Monthly Archives: January 2013

…twice this week, our firm had candidates who got eliminated from contention because of, one a history of DWIs and the other a history of bruised credit… The mistakes the candidates made weren’t so much that they had these in their background but that they didn’t inform interviewing and hiring authorities about them BEFORE they were going to get offers…

The challenge was that both candidates were told that, after a lengthy interviewing process, they were likely to get hired but their background had to be checked… neither candidate told the companies they were speaking to that they were likely to have problems in their background…

When the companies did their background checks and discovered two DWIs for one candidate and bruised credit for the other, they decided to turn each candidate down…

Now, it’s quite possible that neither candidate would’ve been hired because of these problems in their background… but the biggest mistakes the candidates made was NOT telling the hiring authorities that they had these glitches in their background BEFORE their backgrounds were checked… each hiring authority felt that the candidates had not been honest with them… and that feeling overrode the issue that these problems were in the candidates’ past…

If you have any kind of other problems like this that are going to show up in a reference or background check, you absolutely have to tell the hiring authority BEFORE the hiring authority discovers it on his own…

Over the years, we have seen many, many candidates get hired even with felonies in their background primarily because they told the hiring authority BEFORE the background check that they had a problem in their past.

If a candidate waits for the employer to discover these kinds of things without forewarning them, the employer’s trust is violated… and again, they are as upset with not being told as they are with the issue itself… the time to tell an employer that he or she may discover this in your background is when you find out you were a finalist and you are likely to get an offer once the background has been checked…

One of our candidates… the one with the DWIs… had done his own background check on himself and amazingly enough neither one of his DWIs showed up, so he figured there was a good chance that when the company did the background check, they wouldn’t find out about them… he shouldn’t have relied on this chance…

So, the lesson is if you have any kind of glitch in your background, you need to tell the hiring or interviewing authority before they do a background check… if they discover it and feel like you need to have told them, their trust will seem violated and it’s not likely you will get hired…

There is so much junk and bad advice out there about looking for a job, interviewing, etc… I saw a video posted on YouTube where the authority recommended, when negotiating a salary and you were asked what you are presently earning, you should say “well, I’m being compensated fairly but what kind of salary comes with this opportunity?”

The guy who was giving you this advice is supposedly a career counselor with lots of experience… this is some of the worst advice I have ever heard…

If you, as a candidate, are asked a question about what you are presently earning, then answer in some ridiculous “cutesy” way by doing what the author said, “answering a question with a question”…. you are likely to get eliminated…this advice is downright stupid!

If you answer a straightforward question like that with some stupid answer that communicates you obviously don’t want to answer the question, you are  going to do nothing but piss off  the person who asked the question… where any professional “career counselor” got the idea to do this I have no idea…

When you get asked the question of what you are earning or what you have earned in the past, you need to tell the interviewing hiring authority exactly what you’re making and what you have earned in the past… any answer other than that makes you look like a fool and likely gets you eliminated as a candidate…

Any stuff you read or listen to on the Internet regarding looking for a job, interviewing etc. that isn’t written by someone who actually find people jobs, ask yourself, “does this really make sense?”

I found a 1965 study at McGill University that found  hiring authorities made a decision about their hiring or not hiring a candidate in the first four minutes of the interview… That was 1965 and the study was trying to encourage hiring authorities to spend more time interviewing properly…

I contend that inspite of all the literature, coaching, teaching, training and ‘management development to help managers do a better job of interviewing and hiring, the four minute decision is still not far off from reality…

No manager or hiring authority is ever really going to admit to this reality… what this teaches a job seeker in today’s market is that you’d best make a good impression in the first four minutes of an interview… what you say, your body language, etc. sets the tone for the interview…and may decide on your being hired.

interviewing takes practice… most candidates don’t practice enough… interviewing doesn’t come naturally…

So, how would you evaluate the first four minutes of your interviews?

One of the most difficult challenges in a job search… especially in today’s market is maintaining a positive attitude. Unfortunately, the majority of things that happen to job seeker are negative… in fact, my estimate is that there are 15 negative things that happen for every positive.  It is very easy to get what Zig Zigler used to call “stink’en think’en”… Just the emotional strain of having to find a job can put people into a negative spiral.

I suggest that job seekers… or anyone, for that matter… be constantly reading positive, motivational books and listening to positive CD’s… here is a list I recommend…some are old “classics” and some are relatively new… 15 to 30 minutes of this kind of reading every day makes all the difference in the world…

Acers of Diamonds by R. Conwell
As a Man Thinketh by James Allen
Awaken the Giant Within by Anthony Robbins
Beyond Strength: Psychological Profiles of Olympic Athletes by Steven Ungerleider & Jacqueline Golding
Blink by Malcom Gladwell
Devotional Classics by Richard J. Foster
In Pursuit of Excellence by Terry Orlick
In the Zone: Transcendent Experience in Sports by Michael Murphy and Rhea A. White
Inner Athlete by Dan Millman
Inward Bound by Alexander Everett
Man’s Search for Meaning by V. Frankl
Psycho-Cybernetics by Maxwell Maltz
Purpose Driven Life by Rick Warren
Selling the Invisible by Harry Beckwith
Seven Spiritual Laws of Success by Deepak Chopra
The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen R. Covey
The Achievement Zone by Dr. Shane Murphy
The Book of 5 Rings by Miyamoto Musashi
The E-Myth by Michael Gerber
The Inner Game of Tennis by Timothy Gallowey
The Intention Experiment by Lynne McTaggart
The Job Search Solution Tony Beshara
The Laws of Spirit by Dan Millman
The Peaceful Warrior by Dan Millman
The Richest Man in Babylon by G. Clason
Talent Is Overrated by Geoff Colvin
Outliars by Malcom Gladwell
Drive by Daniel Pink
Predictably Irrational by Dan Ariely
Wooden onLeadership John Wooden
Willpower by Roy Baumeister and John Tierney
Flow by Mihaly Csikszentmihaly
Great by Choice by Jim Collins and Morten T. Hansen
How We Decide by Jonah Lehrer
Willpower Roy Baumeister and John Tierny
Nerve by Taylor Clark
Subliminal by Leonard Mlodinow

Spiritual books, like the Bible, the Koran, the Bhagavad-Gita, Tao Te Ching, books of prayer, etc., are also essential.

I would recommend “Horatio Alger” type stories, like the story of Helen Keller, Colonel Sanders, or any inspirational stories that talk about lessons people learn by living and succeeding in a terribly “unfair” world. Stories about people overcoming a fear, insurmountable odds to triumph in the end, inspire us all.

RECOMMENDED AUDIO CD’S

Norman Vincent Peal,  Anthony Robbins, Phil McGraw (Dr. Phil),  Dennis Waitley, Brian Tracy,  Zig Ziglar,  Wayne Dyer,  Dan Millman, Steven Covey and Michael Gerber