Job Search Blog

The interview with our candidate seemed to be going well… the hiring authority was interested because the candidate had done exactly what they wanted and they were pleased.

The salary range the company had was $80,000-$85,000 a year and since the candidate was only making $73,000, it was going to be good for everyone.

We had discussed money with our candidate and explained that with the salary range of the company and them offering him $80,000, while he was making $73,000, it would be a nice bump in earnings… in the initial part of our presentation of the job to him, he agreed…

But when he got into the final offer stage, he got greedy and literally told the hiring authority that when they made him an offer, he had done his research on the Internet and was worth a $90,000 salary…

Our client had offered $80,000 thinking they were giving him a very generous raise and when he came back with this comment, the hiring authority was taken off guard… the hiring authority  said “well, the best we can offer is $80,000 because that’s what the job is worth… this is a very good company and you would do well to be here.” The candidate stated again that since he found his value on the Internet was $90,000, he was going to stick to that figure.

We are still trying now to patch this thing together. In this market, it is unlikely that anyone is going to go from $73,000 a year to $90,000 a year just because a salary survey on the Internet says the person is worth $90,000. The hiring authority didn’t know whether he was disappointed in the candidate because the candidate was  passing up a good opportunity or that the candidate was foolish enough to believe a salary survey on the Internet was going to be his reason for wanting that much of a raise.

Our candidate did a poor job… he got greedy… he thought that since the  interviewing process had been going so well, a $17,000 salary increase was in order.. and his reasoning, “well I saw on the Internet” made it even more awkward.

We are still trying to get these folks back together… trying to get the candidate to understand that no one has any intrinsic value… what you are “worth” is what you can get on the market and that going from $73,000 a year to $80,000 a year is not only reasonable in this market but an excellent opportunity especially with such a quality company.

Our plea to the hiring authority is to beg for forgiveness on the part of the candidate for this lack of experience and changing jobs and negotiating a salary… we tried to chalk it up to inexperience and ignorance.

The lesson is that to go into any kind of negotiation and say something stupid like “well I saw that I’m worth $$$$ on the Internet.” isn’t going to get you very far.  No salary survey on the Internet should have anything to do with your getting a new job. Negotiate in good faith, but be smart about it. No hiring authority is going to pay any salary because of an Internet survey.

…not a week goes by that I don’t hear this..usually comes at the debrief by a candidate after, even knowing the salary range, tells the interviewing authority he wants a ridiculous amount of money over and above what is reasonable..it usually is preceded by a comment like, “well, the interview was going so well…I knew he wanted to hire me”…(another really poor read!)

Somehow many candidates think the money relative to a job has to do with what they tell people they want..in fact, the first really bad sign is when the interviewer “doesn’t bat an eye”…he or she is thinking, “is this guy nuts?”

Lesson: don’t tell anyone in the first few interviews what you “want” regarding money…tell them what you are presently earning or what you have earned in the past and that you are “sure the money will work out if the opportunity for both of you is a good match”…then leave money till the end…just share with them what you have earned in the past..adding, “money depends so much on the job, the challenge, the people and so many other things…if everything else is right, the money will take care of itself.”

I review 200 resumes a week and send 100 of them to clients to help my candidates get interviews… I’m often amazed at the misguided titles that many people put on their resume… these may very well be the titles of the jobs they have but are often grossly misleading… often a Regional Vice President is an account manager…an Account Manager is a salesperson… a Customer Advocate is a customer service person…a Business Development Manager can either be a lead generation type person or a person who increases sales with already existing customers…

Most people imagine that their resume is getting read word for word and line by line… it’s not… it is getting “scanned” along with, on average, 118 other resumes…

Resumes are reviewed and scanned online… the resume reader, who often doesn’t have any real, firsthand knowledge of the job… looks for names of companies they can identify with, dates of employment and titles… if they don’t “like” what they see, or can’t recognize what they are told to look for, they move on to the next resume… if they do like what they see they’ll often save the resume in a file or print it out to be read later…

You want your resume to be read, not just scanned, so be sure that the titles you have are commensurate with the job you’ve done… never mind what your company calls you, you do not want your title to keep you from getting interviewed… so if you are a salesperson, no matter what your title, Regional Director, Account Manager, Territory Representative, etc….title your job “sales”…If your title is  Controller, Assistant Controller, Finance Manager, etc. but really you are an accountant, change your title to just that, “accountant”…

If a resume reader is looking for a first line salesperson, accountant, customer service person, etc. and they see the word “manager” in the title, they will say to themselves, “I’m not looking for a manager, I’m looking for a first line employee,”  pass on the resume and move onto the next..

Just be sure that your titles don’t stand in the way of your being interviewed… if your title communicates any ambiguity, change it.

Mike was an excellent candidate for our client… a small, $150 million company that is poised to grow…Mike  had been interviewing for a vice president position and doing well in the process…

However, as he gets closer to an offer and what has been a fairly long process, he proposes to our client’s executive committee that when he comes on board he brings with him two managers from his present firm as well as two subordinates… Mike made a very simple process much more complicated and he snatched defeat from the jaws of victory… in short, he made everything way too complicated and lost the opportunity…

At first, this suggestion got our client executives excited…suddenly, they started thinking how far along they could be within a short period of time with Mike and his “team”… but then, they got to thinking that they ought to interview all of the members of Mike’s team… now, Mike had to share with some of the people he was working with where he was trying to go to work, the kind of job, etc… now Mike’s company had been sold and everyone who worked with and for him was looking for a job,  so the fact that Mike might be going to a different company was no big deal and, at first, the prospect of everybody working together as they had done before was quite exciting…but it started getting really awkward…one of Mike’s subordinates started thinking he could do as well at Mike’s job as Mike could do…

I advised Mike that this whole thing was a bad idea… I had seen this before, and it rarely works out… Mike assured me that this was a brilliant idea and it would catapult my client to the next level and Mike could be a real hero…however, Mike was looking for a new job and should have left it simply at that.

After the initial euphoria of this idea, the management team of our client, among other things, started wondering about how it would work… they started interviewing the two managers who worked with and for Mike… not only did that get more complicated but some of the client’s management team started pushing back on the idea because they didn’t care for one of the managers…and one of Mike’s subordinates intimated during the interview that he felt he was as good as Mike was and maybe they should consider him for the VP job…the one Mike was interviewing for..(..some kinda loyalty, huh?)

Mike’s idea eventually created a monster… the client wanted to hire Mike but now worried  that if the rest of the “team” didn’t come, maybe Mike wouldn’t… the management team of our client felt that especially one of the  individuals on  Mike’s “team” really wasn’t what they wanted and then became afraid of hiring some and not others… the process went on for another two months and, needless to say, it got way too complicated and our client, as much as they liked him, decided not to hire Mike or any of his team…

The lesson is that, no matter what level of manager you are, don’t try to sell yourself along with a group of others to a new company… now, if you want to go to work for an organization and then over a period of time bring on people who  have worked with you before, that may work… but trying to secure a new position yourself and bring other people with you at the same time makes things way too complicated and it will likely lead to disaster…

Don’t snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.

If you’re looking for a job, you need to read what I’m going to write here twice, because what happened the other evening  just made your job search that much harder… the majority of the American people did not help you…

It is obvious that the majority of the American people care more about the government doing for them than you’re getting a job… they care more about “free stuff” than they care about you getting a job… they care more about their hedonistic contraception than they care about you getting a job…

We’ve now created an environment worse than before where people who are doing the hiring, the vast majority of which are small companies, were afraid and now are absolutely scared to death… they are worried about the fiscal cliff and the fact that their taxes are going to go up, there medical costs are going to skyrocket and there’s going to be more regulation than ever… that’s what big government does…

I hope I am wrong, but I smell a deeper recession coming along and it’s going to be even longer before we come out of it.

At least half of the businesses in the United States are considered “rich” by Mr. Obama and the Democratic party… those companies, 42% of which are “chapter S” corporations, where the money from the company flows to the individual who owns it, are going to see their taxes rise, first by the expiration of the Bush tax cuts and, secondly, by the intention of Mr. Obama to raise their tax rates to almost 44%…

Poor people don’t employ other people… poor people don’t hire… 50% of the business owners in the United States are considered rich by this government and the government is going to penalize them for doing so… on top of being depressed and defeated by the election these business people are wondering if they will hire at all… (and you don’t have to be a small business to have this fear… in the past three days, very big companies like Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Boston Scientific and others have laid off thousands of people.)

So, if you are fortunate enough to get an interview, you need to be aware that the person you’re interviewing with is afraid for their business and afraid of making a mistake in hiring… they’re not going to hire that many people anyhow and they’re only going to hire when they absolutely have to…

That means when you interview you have to really go out of your way to explain to the  hiring authority that you are not only the best candidate for the job, but you are also the safest candidate… the one that is the least risk… the one who is going to protect them, protect their money, and take ownership of the job you could get with them as they take ownership of their business… you’re going to have to be an almost perfect candidate… you’re going to have to sell yourself to be the candidate they cannot live without… you’re going to have to interview better than you ever have before…

The election made your job search 10 times harder than it was before…

Looking at things from the bright, from my own personal practice and my company, we are fortunate to be in Texas… every time California has an election like it had and raises taxes the way they have, more and more companies will be moving here to the Lone Star State… when New York does the same, their companies also move to Texas… God bless us all… all of us know we are fortunate to be living here.

it is clear that the majority of the people in this country don’t care about you getting a job… kinda sad.

..I don’t know whether I’m sad about having to write about this or compelled by the spirit to write…

Just a few moments ago I heard a speech by Joe Biden, our vice president talking about character… character… this guy is talking about character?…

Last week, Joe Biden made a television commercial where he stated, “I am a Catholic and I believe in pro-choice”… I pray for Mr. Biden… I pray for his soul… I’m saddened by his comments as I’m sure the 55 million aborted children in this country are also a bit sad…

But to speak of CHARACTER..Character… and to say you are a Catholic and believe in pro-choice is the poorest lack of character I can imagine… character is having your actions be consistent with your beliefs… Mr. Biden is either a Catholic or someone who believes in pro-choice… he can’t be both…

It is sad that so many people in our society disrespect life from conception… I pray for those people too… but for someone who claims to be Catholic, someone whose faith dictates a clear respect for life when it begins with conception and claims to be pro-choice in the same breath lacks character…

I’m sad for us, I’m sad for my children and I’m sad for my grandchildren… when any leader of our country can be so ingenuous and demonstrate such a lack of character, only God’s mercy can save his soul.

Kyle is a great candidate and he’s been very successful with the kinds of things he’s done…he is skillful and has been lucky in the jobs he has had to have caught companies and markets at the right time… unfortunately, though, his success has gone to his head

Our client was interested in Kyle after the first meeting and wanted to pursue him… Kyle’s attitude was, “well, I might be interested and I might not, let’s see what they’ve got…”

He made it through a second and third round of interviews, performing very well… then he starts playing “hard to get.”

The organization tells us they’re interested in making him an offer… Kyle put them off and started saying things like, “well, let me take a look at exactly what I’m giving up in my present job and get back to you about what it’s going to take for me to leave…” our client’s attitude was, “wait a minute! You knew what our offer was going to be all along, as we explained the money in the first meeting that we had…”

Kyle explains to us, his recruiter, that he knows… we’re not sure how he get this ideda.. but that he knows they can make a much better deal with him than they said they would… he then postpones a second conversation that he was supposed to have with them about an offer… he then calls us and tells us the only way he would consider the job would be to get a $15,000 salary greater than what they said they were willing to pay as well as a sign-on bonus of at least $10,000…

Because of our experience, we had two other candidates in the queue with the company, realizing that anything can happen… we explained to Kyle that it just wasn’t realistic to expect the company to do what he was asking, because the market is such that they didn’t need to do that… Kyle’s attitude was, “well I’m that good and that’s what it’s gonna take!”

We explained to the client that we just didn’t think it was going to work out with Kyle.  He hadn’t looked for a job in a number of years, he just wasn’t aware of the reality of this market and he was asking for more than what we thought was fair… we didn’t want to vilify Kyle because we wanted to be sure the door might be opened for him somewhere down the line… Kyle got his nose out of joint and was rather indignant about the fact that our client just wasn’t interested in this proposition… there was no reason for them to be… Kyle was good but he was more of a “legend in his own mind” than he was valuable to our client…

One of our other candidates was offered the job and accepted with grace and style… the lesson is that no one has any intrinsic value… a candidate’s value in the job search is relative to the market and other candidates that might be available… playing hard to get by coming up with ridiculous demands won’t get you hired… get a job offer, do it or don’t, but don’t let it go to your head…

…So Chris is told he’s going to get an offer… he discusses the salary with the hiring authority and he verbally accepts the job… he is told that the paperwork will come in a day or so and he can start work on Monday…

Chris gets the offer in writing on the Friday before he is suppose to start work and decides that he wants to now “negotiate”…

He calls me up and tells him he would like to negotiate now that he has the offer in writing… I explained to him that now is not the time to negotiate… he has verbally  accepted the job, he needs to stand by his word, and besides, I tell him, it’s very rare for an organization to negotiate a salary once you have accepted it and they put it in writing…

Chris decides, since he is a very experienced “professional,” he is going to negotiate anyhow…(so much for my expertise)… so he tries to get a hold of the hiring manager.  He can’t find him so he writes an e-mail back to the HR director at corporate who sent him the offer, and tells her he wants $10,000 a year more in salary… she doesn’t know what to do, so instead of calling the hiring authority, she sends the e-mail requests to the vice president… he vaguely knows what’s going on, as he had spoken to Chris on the phone before Chris got hired and his natural reaction is not only “no” but “hell no”…

The VP calls the hiring authority, his subordinate, and leaves a voicemail of something along the line of, “who the hell is this guy who thinks he can or should negotiate another $10,000 in salary by e-mail with the HR department?” The VP went on to say that the hiring authority should rescend the offer immediately.

I can’t say I blame the vice president or the company… that was a very unprofessional way to try to negotiate a better offer… the lesson is: don’t try to negotiate an offer after it’s in writing and don’t negotiate by e-mail and don’t negotiate with someone in the human resources department and don’t let what you write get in the  hands of a vice president who has no patience with this kind of thing…

Chris was shocked when the offer was rescinded and tried to “recoup” by telling them he’d accept the offer just as it is… sorry, the damage had already been done.

If you’re gonna negotiate, do it before a formal offer is made and do it with the hiring authority, the one who you have rapport with and the one you’re actually going to be working for… and, oh yeah, read the parts of my blog that talk about how to negotiate before you do it…

I really don’t have a lot of empathy for Chris, he screwed it up.

V.P. debate last night…if you snicker, smirk and laugh at people in a debate or an interview…you look like a dumb ass…

you may not get elected…

you certainly won’t get hired…

The debate between Gov. Romney and Pres. Obama Wednesday was a great lesson in body language… no matter who wins the presidential race, it’s obvious that Gov. Romney won this debate…

If you are looking for a job and interviewing you want to pay attention to the things  Romney did… he had a pleasant smile on his face when he wasn’t speaking… not a smirk, but a pleasant smile… he actually looked at and had eye contact with Pres. Obama… he spoke with passion and feeling… he communicated a great mastery of facts (… whether they were accurate or not doesn’t matter) by quoting lots of numbers and in many questions he answered by saying “first… second…and third” communicating certainty… he spoke with his hands open and his palms up, which communicates sureness..he had enthusiasm and animation…

On the other side of the stage, Pres. Obama often looked down and didn’t face his opponent… he smirked… he had no animation or enthusiasm… spoke in monotones and droned on as though he was uninterested…

If winning the job was based on today, Gov. Romney would’ve gotten hired.