It was anything but luck for Dirty Harry
➔ It’s Friday the 13th and luck is all around us. Whether you’re Dirty Harry Callahan of movie fame, or just you, average ordinary job seeker, luck has got nothing to do with. Or does it?
Football coaches are famous for extolling that “luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity.” And there is a lot to that. Dirty Harry’s preparation was in knowing how many shots he had fired. Your preparation is in researching companies and hiring managers, knowing your resume and knowing for what prospective hiring managers are searching.
That’s not luck. That’s a lot of hard work. But you don’t need us to tell you that. Do you? Of course not.
Exceptions to the rule
But there are those few exceptions. Those rare (and they are rare) instances where there is no other explanation other than being in the right place at the right time.
Case in point: We know a job seeking woman who was in a coffee shop waiting to meet a contact for an informational interview. While she was waiting, she overheard the conversation at the next table. There, two men were talking about how they needed to hire someone with a certain skill set – a skill set that our friend possessed.
She politely interrupted their conversation and said, “I can do that.” Long story short, they hired her.
Another case in point: A job seeker sat down on an airplane next to another gentleman. They began talking casually. The other man explained that his company was looking for someone to do a particular job. Can you guess what happened? Yep. The job seeker filled the bill precisely. Their inflight conversation became a job interview and the job seeker got the job.
We’re our two friends just lucky? Sure. But their stories are the rare exceptions. You can’t bank on Lady Luck to seat you next to a hiring manager. You have to make your own breaks and you do that through research, networking, etc.
Lucky for you that you know all the right things to do.
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