According to a scientific article I stumbled across recently, humankind has been farming for only 0.5% of our history. For most of our ancestors who walked on two feet, hunting and gathering was how they got food.

I think you’ll agree that farming is a more reliable and productive way to feed your family than hunting, especially if the latter involves chasing buffalo over a cliff or throwing rocks at birds.

Which got me thinking …

Almost everyone looking for work thinks of themselves as a job hunter. They hunt for employers and gather job leads, day in and day out. That’s all they know. It’s how they’ve always done it. Maybe for 99.5% of their working history.

But wouldn’t it be an improvement — an evolutionary leap forward — for you to become a job farmer?

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Here’s a quote from a new book that I recommend, The Executive Rules: A Complete Guide to Landing an Executive Job, by Thad Greer, that can help anyone — executive or not — get faster, better results in a job search:

Going small can be a great career move, particularly if you need to find a job quickly. … Small companies typically make hiring decisions exponentially faster, require you to jump through significantly fewer hoops, and are generally more flexible when it comes to compensation packages compared to large companies.

When done correctly, a job search targeting small employers can begin to yield results within days, if not hours.

I’ve seen this work for clients more times than I can count. You can get hired muchfaster by targetting small businesses ahead of corporate behemoths.

Example: Here’s an excerpt of a “small is big” job search from one of my readers, Rod, in Ontario Canada. He got hired after driving around within 15 minutes of home to create a list of small businesses to target with a Guerrilla Resume (instead of an ordinary resume).

“I began sending my new resume with cover letter to a selected list of preferred employers. I built the list by driving around the neighborhood where I thought potential employers might be. I researched and found contact information for them using Google.

“I mailed/emailed/faxed a total of 19 resumes. Received 12 responses, resulting in 4 in-person interviews, 1 phone interview and 1 employer who I haven’t met with yet, but still wants to meet.

“Everyone I talked to said they were impressed by my resume. At one of the interviews (with 2 partners) I was told, ‘That wasn’t a resume. It was one of best pieces of advertising we’ve ever seen — it was so different and so effective. We’re not looking to hire another person right now, but we had to talk to you after reading your stuff.’

“On Day 31 of my search, I accepted the offer for a job, 5 minutes from home.

“You know what the sad part is? I have to call the job search off now. It was fun and energizing.”

You can do the same, when you look to small businesses first for job leads. Happy hunting!

I’ve written many times since 1996 that every job search is really a sales campaign.

In sales, you identify, qualify, contact and convince people to buy your product or service.

In a job hunt, you identify, qualify, contact and convince employers to buy you, i.e., hire you. 

So, the more familiar and comfortable you are with sales, the faster you’ll find work … in any city, country, or economy.

That’s why I subscribe to about 20 different sales ezines and magazines — the more I can learn about sales, the faster I can help my clients get hired.

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I’m back from vacation and just now digging out from under 11 days of email.

(Note to self: email and turds are both 5 letters long. Coincidence?)

Anyway, one of the dozens of emails in my inbox came from a client, who wrote simply: “My network so far has been a bust.”

My advice to him could apply to you, if you’re feeling similarly downcast about how many job leads your network is producing.

So here it is …

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R U under 30? (Or trying to act like it?)

If so, don’t let your texting and IM habits affect your written communications with employers.

Because doing so can be a real turnoff to hiring managers … and keep you unemployed for long stretches, as an excellent article in the WSJ points out.