There is no such thing as too much opportunity

How many of us have looked down a restaurant menu and complained that there were too many things to choose from? We don’t mean it. What we mean is – this is great. As long as we basically understand what we want, the choice can only empower us.

My TV has 500 channels on it – more than I could possibly watch and more than I want to surf through. But I don’t have to surf through them. I understand what each option basically represents and I can go straight to what I want, or occasionally luck into something I wasn’t expecting. If I’m shopping for a new car, I’m better off at a lot with 5,000 cars than 500. As long as I have someone to help me get to the make and model I want, at the right age and price range, I don’t have to worry about the 4,950 cars I’m not interested in, unless I see something along the way that I didn’t know I was interested in.

At no stage is the amount of choice actually a bad thing.

The debate rages on across Australia as to the best way to manage your career and find the right job opportunities. We all know engineers are in high demand and that the work is everywhere. What engineers need to ask themselves is ‘Am I getting enough choice?’

Despite the wealth of possibilities for engineers today, a lot of people are massively restricting their options by trying to manage their career choices alone. If you’re applying directly to major employers and simply waiting for a response, you’re missing opportunities every day. If you’re trying to manage your applications one by one, you’re simply not boxing clever. Find yourself a decent recruiter, and you’ll see a step change in the quantity and quality of opportunity available to you.

You’re also missing out on some important benefits. Your agent can hustle for you; they can chase down answers and expedite the hiring process. The right agent will have enough influence with their client to actually get you the job.  They can show you options you may never have considered, help you compare rates and salaries and understand where you fit.

But all of these benefits are relatively small compared to the central, overwhelming advantage: Recruiters, who live their lives in the job market making hundreds of phone calls every week and meeting with new projects and new companies every day of every week for years on end, can give you access to far more opportunity than you could ever find yourself. How many different companies did you visit last month? How many projects did you walk through? How many new hiring managers and HR professionals did you meet? Not many. And why? Because it’s not what you do. You cannot do your job and look for the next one at the same time unless you are prepared to limit yourself to a far narrower range of opportunity.

This is the biggest mistake made by professional engineers in Australia. There is help and advice available; it never costs you a dollar at any stage and the benefits are obvious. Find yourself somebody good, with a strong reputation and infrastructure behind them. The result will be more opportunity, more choice and a faster way to achieve your objectives, whatever they are. 








Trevor Burne is Managing Director of Talascend. He blogs about Australian engineering jobs, and issues affecting Australian Engineers.