Feeling stuck in your job search? You might want to consider the provocative insights into human behavior that Malcolm Gladwell lies out in his three wildly popular books.
The hopeful thesis of The Tipping Point is that a few people can bring about great change (creating tipping points), what Gladwell, a staff writer for The New Yorker, refers to as social epidemics, without spending much money.
In Blink, Gladwell popularizes scientific studies of another social psychological phenomenon — making decisions based on intuition. He discusses how to improve our decisions based on first impressions, particularly when we need to act quickly.
And in his latest book, Outliers, he debunks the concept that success correlates with high IQ and is due solely to individual merit.
While Gladwell’s books do not provide a template for a job search, they offer deep insights about human nature as they unveil the secrets as well as the serendipity of success.
According to Gladwell in The Tipping Point, social epidemics grow by word of mouth. A powerful few can create change because they are “connected.” They know a lot of people. Connectors do not have more friends than most people but they have more acquaintances. Gladwell cites a 1974 study by Mark Granovetter, Getting a Job, which validates the common perception that people get jobs through people they know. Granovetter further notes that the most helpful people are more likely to be acquaintances whose lives touch circles outside of our own. Our friends, on the other hand, are likely to know the same people that we do. While we can’t all be “connectors,” the successful job searcher expands his or her network of acquaintances.
Gladwell examines what makes some messages “sticky” and therefore popular. He writes: “There is a simple way to package information that, under the right circumstances, can make it irresistible. All you have to do is find it.” Like advertisers and marketers, job seekers need to make themselves “stick” in the minds of potential employers. Gladwell suggests defining your niche, knowing your strengths, and being enthusiastic. Job seekers can refine these skills through research, videotaped mock interviews and through self-assessment.
Behavior is not determined by character so much as by context; for example honesty, he illustrates, is situational. Altering even small details of the context can change how one behaves and can cause a social epidemic to tip. Gladwell uses the example of how maintaining graffiti-free subway cars has drastically reduced crime on the subways. On a personal level, if your talents are not appreciated in your current work environment, what changes can you make in that environment to be able to be successful and satisfied?
Gladwell also has a message for law firms. Populations of 150 seem ideal for creating messages that “stick.” In larger groups, cohesion of message and loyalty break down. These ideas suggest that part of the issues faced by today’s megafirms is due to their size and explains the resilience of some smaller firms.
The ability to make decisions when we do not have much time and incomplete information, which Gladwell tackles in Blink, is important to the interviewing process both for the interviewer and the interviewee. How do we determine whether the employer is a good fit? How do we decide how to answer questions or figure out what the employer is looking for in the real-time stress of the interview situation? Consider what messages you are conveying subconsciously in the interview context. Clues to one’s emotions can be exhibited by brief facial expressions that can register with an interviewer’s unconscious.
As lawyers, we are trained to weigh precedent carefully and to know the answer to every question in court before we ask it. Careful judgment takes time and research. Yet in practice and in the job search, snap decisions need to be made. We need to think on our feet. Trusting one’s hunches seems suspect to those of us trained to think like lawyers. Part of the key to improving one’s hunches is to “thin-slice” correctly — eliminate irrelevant biases and details in what we see and instead really see what is in front of us. Much of thin-slicing is unconscious but we can recognize that we are thin-slicing when we feel unaccountably good or bad about someone or something based on a glance or a few moments of conversation. Oftentimes, Gladwell writes, our thin-slicing is “primed” by unconscious stereotypes such as those involving race or gender. Awareness of unconscious biases is invaluable in the networking and interviewing contexts.
Gladwell suggests two ways to improve our hunches: first, practice, and the experience that comes with practice, and, second, waiting a moment before responding. Resisting the urge to react immediately, or creating “white space,” will allow you to gain the maximum amount of information from a situation. The key point is that we can make better decisions if we can control what happens during our “first impressions.” This idea can be useful to keep in mind when building and maintaining a network. “How could this person sitting next to me on the bus and reading a legal brief possibly help me in my job search?” Preconceptions can cause us to miss out on such opportunities: “Lawyers don’t have time to help others.” “I don’t know him, why should he help me?” “If I can’t get a job out of this, why should I pursue it?” We are more likely to avoid these misconceptions if we stop and think and also rely on our experience with other similar situations. A chance encounter can turn into a potential job lead.
In the job search, as Gladwell writes in reference to decision-making in general, we need to “rely on a balance between deliberate and instinctive thinking.” While information is the basis of informed judgments, we can become paralyzed in the face of too much information. Feeling pressured to make the “right” decision, law students in the recruiting process can become obsessive about gathering more and more information about employers or career options. I have often witnessed students who are frustrated because their detailed pro/con lists have not generated clear answers. These students have reached a point where they need to rely on their experience and “go with their gut.”
Gladwell’s discussion of the process by which a man who looked like a president but was completely unqualified got elected — Warren Harding — can serve as a caution to leave one’s preconceptions behind in the job search, for example: Only large firms have truly challenging work.
In his latest book, Outliers, he examines success much as he did social epidemics and snap judgments. Context again is key, whether that context is cultural, ethnic, or historical. As in his earlier books, Gladwell examines a process that we assume is out of our control and illustrates how we can exert more control over the process to improve our lives. Likewise, we often feel out of control in the job search process. The key to success is taking charge of your search. Gladwell finds that high IQ or going to a “top five” school are not guarantees of success. Rather, one need only be “smart enough.” Anyone with an IQ above a certain threshold has the opportunity to succeed. The lesson for job-seekers is clear: Success does not depend on attending a certain law school or working for a certain large firm. The lesson for employers is clear as well: law students at schools outside of the top 20 and with GPAs below 3.6 can do the work and be just as, and in many cases more, successful than their counterparts with those credentials.
For Gladwell, context is all. He discusses how legacies can be both empowering and limiting. We must recognize that they can be determinative of success far more than talent, skill, and intelligence. Understanding the factors in our own personal history that have shaped us is crucial to both appreciating our parents and grandparents and the social circumstances in which they lived and to understanding where we go from here.
Job seekers can extrapolate from Gladwell’s ideas to their own situations. Examining resources outside of the standard canon can stimulate new ways of thinking about the job search process, provide us with important insights, and lead us to explore our interactions with contacts and employers in new ways.
William A. Chamberlain is assistant dean, Law Career Strategy and Advancement, Northwestern University School of Law.William A. Chamberlain is assistant dean, Law Career Strategy and Advancement, Northwestern University School of Law.
