Monthly Archives: October 2013

Our faith is full of parables, virtues and teachings that apply to the job search… the other day we heard the Gospel parable of the sower and the seed… it’s in Matthew 13… Every time I hear this parable I think about how it applies to the job search…

Back in those days, farmers hired professionals to scatter the seeds for the next season’s harvest… as the story goes, the sower sows lots of seeds.. some of it fell on the path, and the birds got it… some fell on the rocky places that had little soil,  sprouted quickly but died because the soil was shallow and the sun burned them… other seed fell in the thorns and were choked… And then some seed fell on good ground where it produced a bountiful crop…

The lessons of this parable, when applied to the job search are pretty significant… first of all the sower realized that he had to sow lots and lots and lots and lots and lots of seed… more seeds that anybody could possibly imagine… secondly, he realized that the vast majority of the seed was either going to get eaten by the birds, choked by the thorns  or burned by the sun… the sower knew he could “make up” for all the seed that wasn’t going to make it by sowing a lot more…

Unfortunately, most people in a job search don’t do what the sower did… they sow a few seeds, i.e. send their resumes, make a few calls and then sit and wait and inevitably the birds come along and take the seeds… they then sow a little more seed and then wait and wait and wait and maybe they get one or two interviews .. the interviews don’t go very far, they were planted in shallow soil and got “burned” by the sun… they then sow a few more seeds and wait and wait and wait and those seats get choked by the thorns…

The major lesson for job seekers is that they need to sow hundreds more seeds than they think they should in order to harvest one good job and they need to keep sowing the seeds over and over and over and over, realizing that the sun, the birds and the thorns are gonna get most of them…

As I try to teach, focus on the process… the process of sowing seeds… and if  you focus on the process of sowing  seeds  some are going to fall on fertile ground and you’ll find a job

I know it sounds a bit odd, but we hear this a lot from candidates when we get them in interview… they communicate the idea that they’re not interested in the client we have gotten then an interview with because they never heard of the firm. What’s even worse is that they don’t make an effort to interview well because they somehow think that because they have never heard of the company, the company can’t be any good…This is especially the case when a candidate has been in a particular line of business for a number years and think they “know everybody,” so this new company they never heard of can’t be any good…

This idea simply doesn’t make any sense… but lots of things people believe doesn’t make sense . There are 7.5 million business establishments in the United States… no one knows all … or even most of them. There are boatloads of guys and gals who made a lot of  money with firms hardly anyone ever heard about…

I’ll never forget trying to get a candidate an interview a number of years ago with a small company, no one had ever heard of… Netscape. The candidate refused to go because he had never heard of the company. The second candidate I approached actually got hired and became a multimillionaire because of the stock he earned going to work for this start-up…

So don’t let your knowledge or lack of knowledge of an organization stand in the way of an interview…

…it is hard to imagine that this happens as much as it does… but it does… our candidate was a late 30’s woman with a tremendous track record and a great opportunity to go to work for a wonderful company… the job would have turned her career definitely upward…

She didn’t get hired because, during one of the informal interviews with some of her would-be peers she dropped the “F bomb” quite a number of times…

Our client simply said that they didn’t think they could afford to hire someone who talked like that during the interview…in spite of  her stellar track record… and frankly, we understand…

What’s interesting is that when we spoke to the candidate about her inappropriate language, she got mad and frustrated to the point of tears explaining that the man she was interviewing with, one of her “‘would-be peers”, in his late 40’s started using the “F bomb” quite a number of times in his conversation with our candidate… our candidate, admittedly, thought that this was an “off the record” conversation and saw no problem in matching the profanity of the guy she was talking with… she couldn’t believe she was being eliminated for what appeared to be an off the record, casual conversation… what’s more, she felt like she had been tricked into talking that way… and admittedly she probably was…

It’s really a shame… but she kept saying, “it wasn’t a real interview… it just wasn’t a real interview…” but it was a real interview… then she said, “she just felt like the guy she was talking with didn’t want the competition from a woman”… maybe so, but that’s no excuse…

The first lesson is  that there is no such thing as a “casual, off the record conversation” with any people in a company that you are interviewing with… everything you do and say it’s part of the interview… number two, never, never, ever swear, use cuss words especially the “F bomb” in an interview setting…

Now I know there are folks out there that will say, “well, I’d never do that… I can’t believe anybody would do that… etc.” but it does happen… people get relaxed in the interviewing environment and often say all kinds of stupid things… I have had candidates get so relaxed they talked about their recent acrimonious divorce, their drug rehab, they’re overcoming depression even they are DWI’s (… that, of course, were justified)

Please, please, please think about everything you say in an interview… anything and everything you say will be taken to heart and you will be judged by it..

This is the psychological term and condition that causes a person to believe that they are at less of a risk of experiencing a bad outcome than most, and more likely to believe that they are luckier than most to have a positive outcome… This bias shows up in all kinds of issues, for instance, most smokers believe they are a lot less likely to get cancer from smoking than other smokers… the vast majority of drivers think that they are in the top 20% of quality drivers…most people think they’re less likely to be crime victims than they really are…

This is relevant to job seekers because 90%  of the job seekers I have interviewed since 1973…over 26,000 of them…and 60% of them were employed…all thought it was gonna be a lot easier to find a job than it was and is… all began their job search  thinking and saying, “this is gonna be easy…never had a problem before…everyone needs a great employee like me…look at all of the promotions I have had…how great my track record has been…my neighbor (…cousin, brother..etc.) got a job real easily, and he is a jerk, so this will be easy…” then they often follow it up with, “…so I took a few weeks…months…off ’cause I hadn’t had a real  vacation in a while…”

Then they start looking for a job…or doing some minor efforts toward that and find out that the market is very difficult… more difficult than they even imagined… reality sets in and they realized that they should have started a full-court press in looking for a job two or three months earlier…

Another form of this optimism bias has to do with people’s attitude towards interviewing… I hear this a number of times every week, “Tony, just get me in front of them, I’ll nail the interview… I’m really good it.” Anytime a candidate tells me that, I’m worried… interviewing is a difficult thing to do… very few people do it well naturally without a lot of practice… after a few big time rejection, humility and reality normally set in…

Optimism bias in the job search can manifest itself in many other ways and all of them are treacherous to the job seeker… the best way to avoid optimism bias is to approach looking for a job with absolutely no expectations, a slight bit of paranoia and the realization that it is going to be hard and the job seeker has to start working at their job search immediately… I’ve seen six recessions come and go and I assure you the job market is never quite the same every time…A job seeker can’t confuse the last time he or she changed jobs with today’s market

Rather than being “optimistic,”  I suggest a job seekers should be “hopeful” and then work like hell by working a systematic process like I teach.