Unlocking your perfect job
Your perfect job – fulfilling, energizing, challenging. And not listed on any career site. Why? Because someone else has already taken it.
Last week my wife and I headed out for a relaxing dinner at a quaint restaurant. My wife’s work has brought us to Florenceville, New Brunswick, Canada. It’s a town carved out of gaps between farmers’ fields. We are hours from the nearest big city.
In the casual flow of the evening we struck up a conversation with the owner of the restaurant. She shared the trials and tribulations of finding a good chef to work for her.
It was the second conversation I’d had that day with business owners struggling to find great talent. The other conversation was with the co-founders of a tech company in the core of a bustling urban center.
This is the irony of the job market. For job seekers, there seems to be a shortage of exciting, fulfilling jobs available. For employers, finding and attracting awesome talent verges on impossible.
So how do you get involved in this black market for talent?
The psychology of connecting
The answer comes from two important psychological phenomenon.
The first is the Mere-Exposure Effect. Advertisers know this one well. We tend to develop a preference for things that are familiar to us. Brands work hard to make sure we know their product.