Monthly Archives: April 2010

marcia has been with the same fortune 500 firm for 22 years…she has had a metioric rise and, especially as a woman, been told how wonderful she is..

they keep promoting her, helping her get her MBA…and working her to death and, of course, not paying her all that much…(they don’t pay anyone on her “director” level all that much)…but they get the security of working for a well recognized, presigeous firm…

she works at a very narrow job, supporting a division on a world-wide basis..has to travel at a drop of a hat…all over the world…which sounds like fun until you have to do it all the time..and by the way…no social life…but her company doesn’t care…

so, for the past few years, she has gotten more and more frustrated with the company, the job and, most of all, beinig underpaid and underappreciated…

so, she is gonna show ’em…she will just leave and find a better opportuntity where she is apprecaited and paid well..

of course, she wants a director’s job…and $100,000 more a year than she is making…’cause she is worth it (her words) and since she has had a phenominal trajectory up the corporate ladder and she is a woman, she knows she can get it..just ’cause she knows she can get it

so, she gets referred to me and proceeds to tell me what she will and won’t accept…how much she will or won’t take…blah, blah, blah..

she has been “looking” for six months…had only two inteviews…didn’t even give them the time of day…she was simply better than any of those jobs..couldn’t see promotion in the near future…wanted to know “where will i be in five years”…

she is gonna be looking for a very long time…and, likely stay where she is…she won’t like it, but that is likely to happen…

look, 99% of american companies don’t run like your fortune 500 firms…her skills are excellent but they don’t apply to most companies…and, she certainnly isn’t gonna get $100,000 more in salary..

it is kinda sad…she has been drinking the company potient that she is exceptional…but they have boxed her in…and they did it on purpose…they promote her, underpay her…and now she is mad as hell and is gonna show them…

the kind of thing she has been doing is so narrow and so specific to the company she works for, she isn’t conna find anything like it…not likely she can find a director’s job…and certainly not likely to get a $100,000 raise..

she is mad as hell…but that won’t help..

look, all that stuff they tell you at your big company… at your MBA school doesn’t mean poop if the real market won’t bear it…

marcia…settle down…quit being mad…quit feeling indignant and taken advantage of…look for a decent job at a level you can get hired at…work hard…get promtoted..the money and title will take care of themselves

jake really prepares for the interview..he goes into them having done research…an i mean research…he has read every ‘white paper’ written by every expert in the industry…he has done competative research…even called and spoken to the competitors about my client that he was inteviewing with..

he calls customers of my client…looks up Gartner reports..every bit of analysis he can find…prints it all out and writes a summary about all of it..

he writes out three ‘case studies’ of clients he knows of that he would call on to present the client’s service if he were hired..

he does a power point comparrison of ‘where the market’ is for the company’s service…finds analyst’s predictions for the next five years for the company’s industry..

he wirtes a 30-60-90 day plan centered around the BIGGEST problems the comapany has with their customers and how he would help solve them..

by speaking to people both in the company and people associated with the company, he ‘reports’ to the hiring authroity the three biggest internal problems the company has…as well as how he might be able to help solve them

he ‘uncovers’ three new markets the company’s service can be marketed to…writes a plan about how he would approach each of them…

he makes a presentation of himself and all of this stuff in 45 min…using the techniques in www.thejobsearchsolution.com….after which he has an ‘informal’ discussion with my client where he asks 20 questions that he has prepared

my client tells me that in 23 years of hiring people, he has never had a candidate do such a good job of presenting himself and interviewing..
along with interviewing the company

what normally is a two or three week process of interviews with four or five
executives, became condensed into a one week process…and yes, jake interviewed them as efficiently as they interviewed him..

my client hired jake…gave him a $25,000 raise…yea…in this market..he starts the new job May 1st..

oh, the power of the interview…good job jake!

..chris..he is an excellent candidate..10 years in the last place..`150% of quota every year for the past 8 years..as good as is out there…the kind of candidate that needs very little coaching…all i had to do was “point” him and he would do so well in the interviews..and his track record is stellar..his company was sold, so his reasons for looking for a job are good..

well, he gets past three interviews with a great company and they tell him that they are going to fly him to corporate for the final interview..

he had, of course, been going over www.thejobsearchsolution.com every step of the way, so i kinda quit coaching him to do that at the last step..

the hiring authority tells him..”it is in the bag…this is just a formality…no worries…corporate always lets me hire who i want”…blah, blah, blah..

i simply forgot to remind chris to go over the portion of www.thejobsearchsolution.com about corporate visits…and, since it was going oh so well, he bought the idea that “it was in the bag”…

sometimes i’m a lousey teacher…he had done everything right, had momentum, was the only guy going to corporate out of six candidates…i got sloppy..my fault..

he gets to corporate..goes thru six interviews..he adopted the attitude of “since i have the job, what do you expect of me, etc.”…this attitude resonated OK with everyone BUT the Sr. V.P. of Sales…the MOST important interview…

the SVP tells the regional manager that “you can do what you want with chris, but i have my reservations about him… he just didn’t sell me on why we should hire him”

no RM in his right mind is going to hire anyone when the SVP has that kind of attitude…if chris gets hired and doesn’t do well, the SVP is going to say “i told you so”…so chirs didn’t get hired..

chris’ mistake was that he simply didn’t sell himself…no matter that he had 10 years of expereince with this firm’s competitor…had kicked their butt in numerous national accounts…that everyone in the company was thrilled to get him away from the competitor and on their team…he made the assumption that he “had” the job….and the SVP didn’t like it..

i warn about this and many other “watch out fors” in www.thejobsearchsolution.com…but i simply thought chris would know…

i’m a lousy teacher…chris isn’t going to get hired…the company is starting all over to look at candidates…and another problem now is that, since they have seen a quality candidate like chris, they aren’ likely to see one as good..

even after 36 yeras of doing this, i have so much to learn…sorry, chris