Dear Kate & Dale: My daughter graduated with a degree in biology 14 months ago. She is currently working a job in retail, having no luck finding a good job. Can you suggest a placement agency or headhunter to assist her? – Ron

Kate: Most every job-hunter yearns for the same thing: “Just tell me the name of the person who can help me, preferably the right headhunter.” That’s not the way it works. Fewer than one-tenth of jobs are filled via search firms.

Dale: Moreover, organizations usually hire search firms to fill critical positions, or ones where there’s a shortage of talent. Which is to say, odds are very long for your daughter to get hired through a search firm. Still, she should give it a try, letting key headhunters in her target industries know she’s available. If she doesn’t know who the key headhunters are in her profession, then that’s a sign that she isn’t really searching, just hoping for a lucky break.

Kate: To broaden her efforts into a real search, she’ll need to make lists of specific employers who could be likely targets for her skills. She’ll need to get to know people in those companies. Plus, she’ll need to get active in trade associations. I know this sounds like a long process, but it’s actually a shorter route to a great job than simply trying to find the right search firm.

Dale: Yes, shorter than forever, which is the schedule most job-hunters are on. You mentioned, Ron, that she is “having no luck.” There’s nothing so demoralizing as waiting for luck; that way, it seems as though you are powerless. After 14 months, she needs to ask herself, Am I moving closer to a great job in my field, or closer to giving up? If she had spent those months doing what Kate has suggested, she would know where the jobs are and have developed contacts and “insider” knowledge. Instead of waiting and hoping, she needs to insist on making herself a part of the industry by getting involved in it, even before she has a job. That’s when time becomes an ally in her search, instead of an enemy.

Dear Kate & Dale: I’m a marketing guy with nearly 30 years of experience. I can’t seem to break out of middle management and get into senior management. And now it seems as if, in my mid-50s, I’m getting too old for promotion. Any suggestions? – Warren

Kate: It’s true that there are fewer and fewer jobs as you get closer to the top of the pyramid, regardless of your age. It may be that the culture of your current firm is blocking you. Take a look around, and if the senior management ranks are filled with younger people, then it’s probably not a place for you to grow. However, if you look around and see people your age and older, then you can forget about age and focus on items you can do something about. That’s where Dale’s last book, “The Laughing Warriors,” would help – it explains how to be something special in any profession. (You can find it at www.dauten.com.)

Dale: And that’s what you need to be, Warren – something special. After all, if you have similar skills and accomplishments to the other managers around you, why should they pick you for promotion? Upper management might well prefer younger candidates – they are likely to be cheaper, and they might turn out to be stars and thus make upper management into heroes for giving them a chance. You see this thinking all the time in sports – “Let’s give the kid a chance and see what happens.” Your defense is to differentiate yourself. In fact, you can reinvent yourself by acting as though you are a rising star. Start putting together the case to sell yourself to other companies as a senior executive – the productivity numbers and/or innovative projects – and you might just discover that you’ve sold your current leadership on giving you a nice promotion.