The 80/20 Rule

In another life I ran QA organizations. That’s Quality Assurance and not question and answers. One of the tools I used back then was the Pareto Analysis which utilizes the adage: for many cases, roughly 80% of the effects come from 20% of the causes. Of course this is more commonly called the 80/20 rule.
We use this rule in two ways in a job search. First and most evident is that most of your results are going to come from about 20% of your effort. But! And that is a big but, you don’t know which 20% will produce the results you are looking for. So you have to do 100% of what is needed for a job search. It is also important to point out what works for one person in job transition may not produce the same outcomes for another person.

Now the second way the 80/20 rule affects your job search is in understanding the job market. Behind all the numbers of job loss and unemployment rates is this truth. These numbers bear out with statistical analysis done by companies like Challenger, Gray and Christmas. The fact is that the job market is divided into two different and unequal pieces. First there is the advertised job market and then the larger hidden job market.

The hidden job market is represented by the 80% of this pie chart. But we need to be aware of where or how to find opportunities in the hidden market. The second pie chart shows that we can find these hidden jobs through people we know and people we don’t know yet.

Of course through networking we become aware of jobs through strangers: in fact, that is a primary goal of job search networking. I tell my clients that they need to begin talking to friends. Asking for help in your job search is all it takes. Wait a minute, ask for help? I am an American, I don’t ask for help.

Isn’t that the truth! As a people, in a general sense, we hate to ask for help. Who hasn’t heard the joke about the guy driving around lost not willing to stop and ask for directions. Ouch, it's so true it’s a punch line of a joke. But this is just what we need to do to be successful in job search.

People love to help and will help until it hurts. The trouble is that they don’t know how to help the person in transition. So you need to tell them by saying "I’d really appreciate your help and advice". Who doesn’t want to give advice? That’s all it takes.