Page 52 - James Caan - Get the Job you Really Want

But equally in other industries you can increase that percep-
tion of your value by making yourself visible outside the cocoon
of your own company – attending conferences, dinners, writing
in the trade press, blogging. You may not always feel like going
out to another trade dinner, but remember that it might just be

that dinner where you make a contact with somebody who will
later o≠er you a fantastic job. You are making an investment to
enhance the value of your personal brand.

I came across a great example of this when I was in America,
looking to buy a particular recruitment company. I was
spending a week touring a number of their o≤ces and the
directors kept mentioning one consultant, Cindy, who was their
top biller, by a mile – she was billing over five times the average

amount. I was intrigued to learn more about her success, and
on the fourth or fifth day I finally got to meet her.
‘Cindy,’ I asked her, ‘tell me a bit about what you do: what’s

the market you’re in?’
‘Windows, James, that’s what I do.’
I immediately thought she must specialize in software
programmers, of course.
‘No,’ she said, ‘I mean those square things in buildings.’

I couldn’t believe that was an area of recruitment big enough
to make her the star biller – I would have thought she was in
investment banking, or law, or FMCG.

Absolutely not. She placed people in the window business.
And because Cindy was the biggest brand name in that sector,
everybody came to her. That was why she billed so much every
year.

40 get the job you really want