Page 11 - James Caan - Get the Job you Really Want

just do what’s instinctive. They see a job ad and, almost without
thinking, send out their old C V and keep their fingers crossed.
I can only say this because I have been working in recruit-
ment all my life. I didn’t just stumble across this knowledge.
I have learned the ins and outs and the details of the business

from personal, hands-on experience. Together we are going to
set about improving the odds of you getting that perfect job.
Because I really do believe that it is possible to have the job of

your dreams. But you have got to be capable of doing it. There’s
no point in saying, ‘I want to be Prime Minister,’ for example, if
you can’t do the job. You will only be able to perform in a role
if you have the skills to do it, but landing it is about planning,
preparation and determination. Remember that most people,

the vast majority of the other candidates who are applying for
the job you want, do not even attempt ten per cent of the extra
work that would make a significant di≠erence to their chances.

And that is why they are not in those jobs.
A great way to motivate yourself is to take inspiration from
somebody you admire who has got their ideal job through
commitment, belief and real drive. I look at people like Stuart
Rose, who started o≠ at Marks and Spencer as a management

trainee in the early 1970s and thirty years later was appointed
chief executive of the company. Philip Clarke, a Saturday boy
at Tesco when he was fourteen, who went on to take over as

chief executive of the company from Terry Leahy, who’d also
stacked shelves in a Tesco store as a kid. Or Rose Marie Bravo,
who was a buyer in a Long Island department store, and ended

xiii introduction