Episode 3 – Job Hunting Secrets with Richard Maun

November 29, 2014 Podcast

Welcome to episode 3 of the Graduate Job Podcast!

In this third episode, I speak with author and careers expert Richard Maun as we explore Richard’s 3 job hunting secrets. Implement these 3 secrets and I guarantee you will see an improvement in your job hunting.

You can download the podcast to your computer or listen to it here on the blog. Additionally, you can subscribe via iTunes or Stitcher radio.

MORE SPECIFICALLY IN THIS EPISODE YOU’LL LEARN ABOUT:

  • How to demonstrate passion in an interview – 3.00
  • How to network effectively and the number one question to ask – 11.40
  • How to start networking whilst at university – 12.53
  • Creating an elevator pitch that works – 15.54
  • Setting targets for effective networking – 16.53
  • How to practice for job hunting success – 18.35

LINKS AND RESOURCES MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE:

  • Hootsuite (Richard’s top resource for managing social media accounts)
  • www.richardmaun.com (The best way to get in touch with Richard and his work)

Transcript – Episode 3 – Job Hunting Secrets with Richard Maun

Announcer: Welcome to the Graduate Job Podcast, your home for weekly information and inspiration to help you get the graduate job of your dreams.

James:  Hello and welcome to the third episode of the Graduate Job Podcast. This week I speak with author and careers expert, Richard Maun as we explore Richard’s 3 job hunting secrets. Implement these and you will be well on the way to bagging that amazing job. A transcript of the episode and links to everything we discuss can be found in the show notes at graduatejobpodcast.com/jobhuntingsecrets. I won’t leave you in suspense any longer, so let’s go straight to episode 3.

James:   Hello and welcome to another edition of the Graduate Job Podcast. I’d like to extend a very warm welcome today to Richard Maun, business coach, author of the excellent Job Hunting 3.0: Secrets and skills to sell yourself effectively in the modern age
and visiting lecturer on career matters and communication skills.

Richard, welcome to the Graduate Job Podcast.

Richard:  James, thank you very much indeed; nice to be here.

James:  So I’ve given the listeners a very quick introduction to what you do. Would you like to tell us about yourself and, you know, your business and what you do.

Richard:  Yeah, that’s very easy. I work as a business coach and I work, generally, with executives and middle managers to improve their personal performance because I’m conscious that by working with the people you’ll improve the business.

My two modalities, if you like, are lean process improvements skills, because I have manufacturing operations background; and also transactional analysis, which is a branch of psychotherapy. And although I am not a psychotherapist myself, I do work at a slightly deeper level with clients because often there are things that get in the way of their own progress and if you like, my job is to work with them to un-pick that.

So that’s the kind of thing I do and I work across all industries and I do lots of work in NHS. I’m also a visiting lecturer at both UEA and at Cranfield. And my original work at Cranfield was very much to do with career development which is what’s taken me throughout the books and things because it became obvious that teaching people leadership skills was once thing. However, helping to get jobs to use those leadership skills was something else entirely. So, I was a module leader and ran a series of programs called Self Management for Success and the books have sprung out of that because they’ve been based on real life activity.

James:  And today we’re going to talk about extracts from, primarily the book, Job Hunting 3.0: Secrets and skills to sell yourself effectively in the modern age.

So in this book, Richard, you talk about three job hunting secrets, as you termed them. I found the, each of the secrets was very powerful and our listeners are going to find it extremely useful. So, maybe if we start with the first secret. Do you want to have a big reveal and tell us what the first secret is?

Richard:  Yes. The reason behind the three secrets, I should say, is that I think the national sport is trusting to luck and if you unpick these secrets and make good use of them, then you will be head and shoulders above the crowd.

So, the first secret I have is P for passion. Secret number one is passion. The reason for picking it on this is that if you have lots of people who are going for a job, they may very similar backgrounds, they may have very similar CV’s and yet it is how you present yourself to a potential employer is what will clinch the job for you. And of course when we talk about passion it’s very easy to say, oh, I’m passionate about a football club or I’m passionate the latest pop group or something and lots of people, unfortunately, fall over if they are asked the question at an interview, you know, tell me what you’re passionate about? And they say, oh, I’m so passionate about working in office supplies. I can’t believe that I’m having this interview and it’s just fake; quite frankly. So we’re talking about genuine passion here, genuine deep-seated enthusiasm. That’s what we mean by passion.

James:  How can you put that across in an interview situation without it sounding, like you said, like a reality TV show and going, oh, wow, that’s so amazing.

Richard:  Well, that’s a good point you make and I’m sure we’ve all seen various reality TV show where people are so passionate that you want to weep, really. And I suppose the way of getting it across is to be genuine. Lots of people seem to manufacture passion in the moment and it’s not founded on anything. So, if I were really was passionate about working in office supplies, I might have well been to an office supplies conference. I might have well read several books about how wonderful they were and how they were invented. I would have spent a lot of time researching the company. I might have done voluntary work, working in the office supply sector on a voluntary basis. Because I’m so keen to break into that market I want to know about the market. I want to have known who the movers and shakers are and that level of enthusiasm starts to show through because if you say to somebody, I’m very passionate, the next question is going to be, prove it. So if you’ve got stories you can call on, say well, I was at a conference last week and I was speaking to so and so about it. You know, I used to work in a corner shop and I’ve a huge collection of staples and things, the farther you go—

James:  (laughing).

Richard:  I know I’m making it fanciful but the point is to process the same for anything. If you’ve got the detail and you’ve got a bit of experience, then that convinces people. So you need to have that background to it. Because you will know if someone is passionate about the local football club, they will have programmes. They will have been to matches. They know who the captain of the team is and therefore if you have that level of backup you can convince somebody.

James:  Yep. That’s definitely true. I’m thinking back to interviews I’ve had which have gone well, that have been for, like you mentioned, jobs that I’m interested in and passionate about. And then ones where, I can remember, it was a graduate scheme for a credit card., a well known credit card and I got put forward for it by a graduate recruiter and I wasn’t particularly interested in it and the feedback, naturally, came back that well, you did really well on the competencies but we didn’t really didn’t get the, why you wanted to work here which was entirely true because I, you know, I wasn’t passionate about the company.

Richard:  No, and you see, that’s a good point you make. You weren’t passionate about it, and the point of passion is that it’s a risk reducing factor. People seem to forget that hiring someone is incredibly risky, it’s fraught with danger. It’s going to cost them tens of thousands of pounds. So what they absolutely don’t want to do is make a mistake. Therefore if you’ve got someone who maybe hasn’t got the best grades, hasn’t necessarily got the best degree qualification but just comes across as being someone they can do business with, a likeable energetic, enthusiastic person then they’re much more likely to take a risk on you.

James: An American friend of mine is married to an English guy and she says, generalizing, that all English men are emotionally suppressed. How would you recommend for us emotionally suppressed men to demonstrate that passion, ‘cause it tends to be bred out of us at quite a young age.

Richard:  It does indeed actually it’s a good point you make. I think you’ve got to have, if I say your heart in the right place, what I mean by that is you have to value yourself and you have to say to yourself, I’m okay. I have a right to be here. I do enjoy the subject and in fact, I’m going to share that subject with the other person. So, if you’re going into a job interview with your head doing saying, I’m never going to get this, I can’t sell it, it’s all rubbish, then you might as well turn around and go home. So I don’t mean to oversell but by all means you must look at yourself and think, you know what, I do like it this. I want to share it.

The other thing that does make a difference is if you hold eye contact and smile. It’s very easy when you’re going for a job interview to answer the questions and have your eyes bouncing all over the room and that doesn’t help you at all. I mean, go to a nightclub and try and chat someone up and don’t make eye contact with them and you’ll just come across being a bit creepy. So the same applies— I mean, it’s true. People forget that what they do in life they can take into an interview environment. So you make eye contact and you take a breath and say, I love writing books. It gives me enormous satisfaction to see the end products. I research them. I spend hundreds of hours honing the text and you know, it’s something I really enjoy doing. Now you can hear the smile in my voice as I’m saying these words. I’m speaking the truth. I’m holding that space. I’m smiling as I speak and the whole package adds up to, I’m talking the truth and I’m passionate.

James:  Conversely then, would you recommend that people don’t apply for jobs where they don’t have that passion; or should they try and generate that passion or become passionate about it or to fake it?

Richard:  Well, I’ll never say fake it because you’re going to get found out. The trick, though, the trick is to find something to be passionate about. Now, I’ve coached people in a whole number of different organizations, factories, hospitals, some are clean, some are dirty and it would be very easy for me if you’d like to wrinkle my nose a bit and say oh, gosh, this is an unclean engineering business, for example sake. However, if you’re passionate about manufacturing, if you’re passionate about working with people, if you’re passionate about working in the insurance industry or if you particularly like maths and you think, I’m really passionate about the numerical side of this job, then it’s finding that thing to be passionate about. So, if we take insurance as an example, you could say to yourself, on one hand it’s quite a quiet office environment; you know, people don’t do cartwheels around the office. What’s there to be passionate about? However, you could say, actually, you’re enabling people to drive and to insure their houses. You’re providing emotional support to them because having insurance provides that. It involves numbers and statistics. You might find you enjoy those things and once you start to hone in on the detail, you can be passionate about the detail and focus on that and then people will extrapolate from that and say, gosh, that Richard Maun, he loves talking about numbers and things. I never met someone so animated.

James:  Oh, that’s true. I‘ve not thought about it like that.

Richard:  And it’s that sense of you can find the passion in anything. If you think of it at a basic human level, everyone’s got skill and talent. Everyone’s got goodness and it’s about finding that. You can do that in any job you walk into. So, the trick is to know the things that you personally are engaged by, that, you know, really makes you smile and think, I really enjoyed that and when the interviewer asks you a question, so, Richard, you did a geography degree, how does that relate to working as a coach, for example? It sounds like a bit of an oddball question but I believe I have to ask it.   And I say, well, actually, geography is about space and awareness. It’s about having a multi disciplinary approach and being a coach requires me to understand what is going on in my environment and I want to think about both the numerical side of things, the strategic side of things and so on and so forth. Now, you can hear in my answer there that I genuinely believe all that stuff. I love geography. I love working as a coach. And I’m just talking about something that I feel strongly about.

James:  Excellent. So, listeners, secret number one is passion. And moving on to secret number two; I know this is something which strikes fear into many people’s hearts, including my own. Richard, would you like to enlighten us with number two?

Richard:  Yeah, I would. It’s very simple. Again, this one begins with an N and its networking. So it’s N for networking. And the reason we’re going for this one for number two is there’s a massive secret job market out there. You know, 95% of jobs are not advertised. They go to people who know people, who know people. So if you’re looking at a newspaper and there are 100 jobs in there, there will be another two or three thousand that you won’t get to hear about and networking is the skill that enables you to find the opportunity.

The other things about networking that people overlook completely is if, for example, I’m talking to you, James, and then you meet someone tomorrow who says, oh, I’m looking for a business coach, and you say, Oh, I know this guy called Richard Maun. he’s really nice, really passionate about it then you’re already selling me in and that client will overlook that I may not have a particular qualification or particular experience. So networking allows you to be sold at a human level, you see. So, there’s a double hit with it. You found the job and you get sold into it.

James:  So from a graduate point of view, if you are recently graduated from university, you might not have a particularly large big network outside of your peers at the university and your friends. How can you go about starting to network so it’s effective in your job hunt?

Richard:  That’s a great question there, James. Effective networking starts off by making a list of people you know. So, if you know your family, they will know people. It’s very tempting to think of mom and dad as being so grey haired old fogies. It could be, though, that your mom knows the chairman of a local organization. So I always say, start with people at home. Then think about your relatives. Who are they? Where do they work? Who do they know? Then think about your immediate peer group, who are they, who do they know? That immediately gives you about 15 to 20 people you can go and talk to. So networking is about talking to people and it starts with talking to your immediate family, your uncles and your aunts, for example. So you can say, I’m looking for a job. Who do you know who? That’s the most valuable question. Who do you know who, who might be able to help me? Not, can I have a job? It’s who do you know? So that’s the first thing, is really to be methodical about it. It’s amazing that you always know more people than you think you do. And I always say to people, you can always email me and say, Richard, who do you know? And you’d be amazed at how many people don’t ask. So by asking, it gets you ahead of the game.

The other thing you can do is be very practically minded. Look at your local community and think to yourself, where is a good place to go and talk to people. So, there are local business clubs that meet. You can go along to those as a guest, often for free and even if it costs you 10 or 12 pounds a month to go along, you can join them and rather than turn up and say, I’m a graduate, I’m looking for work, you can say to yourself, yeah, I have done a marketing degree. I’m thinking about setting myself up in business as a marketing consultant and I’m just feeling my way in the world and gathering information. People will be very happy to help you and you’ve just met another 50 people that way.

James:  It’s a famous saying, your network is your net worth. So, the number of people you know.

Richard:  Well, you’re absolutely right and you always know more people than you realize and people are always going to be more helpful. So the first thing is look to your – I’m not joking – look to your family and start to tell people that you’re looking for work. The second thing is, look to your community and from a business perspective and go business networking. And the third thing is, volunteer. I have a radio show on a Thursday and we have a number of graduates coming into the radio show to act as producers and supporters and things and I always say to them, you now know me and ask me what do you want? How can I help you? And in fact, I just got our producer a job because she had that conversation and said, okay, Rich, put your money where your mouth is. Your this careers guy. What do I do? I said, you know, go and start talking to people. Of course she’s talked to people at the radio station and lo and behold, she’s been sat in the studio for the last 12 weeks with her future employer.

James:  Brilliant. You talk in the book about developing a seven second sell. Can you expand on what this is and how to create one?

Richard:  Yeah. A seven second sell, it might be also called an elevator pitch. Basically, it’s describe yourself in 10 words. And the reason is when someone says, tell me about yourself, you want to be relatively succinct, as we were at the head of the conversation. So if someone says to me, tell me about yourself, Richard? I will say, I’m a business coach, I have a radio show and I’ve written six books. Now, within that people want to know more. What’s the radio show, Richard? Gosh, what books have you written? And it means I’ve differentiated myself from other coaches, I’ve established a little bit of my personality and I’ve given the other person something interesting to chew on.   They may not want to talk to me, you know, after that. They may say, thanks, Rich. I’m going to go get a cup of tea now, but they won’t meet another me.

James:  Very true. And you talk about in the book as well about having, aiming for a network of 2,000 people, which I thought was quite an impressively large number. I think I’ve got 400 on Linkedin.   So how can you go about getting up to 2,000, thinking specifically about online tools?

Richard:  Well, I think the obvious thing is Linkedin and Twitter. I set myself targets for social media about 10 years ago and said I wanted to have so many in each group. I’ve now got two and a half thousand Twitter followers, for example and I think I’ve got about  800 Linkedin contacts. And by setting targets meant that I went and pushed the buttons and I sat at my desk when times were quiet and I following relevant people. So I made sure I followed some local business people and then followed their followers. And I did the same with Linkedin. And you suddenly find that while 2,000 may see quite a large number, with a bit of diligence and some application you can get to that number  relatively quickly. Twitter will take you a longer time because you can’t use automatic robots and things and it takes people a bit of time to follow you back. But Linkedin, I don’t know, you can have 500 people after a month, maybe; and then for 2,000 after three months.

James:  I’ll set myself that target, now.

Richard:  And the point of the target here, James, is to give people a focus on whether they, a focus on how successful they need to be because as soon as you set yourself a target  you can monitor it and you can manage your performance.

James:  If you want to get there you need to measure it and put targets in place.

Richard:  Absolutely right.

James:  So, moving on to the third secret.

Richard:  Umm, the third one. Well, we’ve done Passion; that was number one. We’ve just done Networking; that was number two. And the third one, I think, is probably the biggest bugbear that I come up against when I coach people to get jobs and pass interviews. And it’s P for practice. The reason for practice is it never ceases to amaze me how anybody, graduate, middle manager or senior manager, can go for a job and expect people to pay them, maybe 30,000 pounds. They’re going to be with the company a couple of years, so you’re looking at 60,000 pounds plus a laptop, plus costs. So basically you’re asking your employer, I’d like to give me 100,000 pounds, please, over the next two or three years, and I’ve done no practice for this interview whatsoever. When you put the numbers to it, it brings it home to people that you are asking for money. So practice is really what makes perfect.

James:  And as you mention in the book, it’s not a question of knowing what to do. It’s actually doing what you know and it’s no good reading the book, it’s about then, okay, I’m going to do the exercises. I’m going to go out and network. I’m going to speak to people. It’s then, putting into practice, as you say.

Richard: Very much. I mean, the book Job Hunting 3.0: Secrets and skills to sell yourself effectively in the modern age has been written from practically real life teaching and coaching. It’s based on working with graduate type people and middle manager type people and I have seen time again the bit that makes difference at the end of the day is that the successful people practiced and they can be scared, they can be nervous, they can be frightened but they still practice. Because you can say to your mate, I’m a bit nervous about networking. I’m going to do it. Can you come and hold my hand, sort of thing. If you’re going to go for a job interview and ask someone to– basically you’re selling yourself in return for tens of thousands of pounds, you need to know your stories, you need to have your stories in the muscle. So that means you need to know them spontaneously. And for example, I’ve had people who have not known their CV and you say, so, James, you went to X, Y University. And James at the interview says, oh, yeah, did I? Oh, yeah, can I just have a look at my CV. I haven’t read that recently. I promise you that has happened. I’ve flipped it around and said, shall I go out and come back again and give you 10 minutes to practice? And the candidate, of course, knows the interview is slipping away from them at that time. Yet, they will have polished their shows. May be that they bought a new shirt, they’ll have their hair styled and they don’t, they don’t know what they did in life.   So practice really is about sitting down, making your mistakes at home, getting a friend to bounce questions off you and to work at it until you can pull the answers out of your head, because when you’re under stress it’s very easy to forget stuff and practice is what carries you over the line.

James:  From a practical point of view, then, what exercises would you recommend for, you know, job seekers who are going through the graduate application process with companies?

Richard: I think the first thing is actually to do stuff. It’s very tempting for people to wait until they see their dream job and then apply for it. The trouble is you need to cut your teeth on all the other jobs that you weren’t so fussed about. So the first thing I would say, is always have a target of, maybe, five good applications every week. Of those, four can be things you perhaps not so fussed about but that will give you a chance to practice writing answers and thinking about yourself.

The other thing is you need a great CV and you need to be able to talk about that CV. So you can print off a CV, give it to your housemate or your parent or your girlfriend or whomever, and say, can you ask me questions about that so I get confident talking about myself and knowing my stories.

And then the third thing is actually to practice the interview. Practice shaking hands; practice making eye contact with people. Whilst that might sound a bit of an easy tip. It’s amazing how many chaps shake like their shaking a wet lettuce. It’s amazing how many times they didn’t make eye contact. Or if I say something like, James, tell me about the time when you’ve handled a really difficult customer. You know, you come in for a job in the service industry and you say, oh, gosh. Let me think for a minute. Ah, um, ah, um. But the answer is, thank you for the question and interestingly I had a difficult customer three weeks ago when……. you’ve got the answer ready in your head, you see.

James:  You mentioned there having supporters and that’s one of the things you mention in the book that I wish I had when I was going through the process was having people who are mentors or a group of specific supporters who were there to help you through the journey. What type of people is it good to rope into this role?

Richard:  The primary requirement for your supporters is that they actually want you to get a job. I coached a group of people who were self-sustaining in terms of support but they all said to each other, I’m okay, Jack, as long as you haven’t got a job. Well Bob and Brian haven’t got a job but that’s okay. Whilst this sounds obvious. If your best mate always says to you, don’t worry, I don’t practice and I got a job, ignore them. You do not want them in your team because what you want is somebody that says, great. Let’s practice. Let me have a look at your CV. How are you doing? Have you met your targets yet? Whether that is a friend, a partner, a parent, an uncle, an old tutor, they need to have your best interest at heart and really be supporting you and gently nudging you forwards all the time, rather than simply buying you a beer and saying, oh, well mate better luck next month.

James:  You mentioned at the beginning of the book the job hunting road is a difficult one. You’re going to hit setbacks. And there’s going to be times when you’re feeling down, you’re feeling depressed.

Richard:  Absolutely.

James:  You need somebody who can, people around your network who can lift you up and get you back on the road.

Richard:  I think so. You do want people to be nice to you and clearly if you have had an awful day, it’s nice to have a hug or to go for beer or to just to sit and talk about it. But that’s a sort of value adding support and I think what you find is you quite quickly can sort your friends into two groups; those who actually will be constructive and those who simply will just, you know, want to chat about nothing and not really add value to you. And I would always say, find the constructive people. They’re not always the people who you think you are and I know for myself that when I set up in business, I phoned an old lecturer and I went out and bought him a beer and basically asked him for all of his tips. I phoned a managing director friend and then I said to both of those people, who do you know who can help me, and both of them gave me a couple of names. I ended up with a group of five supporters who all do something different; one did sales, one did marketing, and so on and yet they all wanted me to be successful and would sort of, would email me and say, how are you getting on Rich. You know, did that work? It was very nice to have that environment.

James:  Another saying, they do say you are average of the five people you spend the most time with. So you need to make sure those five people are positive and are going to keep you going and are not going to bringing you down.

Richard: I agree. I agree. And if you’re with people who aren’t getting a job, perhaps, themselves and are saying, oh, this is all a bit too much like hard work and I can’t be bothered, then you might need to think to yourself, perhaps I’ll put those into my weekend friend group but during the week when I’m job hunting I’ll have a different support group because it will make a difference. It will power you forwards and energize you.

James:  Excellent. So listeners there are the three secrets from Richard. You need to make sure that as we said, you actually then put these into practice and start to fulfil them yourselves. So Richard, before we finish, let’s go to the lighting round where I ask you three  questions in quick succession.

Richard:  Okay.

James:   So the first off, do you have a book that you’d recommend to graduate job seekers?

Richard:  Do I have a book I’d recommend? Obviously I’m going to say, Job Hunting 3.0: Secrets and skills to sell yourself effectively in the modern age, only because it’s a practical book that has been written based on some graduate experiences and what I would say to people is any book is better than no book. However, you have to take it off the shelf and read it.

James:   And not just read it, but actually do the exercises.

Richard:  I was going to say, lots of people have got books on their shelf. So I would say do that and read it.

James:   Excellent. Do you have an internet resource that you’d point people to?

Richard:  Do I have an internet resource that I would point people to? I would say, go to Hootsuite and use that to help manage your Twitter accounts because it’s a great way of stratifying your followers and making sure you’ve got lists set up so you can capture particular job opportunities or maybe enter into a particular discussions.

James:  I’ve not used that one myself. Listeners, that will be linked into our Show Notes. So go to the Show Notes and you’ll be able to find out more about Hootsuite.

Richard:  And Hootsuite is free and because it’s an internet based app you don’t have to download anything to your device. You can access it from anywhere but it’s a great way of managing your tweets.

James:  We do like ones that are free. And finally, do you have a tip that you can give people that they can implement straight away to help with their job hunt?

Richard:  A tip to help them? I would say is to construct a spreadsheet that has targets on it so that you give yourself some numbers to shoot for. For example, I always say to people, go networking twice a week. And by that I mean, meet two people twice—one person twice a week doesn’t make sense—go meet two people twice a week and then have a target that flows from that. So you might say, two people to meet, five good job applications and I’m going to build, to say, 500 LinkedIn supports over the course of the month.   If you get your targets on your paper and you meet them, you’ll be a lot more successful than someone who’s just simply putting letters in a postbox.

James:  Richard, excellent. Thank you very much. It’s been a pleasure to have you on the show. Before we close, how can people get in touch with you and your work.

Richard:  Very easy. www.richardmaun.com and Maun is M-a-u-n. That’s Richardmaun.com or  you can find me via Amazon. I would just say go to richardmaun.com. I’m very contactable. You’ll find me from there and I’m may add, if people say always plugging his own book and bound to, however any book about job hunting that scores highly on Amazon is better than not having a book. And that’s what I would say to people. You know, do something. It’s always better than doing nothing.

James: Richard, thank you, again, for appearing on the Graduate Job Podcast.

Richard:  Thank you very much, James.

James:   Thanks again to Richard Maun for sharing his job hunting secrets. I hope you enjoyed the episode as much as I did, if you implement these tips, and I mean implement them properly, get out there and network, proactively practice, you can’t help but improve. In terms of my personal top 3 takeaways from the episode firstly Passion. Don’t underestimate the importance of passion. Have it for the job you’re applying to and you’ll stand out. Conversely if you are applying for a job and you don’t have that passion stop and think why. Are you applying for the right job? Maybe you’re just applying for the experience of the application process. But don’t fool yourself, you spend a lot of your life working, and you don’t want to waste it doing something you don’t care about.

Secondly, networking. Key point which really struck home for me was to ask ‘who do you know who?’, I’d not thought about networking in this this way before and before had thought about it as something transactional. It’s now a question that I utilise with the guests on the show, as I ask them, ‘who do you know who I should also speak to’, and it’s been extremely helpful. One of Anthony Robbins quotes is that ‘Successful people ask better questions, and as a result, they get better answers’. This is definitely a better question to ask.

Finally, Practice, it’s in your hands. Utilise your friends, practice together, listen to episode one at graduatejobpodcast.com/interviews and check out Jon Gregory’s Spotlight technique, a great tool for internalising the practice. And finally don’t forget to set yourself targets, It’s been 3 weeks since the interview and in that time I’m up to 475 linked in contacts, a way to go to get as many as Richard though.

The full transcript of today’s episode can be found on the website at graduatejobpodcast.com/jobhuntingsecrets. Please do get in touch via twitter as well @gradjobpodcast. Finally please do leave a review on Itunes, I read everyone and it’s great to hear your feedback.

Do join us next week when we have bestselling author Steve Rook sharing his tips for how to find a job you’ll love. I hope you enjoyed the episode today, but more importantly I hope you use it and apply it. See you next week.