Are you a city pigeon or a countryside pigeon?
Tags: city pigeon, countryside pigeon, CV, cvs, dawn bugni, job boards, Networking
The other day, I was waiting for a train at my station…and I was at the same time observing the pigeons hanging around on the platform (the idea of this article came from reading this awesome story, Job Search Tenacity through a blind dog)
There were 10 of them, 3 were really rawboned, and the other ones were not that great either.
A guy in front of me just dropped a crust of bread, and all of them rushed to grab that piece of food…they were fighting each other for a tiny slice of bread, one of them (apparently the healthiest) just got the bigger part.
On the other side, I do remember my summer in the countryside in France, where I saw a couple of pigeons…they were all healthy and shinny pigeons, quite fat, hanging around from trees to trees in group of 2-3 individuals.
So are the city pigeons stupid? Or the countryside pigeons cleverer?
It is really difficult to say or to explain.
But what I can say is that pigeons living in the countryside have much more food and less competition whereas in the city, pigeons are much more concentrated, so there are more pigeons for less food.
As a consequence, if you are a pigeon living in the city, you will have more chance to suffer from starvation.
The moral of the story?
It is better to live in the countryside…No I am joking.
The moral of the story is that when you look for a job, try not to be that city pigeon, struggling for a tiny piece of food against a huge competition.
Find your countryside where you can have your food more easily without fighting all the time.
It means that sending your CV for a job, is acting like a city pigeon.
90% of the time, you are struggling for less food with a huge competition
Actually sending CVs all day long make you a proper city pigeon.
And job boards are big places where you can find only city pigeons hanging around. You will see, they flock into the same jobs, same ways of looking for a job, same CVs.
Countryside pigeons are elsewhere, they are going from trees to trees picking up nuts effortlessly.
They go to networking events, they write articles, they are seen as experts, they don’t act as city pigeons.
They find their uniqueness. They know where to go and how to get there.
So they find their food more easily and can really live longer and better.
City pigeons always act the same when they find a piece of food: they rush to get it, eat what they can, and just wait for the next one…hoping to get more than the neighbor. They only see the world in a really short term period.
So are you a city pigeon or a countryside pigeon?
Dawn Bugni said:
Oct 06, 09 at 10:39 amLaurent –
What a brilliant analogy! Happy to have helped inspire this timely advice for job seekers.
In this market, well anytime really, a job search takes resourcefulness, as you outlined. Pecking away in the same way as everyone else isn’t going to cut it. Flying to the fringes (the countryside) and looking where others aren’t flocking usually nets some very positive results. As you indicated, there’s nothing wrong with sending resumes and CVs or searching the boards, only don’t make them your only crust of bread.
Great post!
Duncan Elliott said:
Oct 06, 09 at 1:03 pmI knew I was wasting my time hanging around Bristol Temple Meads Station in the cold and wet, waiting for the directors of Recruitment firms to throw me the occasional crust!
Nice one Laurent.
Laurent Brouat said:
Oct 06, 09 at 2:19 pmI hope you did not catch a cold…city pigeons are quite frail!
Is your job search “Cookie-cutter” or “hand-dropped”? « Dawn's Blog said:
Oct 07, 09 at 3:05 am[...] force it, but bring your skills up to date. Laurent Brouat shares some great ideas in his post about looking where others aren’t. Capitalize on social media. You never know who [...]