Monthly Archives: February 2013

I interviewed 10 to 15 professionals week… folks who have anywhere from 5 to 25 years experience in their chosen field… in my face-to-face interview with them, among other things, I asked them if they know what they are selling to a prospective employer… most often I get a blank stare or I get some insane answer like, “the fact that I need a job”… (I won’t even address this!)

I then ask, in a very kind way, again, “what are you selling to a prospective employer?… What makes you a good employee?… What’s going to set you apart from the 23 other folks a hiring authority is going to interview?”

Often, candidates say things like, “well, I’m just a really good employee!” So, I ask, “what makes you a good employee?”… Often they’ll say something like, “well I’m just a hard worker!” It’s clear that most often, even the most experienced candidates really don’t know what they are selling to a prospective employer…

Successful candidates need to be able to qualify and identify specific attributes, performance and track record that set them apart from other candidates… these don’t have to be miraculous, mesmerizing, superhuman feats… they can be simple, straightforward quantifiable facts that show you are a hard worker and a good employee… the best candidates have a 30 second, “elevator pitch” about why they’re a good employee and why they ought to get hired…

So, if you are a job seeker, have you sat down and written out ten or fifteen quantifiable, provable, factual aspects of your history that make you a good employee?

Do you know what you’re selling?

Edward had a 20 year successful career with a number of different firms… he took a job as a vice president with a company based in Mumbai, India… even brought over a few of his previous employees to work for him…

Early on in the relationship, Edward caught on that his new employer really didn’t have much respect for Americans and Edward’s clearly arrogant attitude didn’t help…

Edward had never really had a problem finding a job and had always been hired by people he knew or was introduced to by people he knew… there is no doubt he was a top performer and never had a problem finding a job… even though he was earning more than $300,000 a year, he got fed up with the friction between himself and his superiors so he quit…

Edward assumed he would have no problem finding a job… he took a month or two off to calm down and started calling all of the contacts that he had…VP jobs are not easy to find, but,  after all he had never had a problem before… Edward was always very picky about the kinds of companies he would interview with and the kind of job that he would accept… after all, he was good…

Edward didn’t get as many interviews in the beginning of his job search as he thought he would… he turned down three over four interviews for positions one step below a vice presidency as well as a few of them because he didn’t feel, after looking at the company’s websites, they were the kind of organization he wanted to belong to… the calls started dwindling and even when they came,  Edward rationalized not following through with interviews because he had already turned down interviews for better positions with better companies… he also became angry and more frustrated at the situation… he had never had this much trouble finding a job…

Almost a year has gone by since Edward has worked… he has spiraled down to a frustrated, angry person… the company was sold to a group of American investors so emotional challenges of working for a foreign company are no longer there…but Edward can’t go back

Edward will eventually find a job… most likely a lot less of a position that he had for less money and hopefully he will rebound well… the lesson is, never let your ego get bigger then your game… never let your ego lead you to make a rash decision like Edward did… just because you found a job easily in the past doesn’t mean you will now or in the future…

Just this past week we had candidates eliminated from being considered for jobs for these reasons:

not bring a résumé with them to the interview
not taking notes during the interview
not having any questions for the hiring authority when asked
being 20 minutes late to the interview… and not apologizing
falling asleep in a waiting room
perfume that you could smell three offices away
a candidate had gained  so much weight he couldn’t button his shirt collar when he put on a tie
the hiring authority thought she detected alcohol on the candidate’s breath
the candidate badmouthed three previous employers
the candidate claimed to be presently employed when he wasn’t
the candidate complained about the parking to the receptionist

I wish I could tell you that I was making this stuff up… we deal with a pretty high level, professional group of candidates and this stuff still happens…

Fortunately, we are a large organization and many of our other candidates did very well…

I sometimes think I know why people have trouble finding a job…

There is so much ‘noise’ out there about how to get a job and so many people saying so many things, it’s hard to separate the right stuff from the junk…

I recently saw a video by a “job search expert” who talked about how important it was for candidates to have a blog and all of the effort it takes to write a blog, etc…

Please remember that the most important… the most important… thing you can do to get a job is to interview well… the second most important thing you can do to get a job is to get the interview… you gotta  pick up the phone, call a hiring authority who has “pain”  i.e. the need to hire somebody… and ask for an interview… then go to the interview and sell yourself…

I interview candidates all the time who spend hours upon hours crafting resumes, developing their personal “brand,” designing their LinkedIn profile, developing “guerrilla tactics” for their job search,  attending seminars and all kinds of other stuff that causes them to confuse activity with productivity…instead of trying to get an interview.

All of this stuff might be OK, but where the rubber meets the road in the job search is to get interviews and perform well on interviews… you gotta pick up the phone and get an interview, then perform well on that interview… these two things are the only things that really matter…

The major reason that people spend so much time on all of these secondary activities in looking for a job is because they can control them and they don’t run the risk of being rejected by doing them… the sooner a job seeker learns that being rejected as part of a successful job search process, the better off they’re going to be..

So, have a nice LinkedIn profile, write a great blog, craft a great resume, but quit doing this stuff instead of trying to get interviews…

Focus on what really matters…