The Monthly Memo with Chad Oakley: August 2023

In this episode of our new recurring podcast segment, Charles Aris CEO Chad Oakley shares a job market update plus his five-step process for finding your next dream career opportunity.

Read the full transcript:

Hello everyone and welcome to the Monthly Memo from Charles Aris Executive Search where we share the latest trends in talent and recruiting. I’m your host Chad Oakley, CEO of Charles Aris, and today is Wednesday, Aug. 16 of 2023.

The first Friday of the month was a little over one week ago, Aug. 4, and like every first Friday of the month the U.S Bureau of Labor Statistics released their monthly jobs report. As always, we will give you a quick reaction to that report and what we’re seeing in the marketplace here at Charles Aris. Secondly, we’ll answer a very popular question that we’re hearing from people in the market which is: What is the best practice for finding my next career opportunity in this slower labor market for senior executives? Very popular question today, but first as always let’s start with the jobs report from Friday the fourth.

187,000 new non-farm payroll jobs added in July. 187,000 is a respectable number in the grand scheme of things even though it does mark the lowest number of new jobs created in 30 months, replacing last month as the lowest month. In other words, the last two months have marked the two lowest months in job gains seen over the previous 30 months. Clearly the rate of job growth is slowing but the good news is that that’s exactly what J Powell and the Fed are trying to accomplish in an effort to stem inflationary fears. The other key data point from the July report is that the unemployment rate dropped from 3.6 percent down to 3.5, close to the 50-year low of 3.4 percent we saw in April of this year. So even though the rate of new jobs created is slowing it is still a very tight labor market out there. Perhaps the best evidence of that type labor market is the year-over-year increase in hourly wages which hit 4.4 percent, definitely higher than what the Fed would ideally like for us to see which is closer to that 2 percent mark. The other piece of cautionary news is that the number of hours worked dropped slightly in July indicating that employers have less work for their employees to do compared to the previous month. But on the upside, employers are not laying off their employees, they are simply scheduling them for fewer hours. That would indicate that employers are optimistic about the future and don’t want to get caught short-handed when an increase in business eventually shows up.

You know there are a lot of ways that we can interpret this data and depending on who you are you could see this job report as good news or bad news, but I always like to take it from the employee’s perspective, and from the employee’s perspective this is all pretty good news. If you want a job, there are a good number of opportunities to choose from and wages have never been higher. Let’s hope that we can continue to maintain full employment while still lowering inflation.

All this good news aside, it is not all rainbows and unicorns for everyone. Some companies are still conducting layoffs and here at Charles Aris we’ve seen an uptick in companies eliminating roles at the more senior levels. Our current economy has proven to be one of those strange situations whereby senior-level executives are perhaps at a greater risk of losing their jobs compared with their junior counterparts, which is simply a manifestation of when companies were caught short staffed at the more junior levels coming out of the pandemic. No company wants a repeat of those very trying times when they couldn’t find enough hourly workers, so some companies are making a trade-off keeping their junior-level staff and laying off some middle and upper-level management positions instead. And that brings us to part two of our monthly memo: What is the best practice for finding my next career opportunity in this slower labor market for senior executives?

If you’ve caught yourself in one of those situations where you’re looking for your next opportunity, hopefully this will be of value. Here at Charles Aris, we have had countless career discussions with executives over the course of our 54 years in business, and those conversations have allowed us to hone a five-step process that we believe is the best way to find your next career opportunity. So, I’m going to outline that five-step process but before I do I want to highlight that nowhere in this five-step process does it say get in touch with executive search firms, and this might surprise some of you given that Charles Aris of course is an executive search firm. But let’s talk about why. First of all, is it wise to get yourself on the radar screen of executive search firms? Absolutely. Of course, executive search firms have their finger on the pulse of the job market perhaps better than any other entities in business and they often have exclusivity for filling key positions, however, the executive search industry is still a small fraction of all the roles that get filled each year.

Take Charles Aris for example. Last year Charles Aris was ranked as one of the top 30 executive search firms in the United States by revenue and we completed 270 searches during that time. I’m very proud of those 270 searches that we completed, but how many people are there in the United States? 330 million, and we placed 270 of those 330 million. In other words, as much as an executive search firm would like to place you, the stars really have to align for it to actually happen, therefore the number one catalyst for finding your next career opportunity is not an executive search firm. It’s actually you.

So, let’s talk about how you can help you to find your next career opportunity. Here’s that five-step process. First and foremost, number one: Define your scope, and you define your scope by answering three very simple questions: What industries do I want to work in that my skill set applies to and you should have no more than two industries and odds are they’re pretty darn tightly correlated. Number two: What size company am I comfortable working at? Am I a startup person, am I a mid-sized organization or am I a large corporation? And then number three where geographically I want to live. The classic mistake that many job seekers make is defining a scope that is too broad. Remember you can’t boil the ocean. Narrow your scope aggressively and know that you can expand later if necessary. By narrowing your scope, you will dig deeper in those spaces which will allow you to find hidden opportunities, which are always there, and you will have a better and more convincing story to share with hiring authorities. So that’s number one.

Number two is to create an exhaustive list of all the companies that meet that scope, that intersection of those three questions that we just went through. Create an exhaustive list of all the companies that fall within that scope. A manageable scope is anywhere from 15 to 50 companies that align with your career goals. Any less and you’re unlikely to find a good opportunity. Anymore and you’ll spread yourself too thin. There are multiple ways to find this information. You could use simple services like LinkedIn or certainly Googling something as simple as “chemical companies in Chicago” will get you started, if you’re interested in chemical companies that happen to be in Chicago. Or if you have access to pay services such as Zoom info, those can work a great deal as well. So, number two just simply create a long list of every last one of those companies that fall within those criteria.

Number three: Research and prioritize your list of companies, right, simply go online, review the websites of each company in your scope and force yourself to rate each company as either (A) high interest (B) some interest or (C) no interest at all. It’s easy to fall into the trap of prioritizing companies based on the open positions they list on their website, but don’t make that mistake. This is not about what positions a company has listed publicly, which is never an accurate reflection of a company’s hiring needs. Instead, you’re simply trying to prioritize which companies you want to work for regardless of who you believe they are looking to hire.

Fourth, identify and reach out to the appropriate hiring authority at your top target companies. The hiring authority is effectively the person to whom you would report if you were to join the company. This is not human resources unless you desire to be in a human resources position. Leverage LinkedIn and classic Google internet searches to identify who that person is. So, identifying them is one but then you’ve got to reach out to them and how you reach out to this person and what you say to them is clearly important. And this is where the rubber meets the road everyone.

You can start with an email or a LinkedIn message, but you should plan to follow with a phone call as well. Whether you’re sending an email or leaving a voicemail a simple straightforward message is best. Your email and voicemail script which you should write out and practice should include the following topics (A) this is who I am (B) this is what I do or have done (C) I have no idea if you’re looking for someone like me (which provides a nice disclaimer that allows the hiring authority to drop their guard) and (D) I’m interested in you and I would appreciate the opportunity to set up a time to speak or to meet with you.

Note that when calling you will likely get this person’s voicemail. In this case your message should largely be the exact same as what I’ve just outlined above just in an executive summary format; no more than one to two minutes in length which means you’ve got to be very tight. Many of you will be calling a senior person at that company and it’s likely that you might get their assistant on the phone. In that case you should communicate with the assistant exactly in the exact same way that you would be with the hiring authority as they will be passing your message along to their boss.

Many of you might be asking why I am calling a hiring authority if they don’t have a job posted. The reason is twofold: (A) many companies don’t post every role they’re looking to fill, especially not senior positions, and (B) hiring authorities are always looking for great talent even if they don’t have an open requisition. I’ve heard countless executives say I don’t have an opening, but I’ll create one for this person. You might also be saying wait a phone call in today’s day and age? You really want me to call this person and the answer is yes, pick up the phone and call them as well. Don’t just rely on email or LinkedIn which is the path of least resistance. It’s harder to make that phone call and doing so will definitely help you to stand out, and it makes you unique. It also allows the hiring authority to hear your voice and to hear your professionalism and that will make them more likely to be willing to return that call and speak with you.

Step five lastly just be highly appreciative of those who help you. Be sure to send a brief thank you email to everyone you interface with. In your email, be sure to list your career goals in two sentences or less, very short and sweet, and don’t hesitate to attach your résumé. You’ll be surprised by how many calls you get from people who received your résumé from a colleague that you sent it to. The key to this entire approach is polite persistence. Don’t just email and call the hiring authority once and give up; these are busy people and there are a lot of things vying for their attention. Our rule of thumb is to email the hiring authority and then place your follow-up call no later than five days after. Rinse and repeat this process no less than three times. It shows that you’re serious and companies only want to engage with serious candidates.

There you have it. This five-step approach is not easy however we’ve found it is by far the most reliable way to identify multiple career opportunities if you invest the time and if you want more information on this you can visit our candidate resources page at charlesaris.com for more information on how to land your next life-changing career opportunity. I hope this monthly memo has been helpful for all of our subscribers for all of us at Charles Aris executive search. This is CEO Chad Oakley saying thanks for listening and we’ll talk again next month. Happy recruiting, everyone!