Episode 44 – Cracking the Success Code with John Lees

May 20, 2016 Podcast

In episode 44 of the Graduate Job Podcast, I am joined again by one of my most popular guests, career coach and best-selling author John Lees, as we delve into his new book, The Success Code. John shares his expert advice on the tips, tricks and strategies you need to employ to ensure that your job search is a success. We explore why you need to think about self-projection and not self-promotion as you look for a job, why you definitely shouldn’t be trying to sell yourself, and the power of asking questions. No matter where you are on your job search, this is an episode you will not want to miss. As always, all links we discuss and a full transcript are available in the show notes at www.graduatejobpodcast.com/success.  Before we start a quick request from me, your feedback helps me to create the episodes you want to hear, so I’ve set up a super simple and very quick survey, as I want the show to best serve your needs. It’s got 5 questions and will take you a minute, so please check it out at http://www.graduatejobpodcast.com/survey/ . I look forward to hearing your thoughts. But in the meantime, let’s crack on with the show.

MORE SPECIFICALLY IN THIS EPISODE YOU’LL LEARN ABOUT:

  • How to talk about yourself in an authentic way
  • Why you need self-projection and not self-promotion when it comes to your job search
  • The power of utilising your alumni network to find a job
  • Why you should ask yourself, what does this person need to commit to the next step?
  • What you can learn from a stand-up comedian to improve your job search
  • Why you shouldn’t be trying to sell yourself
  • The power of asking questions

SELECTED LINKS FROM THE SHOW

  • Check out the ‘How to Get a Graduate Job’ step-by-step online course at https://howtogetagraduatejob.com/
  • Don’t even think about applying for graduate jobs until you’ve read my free guide, ‘The 5 steps you must take before applying for graduate jobs’. Click here NOW. It will completely change the way you apply for jobs!
  • Would you like a free 30-minute video coaching call? Simply select a time that works here https://calendly.com/gradjob/ We can go over your CV, application, or anything that you are struggling with.
  • Assessment Day – One of the top providers of psychometric tests. Click HERE and support the show
  • Career Gym – Use code GJP to get 20% off all of their tests!
  • Job Test Prep – One of the top providers of psychometric tests. Click HERE and support the show
  • The Success Code – John’s excellent new book on which we base the show

RELATED EPISODES

Transcript – Episode 44: Cracking the Success Code with John Lees

James: Welcome everyone to the Graduate Job Podcast, with your host James Curran. The Graduate Job Podcast is your weekly home for all things related to helping you on your journey to finding that amazing job. Each week I bring together the best minds in the industry, speaking to leading authors, entrepreneurs, coaches and bloggers who bring decades of experience into a byte size weekly 30 minute show. Put simply, this is the show I wish I had a decade ago when I graduated.

This week I am joined again by one of my most popular guests, career coach and best-selling author John Lees, as we delve into his new book, The Success Code. John shares his expert advice on the tips, tricks and strategies you need to employ to ensure that your job search is a success. We explore why you need to think about self-projection and not self-promotion as you look for a job, why you definitely shouldn’t be trying to sell yourself, and the power of asking questions. No matter where you are on your job search, this isn’t an episode you will want to miss. As always, all links we discuss and a full transcript are available in the show notes at www.graduatejobpodcast.com/success. Before we start a quick request from me, your feedback helps me to create the episodes you want to hear, so I’ve set up a super simple and very quick survey, as I want the show to best serve your needs. It’s got 5 questions and will take you a minute, so please check it out at http://www.graduatejobpodcast.com/survey/ . I look forward to hearing your thoughts. But in the meantime, let’s crack on with the show.

James: I’m very pleased to welcome back to the Graduate Job Podcast, career expert and best-selling author of How to Get a Job You Love and his new book The Success Code. Welcome John Lees.

John: Thanks very much. Good to be with you.

James: John, can you believe that it’s just over a year since you first appeared back in episode 16 when we covered how to get a job you love, and it’s still one of my most popular episodes today?

John: Haha, brilliant.

James:  And today we’re going to touch upon your new book, The Success Code. As a way of introduction, could you briefly describe the book and why you wrote it?

John: Yeah, when I was asked to look at the topic of personal branding by a publisher and it really struck me from a lot of the work that I’ve been doing with clients and with different audiences, how many people have come up to me at the end of a presentation and say, “I know I need to be speaking to people, but I just don’t know how to do it and I don’t like talking about myself.” So I thought, well I’ll try to write a book that is not about personal branding, but it is actually about self-projection, about communicating well, but doing it in a style that almost anybody can adopt and try out, and a style that feels authentic as well.

James:  And I really really enjoyed the book. And listeners, check out the show notes at http://www.graduatejobpodcast.com/success/ where I’ll link to the book and everything we discuss today. And what I really liked about the book, John, is some of the books I’ve read on personal branding tend to be more from a, say, American perspective and it’s very, you know, in your face, and go out there, and you can do it. And this is a lot more enjoyable, and it resonated with me just from a British perspective and being a bit more reserved initially in thinking about how I can, you know, project myself and that side of things. So, in terms of areas for us to cover initially, maybe an issue discussed in the book. You talk about the difference between self-promotion and self-projection, could you kick us off with discussing what you meant by that?

John: Yeah, well I’ve been a bit cheeky using the term self-projection because projection is a technical term in psychology. But, what I was trying to do is think of a way of saying, “Well, how do we actually talk about ourselves authentically?” And I thought, “Well, this is the sort of self projection in the sense of projecting onto a screen, and putting an image out there.” But, I wanted to make a distinction between that and self-promotion, which is usually people endlessly talking about themselves, and drawing attention to themselves, and taking up more than their fair of a conversation. And self-promotion can easily be linked to, almost a kind of a narcissistic view of the world, really, that says, “I’m the most interesting thing and therefore nothing else should get my attention.”

James:  It’s interesting that you said that. I was speaking with one of my clients I coach last week and, they were in an interview and they’d been doing really well, and they said the question that really threw them was, “Tell me about yourself.”

John: Yeah

James: And she said that, without realizing it, she’d started talking about her boyfriend, and what her boyfriend was doing, and things they’d went to together. And she found it very difficult to just, try to talk about herself and how to sell herself.

John: Yeah, well there’s two important things though. I think one is that, we’ll be talking about some other strategies today, and including asking good questions of people, and getting a conversation going rather than constantly talking about yourself. But there does come a point, in particular at a job interview, when somebody says, “Well, tell me about you,” or, “What are you looking for?” or “Why are you here today?” So, it is fairly important that we kind of do a bit of thinking ahead to think about how you’re going to manage those moments and say something which is relatively well rehearsed. You know, it reminds me of the kind of, when you look at stand-up comedy and the way they deal with hecklers, for example. Those little bits of spiel are very well rehearsed and they know exactly how they’re going to do it. So, a lot of material that we see out there in performance-world that looks improvised and natural is actually very carefully rehearsed.  So, yeah, I mean, nobody should be surprised by that question at an interview and if you are surprised then really does mean you haven’t put any thought into what the process is going to feel like.

James:  When you do rehearse those bits to talk about yourself, should it be a conscious effort to sell yourself? You talked in the booked about the need to try not sell yourself, and for it to be more of a conversation.

John: Well, if you talk to almost any audience at the moment who are thinking about either looking for a job or changing their career, in some way, two bits of advice you can guarantee that they will have received in the last two weeks will be; To get out there, whatever that means, get out there somehow, and that kind of explains itself. And the other bit of advice is to sell yourself. And, the worrying thing about telling somebody to sell themselves, if that’s not their natural style, is that they’ll either ignore the advice completely and hide or they’ll try it once and be very disappointed with the results. And then adopt a much more self-effacing approach.  So it’s not as if we say, “Well I’ll do 20% of it, or 40% of it.” It’s an all or nothing thing, and I really understand that because I think it’s the wrong message for people. And I’ll tell you why, I mean, the reason why is that there’s huge amounts of research around, as well as anecdotal material, that say that people actually dislike being sold to. They like being engaged in conversation but they hate being on the receiving end of a sales pitch.

James:  Yeah,  I completely agree and you know when people, especially when people are trying to specifically sell you something, you do have that instant recoil back from it because, you know, it’s not a two-way conversation. It’s just them trying to push something that you don’t want. So, thinking then, about the conversation, what does that mean then from the graduate point of view where you might not be in a position where it’s easy to have conversations with people who are going to be able to do the hiring, specifically if you’re applying online through the big milkround.

John: Well, I think part of that it about encouraging people at that stage in the market place to spend a lot more time having research conversations. So, I don’t mean about academic research; I mean informational interviews or discussing organizations and sectors and lines of work with people. And some of those doors are relatively easy to open, and it still amazes me how many graduates don’t really tap into the alumni network. And the advantage of talking to people and asking questions like, “How did you get into your line of work?” and, “What’s going on for your organization at the moment?” and, “What are the major changes in your sector?”  The advantage of all that stuff is you get used to asking good questions and then you also get used to talking about yourself because it’s quite natural that someone will say, after talking to you but for maybe 20 minutes, “Well tell me about you.” “What are you studying?” “What are you doing?” “Where do you want to get to?” So, again start to learn to be ready for that moment where you can say something which is your own language, it’s not cheesy, it’s not a pitch, and it’s a summary of the most important things that you’re doing at the moment and what you’re looking for as well.

James: It’s a really good point about the alumni network and with tools like LinkedIn it’s so easy to, just tap into it and to find out who are the people who have been to your university who are doing interesting things that you want to do.

John: Yeah, I would say it’s a pre-contracted arrangement, and what I mean by that is if I’m in an alumni network and somebody rings me up and says, “I’m in the same network as you, can I have 20 minutes of your time?” I’m pre-contracted to say yes to that conversation. It needs no further explanation, or if I’m really busy I might say no, but most of the time people know what’s it’s about and you don’t need to over-explain it. So, it’s an amazingly good resource. But, maybe for the reasons I’ve just explained, that it also gets you used to asking intelligent questions, digging around, and being prepared for that moment when you have to say something about yourself and why you’re interested.

James:  I love the comment in one of the quotes in your book, you say, “It’s not about who you know, it’s who you choose get to know.”

John: Yeah, and I really firmly believe that. And I really don’t accept it when people say well this is networking and it’s only for people who are well-connected, or middle-class, or middle-aged, or male, or you know, because I know people from every age range and right across the social spectrum who do this quite naturally and I’ve also seen people learn to do it in their own style and get some great results.

James: So, working through that example then. So say if you do being to tap into the alumni network and have conversations with people who are doing a job that you might want to do, would you recommend that people begin to go into that with a set a spiel or some pitch that they would give people?  Or would it be more natural how they would approach the conversation.

John: Well in the early stages it’s probably a misunderstanding of the process to think that you need to have some kind of presentation speech or an elevator speech. But it is natural to understand that people are curious and they want to know about you. So, what we’re really doing, I think, is just sort of start to deconstruct that idea of selling yourself, because it’s the wrong model because people don’t like to be sold to, it makes people sound inauthentic, and there’s lots of research around that shows how people actually feel slightly grubby doing that kind of thing. So what can you do? Well you can, first of all, learn to ask great questions because it’s much easier to start a conversation with a question than a statement. It’s people like to communicate about themselves and like to be invited to do so. When you’re talking about yourself, but particularly at an exploratory stage, it makes no sense at all to start saying, “I’m really good at this, and these are my strengths, and these are my values,” or the kind of clichéd stuff that people are being taught to deliver. And it’s very hard to do. It feels wrong and it sounds wrong. And what I recommend people to do in my book and in my training programs as well, is to talk about what they’re interested in. So, talk about what they’ve been studying, talk about the organizations, and the people, and the products, and the ideas, and the approaches that they’ve found really stimulating and inspiring. Talk about other organizations that they’ve been to see. Talk about anything that fires up a bit of energy because people remember energy a lot more than they, a lot longer, sorry, than they remember information. So, being an energized communicator is, you know, it’s one of the things that really starts to open doors.

James:  And that energy, what you talk in the book about in the book there, people thinking about person branding and what their personal brand is, would that then become a component of someone’s personal brand.

John: Yes it is, that’s right. And it’s strangely so much easier to do because, in some sense, on Radio Four this week, the problem about working in an age where everyone is a knowledge worker and I think that is broadly true, is that when you talk about yourself and your work it’s very difficult to separate that from your identity. So in a job interview somebody is questioning your skill level, and because knowledge is very close to us isn’t it, it’s close to ourselves, we feel personally attacked. So, for that reason it actually feels odd for most people to say, “I’m really good at this.” In fact, it’s probably the worst thing to say anyway because that immediately invites a challenging response or an incredulous response. But if you say, “You know, I’m really fascinated by this. Who do you know that I could be talking to at the moment?” Then, it’s much easier to respect and even get carried along with that kind of enthusiasm.

James:  How then can you begin to change, and carry this forward from a face-to-face, meeting people face to face, to bringing that message across to your online and written communications, particularly thinking CVs and online applications which for the majority of listeners who might be applying for jobs, especially  with the big firms. How can you almost think about your personal brand and your message and try to convey that in a confident way without feeling like you’re selling yourself.

John: Yeah. It’s about being original and authentic, and I also respect the fact that both of those pieces of advice are quite hard to follow. I mean, it’s a bit like, before you go to a job interview, somebody says to you, “Just be yourself,” this is actually a totally unhelpful piece of advice, because in fact you’re not yourself in either of these contexts, writing a CV, presenting yourself online, any more than you are at a job interview. It’s a kind of performance. So, one of the ways into that is to start to understand what it’s like for people who have to process vast quantities of this material.  And what it’s like for them is that they respond badly to people who oversell themselves, they respond badly to cliché. They also frequently report to people like me that the best evidence is often hidden away or not even revealed until the candidate turns up for interview. So here’s a simple technique that I would use with many of my clients and that is just, sit down with a friend and get that friend to ask you the question, “What would you want to like an employer to know about you?” And just brainstorm it, just talk, and let them write it down, and particularly the things that you know that make you an energized person, and I don’t really mind whether that’s from work, play, study, any part of your life. You’re going to end up with maybe a list of 20, 30 bullet points there. Then it’s your job to filter that down and to say, “Well which parts of that do I want to prioritize? How can I get, maybe, the best half-a-dozen of those pieces of information to form the top end of a CV and to also populate the first part of my LinkedIn page?” So it’s a process of filtering down so that you find things which are interesting to an organization, and relevant, and also pitched in a language which is, that you’re relativity comfortable with, that you can stand behind if somebody interrogates it.

James:  I think that’s brilliant advice. And I really loved in the new book, you talk about the same exercise with the CV. You know, handing the CV to someone, and getting them to let you look at the CV but to ask the same questions, you know, “What message do you want to convey?” And then just seeing what they’ve put in the CV. Does that reflect to anything you’ve just mentioned in terms of the message that you want to convey? And when I’ve done that with clients you find the answers normally no, they’re talking different things, where it’s what they were doing at school when they were 15 as opposed to something that might be relevant to the employer. I really like, you also mentioned, in the book about asking yourself, “What does this person need to know in order to commit to the next step?” as a question. Why is this a good one to ask?

John: Well, I’m not sure it’s a question that you would ask aloud in an interview, but it’s certainly a question you’d ask yourself. And the reason it’s important is that, particularly with early screening interviews, and that could include telephone interviews or could even include the screening of your CV, people have a relatively short list of the things that they’re looking for.  So, a little bit of time spent interrogating the job advertisements, and job descriptions, and vacancy briefs and all those kinds of things. Just say to yourself, what’s the top half a dozen items here. What are the boxes that absolutely have to be ticked in order for me to progress further?That’s one way of looking at the basics. And the other one, of course, is to say, well, if the better you can decode a job, the greater your chances of speaking the language that the employer not only understands, but finds exciting.And you can’t get at that. And in fact, this is again that’s why reaching out to people is so important. Because if you’re applying for a role or applying for a graduate scheme if you can talk to somebody that’s already on it or was on it two years ago, they’ll, when they tell you about their experience, what they’re effecting doing for you is decoding that and saying to you, “This is the kind of language that selectors are going to respond well to. This is the way to package your evidence.” You know, none of us can do that without putting in the groundwork which is way way more than just reading an employer’s website. It really pays dividends to spend some time just asking questions at the right people.

James:  I know you mentioned in conversations like that, that the focus of the conversation is not on yourself and needing to sell yourself, it’s on asking good questions and just being a sponge and soaking the information up from them.

John: I think there are very few occasions where you really need to sell yourself, unless an employer is specifically drilling you on the level of your skill, and you’ll know that because they’ll keep asking the question and they’ll be, they’ll, for example, for evidence and what they’re really doing is saying, “Okay, you’ve named a skill, and now I want to know what the level is, and want to see some hard evidence that you’ve used it.” And that’s fine, because that’s actually not selling at all. That’s information based on your experience and if you haven’t pre-packaged those narrow tips before you go into an interview, then you’re taking a huge risk. 

James:  So, moving on then to an interview situation. What advice would you give people to, who are walking into the interview so they can make that instant impact in terms of their communication, but also their general demeanour, how they can impress the people when they walk in?

John: Yeah, but again it kind of, this is where people are sometimes coached to be quite assertive, almost aggressive and sometimes to actually deliver their elevator pitch without even being asked to do so. To, sort of, crunch somebody’s hand in the firmest hand shake possible. Now, you know, most of that is either going to bounce very badly or people are going to listen to advice and never actual implement it because it feels wrong. When you’re in interview, you’re respectively, what you’re trying to do to communicate in the opening minutes, is the sense that you are going to be an easy person to interview, and that’s it. Because behind that, of course, is the understanding that you may well be an easy person to employ. So, one of the ways of doing that is to actually practice small talk. And I know it sounds crazy, but even if you’re talking about, if you’re asked a question about the weather, or traffic or your journey here, or your delays on the train, or anything like that, two tips seem to work very well. One is to speak in a voice that which is audible and clear, because it’s the first time you’ve used your voice in the room and people are listening very careful to hear how clear and confident that is. And the second is to be relatively up-beat. So, rather than complaining about the traffic, just saying it wasn’t a problem, and the instructions were very helpful, and you got there on time, or whatever it is. So it’s, kind of, strangely enough, you can actually practice this very very easily in lots of social situations which is just to remember to be positive, clear, audible, and to just sound as if you’re enjoying the experience.

James:  What advice would you give people who completely agree with everything you’ve said, but maybe find it difficult to find, or to think about what their authentic voice actually sounds like? So, who they are and they recognize that often the advice they’re given said at interview is, “Be confident,” and, you know, “Walk in there,” like you said, “Big handshake,” and they’re not at that end of the extreme and they’re not at the very end but they’re not so sure where they are in the middle.

John: Yeah, well, I suppose that in a way that’s a bit like taking somebody who’s relatively quiet and saying, you know, “I want you to make a big public presentation.” It’s a huge leap in terms of ability, you could get that person to that point, but you’re not going to get them there within 24 hours. So, really, taking someone that doesn’t know how to talk about themselves and saying, “You need to deliver a confidant pitch,” is equally unrealistic. It is a good idea for individuals who feel that way to actually think about how they’re going to have warm up stages. And now, you’re not in a job interview, you’re not given that, nobody says well we’ll a half-hour and just chat and things will be very easy and then the real interview will begin. It starts cold. But there is another way you can do this, and this is actually, and I covered this in the zone system in the book. Because, it just essentially says, you start easy, and you start with people who are easy to talk. You do that not just to discover information but also to practice talking. So you find people that you really trust and you say, “Listen, I’m going to have to go to interviews, I’m going to have to do some small talk, so can I  just practice, and I’m going to have to communicate some of my experience. So, can I try it out on you? Can I practice with you?” And you need people who are going to give you a little bit of tough love, but mostly encouraging, particularly at the beginning. And it helps if they’re people who can also remind you of your strengths. So, like a good coach would do, say, “Listen, I know you’re really good at this, and you haven’t mentioned that in your CV yet. And how about expressing this story in a much more positive way?” So, it’s sort of a gradual steps which allows somebody to reveal their strengths, their best bits of their experience. And just, to do it through natural storying telling. And sometimes it helps to have someone around who writes down your best phrases, so, because if you’ve said it then it’s probably an authentic way of speaking for you.

James:  That’s a really good point, and as you mentioned in your book, “It’s about stepping just to the edge of your comfort zone, you will learn to project yourself onto the world at work.”

John: I really believe in that, because, well, too much advice just essentially says, “Go way outside your comfort zone, be somebody else, fake it,” and that’s just inappropriate advice. So, if you can work out where the edge of where somebody’s comfort zone is, you can get people just to push on the edge of their behaviours as well, and try things out, particularly with a bit of encouragement.

James:  And as they keep on going to the edge, they’ll find the edge just keeps on pushing just a little bit further and further out each time.

John: Well, naturally. But, you know, in a sense you don’t need to know that, do you, when you start? Because you’re just trying things out. But, yes, you’re absolutely right. I mean, even, I was doing an exercise in a workshop just yesterday where I got people just to explain one thing that motivated them at work. And to go around the room and have that conversation with three or four different people. And just in three to four iterations of that piece of evidence, they were getting significantly better at it. So I say, you know, “If you can get that much better within four minutes, how much better can you get within just three to four days, trying things out?”

James: That’s a brilliant, a brilliant point. And you touched upon the zone system and, you want to, maybe just briefly take us through what the zone system is and how you describe it?

John: Yeah, well I’m not going to bore you by going through all the zones.  But I think, you know, what I would say is that the principle behind them is that you’re starting with people who are very supportive and will actually give you direct feedback and, you know, bits of advice in terms of how you present yourself and how you talk about yourself. And at the same time, talking to people about your questions. So, let’s say you want to discover about a particular sector of work, you’re not going to go through the yellow pages, or approach very senior people immediately. You might talk to former colleagues, people you studied with, friends of the family who you know are somehow connected to that sector. And you try out a question technique with them. And, maybe you have a bit of a script, and you see how it goes. And the important thing about this initial group is that they’re easy to approach, you know, you don’t have to have a script in your head when you pick up the phone to ask for some help. And, later on, because you’ve practiced both asking good questions and talking about yourself to a small degree, when you are introduced to people that you’ve never met before, and that’s an important link, that you never ring anybody cold, then you’ve actually got the skills at your fingertips. So, in a sense you can forget about your performance and now you’re focusing on the information and you’re focusing on the quality of the relationship, and relationships are really important in terms of being remembered and help getting people to move you forward. So the top end of the zone, the deeper parts of the zone system are, of course, talking to decision makers and talking to people who you have been passed onto. And that’s actually where you get some of the best results when you are now talking to people who are effectively strangers, but you’ve had warm introductions to meet them. So, it’s a sort of a, it’s a step-by-step approach which really respects the fact that people dislike doing this stuff but they see a need to do it and it realistically reflects on the fact that we can get a lot better at doing this stuff fairly quickly, particularly if you take the pressure off by removing the idea that you have to sell yourself.

James:  John, that’s a really good point for us to maybe finish on because time is, unfortunately, running away with us, but before we do finish, if we can just move on to the weekly staple questions. Now, the pressures on with you because I’ve got your answers from last year so I’m expecting some fresh insights now. So, to kick us off, what one book would you recommend that listeners read?

John: Well, I’m not sure how this is related to the needs of your listeners at the moment, but I’m going to recommend it, and I’ll explain why. It’s a book called In America, and its subtitle is Travels with John Steinbeck and it’s written by a Dutch writer called Geert Mak, M-a-k. Now the great thing about this book is that he is following in the footsteps of John Steinbeck, who drove all the way around America some 50 years ago, and he’s doing it now, and in the process of that he is unpacking the way that America has developed in the last 20 or 30 years. And it’s some fascinating insights which explain a huge amount about American politics and world events, and I highly recommend it.

 James:  Excellent, and that’s a new one for me, but listeners don’t worry it will be linked to in the show notes. So check out the show notes at http://www.graduatejobpodcast.com/success/ . And John, what one website would you recommend our listeners to visit?

John: Well I’ve, I thought to myself, “Well, what website do I visit fairly frequently for a whole range of information and ideas?” And it’s one that I write for occasionally, and it’s hbr.org. And, this is Harvard’s Business Review’s online offering. And because I’ve written for it, I know how tightly and how carefully all of the blogs and articles are edited and there’s huge amounts of resource there in terms of straight forward things like careers advice, but all kinds of background information about businesses and people stuff. And it’s a very very distinctive and impressive offering at the moment.

James:  Excellent, and is that one that you need to subscribe to? Or is it open to the general hoi-poloi?

John: It’s open to anyone. I think you have to sign up, but there’s no charge to do so as far as I remember. As far as I remember, you might want to check that out and put that in your notes as well.

James:  I will do and I will also try to find John’s articles so that you can link directly to the good stuff on there. And finally John, what one tip would leave listeners with today that they can implement on their job search straight away?

John: Well I would say, if you’ve liked anything of what we’ve been talking about today, try it out. You don’t have to try out a hundred things. You don’t have to do all of it, but have a go. Because, not having a go, it’s a bit like somebody watching a bake-off on television and saying, “Those people are so good at this, I’m never going to turn my oven on. I’ll never reach that standard.” Well, they don’t do that, do they? They say, “Well, I think I’ll go make some scones.” So try one thing and try it for yourself.

James: Definitely, and if you do get good at scones, then send one my way. I’d love to try one.  John, thank you very much for appearing on the Graduate Job Podcast. Before we finish, what is the best way for people to get in touch with you and the work that you do?

John: Just to visit my website, www.johnleescareers.com or if you simply Google, ‘John Lees Careers,’ that should find me.

James: John, thank you very much for appearing on the Graduate Job Podcast.

John: Thank you very much. 

James: Many thanks again to John Lees, it was a pleasure to have him back on the show and he was as informative, insightful and debonair as always. Lots to take in over the half hour, but one biggy stood out for me. As I mentioned in the show, I love John’s  comment it’s not who you know, but who you choose to get to know. You might not have been born with connections but don’t let that hold you back, through the internet, twitter, linkedin or a simple email, you can reach out to anyone, and find out what they did to get where they are now. As Tony Robbins says, ‘model someone who is already successful, because success leaves clues’. So dear listener, your task for today, is utilise your alumni network and reach out to 5 people who are doing a job that you would like, and follow John’s advice and discover the power of asking questions. Then let me know how you get on, drop me a mail at hello@graduatejobpodcast.com or hit me up on twitter @gradjobpodcast. Thanks for listening today, check out the show notes for links to everything we have discussed and a full transcript. If you’ve enjoyed please head on over to Itunes and leave a review, it helps us stay high in the rankings and for listeners to find us. See you next week when I have Raghav Haran on the show as we discuss how to land any job you want, with no experience. It’s a goodie.

I hope you enjoyed the show today, but more importantly, I hope you use it, and apply it. See you next week.