Oracle of NY

Happy Ending Holiday Story

On December 1, 2008, I started working at Weiser LLP—and the media went wild. The New York Times and New York Post published splendid articles (i.e. “Better Sign Of Times, From Sandwich Board To Dream Job” – New York Post) and dozens of other media outlets quickly followed suit.

New York magazine came out with a humorous article “The Recession is Over!” and cited the number one reason as “Joshua Persky…got a job!”

Fortunately, there was a savvy Chief Marketing Officer at Weiser who helped me prevent my media attention from becoming too much of a circus or a distraction from work. I loved the attention and would have spent as much time as I could telling my story to the media, but I also understood that the established and respected firm had to protect its reputation and not let the publicity get out of control.

My supervisor accompanied me on all my major interviews, helping me host the New York Post, Inside Edition, WPIX and others at the office—and joining me for interviews at the studios of CNN, MSNBC and Reuters.

We had a fun and exciting honeymoon, including an in-depth lunch-time interview with Erika Hayasaki of the Los Angeles Times at a local sushi restaurant.

After a couple of weeks of exciting interviews, we started toning things down and refused any further interviews at the office or during work hours.

I was extremely disappointed about having to turn down major international television networks from Japan, Taiwan, and Brazil who wanted to interview me at the office and share my inspirational story with their viewers—but I understood I was being paid to do business valuations and had to focus on my work.

Nevertheless, I still received many telephone calls from journalists and spoke freely about my job-hunting experience.

As the holidays drew closer, my story became a happy ending holiday success story and instead of subsiding, my media attention soared to new heights.

Curtis Silwa and Steve Scott called for live radio interviews. Forbes.com featured me in an article called "Extreme Job Hunting," and Cindy Perman published a break-through article for CNBC.com, "6 Job-Hunting Tips From the 'Sandwich Board' Guy."

My iconic image popped up in newspapers, on television and on popular Internet sites all over the world.

My picture was even included in the Wall Street Journal’s “2008 Year in Pictures (Financial Crash),” as part of 20/20’s “2008 Year in Review (Greed Gone Wild)” and was noted as the New York Post’s number two viewed story of the year—ahead of scandalous stories about Elliot Spitzer, David Letterman and Marilyn Monroe!

PRWeek cited me as number two among the year’s “10 PR stunts that would make PT Barnum proud.”

I even got a call from a Hollywood movie agent asking if I was interested in creating a movie adaptation of my inspirational story.

When I had been unemployed and famous, most of the emails and calls I had received were full of encouragement.

After I had started working and had a second round of publicity, many of the emails and calls I received were congratulatory—but many were also from people asking for job-hunting advice.

Whereas before finding a job, I was the go-to unemployed sandwich board guy, after finding a job, I became the go-to how to get your dream job guy.

The Sandwich Board Guy Gets Weiser

Unbelievably, while I was on the way to Yokohama, Richelle Konian emailed me that I had received the green light from Weiser LLP. I accepted the offer via email and signed the Offer Letter when I returned to New York.

I was ecstatic, my wife and sister and the rest of my family were ecstatic, and Paloma Bowland put one more notch on the handle of her gun.

My wife and I were ecstatic because although many challenges still lay ahead, we could start rebuilding our lives and making plans for a future under one roof.

My sister and her family were ecstatic because after doing a great deed by sheltering me for three months, they could have their privacy back. Yet, I knew their dog Skipper would miss me.

The rest of my family was ecstatic because I had prevailed and would become financially independent again.

Paloma was ecstatic because of all of the above and more. She knew that this was the beginning of our relationship and not an end. “Now that you’ve found a job,” she told me, “You have to start managing your career.”

A couple of weeks after returning from Yokohama and accepting the job at Weiser LLP, I moved out of my sister’s house and back to Manhattan—and then I flew to Omaha for a real Thanksgiving celebration.

I also brought my wife and children their winter clothes which had been in storage since the end of June.

At last, Cindy and I had a happy ending in sight after what had been a very difficult year.

As my Grandpa Victor used to say, “Making a living is as difficult as parting the Red Sea.”

Well, the Red Sea had split wide open—and I was crossing over to the Promised Land.

Inspiration

I am still trying to come to terms with what I saw and experienced in Yokohama. Dr. Okuno hosted me with the greatest hospitality and generosity, even while he operated on patients twelve hours a day.

His medical practice, a combination of science, technology, research and art, impressed me beyond words. I watched as he introduced a scope into the veins of a middle-aged woman and sprayed multiple malignant cancerous tumors with a cocktail of cancer-fighting agents. The tumors shrank within hours.

Patients who entered his clinic with excruciating pain and little hope, left without pain—and with renewed hope.

With one treatment, Dr. Okuno saved a person’s life—and with two or three treatments, he saved his patient’s quality of life.

That was his main goal. Dr. Okuno was so brilliant and so humble, he would not even admit he cured cancer or saved lives. He only admitted to helping cancer sufferers improve their quality of life.

If I had been on my own, without a family, I doubt I would have returned from Yokohama.

However, when I sat with Dr. Okuno and his counselor Takahashi to discuss business, I asked for more than I would require from an employer in the United States. Cindy and I had agreed that if we were going to move abroad, we would only do so if we could put money in the bank. I did not want to live and work in Yokohama with the possibility of finishing the year with little or no savings. Yokohama was not as expensive as Tokyo, but we wanted to put our children in private international schools which were very expensive, and we wanted to be able to visit the USA at least twice during the year.

I told Dr. Okuno that if was going to move my family to Yokohama, I would need a salary—plus all expenses paid.

Dr. Okuno told me that Clinica E.T. functioned on a budget and could not hire me on those terms. Both the doctor and I were disappointed we could not reach an agreement, but I had the feeling my visit with Dr. Okuno would not be the end of our relationship but the beginning.

Actualization

Interestingly, once I had taken my career coach’s advice and was putting more effort into my job applications, interview preparations and follow up, had rewritten my resume in a transferable skills format and had unified my social networking profiles and public communications, good things started to happen.

I felt better about myself—and the people with whom I communicated felt better about me. I was able to move forward and incubate two fantastic opportunities.

Suddenly, an executive recruiter was as excited as could be about getting me in front of a hiring manager and actually followed through. Richelle Konian, co-founder of Careers On The Move, had followed my story—saw my resume, blog and LinkedIn profile—and put my resume on top of the stack.

When she asked me if I was interested in a Senior Manager of Valuation and Corporate Finance position with a large accounting firm in midtown Manhattan, I was more than enthusiastic.

Nevertheless, I tried to prevent myself from getting my hopes up too high. I had suffered too many disappointments since becoming unemployed.

Rochelle was extremely encouraging from the beginning and seemed to have little doubt during the entire hiring process, including several rounds of interviews, that I would get the job.

Simultaneously, my communications with Dr. Okuno became more focused and his invitation to host me for a week in Yokohama materialized. I was extremely intrigued by Dr. Okuno’s research, the possibility of contributing to the fight against cancer and taking a trip to Yokohama—yet, I had many questions and practical considerations.

Was I really qualified to help Dr. Okuno publicize his endovascular therapy research and disseminate his tumor-destroying techniques internationally? Could I effectively help him build a new and larger clinic and research facility in Japan? Was it feasible to move to Yokohama with my wife and children? Could Dr. Okuno really make my efforts worth my while?

After much deliberation, even with all my questions and doubts, I decided to go for the journey. At worst, it would be a great adventure.

Creativity, Bravery and Integrity

After we had worked on interviewing strategies and my transformational resume, Paloma’s next advice to me was to identify my brand—and to professionalize and unify my blog, social networking profiles and all my public and professional communications.

Identifying my brand was not too difficult. People from all over the world, including Paloma, had emailed me telling me that they admired my creativity, bravery and integrity—so that became my identifiable brand. I began infusing all my communications with creativity, bravery, and integrity.

Unifying and professionalizing my blog, Facebook and LinkedIn profiles did not require a tremendous amount of effort either.

I had started my blog in order to keep in touch with people from all over the world, document my job search and post my resume. I was not exactly sure in which direction I was ultimately going to take it, but I knew I wanted it to help me find a job.

It did not take much effort to be sensitive and professional about what I posted—and to keep the site focused on my job-hunting efforts.

I had signed onto Facebook when my children had invited me to be their friend. How could I refuse? I had not considered it a public forum or a platform for finding or preventing me from finding a job, but with Paloma’s advice, I started to regard Facebook not only as a personal site for keeping up with my children or as a free-for-all social networking site—as most people seemed to regard it—but as part of my professional platform.

I certainly regarded LinkedIn as a professional platform, but I did not have a complete profile and did not fully understand how to best utilize it to find a job or enhance my career.

As I cleaned up and unified my profiles and online communications, I always kept in mind that my main goal was to find a job. Anything that would interfere with my chances of finding a job was not good and was omitted or deleted, and anything that added to my chances of finding a job was posted and retained.

One of the simplest techniques I used to give my new resume, blog and social networking profiles a professional and cohesive look was to post the same business-like photograph on all of them. My profile pictures had been too casual.

My wife Cindy is a photographer, so getting a high-quality digital portrait was easy. Otherwise, I would have gone to the nearest passport photo service which could supply me with an electronic image.

Once I had streamlined my online presence and had instilled my personal brand of creativity, bravery, and integrity in all my public communications, I felt as though I had an effective marketing campaign working in my favor. My professional image was sharpened, and I was transformed into an easily recognizable brand.

Transformation

Once we had spoken about the interview process, Paloma advised me to rewrite my resume in a non-chronological transferable skills format.

“Oh no, not again,” I thought. I had reformatted my resume countless times before.

“All my skills are transferable,” I told Paloma, “but nobody seems to understand that. They want people with the exact experience and skill set for the job description.”

“That is exactly why you have to make a non-chronological transferable skills resume,” she responded.

I was initially resistant but Paloma was insistent. She said it would help me find a job—and did not stop telling me so.

I spent several days on the first draft of my transferable skills resume and by time I was finished, I was transformed. It was my a-ha moment when my resume, job search, career management and self-perception in general turned from black-and-white to color.

If I had been reluctant to take my self-appointed career coach’s advice before, after writing my new non-chronological transferable skills resume, I was hooked by Paloma’s charisma, intelligence and determination—and by what I quickly coined as the Paloma Method.

What would I have done without my coach? Would I have gotten my job at a midtown accounting firm? Would I have ended up somewhere else? Would I still be unemployed?

When I asked Paloma why she had reached out to me, she did not hesitate to answer, “I followed your story and could not believe that after all your publicity, you could still not find a job. I could not believe that no one was helping you. This is America! I knew that I could help you, so I contacted you.”

She also told me that if my integrity had not shined through my sign board story and had not been reaffirmed by her conversations with me, she would not have given me fifteen seconds of her time.

“Character is not something that can be taught,” she said.

The Mantra and the Promise

As I had a couple of interviews coming up, my self-appointed career coach started advising me on how to prepare for interviews and how to follow up.

She convinced me I needed to put much more effort into preparation and much more effort into following up after my interview. I had been so busy applying to as many jobs as I could, I was not preparing as well as I could or following up as much as I should for the most relevant leads. If I did not get a response from one or two calls or emails, I usually let the lead slide and that was the end of it.

With most of my resume submissions and job applications, I was not even including a cover letter—or if I did, it was brief and generic.

Paloma advised me to take a more targeted and custom-made approach. Every communication, especially the first contact with each potential employer had to be fresh, personalized and effective.

I was used to doing some preliminary research about the companies and people I contacted, but I did not take the time to apply what I learned in crafting a position-specific resume and cover letter.

I was also not following up appropriately—and that is where a little additional effort can make a huge amount of difference.

Paloma advised me to think hard and long about each company to which I applied and explain to them how I could contribute to their success.

“There are only three things that your potential employer wants to hear,” she told me. “How you can make them money, how you can save them money and how you can solve their problems. If you can tell them that—I promise they will hire you.”

She told me to keep those three things in mind in all my communications—and promised I would find a job. “That is the mantra,” she said. ”I can make you money. I can save you money. I can solve your problems.”