1. Career Talk News
January 5 , 2010 Vol. 40
Tip of the Week
Career Tips Provided by Pat Meehan of The Meehan Group
www.themeehangroup.com
Targeted Marketing is Powerful
How did you get the first job interview of the year? Hopefully, your first
attempt was not from looking in the newspaper, where everybody else looks, or
on internet job boards, where everybody else looks. You might ask, where else
can I look, what’s left?
Actually, only 15% - 20% of career opportunities are posted on all of the
above mentioned media. The rest of the career opportunities are ideas running
around in other peoples’ minds. These people are the key people that make hiring
decisions in companies.
Why do you think that 80% of job seekers apply to only 20% of the job
market? The answer is they are reactive people. They react to a crisis they happen
to be in at the time, like having a bad performance evaluation, experiencing a lay
off, receiving a chewing out from the boss, or having an argument with a co-
worker. This is called crisis-based job searching. In other words, I am looking for
a job because I am in trouble. It has nothing to do with accountability, self-
awareness, or self-improvement. It’s about being in a crisis and looking for a
quick fix by running to the newspaper or the internet for quick help only to find
that quick help comes very slowly. Reactive behavior is not self-aware, self-
improved, or accountable. It’s just scared.
Fear is the most destructive element to any undertaking. In most cases,
fear can’t be identified by the fearful person. It is not specific, but more of a
feeling of emptiness of not knowing where to go or what to do. Fear is having the
lack of proper knowledge to make life decisions. Since we are people of choice,
and we live every day, life brings us daily challenges. As people of choice and
free will, we must choose how to deal with these challenges. If we don’t have the
proper knowledge that comes from self-awareness, we can’t make informed
decisions, leaving us feeling scared, insecure, and lost. Fear makes us dependant
on other people to take care of us, which usually doesn’t work.
Before you were accountable and self-aware, you were fearful and
insecure. Now that you know who you are, what you have to offer, and where you
want to go from here, you have eliminated fear from your life. You have replaced

2. fear with adventure, hope, and trust in the decisions you have made to self-
improve and make positive changes. Because you are accountable and proactive,
your ever self-improving mind allows you to find the 80% of job opportunities
that reactive people can’t find. You simply figure out that there are many
companies that employ people who have similar skills, goals, and achievements
as you have. Therefore, they may have an opening for someone like you.
With this realization, you start researching sources of where to find these
companies. You discover that there are directories with nearly every company’s
information, including location, product, number of employees, key names of
managers and directors, addresses, and phone numbers. You can simply go to
your local library and ask to see the Harris Infosource Company Directory. This is
a free alternative to get good information on companies you want to market
yourself to.
Because you are self-aware, you have just improved your writing skills
through writing your resume. Now you will put together a marketing letter all by
yourself. You will let your network partners give you some free help to fine tune
this letter. This letter explains where you are now and where you want to go from
here. It is called a cover letter and its purpose is to accompany your resume to a
targeted audience of key people who make hiring decisions in your targeted
employers of choice. This method of job searching is called targeted marketing.
You are going to market yourself to targeted companies that employ people like
you, and to people within those targeted companies who make hiring decisions.
The majority of job hunters are reactive people looking for a quick fix in
reaction to a crisis in their current employment situation. They are rapidly firing
resumes to newspaper and job board ads in high volumes, along with hundreds or
thousands of other reactive people. These resumes are stacking up in piles and
loading up companies’ e-mail boxes. These reactive people are standing in long
lines to get their resumes looked at along with hundreds or thousands of other
people waiting for the same thing. You, on the other hand, are taking your one
day at a time approach, and mailing two or three mailings per day to targeted
companies in the unadvertised job market. Your mailing program is powerful
because it comes in an envelope with someone’s name on it. That is a rare
occasion these days. People still love to open an envelope with their name on it.
If you take your cover letter and resume and send two mail outs per day,
you will have mailed your marketing documents to 60+ targeted companies over a
month, 180+ over a quarter, and 360+ over a six month period of time. Unlike
the reactive person, who is looking for a quick fix, you are proactive, looking into
the future as though you can see it, and acting accordingly. You are not looking
for a quick fix, but methodically evolving into greater opportunity in a relaxed
and self assured manner. In six months, you have hit 360 targets. The reactive
person may have found only ten to twenty targets over that same period of time in

3. the advertised job markets. The reactive person’s resume finds itself sitting in
large stacks of resumes sent by other reactive people. When your resume hits its
targets, it is most likely opened immediately. Of 360 targeted mail outs, there are
normally 10% - 15% of those targeted companies that need someone like you. In
this scenario, based on my experience of working with thousands of job seekers
that have started this targeted marketing approach, here are the numbers: 360
targeted mailings over six months would generate thirty six serious looks at your
resume, twenty initial phone contacts directly from the targeted companies, six-
to-eight face-to-face interviews, and two-to-four job offers with significant career
growth potential.
This system is predictable, measureable, and it works. All you have to do
is start your targeted mailing program today.
For more career search self-help information take a look at Pat’s
book, “Career of a Lifetime.”
Click on book icon to see inside…
Visit our Website: www.themeehangroup.com