It happens at least three times a week… I coach and teach my candidates that they need to ask three questions at the end of every interview:
“How do I stack up with the other candidates that you’ve been speaking with?”
“Do you have any concerns about my ability to do your job?”
“What do I need to do to get the job?”
If they are speaking to someone other than the hiring authority that may be a screening interview or or an interview beyond the hiring authority:
“Are you going to recommend that I be hired for this position?”
I can’t tell you the number of times I ask candidates if they asked these questions… even after I told them… they say something like “Well… it just didn’t seem appropriate… we were running out of time… it just didn’t like the right thing to ask… blah, blah, blah.” In other words what they’re saying is, “I just didn’t have the guts to ask the cold hard question of ’are you going to hire me’… I just couldn’t bring myself to get the courage to run the risk of being told ‘no’… I just couldn’t do it.”
Last week, I sent five candidates to one of my clients. I instructed them all to do the same thing and sent all of them to www.thejobsearchsolution.com which teaches in absolute detail exactly how to ask these questions. Only one… I repeat, only one had the courage to ask these questions.
My client said, “It was kind of amazing that only one of the five actually asked for the job. Tony, I thought you said these guys are really solid professionals. Only one had the courage and guts to ask if I was going to hire. I want that guy to come back.”
I know this takes practice and I know it takes courage, if you really want to set yourself apart from all of your competitors and interviewing situation you absolutely have to ask these cold, hard questions. You need to know if your candidate or you’re not and you need to know what you need to do to get the job.
I can’t make it any more clearer than that!
Poor poor pitiful me
Poor poor pitiful me
Lord have mercy on me
Woe Woe is me
—-Linda Ronstadt, 1973
This happens often with candidates who have been “done wrong” by everybody from their present boss, passed bosses, present company, past company, parents, ex-spouses, present spouses, teenage kids etc., etc., etc….and they let it all hang out in the interview
Everybody has wronged them… they had a miserable life… they can’t get a break… they blame everyone… and they try to get sympathy on the part of the hiring or interviewing authority by sharing their woes…
STOP! you can never go into the interview singing “poor pitiful me”… I don’t care how hard life has been, how lousy you’ve been treated, how unfair life is, how you can’t get a break… you just can’t come across as pitiful
At least three times a week we have to warn candidates to stop complaining … employers and hiring authorities DO NOT WANT TO HIRE PITIFUL PEOPLE… they got enough problems and don’t need anymore pitiful people in their organization…
Sometime back we had a candidate who was going through a rather hateful divorce… unfortunately, she shared her plight with the female hiring authority… when we told her that it was a bad idea to do that, she told us that it didn’t turn out to be such a bad idea because the hiring authority had just gone through a terrible divorce and they spent at least half of the interview sharing their terrible situations…
Unfortunately, the hiring authority thought the candidate’s skills were good but refused to hire her because, ” — she’s going through a terrible divorce like I did and I was so pitiful for so long I couldn’t function, I just couldn’t hire anybody knowing what bad shape they would be in when they tried to work.”
So, please share your “pitiful me” stories with your therapist, priest, rabbi, counselor… anyone but a hiring authority…
Our client had just let go a VP after only four months on the job… and that’s a big deal for a $50 million company… the guy had made two or three major mistakes with one of their larger customers and it was plain that the guy wasn’t going to make their company better… so they fired him
They called us and, over a period of four weeks, interviewed a number of very qualified candidates… after a number of lengthy interviews they came to the conclusion that Joe, one of our candidates, was the most qualified to do the job so they sent Joe to visit with the CEO
Everyone in the company was so afraid of making a mistake they were thinking of all kinds reasons that it “wouldn’t work” with just about every candidate we presented… including Joe. The CEO was no different and felt like, even though Joe could do an excellent job for the company, he wasn’t as charismatic as they might like. So, the CEO decided to pay a retained search firm to do a nationwide search for possibly a more qualified, more charismatic candidate. They explained their situation to Joe in a very business, but kind way. They did not tell him that it was his charisma that they were concerned about. They simply told him that they felt like they needed to talk to other candidates.They made it clear that the answer was and “no” it was just “not now.”
Joe wasn’t wild about the decision but he had a good job and although he was disappointed, he was smart enough not to burn any bridges. After four months of the “search” at least they admitted that they hadn’t found any candidate better than Joe, so now they are ready to engage with Joe again.
We don’t know if Joe will get the job or not… hopefully he will… he should, because he is very qualified. Here is the lesson. When Joe was told that he was not going to be hired, he didn’t get upset or pissed off or let his pride get in the way by saying something stupid like, “okay you guys, forget me as a candidate…” Joe was smart. He was very graceful about being told “no.” He wrote everybody in the company whom he interviewed with that he understood about them wanting to do a nationwide search to compare and then expressed the thought that if they didn’t come up with a great candidate he would love to still consider the opportunity.
He left the door open for them to reconsider him. By being graceful and smart he gave himself an advantage. Most candidates wouldn’t have done that. They would have “taken their ball and gone home.” I guess there’s a chance that Joe may not take the job even if it’s offered…and it hasn’t been offered. But the point is Joe was smart enough to leave the door open even though he was faced with refusal… at least for the moment.
Good job Joe!
You talk about people
That you don’t know
You talk about people
Wherever you go
You just talk
Talk too much
Joe Jones sang the song in 1960… unfortunately it still happens today. Here is a conversation that I had with the hiring authority this week:
tony: John, how do it go with my candidate?
john: Well, Tony, the interview lasted 45 minutes… and she talked for 44… her divorce, her ex-husband, her kids… I can see from her résumé and track record at one time she was really good, but the only way she could have said less would be to have talked longer… you really need to coach her to shut up!
What’s so sad about this is the candidate is still really good. Unfortunately she hadn’t practiced interviewing like I thought. She had been tremendously successful in the past for quite a number of years. Unfortunately, she assumed, that just because she’s been out of market in the past five or six years he ability to sell herself well would simply ”kick in.”
Here’s the lesson. Interviewing takes practice. Nervously running off at the mouth is not going to get your hired. Ironically she was one of the best candidates who could’ve been interviewed. She just talked too much… and what she had to say wasn’t relevant to the job. So, practice interviewing.
Joe Jones ends his song appropriately: “You can make me scream”
Don’t talk too much!
