Making the World Better and Safer
Five O'Clock Clubbers Land Their Dream Jobs  
-by David Madison

K risti Ragan:
From the UN to the Peace Corps
“I got off the phone and had that sinking feeling.” Kristi Ragan had just chatted briefly with the outgoing director of the Peace Corps about the position of Country Director she’d been interviewing for. He had told her that he was meeting ‘a few more people this week’ on behalf of the new director, and she knew that didn’t sound good. But she had learned at the Five O’Clock Club that “the ball is always in you court.”

Kristi was back in the U.S. after many years in senior positions overseas with the United Nations. It had taken her many months to get to see the right people at the right level at the Peace Corps. She had had 18 hours of interviews with them over the last six months. “I thought, ‘I’m not going to be disadvantaged—after I’ve put so much into this.’”

She dashed off an email to the outgoing director urging him to meet with her, and managed to get onto his busy calendar. After a five-hour drive to Washington she learned the crushing news that the incoming director had, in fact, thrown out all the candidates interviewed over the previous six months. He would be considering only people he knew. “You should apply again in 2003,”she was told. Kristi was so persuasive, however, that the departing director agreed to arrange for her to meet the new boss.

The following week she made the five-hour trip again. “All during the drive I rehearsed what I was going to say. I had read five recent speeches of the new director, so I knew what his goals were, and I knew how to describe my skills accordingly.” During the first ten minutes the new director explained to her that he had a list of 175 ‘supremely qualified’ candidates drawn from the ranks of corporate America and the State Department. Then he said, “Who are you? Let me try to find that paragraph they wrote about you.” “I could see I was totally off his radar screen,” says Kristi, “so I suggested, ‘Let me tell you who I am and what I can do for you.’ I was so hyper that I was off like a rocket and took my first breath fifteen minutes later. Since I’d read his speeches I described the skills he was seeking, with concrete examples from my own background for every one of his points. At the end he looked at me and said he only had one question—and he wanted an honest answer: ‘You are so outstandingly qualified, even overqualified. Could you survive if you got stuck in a small backwater country?’ I just had to laugh at that. I had swung him from seeing me as a nothing to being too much.”

I had swung him from
seeing me as nothing to
being too much.

She left with the assurance that she was ‘on the list’ again. Kristi didn’t wait by the phone, however. Although the Peace Corps was her top choice, she followed through interviewing with a major not-for-profit on the West coast. She admits that her morale took a dive as the days passed. For the first time she found herself too depressed to go to a Five O’Clock Club meeting. But in a few days she got word that she was being offered Country Directory for the Peace Corps for the Ivory Coast, the largest French-speaking nation in West Africa. “I’m hiring you because of your passion,” the new director told her. With thirty new offices of the Peace Corps on the drawing board, he wanted her to be part of the team.

I had read five recent speeches given by the new director,
so I knew what his goals were, and I knew how to describe my skills accordingly.

 “When I told my husband,” Kristi reports,“ he said, ‘You owe this all to the Five O’Clock Club. You never would have pushed for a meeting after hearing you were no longer a candidate if you hadn’t learned it at the Club.’ And it’s true. I have this post only because I didn’t take no for an answer.” 

Kristi landed well after an especially tough job search. Many years absent from the U.S. because of foreign assignments with the UN, she was unaccustomed to the American job market and had no network. While building the network as she could, she decided to focus primarily on writing targeted letters. In a search that lasted more than a year, Kristi wrote 167 tailored cover letters and worked out 85 different version of her résumé—with headlines appropriate for the different positions she targeted.

My husband said, “You never would have pushed for a
meeting after being rejected
if you hadn’t learned it
at the Club.”

“But life can get in the way of your job search,” she admits, with good reason. Kristi had to abandon her focus—which, for her, meant working 8 til 3 every day on the search—to handle family emergencies. Her husband, in the sixth year of doctoral studies, had to have a shoulder operation, her son was hit by a car—and broke an arm playing soccer. She herself was in the hospital at one point, the family had to move when the lease on their home was cancelled unexpectedly, and her daughter had to undergo major spinal surgery.  And then there was 9/11. Kristi had a networking appointment at the World Trade Center that morning, but had to postpone at the last minute (as a result, thankfully, the man she was supposed to meet decided not to get to his office by 9 a.m.). “Life doesn’t stop when you’re job hunting,” she reflected—and she likes to share a quote from Nietzsche, “What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.”

Kristi wrote 167 tailored cover letters and 85 versions of her resume with tailored headlines.

Kristi had signed up originally for Five O’Clock Club sessions late in 2000 after hearing one of our coaches speak at a professional association. With the intrusion of the family emergencies, there were major gaps in her job search, but she began again in earnest early in 2002, and tried to get to Club sessions regularly. “I came to check in. I needed to report here—it gave me a feeling of accountability. I so imbibed the Five O’Clock Club approach: tenacity, you can’t take no, you have to keep going, keep pushing.” One of the things that kept her going was the prospect of getting to tell her success story when the time came. “I wanted to do my presentation as much as I wanted to get a job!”
In reflecting on her difficult search, Kristi offers several suggestions to others:

· When you really want the job, don’t give up—really take to heart the Five O’Clock Club message about follow-up and persistence. “Not taking no means trying to find a way around the no.” Kristi made two 5-hour trips to Washington DC after she’d been turned down for the job.

· If you’re forced to put the job search aside for any reason, try to keep yourself psyched, so that you can pick it right up again. Even if you can grab just one day a week for job search—while juggling crises—do it.

· Set priorities for keeping yourself healthy and whole during the process. She chose the regime that worked for her: for two years, no restaurants, no movies—“not even Harry Potter”—and no clothes shopping. “I went to interviews wearing the designer suit I found at a thrift shop for $4.99.” But she didn’t give up the gym. “I calculate that during my job search I did 160,000 sit-ups and 840 hours of intense aerobics.” 

“Not taking no means trying to find a way around the no.” Kristi made two 5-hour trips to Washington DC after she’d been turned down for the job.

· Manage your expectations about when and how the new job will fall into place. “I had to stop seeing some of my friends who loved me best. They would say, ‘You’re so wonderful—why don’t you have a job yet, what’s wrong?’ I couldn’t take that anymore.” While sitting with her daughter following the spinal surgery, Kristi watched the 18 monitors by the bed. One of them was always supposed to be a flat-line (“Obviously not the heart monitor”), and she realized that flat-line was a good approach for managing expectations. “That’s how you have to be on the job-search. You have to be flat-line with your expectations, but still be positive and confident.  My husband would say, ‘Oh I’m sure you’re going to get this job,’ and I would say, ‘No, flat-line….’”

I had to stop seeing some of my friends who loved me best. They keep asking, “You’re so wonderful. Why don’t you have a job?” I couldn’t take it.

During her presentation at the Five O’Clock Club to describe her success, Kristi said that one of the mantras for her family—during the many months of struggle with job hunt, injuries and surgery—was a quote from Tolstoy’s War and Peace: “Wars are won by patience and time, and time and patience.” “I have finally won the battle,” she said. But it’s clear that she supplied rare measures of hard work and persistence, even by Five O’Clock Club standards. 

Michael Dunaway: Exchanging the Navy for Homeland Security
 “How do I continue to serve after I’ve taken off the uniform?”

This was the question that Michael Dunaway faced as his 27 years of active duty with the U.S. Navy were coming to an end. His distinguished career included tours of duty on U.S. Navy destroyers, and commands of a guided missile frigate and a patrol hydrofoil. He also taught at the Naval Academy and National War College, and served as a strategic planner on the staff of the Chief of Naval Operations.

“When you’re in the Navy, you’re used to being handed a set of orders,” Michael reflected on the process of taking charge of his future. “You can negotiate orders and manage your career to a degree, but orders are orders. This was my first real career transition.”

A friend at the National War College suggested that he look into the Five O’Clock Club, and Michael began attending the branch in Rockville, MD. Our coaches there, Harvey Kaplan and James Dittbrenner, specialize in helping people transition from military to civilian careers. “It was worth investing the time and money in the Club. I had attended a couple of seminars offered by the Navy, but I really had to learn how to do a transition. I came to look upon the Five O’Clock Club program as a graduate course for minding my career.”

With how do I continue to serve foremost in his mind, Michael was struck by the Club’s emphasis on analyzing what you already know and love, and applying it to the future. “The approach is about learning about yourself, learning about the market, doing proper research, being persistent, working hard, doing the networking.” When he did the Seven Stories, Michael noticed that there were a lot of things in his career that he had done well—but didn’t especially want to do again. “You put these things into a separate basket—skills to fall on back on if you have to—but which you don’t necessarily want to rely on again.”  The Forty-Year Vision appealed to him especially as he was “….trying to figure how to contribute to society and make my future life meaningful.” “Figuring out how to serve a higher cause, orienting your life to what’s important,” Michael notes, “is right in line with working out your Forty-Year Vision.”

I came to look upon the
Five O’Clock Club program
as a graduate course for
minding my career.

His role as strategic planner for the Chief of Naval Operations was one he enjoyed, so trying to build on this made sense as he began targeting a civilian career. At a job fair he visited the booth of Noesis, Inc., an engineering and strategic planning consulting firm in Arlington, VA.

At about the same time, his wife met the wife of a man he had known at the Naval Academy 27 years earlier—and who now worked for Noesis. He was soon in the door there for a series of interviews. He knew he had competition, so he followed basic the Five O’Clock Club rules about trying to get ‘6 to 10 things in the works’ (“I actually had about three or four”), and following up smartly. He wrote ‘influencing letters’ to the president of the company, the executive director and others he’d met with. “I was impressed with the president’s positioning of his company,” Michael notes. “He told me, ‘We provide a service to the nation, we do high quality work, hence we have a good reputation and get good customers’. I liked his priority of putting ‘service to the nation first.’”

Figuring out how to
serve a higher cause,
orienting your life to what’s important, is right in line with working out
your Forty-Year Vision.

Michael saw the process through for five or six weeks, but got the offer he wanted, and was assigned by Noesis to the office of Naval Research, to work on scientific and technology projects.  

On the morning of September 11th, 2001, from his office at Noesis he could see the smoke rising from the Pentagon. Within a matter of weeks the focus of his role shifted. From November 2001 through March 2002 he served on a homeland security task force involved in designing a bio-terrorism response plan for the Delaware Valley Health Care Councils. This focused on inter-agency strategic planning and mass casualty response during ‘worst-case scenarios.’ More recently he has worked on projects to enhance Navy and joint service training in complex missions using virtual reality systems. He is also involved in his company’s initiatives in developing high altitude airships to maintain communications linkages. Using the skills he most wants to use, Michael found his answer to the question, “How do I continue to serve?”

Seeing where Michael landed, it might, at first blush, look like an easy answer, and an even easier transition: a captain in the Navy ends up consulting for the Navy. But that would minimize the complexity of a major life shift. Such a move—even one that seems so obvious—shouldn’t be made on a hunch. Michael values the discipline of doing the Seven Stories and the Forty-Year Vision, as well as the camaraderie of the ten weekly Five O’Clock Club meetings he attended. “The association with a group—one focused on more than simply following the routines of a job hunt—was important. It helped to develop relationships with other people who were facing the same process. And we weren’t all getting together to pool conventional wisdom—we were applying what we learned in the Five O’Clock Club books.”