get out of the way when it's necessary um if you are in a corporate office experience you're going to experience all manner of nonsense learn to deal with that nonsense of the corporate office environment with equinity and reserve and a lack of emotionality and you will go far I swear at this age I can tell when someone's e easy to work with more than most other things about them but um yeah that's a terrific terrific question Zay hoden raising racing uh and worthwhile investigating [Music] um you don't know

what any of these jobs are actually like for you and that's why I'm saying you might think you want to work for this shop because of the stuff they do but when you get there you might find that it's ah okay that's the other thing right I knew I had this other point to make about this as you are thinking about going into inter informational interviews and sitting across from people to learn about the industry and if you turn out to have a sympatico personality maybe they could hire you the other thing I want you

to be uh to be considering in your head is wait a minute wait a minute um what do you want the job to feel like do you want a supervisor who micromanages you you're going to get one at some point um I say this because I wanted to work in special effects in a special effects shop since I was 10 years old and I learned that that was a job when I was 18 19 20 years old in New York I worked for several shops that were terrible places to work they did beautiful work but

at the level I engaged with those shops they were unpleasant workplaces with yeah uncommunicative not supportive uh kind of shitty yeah so I was surprised by that but it also reset me and the reason I want you to think about what it's should feel like because the job should feel good you you don't kill yourself to go work for a shop that does beautiful output but is a horrible place to work that won't be satisfying to you uh yeah I think there's real value in spending time thinking about your future and how you want it

to feel not just the output you hope to uh engage in okay thank you for watching that video are you as sick of the tosses to membership as I am good cuz here's a brand new one that I recorded today and it's nice and short there are three tiers to tested membership and they all offer awesome stuff find out about it by clicking the join link below we'll see you there