No. 4: Seek out a mentor to help you on your career path.

The best way to land a job is through a personal referral. Yes, you can find a job by flooding the market with unsolicited resumes or by applying for every opening that comes available. But when you do so, you become part of the nameless, faceless crowd vying for a position.

A personal referral, on the other hand, automatically distinguishes you from the competition and places you in the “second review” pile of resumes. A personal referral is a differentiator that can help you along the pathway to professional success.

Working with a mentor can help you generate personal referrals. Mentors come from many different stations of life. Your mentor might be a professor, a friend’s parent, a work colleague, a neighbor, a fellow congregant, or a former classmate. You might even reach out to someone you admire from a distance.

How do you convince someone to be your mentor? The answer is simple: Ask. Most people are willing to give meaningful advice if you will ask.

Ask your mentor for referrals for your job search. Does he know anyone who is hiring? Ask for recommendations and career advice. What groups and associations should you join? Ask about your preferred job niche. How can you distinguish yourself in that niche? Ask for advice, then follow through on that advice.

Several years ago, I received an unsolicited email from a woman who was a third-year law student in another state. She advised that she was interested in practicing employment law in Phoenix and referenced another lawyer in town – a graduate of her alma mater – who had suggested that I might be able to give her some guidance on the job market.

Note that she did not ask me for a job, she asked me for advice.

I respect the attorney who had given her my name. I was flattered that this student thought that I could give her meaningful assistance in her job hunt. And I was impressed that she had formulated a career plan and that was taken the initiative to implement her plan.

We agreed to meet the next time she was in town. I explained that my firm did not have any job openings at that time, but agreed that we could talk about the job market and general advice for a job search.

When we met a few weeks later, I was impressed with her qualifications. She was smart, articulate, and outgoing. She presented herself well and asked good questions. She was receptive to my comments and suggestions for her job hunt.

She followed up with me several weeks later. By then, we were getting busier at the office. My partners and I realized that we could use an associate shortly. We invited her in for a second meeting so that she could meet some of my partners. They were as impressed with her as I was.

Several months after our first meeting, we made her a job offer. Fortunately, she accepted. She has become an invaluable member of our team. And she has made me look good many times over.

I have tried to be a good mentor to her. I involve her with my cases whenever possible. We regularly meet to discuss litigation strategy and skills. She is not relegated to writing research memos and reviewing stacks of documents, but instead regularly meets with clients, argues in court, and handles her own cases.

We have developed a genuine friendship and respect for one another. But none of this would have happened if she had not taken the initiative to reach out and ask me for advice.

Seek out a mentor who can help you on your career path. You’ll be glad that you did.

(To be continued)

A terrific way to differentiate yourself is to show your prospective employer that you understand needs – and that you are uniquely qualified to meet those needs.

No. 3: Help your prospective employer understand how you will make his life easier.

You are a terrific human being who has the skills, drive, and determination to succeed in the position. Your dog and your mother love you. Why is it so hard to get a prospective employer to love you back?

The answer is simple: You have not looked at the hiring experience from the employer’s perspective.

You might believe that since you are competing for the job against a cast of thousands, you need to trumpet how wonderful you are so that you shine in comparison to other applicants. There is some truth to that thought. But unlike your dog and your mother who love you unconditionally, your prospective employer will love you only if you first give some love to the firm.

Look at the hiring experience through the employer’s perspective. The hiring partner is taking time away from her busy practice to meet with you. While the two of you are chatting, clients are calling, emails are landing in her inbox, and judges are scheduling trial deadlines. Moreover, her partners will judge her competence based on the performance of whichever applicant she ultimately chooses to hire. She has a lot on her mind.

If you want to land the job, you must show her that you are a safe choice.

You may think that you are applying for work because you need a job. In reality, however, you are interviewing for a position only because the employer needs help. If you want to get hired, you need to prove that you will make the employer’s job easier.

Show your prospective employer that you understand her needs and that you can meet those needs. Professional competence is the ticket that admits you to this dance. Tell her about experiences in your background that prove your dependability. Explain how you work well with others. Describe your ability to adapt to changing circumstances. It is your job to convince her that her life will be easier with you on board.

To do so, you must forget your own interests and instead view things from the perspective of your prospective employer. Take a genuine interest in the firm, the clients it services, and its practice areas. Ask yourself, “How can I uniquely meet this firm’s needs?” Then convince the hiring partner that you are not only a safe choice, but that her partners will consider her a genius for having the good sense to hire you.

Be careful how you express your love to the prospective employer. I remember a young lady who said in her cover letter that my firm would be a “good place to start my career.” By saying that she wanted to “start” her career with my firm, she (perhaps unknowingly) suggested that she would leave as soon as she found a “better” opportunity. As a small law firm, we could not afford to hire someone, train her for a year or two, and have her bolt the first time a “better” job came along. I liken her letter to a young man proposing marriage to his girlfriend by asking, “Will you be my first wife?” It’s not a good look.

Once you begin to view your job search through the employer’s perspective, you quickly will understand how to position yourself to meet the employer’s needs.

(To be continued)

You have the ability to succeed. You are confident and prepared to succeed. So how do you convince a prospective employer that you can succeed? You must differentiate yourself from the competition.

No. 2: Differentiate yourself from your peers in a way that is meaningful to your prospective employer.

Finding your first job is an adventure in marketing – a skill that most law students have not needed to develop thus far.

Before law school, you were able to differentiate yourself based on your ability to make good grades. But now you are thrust into a pool of overachievers who also have made good grades throughout their scholastic experience. You no longer are differentiated but are instead like everyone else in your class.

For perhaps the first time in your life, you must market yourself. Marketing requires you to differentiate yourself from your competition in a way that makes a difference to your target audience, in this case, your prospective employer.

But the sad truth is that most resumes and cover letters are mundane, predictable, and indistinguishable. They do little to differentiate you from your classmates or help you get a job.

You have no more than 15 seconds in which to impress the person reviewing your resume. If you have the fundamental skills required for the position (see No. 1), then don’t waste your precious time telling me that you have the fundamental skills required for the position. Instead, show me why I should put your resume in the “maybe” pile instead of tossing it into the trash can.

You “differentiate” yourself when you show a prospective employer that you have a tailored set of skills that enable you to succeed in his position. Almost anything can serve as a differentiator, including your experience, education, or relationships. For example, if you are applying for a position with a firm that handles construction defect litigation, your experience as a construction superintendent makes you a great prospect, particularly because few (if any) of your classmates have a similar background.

Make sure your differentiator is clear and unambiguous. I have reviewed hundreds of resumes from newly minted lawyers. Virtually every one of them referenced the “Thingamabob Society,” the “Doodad Club,” or the “Whatsit Award” as though I should be duly impressed with their accomplishment. And maybe I would be impressed if I understood what the designation meant.

Assume that the decision maker reviewing your cover letter and resume doesn’t understand what those terms mean. Explain that the “Whatsit Award” is given to the student with the highest grade in your property class, and I’m more likely to be impressed (particularly if I’m the hiring partner at a real estate boutique firm).

Modify your differentiation for each application. What makes you a top prospect for Firm A may be irrelevant to Firm B. Though your experience as a superintendent makes you a great candidate for a construction defect firm, it is less relevant for an employment law firm (unless you can show that you have experience implementing OSHA safety regulations on the job site).

Learn everything you can about your prospective employer. The internet gives you access to incredible amounts of information about a firm. What types of cases does the firm handle? How do they separate themselves in the marketplace (i.e., how do they differentiate themselves to their target clients)? Why do you want to work with this firm instead of one of its many competitors?

Once you have done your research, tailor your resume and cover letter to fit the needs of the particular employer. Talk about the firm and the hiring partner. Show them that you understand their lingo and culture. Be specific. Give examples. “I am impressed by the depth of your formal training program for new associates” is much more persuasive than “I like your commitment to excellence” (whatever that means).

Differentiation shows why you are a terrific candidate for this firm. Yes, it’s more work to re-tailor your resume for each prospective employer. But if your objective is to find a job where you can prosper, it’s worth the additional effort.

(To be continued)

If you would like more information on how to differentiate yourself from the competition, I recommend Jack Trout’s classic marketing book, “Differentiate or Die.”

My favorite law student – my son Mitch – just completed his first year of law school at George Mason University. He and his classmates soon will be starting the ego-bruising experience of interviewing to find their first legal jobs.

I remember those days well.

My first semester of law school was, by far, the most challenging one. I knew I wasn’t the smartest person in my class (that much was obvious) and hoped that I would not be the dead weight at the bottom. My grades after that first semester weren’t bad, but I was, nonetheless, terribly disappointed in the results.

I concluded that I would redouble my efforts during my second semester. If my grades didn’t improve, I would resign myself to the fact that I was a slightly above average law student.

With the renewed effort to my studies, something clicked in my head during that second semester. My grades improved significantly and continued to rise each semester.

But prospective employers were not impressed. While many of my classmates entertained job offers from multiple prestigious law firms, I received dozens of rejection letters.

My confidence waned. I questioned why anyone would even want to hire me and worried that I never would find a job. I envisioned myself unemployed, destitute, and ostracized.

Fortunately, I worried for nothing.

I landed a summer clerkship with a great small firm near the end of my second year. That summer, I received offers for judicial clerkships from two of the state’s most respected judges on the court of appeals. It has not always been easy, but over the next 30 plus years, I have made a career for myself.

In the course of doing so, I have learned a few truths about finding a job and building a career. Though my experience is in the practice of law, these principles apply to any career.

This post is longer than most of my offerings, so I have broken it into a number of pieces that will be posted over the next few weeks.

No. 1: You will find a place where you can succeed.

This first point does not directly discuss how to find a job but instead addresses that nagging voice in the back of your head questioning whether you should have gone down this professional pathway.

If you have done the work required to qualify yourself for entry to the profession (and you have), you have the tools to succeed. Your path ultimately may differ from what you initially thought it would be, but if you are focused and persistent, you will succeed.

Be confident. You alone are responsible for your own career path and professional success. The sooner you accept responsibility for your career, the sooner you will begin to succeed.

Focus on your strengths. Learn everything you can about a narrow area of the profession and become an expert in that area. Make the area of expertise narrow. Being a family law attorney is better than being an “experienced, aggressive lawyer” who, among other things, handles family law cases. It’s even better to be a family law attorney who represents doctors in divorce and custody matter.

Being an expert does not mean that you know more about the area than everyone else. It means that you know more about the area than most.

If you continue to hone your craft throughout your professional life, you just might come to know more than anyone else about your narrow area of expertise. The sooner you start down the pathway to expertise, the further down the pathway you will go during your professional life.

Move forward with courage. You have the ability to succeed.

(To be continued)