Monthly Archives: September 2013

It was Ken Blanchard who stated that feedback is the breakfast of champions, and this couldn’t be more true for a candidate in the job search process… I can’t tell you the number of times a week  I ask a candidate who has been on an interview with one of my clients if they asked, “how do I stack up with the other candidates you interviewed?… what do I need to do to get the job?”… Even though my coaching and our online interviewing course,  www.thejobsearchsolution.com, preaches and teaches these essential questions, even experienced candidates don’t seem to do it…

The excuses I hear for not asking either or both of these questions, is basically this lack of courage.  This is ridiculous…. People say things to me like, “well it just didn’t seem appropriate”… or “we ran out of time and or, I didn’t get a chance to ask him”…  I hear any kind of cockamamie excuse you can imagine for simply not having the guts to ask for FEEDBACK!!!

You gotta ask an interviewing authority, “how am I doing?…how do I stack up with the others that you’ve spoken to?…”  Feedback, feedback, feedback… you gotta get it…

I know it takes courage and I know you run the risk of being rejected right there on the spot…for example  “well, you really don’t have what we’re looking for”… or… “I just don’t like you and I like other candidates better”…but you gotta ask…remember “no” is the second best answer you can get

Getting feedback is especially important if, after the whole interviewing cycle, you don’t get hired… you’ve got to do your best to call or write the hiring authority and simply ask why you didn’t get hired… you can ask it in a really nice way, something like, “I really appreciate the opportunity to have interviewed with you and your firm… I know that I would’ve made a great employee and I would still love to work at your company. I understand that you’ve chosen someone that you think might be a better and I respect that. Please, do me a favor and explain to me what I might have done better or differently in order to get the job. Please give me honest feedback on my interviewing. Any help you might give me will help me in other interviews.” Don’t hesitate to ask for this kind of feedback two or three times if you don’t get a response after the first request.

Most interviewing and hiring authorities are nice people and they’re willing to give you that kind of feed if you simply ask. But you’ve got to ask!

Feedback is one of the most important ways that you can get better in your job search.

Mark and Sally work at the same company… their company is known for a rather strange, mercurial CEO  who changes his mind fairly often, has a rather adversarial environment for people, and yet it is a fairly successful company… most employees don’t stay very long, maybe two or three years even though the company pays very well… on paper the company is very successful but it is known for being a very difficult place to work…

One of the company’s competitors was expanding and wanted to meet both Mark and Sally and try to hire one or both  if they could… so we recruited both of them and set up interviews…neither Sally nor Mark knew the other was interviewing

Sally was the top performer of the company and our client was very anxious to speak with her… she, too,was very excited about the interview… however, when she got there she started “explaining” about the lousy place she in which she was working … “the CEO changes his mind every month… we never know where we are … I make a lot of money, but it’s a crazy place to work… the only people who stay are just as wacky as the CEO and I can’t wait to leave…it is just a crazy place to work“… she went on and on about the company, the job, and the people…. near the end of the interview she started speaking about her track record, which was excellent and how successful she has been and is.  Admittedly, our client was impressed…but her attitude about her present company overrode her presentation of herself.

When Mark interviewed, he took different approach… he said things along the lines of, “…our place is a rather interesting place to work, to say the least, but it is a very gratifying experience… even though it’s  a challenge, I have performed well and I have learned a ton… the CEO is one of the smartest guys that I’ve ever run into and even though he’s a bit erratic, he has given me a tremendous opportunity and I have really appreciated it… the only reason for leaving is to find a better opportunity for me and provide well for my family…”

Well, guess who got hired…it wasn’t Sally… even though Sally had a much better track record than Mark.  Our client just didn’t like how much she’d badmouthed her present company… everybody in their market knows how goofy the CEO is and how difficult a place it is to work, but Mark simply handled it better than Sally.

The truth is that Sally is a much better performer than Mark … but our client just didn’t like the comments Sally made… so they hired Mark..

Lesson:  Don’t ever, ever, ever badmouth your present or past employer.  Whatever you say about the company you are working with now or have worked with in the past, the people who you are currently interviewing , will assume you are going to eventually say the same things about them…it can cost you a job and a career…

So you say, “Well Tony, you have been telling me to sell myself really hard. So, how can I be humble doing that?”

There is a big difference between selling yourself in a “bodacious, chip on your shoulder attitude” or an attitude of “confidence and humility…”

It’s the difference between “I’m a stud…or studette .. and you should hire me because I know what I’m doing.”  “Give me a good reason why I should go to work here…and, you’re gonna be lucky to have me!”…or  “I’ve been blessed with many attributes  and I’ve been fortunate enough to have had good mentors.  Fortunate also to get the chance to apply those attributes and to be in the kinds of places that have given me a chance to perform well and grow.”

The idea is to sell your skills… one way to do it is to take on a prideful, egotistical attitude and the other is to take on, well, a humble attitude… there’s a big difference.

People appreciate and respect humility… many times when a job candidate is in an emotionally distrustful state, they can be overaggressive and egotistical in their presentation…this is usually a defense mechanism…

Real confidence communicates real humility.

This quote by hiring authority is usually followed by a statement like “… It really doesn’t matter what they think or what they say about you, we just like to get their opinion since you’d be working with them”..DON’T BELIEVE THIS LIE!…

The team is usually a group of five or six people who are peers to the person being hired… the  manager read some management book somewhere and came up with the idea of  “wouldn’t it be nice if all of the people in the group talked to the candidate to see if they might all get along”… there is no proof that this kind of step in the interviewing process helps hire a better candidate…in fact,  it usually has more of a negative impact than a positive one… the idea is that everybody will get a chance to meet the candidate…kumbya!

What really happens is, if the “team” or some member of the team doesn’t like the candidate or, more importantly, is threatened by the candidate, they won’t outright say they wouldn’t hire the candidate or they don’t like him or her, they’ll say things like  “well, I’m not sure they’ll fit in”… or… “I don’t really know…” or something pejorative like that… the truth is that these people do have something to say about who gets hired… no matter what any hiring authority says, they are going to listen to the input of the “team’…

The truth is, that this whole exercise is a waste of time at best and detrimental at worst.  A month or so ago, I had a candidate with a stellar background and 15 years of experience… he went to the “team” meeting/interview and some 22-year-old kid who had only been with the company six months… the same amount of time he had been out of college. He asked my candidate, in front of five other people “what motivates you?”… my candidate simply looked at the kid and after a long pause, clearly expressing his being relatively insulted, said something like, “my family”… needless to say the candidate was not impressed with the interviewing process and refused to go back to the company even though they thought he was a great candidate…Interestingly, the hiring authority was so upset with the result, he decided to quit organizing the “team” meeting step in the interviewing process…amen!

If you, as a candidate, are faced with this insanity, you can’t call it that… you’d best realize that these people do have something to say about you getting hired and you better play it cool… do not take the meeting for granted… realize that it is a real interview…

Most of the time these “interviews” become more conversational with the candidate and in that conversation the most important thing you can do is to ask the ‘team,’  both as a group and individually, about themselves…about what they like about the company, why they work there, etc… Engage with them as much as possible and get them to talk about their favorite subject… themselves…

What you’re really trying to do here is to at least “neutralize” their opinions and maybe get them to wildly support you… obviously I don’t think highly of these encounters but what I think doesn’t mean a fig  to hiring authorities… there are lots of things that I think are absurd in the interview and hiring process.  But, what I think, doesn’t matter…

Be prepared to “meet the team”… remember, it is an interview… treat it seriously