Amazing Stories: Get Your Foot in the Door Part 1

I used to have a friend who was what anyone would call a late bloomer. Always brilliant, always smart and sensitive, blessed with a voracious curiosity, a killer sense of humor, he was also a child of the 60s. It wasn’t until he was in his 40s that he got around to finishing college. The academic discipline he chose required that he learn Chinese. And so at night he studied his brains out surrounded by the delightful demands of three adorable daughters ranging from newborn to 8-ish – each one with the same lively, curious, busy (read: demanding) intellect of their parents.

So here was my brilliant friend, fully and formally educated, and newly equipped with Chinese. Only problem: What the heck was he going to do with this liberal arts degree with so extraordinary an emphasis? It beat the heck out of all of us, including him. He knew what he didn’t want to do with this education, and that pretty much cut out all possibility of most of the obvious answers – like work for a company doing business in China.

One day, around about this time of year, he’s getting ready for his last round of finals, and we’re all still wondering how the heck is he going to cash in on his passion, brilliance and hard work. At just about then, he comes across a newspaper article about an organization that completely represented everything he cared deeply about. And so he wrote the executive director what can only be called a fan letter. Within a couple of days, the phone rings in his wife's kitchen: “Hello, is this where….lives?” Oh my gosh. It’s them!

He was employed before he had even reached out to accept his diploma among the thousands of others in his class in the gigantic auditorium. Fast forward 9 years: He’s still there, blissfully employed, deeply appreciated and that impressive noggin of his used to almost its capacity. It’s probably the only organization on the planet he would ever consider working for (or pretty much close to it), and this organization totally gets him.

So what’s the lesson here? Don’t be shy. Let the spirit of your passion move you. Write fan letters, true, sincere, well-composed, flattering (but not fawning), smart and specific.

Start building up a fluency in your own passion and possibilities. You don’t have to be PollyAnna, but just start building up a clipping file or data base of organizations that really turn you on for whatever reason. And start writing fan letters. Write a bunch of them, so there’s no pressure on any one of them to produce a job.

Get in the habit of kvelling (I’m not Jewish, but I sure do love that word, and I hope I spelled it right). Do it enough and soon the sheer weight of all that positivity is going to shift the luck balance in your direction. You’ll become more familiar with what brings you joy, what kinds of companies or organizations are most likely to be the right fit, and you’ll be able to speak their language.

And start hammering out those letters. Be sincere. Be specific. Be informed. Be enthusiastic...for reasons you can identify in your letter. Be personal -- make sure the letter is addressed to an individual, the higher up the better.

Then one of these days, your phone will ring.