Here’s a step-like program, very much based on the practice found in “What Color Is Your Parachute?”:
- research everything you can about the firm
- find connections, any connections, to people woking there (e.g. same home town, same college, friends-of-friends, etc.)
- found out where they get lunch, go there and hang out, watch and learn
- flirt with the switchboard operator and with the executive assistants in the departments in which you’re interested, listen to everyone
- take people out to lunch, invest in them and listen to everything they have to say about their experience there
- ask for “informational interviews” with those people for whom you’d like to work
- ask those hiring managers intelligent questions, listen, demonstrate your knowledge of the firm
- at the end of the interview, ask them if you can work for them for free… for 2 weeks or a month… or at least ask how you can “earn the opportunity” to work with them
- be consistent, committed and tenacious
- put yourself in positions where you’re always “in the right place” so that you have a better chance of hitting “the right time”
I know two people who landed their dream jobs this way. Mind you, they also had 1-2 friends advocating for them all the way.
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