🍀PBP News #2 | Busting 5 Headhunter Myths!

Dear friend,

Welcome to the second issue of 🍀PBP News.

FOOD FOR THOUGHT 🥦 – Reflections on career and life

*** HEADHUNTING ***

The HEADHUNTING SCENE is regarded by many as covert, secretive, clannish, and inaccessible. As a place driven entirely by networking among the top tier. As an environment where you are either in or out, and if you’re not in, your chances of a successful career seriously diminish. As a setting guided by the dogma:

“You scratch my back, and I’ll scratch yours.”

Yes, headhunting IS exciting – and it is also full of myths….

Stephen was a top headhunter for 20 years. He knows the headhunting business inside and out. In The Headhunter Behind the Scenes – The Simple Truth! he explains the headhunting process, viewed from the inside. He shares his headhunter insights along with his simple and effective system for evaluating job candidates.

Stephen breaks down 5 common myths about headhunting, like

• “The game was rigged!” or
• “If I can only get a meeting with the headhunter, my luck will be made”.

Because in reality, headhunting is mostly hard work (just like anything else that people do to achieve anything). Headhunting is based on databases and systems, researching and documenting, and interviewing, and presenting. And above all, it’s about selling. Selling to the client and selling to the candidate.

Enjoy Stephen’s headhunting insights.

THE MENTAL FITNESS ROOM 🏋️‍♀️ – Piece of advice

*** Be adventurous and focused – and believe in yourself! ***

In this newsletter, we offer you The A-Z for a Better Career from Stephen’s book, The Personal Business Plan – A Blueprint for Running Your Life (Wiley 2013). It’s a comprehensive list of 25 things to consider in your career, everything from dress code to relationships to expertise. Here are three examples:

• Dress well and appropriately – look the part. It is vital to create a positive impression from the first moment.
• Educate yourself and remember – your functional professionalism must be excellent before you start discussing general management.
• Listen to your intuition – it is the sum of your experiences.

We’re hoping you will take away some beneficial ideas for yourself to apply to your current work-life situation. And if you’re an entrepreneur, stay tuned. We’ll have much more advice for you in one of our coming newsletters.

CATCH OF THE DAY 🐟 – Miscellaneous

*** DENMARK AND TRUST ***

We, Mette and Stephen, founders of The Personal Business Plan, are Danish – and we’re proud of it!

We are also truly European. But DENMARK, the small Nordic country, is our backbone.

We stem from Danish confidence and TRUST. Don’t get it wrong. It’s not a naïve kind of trust, where everybody always speaks the truth, and everyone believes in everyone else. What it means is that we Danes just basically believe that other people have good intentions until proven otherwise. We are still on guard for lies and fraud and violent behavior, but in general, we don’t expect to meet it.

Basic confidence and trust create a very strong coherence in our society.

It means that in business, buyers trust their sellers, and sellers trust their buyers. In organizations, employees trust their leaders, and leaders trust their employees. In school students trust their teachers, and teachers trust their students In homes, children trust their parents, and parents trust their children. In the street, the police trust the citizens, and the citizens trust the police.

This perspective leads to trust in oneself, trust in others, and trust in institutions and organizations. It is the foundation on which we build our families, businesses, and public sector.

If all of this sounds too fairy-tale-like to be true, just think of it being 80% true, and you will be convinced. 80% is still enough to create a pretty solid system.

Recently, Megan McArdle wrote about the special Danish trust for Bloomberg You Can’t Have Denmark Without Danes. Her article is comprehensive and interesting with many intriguing points. One such point is that the strong Danish trust frees up workforce and therefore helps make Denmark rich! It is well written and absolutely worth reading. Enjoy!

Our Personal Business Plan philosophy builds on our Danish heritage, on our unique and effective interaction between individuality and community. But our Danish foundation is not enough. We spice it up with our upbringing outside of Denmark, mostly in France and the US. More about that in a future newsletter….

Thanks for reading!

Warm regards,

Mette and Stephen Bruyant-Langer
Founders of The Personal Business Plan

thepersonalbusinessplan.com