Not
In Your Right Mind
Some
of us have organizational disciplines and some of us creativity skills. As you
move away from modest amounts of either, you may qualify as super-organized, or super-creative, which is around 15%
of the population. There are, of course, the outer extremes. (For the purpose of this article, you need
not concern yourself with the outer fringes. These individuals pose no threat
to job seekers.)
Few
of us see ourselves as normal when our job hunting efforts hit a brick wall. Overnight,
our daily routines become broken, we feel out-of-step or out of sync with those
who are working. For these job-seekers, the lack of daily productive routine becomes
the new norm.
The
job-hunting population is somewhat divided in their organizational disciplines and creativity
skills. Half are better organized, and the other half more creative. Thus, some
job seekers are more left-brain dominated, and those who are not, tend to be more
right-brain dominated.
As
we move further away from the statistical center, there are those who are super-organized, and those who qualify
as super-creative. To simplify this,
think of a teeter-totter. As one side go up, the other side goes down. The more
organized an individual is, the less creativity is utilized, and vice versa. Those
who are super-creative tend to be far less well organized.
In
the active job market, those individuals who are more left-brain (organized and structured) tend to fare
better than those who are right-brain dominated. Those who lean toward being more
structured and well-organized, have a distinct advantage over those who are
less structured. From a job-seeking prospective, having organizational tenacity
trumps having creative genius.
Ask
yourself this question: Are you more organized
or more creative? This is one of
those know thy-self questions. You
will lean more one way than the other. If you believe you are equally balanced in
both arenas you are an anomaly, or you may lack self-awareness.
In
the event you tend to be more right-brain, you need to focus on being more
organized—at least during the job search period. Relying on your creativity
alone will not serve you well in the job market. How many times have you asked
yourself, “Why haven’t I fared better employment-wise?”
Job
seekers historically tend to overgeneralize. They see a few highly creative,
innovative individuals succeed (or be
discovered), while the majority of
right-brained individual stagnate and struggle. Then they proceed one-step
further and quietly blame themselves. If you are a right-brained job-seeker and
desire to compensate for this, you literally have to force yourself to become
better organized. In fact, you may have to overcompensate just to rebalance
your employment teeter-totter.
I
rarely mention friends, three of whom qualify as right-brained and super creative.
All suffer from employment disasters. Two individuals have IQs above 160. If
called upon to identify their dominating weakness, it would be lack of organizational
skills. Each has held employment far below their potential.
In
addition to those known personally, there are been a long parade of
right-brained clients who relied solely upon my skills as a résumé writer to
salvage their careers. Only one-third of those individuals achieve serious
employment success. The balance accepted employment well below their creative genius.
In
analyzing their job securing performance, their organizational and preplanning
skills consistently rank low. Either they failed to adequately prepare for
their interviews, or they threw caution to the wind playing the numbers game.
The common denominator was their lack of having a structured focus. In short,
they failed to have a structured job-seeking strategy, and therefore, they had
no plan to follow.
Now
here is a rub. Most key decision makers—in this case we are referring to those who
make the ultimate hiring decisions—tend to be very highly structured. In the
vast majority of the cases, that is how these individuals rose to the top.
Don’t
take my word for this. Analyze it for yourself. Randomly select the top-tier
individuals from any organization. Unless they crawled their way up from the
bottom, those hired in at the top will have degrees in accounting, finance or
business. With few exceptions, these individuals are left-brained—some more so
than others.
The
more right-brain dominated you are, the less likely far-left brained
individuals will invite you into their highly structured organization. They see
such individuals as misfits, maladjusted or not fitting into their
organizational structure. They may advertise for creative genius, but when that
materializes into reality, remember: Organization
trumps creativity.
Now you know: Proceed
with your job search accordingly.