Job Search Solution Blog by Tony Beshara

This happens a lot more than most people ever want to admit And it is really tricky…when you have taken a stop gap job and it dragged on longer than you ever intended…like six months or so. And you are now going to have to explain it to a hiring or interviewing authority. This is especially more difficult when you’ve had “too many jobs.” If you’ve had three jobs in three years and then have to explain a “stopgap” job whether it’s with Starbucks or any other type of hourly job for even a professional position that you take knowing that it won’t be for long period of time, it’s a lot harder for hiring authority to understand than you think it is.

You’d best explaine this carefully and with humility. A hiring authority is concerned that you would leave them in a relatively short period of time if you didn’t like one or two little things about the job and go back to the “stopgap” job.

Do not justify the job flipantly by saying something like, “hey, i had to do something to put bread on the table…can’t blame me…now the market has changed and i can do better…i’m ready to leave”

That tells an employer that you would do the same thing to them…when the market gets better.

The way you explain it is like this, “well, i never intended for this job to last so long…it was meant to be a stop gap to put food on the table…however, the people were great and very nice and it seemed to go on a longer time…”

“It really isn’t a career for me and it has dead ended pretty fast…i am not growing personally…they are aware of my situation and understand that i really need to get on with my career with a very challenging opportunity as this one..”

say it humbly..then drop it…and ask a new question To get the interviewing authority off to another subject.

About 40% of the employers that I’ve worked with over the years become candidates of mine somewhere along the line. Over the last month this happened with the guy that I’ve been working with for almost 15 years as an employer. His company was sold and he lost his job.

He’s been looking for a job now for about two months and he is very surprised by many things. First of all, he is surprised that he had not had as many interviews as he thought he was going to get. He’s only had two. Like many of his peers, he has always thought that he was so good at what he did, if he ever needed to find a job, people would come banging on his door. I tell everyone that management jobs are really hard to find. Seventy percent of the time people are promoted from within for management jobs (which is the way he got his), whether they are qualified or not. Companies do this for all kinds of reasons that aren’t really worth going into here.

But the point is, he had been promoted into his management job and told by his previous company how wonderful, spectacular, invaluable, unbelievable, phenomenal and indispensable he was…until they just didn’t need them anymore. All of those accolades, promotions, etc. haven’t helped him find a new position.

What’s most astounding to him is that people have been so rude to him about saying they would interview him and then not, saying they would get back to him and they don’t, telling him that he is a wonderful candidate and then never hearing from them again. This last point has been most astounding to me. He told me today that, “I just can’t believe that these people are so rude as to not call me back, tell me they’ll get back to me and then never do… It’s just plain rude.”

What’s amazing about this is that he was exactly this way when he was a hiring authority. He would tell candidates that he was interested in them and then never call them back…. never call me back and just plain go silent. It’s easy to say that what goes around comes around and that he’s getting what he deserves. He was perceived as mean and rude and now he’s being treated that way. But that is terribly unfair and doesn’t make it right.

Since 1973 I’ve never been able to figure out why hiring authorities have to be this way. We all learn and hear that hiring people is one of the most important things that a manager can do and yet when they go to do it, it continually gets put on the “back burner” and candidates are absolutely left in the lurch.

Now, I will admit that when a candidate is looking for a job, especially if they are unemployed, that is their highest priority. When you’re managing an organization and running a business, hiring people is simply one of the things you have to deal with and, frankly it’s one of the hardest and most difficult things to do, so people postpone it and let other things that are easier to do take priority. And soon, the job search goes from days, to weeks, to even months, almost unintentionally. But it is so darn rude and almost mean.

Here is the message. If you’re a hiring authority, put yourself in the shoes of the candidate. Treat the candidate the way you would want to be treated because this week, this month or next year you may be in their shoes.

How much of a problem is it to just simply pick up the phone and call a candidate and tell them where they stand and what’s going on?

If Robert Mueller had been a candidate in a job interview he would’ve failed miserably. It was one of the poorest displays of answering questions that I’ve probably ever experienced in the 46 years that I’ve been doing this. It was awful!

“Who hired you?”…. “I don’t really remember… I’m not sure… Clinton?”…

The guy answered questions with, “That wasn’t in my purview.” He was nervous, unfocused, wasn’t sure of some things and couldn’t remember others.

Age discrimination!… You say? Well, he is 74, but he supposed to be one of the most trained minds in the country. I felt sorry for him. But if he had been one of my candidates, I would’ve trained him a whole lot better, and if he’d performed like that I’d been really pissed.

I know Robert Mueller doesn’t need a job, but if he performed like he did the other day in an interview, he’d still be looking for one.

The lesson? Go into an interview prepared. Practice the answers to the questions you know you’re going to get. Like many “candidates” this guy is brilliant and he is good at what he does, but when you don’t prepare for an interview and you don’t do well the interview becomes a disaster. People feel sorry for you, but they don’t hire you.

So, you’re gonna say, “Tony, you wrote about this stuff not too long ago… What the hell is with this?”

Well, let me tell you what the hell is with this. A VP in his late 40’s making a $250,000 base salary and another $250,000 on quota with an absolutely stellar track record, wonderful presentation skills and nothing in his background that would not make him an excellent VP anywhere he wanted to be screws up an interview.

How, you ask?

He goes to the corporate office. He goes to lunch with the CEO, the president of the company the  executive vice president of sales, who is a woman as well as another woman in the executive management of the company and somewhere in the conversation says something like, “Well, they just had a ‘hard**’ to buy”. END of consideration!

My candidate had done a splendid job in the interviewing process. When I told him why they were not going to hire him, because of his crude and rude language, especially in mixed company, he couldn’t believe it. He said, “I am so sorry, I guess it’s that Jersey boy coming out of me.” He was as disappointed as they were. Remorseful is a mild word to say how he felt. But the damage had been done. Over! Fini! Kaput!

Lesson: you got to watch your language all the time. I’m an ex-rugby player and I’ve heard it all. Ironically enough (wait till you hear this) the executive vice president of sales, a woman herself, was also an ex-rugby player. She admitted that she had heard just about everything all of us who played rugby heard too. But not in an interview. She was sad about it also. But the whole management team couldn’t believe the guy said that and couldn’t imagine hiring him either.

Watch your language!

Basically, most of it sucks! Over the last two weeks I’ve read the top seven newest, most popular books on finding a job. The reason is I’m rewriting the online training program of the Job Search Solution. It is all going to video format and, of course, I’m updating just about everything. So, I bought these books to find out what information there was on the market about finding a job.

I want to be kind, empathetic, and respectful of anyone who goes to the trouble of writing a book. I read all seven of these and, although there is some decent information in all of them, like “you really need to have a good resume,” most of them aren’t much help. The major reason is, all but one of these people never found anyone a job…ONLY ONE. But other than that, everyone else who wrote one of these “bestsellers,” doesn’t seem to know their ass from first base.

One of the books talks about comedy and finding a job. The whole damn book is fiction and it is supposed to be funny. It isn’t funny. If you’ve been out of work for a year or even a week, there is nothing funny or amusing about needing to find a job. Fiction does not help you. Reality helps you. If you’re looking for a job you have better things to do than to read a fictional, humorous book that is supposed to be amusing.

A number of these books have the word “love” in the title. “Love your job… The job you love… Love the job search… Love, love, love!” Bull shit!!! A job you just “love!” Only 13% of the people in the world have a job they actually love. I happen to be one of them, but I guarantee you that most people, when they need a job, try to get what they reasonably can. The authors of these books are good writers but they’re so out of touch with reality, it’s a joke. Look, I’ve helped more than 11,000 people on a one-on-one basis find a job between 1973 and today. I personally interviewed face-to-face more than 100,000 candidates. I guarantee you if you walk into an interview and tell a prospective employer that you are looking for a job that you “just love” you will be eliminated immediately. These people that write these books about how to find a job you “love” act like there is one on every corner and all you have to do is go put your money in the slot machine and get one. Crazy! Do yourself a favor and stay away from any book about finding a job that has the word “love, joy, ecstasy, fun, excitement…” in the title. These people are smoking dope! They have no idea what you’re talking about. (That goes along with the word “secret.” There are no secrets to finding a job. Also avoid the words “adventure, brave, break the rules” and anything else that might seem a little unrealistic.)

A couple of these books are just plain odd. One of them is written by a fellow who subtitles it as, “What I wish every job candidate knew.” He explains in the book that basically people don’t do well in interviews because they don’t present themselves the way he wishes they would. So, I guess if the reader is going to interview with this guy they should buy his book and learn the way he wants to be sold. Big secret: not everybody interviews the same way or wants to see the same thing in interviewing. And as a job candidate you need to be ready for just about what anybody can throw at you even as insane as it might appear (like the question, “Why do they make manholes round?”)

Another rather odd one is titled Fired. It chronicles dozens of people who got fired and their relatively sad stories. While I admire the research that the author did to write this book, she really only interviewed 65 people and reported on many of their stories. There is a “poor, poor pitiful me!” tone to the whole book. I will admit that getting fired isn’t fun, but in today’s fast moving world of business it is part of reality. Hearing about the sad stories of a whole bunch of folks who got fired isn’t really going to help anybody find a new job. This book really doesn’t help anybody get over being canned which is the very first thing they should do as they start looking for a job. Quit dwelling on being fired, figure out how you’re going to explain it to a prospective employer and get on with finding a job.

One, supposedly a “career expert” implies that you can get hired in 60 seconds. Right! … Actually, most people probably really know better than this. Most of the book is pretty good and gives some pretty sound advice, It just really isn’t very deep or revolutionary.

The best of the group was written by the CEO of a large executive recruiting firm. The unfortunate thing about books, as I’ve mentioned before, is that they really are short and can only address the surface aspects of most job search issues. So, no one can expect a really deep analysis of many things simply because there’s not enough room. For instance, there are seven or eight different kinds of recruiters. One could write a whole book on just the differences with them and between them. But this guy does a really decent job of hitting the most important points of a job search.

What I especially liked about this particular book is that the author addresses the fact that people should have a good idea about what their aptitudes are. If you listen to my Ted talk, the first thing I recommend is that people take some kind of in-depth aptitude testing,  preferably before they begin their career. This is one of the only authors that talks about that. Most workers, even professionals, aren’t very good at what they do simply because they don’t have an aptitude for it. Every professional should know what their aptitudes are…their strengths and their weaknesses, especially before they go look for a job. As I’ve mentioned before, I can’t tell you the number of people I’ve interviewed over the years that got into sales, for instance, because they “loved people.” They turned out to be really mediocre or lousy salespeople. They really had no aptitude for sales. They thought because they “loved people” they would make good salespeople. We all know that’s not true.

Look, if you’re gonna buy information about how to find a job, get it from someone who has actually been in the trenches, finding people jobs on a daily basis. Don’t buy the title. Read about who the author is and what they do for a living.

Caveat emptor!

I’ve been in a polemic for the past few weeks with a number of people on LinkedIn going back and forth about people feeling discriminated against because they are “too old.” There have been a number of writers and commentators bemoaning the fact that they are being discriminated against because of their age.

My contention is that you’re getting hired or not may not have anything to do with your “age” so much as it has to do with the things that come with your age. So, when people don’t get hired, they claim they were discriminated against because they’re too old. Let me give you an example of what happened today.

The candidate comes to our office. He was 22 years with the same organization. He left that firm making $160,000 base salary and a total of $250,000. He was a salesperson for this organization and had been laid off…. a year ago! He told us that he couldn’t find a job because he was 58 years old and nobody wanted to hire a 58-year-old in the business that he was in (he worked for a data storage manufacturer.) He was convinced that it was his age.

Upon asking him how many interviews he had in the year he had been looking, he said that he really had only had one or two. He told us that he was looking for a position with one of his competitors…he did not under any circumstances want to go to work for a value-added reseller or a manufacturer’s rep and he wanted a base of at least the $160,000 that he had been making and if he couldn’t make $250,000, it wasn’t worth his doing.

He claimed that he was worth the $160,000 and that it took him 15 or 16 years to get to that level and he wasn’t about to take a step back and that he didn’t want to lower himself to work for a VAR or the channel, because those people “just don’t make enough money.” He claimed that he had a chance to interview with a couple of VAR’s and a channel and he just wouldn’t take the interview, because he was better than that.

You see what I mean? This guy has been out of work for a year. He claims that it’s his age. The fact is that it took him a number of years to get to the base of $160,000 and a total earnings of $250,000. For some crazy reason he expects that he has an intrinsic value of $160,000 and a $250,000 package simply because he’s been with the same firm for so long and performed so well. Nobody has any intrinsic value.

The fact that this guy can’t find a job doesn’t have anything to do with is age except for the fact that it took him a number of years to get to the base salary that he was making and the total earnings. If he were 35 years old and insisted upon the same kind of salary and wouldn’t consider any kind of opportunity except exactly the kind he had before, he’d also be looking for a job.

What we tried to convince our candidate was that he needed to consider a lower salary, maybe going to work for a value-added reseller or someone in the channel. He may have to take less money and basically do what he really didn’t want to do which is “start all over.” But, my goodness, he’s been out of work for a year. This is crazy. If he has to start all over, he has to start all over.

So, quit complaining about your age. Take a look at the silly stuff you might be trying to demand that the market won’t bear.