51.

Enter Through the Side Door

Crafting your résumé into an impeccable representation of who you are professionally is necessary to finding work. But simply sending it out is no longer the most efficient way to accomplish that.

Imagine thousands upon thousands of résumés trying to get through the “front door” of a company. They don't necessarily get read. The front door is a little like a toilet that gets backed up because, well, too much paper has been sent through. I'm not telling you not to send your résumé in response to a posting. What I am saying is that there is a better, more efficient way to find work. And that's through the side door, which I'll label “relationships.”

When I was in sales, I had, as one of my bosses described it, “the tenacity of a bulldog on a pant leg.” I made 100 phone calls a day—literally—and from that, might get a couple of appointments and one sale. Years later, when I became a Hollywood agent, I learned about access. Access is the ability to make one phone call to a decision-maker, close the sale, and spend the rest of the day at the beach. Smart employers—myself included—are interested in the results, not the process. Neither employers nor clients pat you on the back for the effort you made. It's about efficiency: how little work can you do to produce the desired results? And being able to enter through the side door can save you a ton of work.