Career Doctor Articles

With the kind permission of the Career Doctor, jfo is able to bring you a series of articles to help you in your work situation and longer term career management

Ambulance Chasing for a Job

There are 11 methods of getting a job, and ambulance chasing is one of them. “Ugh, terrible American way” I hear you say?

Well, yes, ambulance chasing did, apparently begin in America, but so what? If it works, why not incorporate it in your job-seeking kitbag? It is a method which I encourage my clients to adopt and they have had some success using it, in an English context.

In this article I will look at ambulance chasing for a job in depth and hopefully inspire you to chase ambulances yourself.

So what is ambulance chasing in the context of job-hunting?

REAL AMBULANCE CHASING

The history of ambulance chasing, as I understand it from American movies, is that a lawyer happens, by chance, to see a road traffic accident where an innocent victim is injured. The injured person is put into an ambulance which the lawyer follows in his car (it has to be a man, I suppose), so that the lawyer discovers to which hospital the injured person has been taken. So the lawyer chases the ambulance, literally.

At the hospital the lawyer tells the injured person that he saw the accident and thinks he can win the injured person lots of money in a claim for personal injury against the other motorist. The lawyer leaves his business card, hoping that the injured person, when better, will engage his legal services.

In essence the lawyer has spotted an opportunity to attract new business and taken proactive action to gain from what he has seen. Pure opportunism. Nothing wrong in that, for the injured person has the choice of whether or not to sue the motorist, and whether or not to use the services of that particular lawyer.

I wonder whether our lawyers would do such a thing? However, the principle of taking proactive action when you happen, by chance, to spot an opportunity, has to be a good idea, and one you can use to your advantage if you want to get a new job. Contrast it with a mailshot to local companies.

THE SHOTGUN APPROACH

Whenever you see a press advertisement for a job that appeals to you, you can safely say to yourself that another 200 people will also respond to that advert. Now obviously that figure will vary enormously, but most adverts for a job with a decent salary can expect, on average, to attract a large number of applicants. So, throwing your hat in the ring, along with 200 other people, seems to me to be a pretty long shot. The odds are stacked against you. But how to reduce these odds?

Writing to a number of local companies and asking if they have any vacancies can be an effective way of short-circuiting the system and reducing the odds. If your letter is well written, and you have skills that the company receiving your letter actually wants, and it has a current vacancy, well then you might get lucky. A long shot, but then long shots occasionally work

I call that the shotgun approach. Imagine that you are standing in a field which is known to have rabbits. You load your shotgun, place it over your shoulder so it is pointing behind you, shut your eyes and pull the trigger. Maybe, just maybe, a bunny runs behind you and you get lucky. Not so lucky for the bunny, however.

That is how “effective” a mailshot can be. Pure luck is needed. If you send out enough letters one may land on the right desk on the right day, and you’ll get an interview. Most mailshots are deemed to be successful if they attract a 1% or 2% hit rate. So you will have to send out at least 100 letters to local companies to stand any chance at all of getting lucky.

Expensive in terms of postage and effort, with a tiny percentage chance of success

A SNIPER RIFLE

In contrast ambulance chasing is like a sniper rifle. It is an aimed shot at a single target. One company, one letter, end of story.

As a job hunting tool, chasing ambulances can be quite effective, but in my experience most people do not recognise an ambulance, even when it is parked in front of them. Even then, the bashful British “would not do such a thing” thus missing out on a possibility for developing an employment opportunity. So what is an ambulance in job hunting parlance?

An ambulance is a unique opportunity that is spotted using lateral thinking. That is why most people never see an ambulance as they don’t use their imagination to see it for what it could be, not what it is. An ambulance is a piece of information that you see about you, or on TV; maybe you hear about something on the radio, read in a newspaper or magazine, overhear in a conversation whilst sitting in a train. The information is rarely about a job vacancy, you have to make the link yourself.

That’s where the ability to think beyond the obvious, to see things that others don’t, to read between the lines and think about possibilities is an essential skill for the ambulance chaser. Here are some examples to encourage you to think laterally:

THE CLERK

A lady client walks by a building site every morning on the way to work. The workmen are building a large office block, which takes many months to complete. The building site becomes part of the background and after a while blends in with its surroundings. One day she sees a van delivering carpets and tells me this information, in passing, whilst having her weekly consultation with me.

I told her that the carpets represent an ambulance, in that they herald the imminent arrival of workers as the building is obviously nearing completion. I asked her to stop at the site the next day and look at the display board outside, to see if there were any names we could use. This she did, found me the name of the owners, and I drafted a letter to that company on her behalf. A sniper’s single shot to an aimed target.

Now it didn’t work, but it could have … especially if the company wanted to recruit local staff. Maybe the letter was too early, or too late, but it was worth a try.

THE TEACHER

Another client was a teacher and a keen hockey player. One day she brought me in a newspaper cutting showing a hockey player being carried shoulder-high, as he had scored the winning goal that gave Britain an unexpected gold medal in some dim and distant Olympic Games. The newspaper had used this old archive photo to accompany an article about this hockey player who had opened a new management consultancy in another county.

To her, this was merely interesting as it showed one of her hockey heroes, but to me it represented an ambulance that was worth chasing.

The Olympian’s new offices were too far away from where my client lived, and so on the face of it there was no mileage in writing to him. I asked my client to tell me a lot of hockey words, and then I drafted a letter to the Olympian, interspersed with hockey words, suggesting that if he ever opened a branch of his new consultancy in Berkshire, my client would be ideal for him.

The letter was very tongue-in-cheek, but it generated a fantastic reply from the Olympian, he was really impressed with my client. Now that also didn’t work, but again it was well worthwhile trying.

THE ACCOUNTANT

An ambulance chasing letter that did work was one I drafted for an unemployed accountant. He spotted a newspaper article about an airline that had taken over a cruise line, and I told him that was an ambulance he should chase. The line of my letter was that he had some experience of ship-board accountancy, and as the airline was new to shipping, would his experience interest the airline?

Well they were not recruiting, but offered him an informal chat, which I coached him how to handle. He convinced them they needed him, and got a job offer. No-one else was in competition, and the job was never advertised. A perfect example of ambulance chasing.

THE LINGUIST

Yet another example of successful ambulance chasing was one of my clients who spotted a press advert for a company that sold fireplaces. They were not advertising for staff, merely trying to sell their fireplaces. The ambulance was their press advert.

He was a linguist and thought the company might want to sell their fireplaces in Europe, where his linguistic abilities would be an advantage. I drafted a sniper’s letter to the company, he signed and posted it, and ended up with an offer of a job which the company had not thought about. Again there was no competition, and he got a job by suggesting to the company that they needed him.

THE HR MANAGER

In 1990 I was made redundant, during the great recession. Nobody was recruiting HR Managers, in fact they were being made redundant in droves. So I faced a lot of competition. In the monthly HR magazine I spotted an advert for an outplacement consultancy’s services, which caught my eye, even though it was aimed at HR managers who were making staff redundant. “Use our services” was the advert’s message. They certainly were not recruiting.

I noticed that they had an office in London, another in Bristol, and further offices in the Midlands and North of England. At the time I lived in Southampton and thought that the company did not have a local office for people who lived in Hampshire, which was equi-distant between London and Bristol.

So the ambulance that I had spotted was the gap in their network, which could be neatly filled by an office in Southampton. How convenient that I lived in Southampton! So I wrote to the Chairman, pointed out the gap in his network, and offered my services, based upon my geography. He invited me in for a chat, and the rest is history, as they say.

SUMMARY

Ambulance chasing really works, and is an honourable way of finding a new job. All you need is to keep your eyes and ears open, and apply very lateral thought to every piece of information that you find. “How can I exploit that to my advantage?” is your byword.

When you have found your ambulance spend a lot of time on your sniper’s letter. Apply the “so what?” test, then having written your letter, try it out on a few friends before posting it. Try to find people who are senior managers and who make recruiting decisions as part of their normal work. Use them as a filter to ensure that the letter you do eventually send is as powerful as you can make it. Then post your letter and keep your fingers crossed!

Good luck!

The Career Doctor is Eric Hearn, Chartered MCIPD and Managing Director of Milverton Career Solutions Ltd, Ascot, Berkshire, UK.

Contact details:
Tel: 01344 624383
Email: milvertoncareers@btconnect.com
Website: www.careerdevelopment.co.uk