America’s only online 60-hour job search program!

The Job Search Solution
Tony beshara logo 269w cropped

“I’ve been finding people jobs since 1973, and have helped thousands of candidates find great career opportunities. Let me help you too!”... Tony Beshara

"I've been finding people jobs since 1973, and have helped thousands of candidates find great career opportunities. Let me help you too!"... Tony Beshara

Aggressive?…. Sales?…Pushy?

I have been rewriting our first book and reviewing some of the critiques of the first edition. There are some critics and reviewers of the first edition of The Job Search Solution who claim what I advised was just too aggressive for them… I was just a salesman advising sales techniques and scripts. They are absolutely right! Getting a job in today’s market… or in any market.. requires selling yourself better than any other candidate. What I teach is aggressive. It is sales. It is only pushy, however, if you don’t use the scripts in the right way. If you don’t practice what I teach and communicate humility and sincerity in your presentations and during the process, it will come across as pushy and it won’t get you to first base. It takes practice. If you sell yourself with the attitude you are more interested in what you get than what you can do for someone else, it will come across as pushy. If you use what I teach in an obnoxious, egotistical manner, none of it will work. If you present yourself in an “I’m interested in helping you get what you want and in the process, get what I want,” you’ll be in great shape. It’s all a matter of attitude.

We shouldn’t confuse pride with arrogance. Presenting yourself with confidence is different than being obnoxious. Some critics claim the techniques I teach are too aggressive for them, that they know a better way. That is wonderful! If what I teach is too aggressive for you… don’t use it, or modify it to your personal style. If you’ve been successful in finding a job different way, God bless you. The system I teach is not the only way to find a job. I’m simply presenting a system and process that has helped thousands of people find a job. The techniques are proven and, if done the right way, really work. They get positive results.

No one is going to hang up on you or be insulted by your using these techniques, as some critics claim, if you communicate sincerity, humility, honesty and a genuine interest in helping them get what they want. If you can, as the critic who wrote that he didn’t like what I suggested, “write a brief and informational letter to potential employers, followed up with ONE polite phone call, and landed 2 jobs with in 6 weeks,” then you don’t need this book. Give it to someone who may not be as fortunate. I am ecstatic for you.

One critic wrote, “…his tactics are sometimes pretty hard sell. I can’t bring myself to do things like this. But then again, I’ve been out of work for more than a year so you should probably ignore everything I’ve said and follow his instructions.” “Hard sell” is not what you say or do as much as it is how you say or do it. If these tactics were done in a hard-sell way, I would’ve been run out of my profession years ago.

You don’t have to agree with my approach. It won’t work well for you if you don’t believe in it. It has worked for thousands of people. Some have actually had to overcome being reluctant to be as forceful as they needed to be to find a job in this market. It comes down to how badly they needed a job. The question is, “are you more uncomfortable with being out of work or needing to change jobs or more uncomfortable with doing the things I recommend?” I’m reminded of what Frederick Nietzsche wrote, “he who has a reason why, can bear with almost any how.” If that isn’t motivating enough, the how won’t matter.

Guarantee: If you buy this book and it doesn’t help you, send it to me, with your name and address and I’ll either send you your money back or give the price of the book to charity in your name. Just choose one of the options.

By |2011-07-17T19:50:12-05:00July 17, 2011|Job Search Blog|

new age reference checks…self inflicted wounds

I have been rewriting our first book…so i have been away for a while from writing the blog…here is a section of the new book that will help reference checking. Today’s reference checking has to do with the permanent Internet and the intermingling of personal, social interaction and business. One of the first things a hiring organization is going to do is try to find out everything they can about the candidate on the Internet. They will Google your name, try to find your MySpace, Facebook, Twitter or any other kind of social/business networking account and review your Linkedin profile. Anything they find will be used to help or hinder your candidacy.

For better or for worse everything we might do, write or say could show up on the Internet. At least two times a month one of our candidates, who looks like they are going to get hired, gets eliminated because of what hiring organizations find out about them by just searching around on the Internet. Sometimes what they find has nothing to do with our candidate, except the same name. Recently one of our hiring authorities Googled the e-mail address of one of our candidates and found that someone with a very, very close e-mail address had written a review… of a prostitute. Unbelievable! It wasn’t our candidate, but the hiring authority was so taken back, he simply didn’t even want to discuss it. It wasn’t exactly the same email address, but close enough to be disturbing.

We’ve had candidates eliminated because of comments they made on Facebook, comments made about them on Facebook, pictures on their social networking sites, like MySpace, off-color public Twitter posts, blogs they have written about their views, insulting blogs written about them by ex-spouces, ex-boyfriends or ex-girlfriends, eight-year-old articles mentioning their name and questionable circumstances, as well as pejorative things that have been written about them by others that show up on the Internet. We’ve had candidates eliminated because their Linkedin profile did not agree with their resume, or didn’t have a very robust profile on Linkedin. We can’t count the number of times candidate’s identities have been confused with other people of the same name, causing a hiring authority to stop and think.(And don’t think “positive” recommendations on Linkedin make a big deal of difference. They don’t seem to.)

The New York Times reported a study by Microsoft claiming that 75% of executive recruiters and human resources professionals surveyed said they research promising candidates online, using search engines, social networking sites, personal websites, blogs, twitter feeds, online gaming sites, as well as photo and video sharing sites. 70% of those recruiters revealed that information found online lead them to reject a candidate.

The Times also reported a 25-year-old Pennsylvania high school “teacher in training” posted a photo of herself on her MySpace page with a pirate hat, holding a plastic cup at a party, along with the caption, “drunken pirate.” Less than a week before she was scheduled to graduate, the university refused to issue her a teaching degree because the students could find her photo online and get the impression she was encouraging drunkenness. When she sued, citing her First Amendment rights, the court ruled against her.

The constantly evolving, permanent digital record of our lives means we’ve lost, to a large degree, control of our reputations. The possibility of second chances may be lost as well. Most hiring authorities, when they discover anything of questionable nature regarding a candidate, will simply drop them. Unlike traditional reference checking that is usually centered around business people, this kind of reference checking has only the limits the Internet poses.

Over the next few years, people may come to their senses and realize anything they do, personal or public that might show up anywhere on the Internet, is not going to help them. There are two major issues candidates need to be aware of regarding this kind of reference checking.

First of all, clean up anything that might be questionable regarding your Internet “presence.” And don’t complain that personal stuff like this should be used to make business decisions about hiring you. Companies want to try to assess your character as much as anything else. They’re going to check your credit, arrest record, and anything else… including what might be about you on the Internet.

Secondly, do your own research on yourself. Be as extensive as you possibly can. If you find anything that you can’t do anything about, like articles about people with your same name, be prepared to let a hiring authority know of this issue before they do this type of reference checking.

There are now services available that offer to protect individuals reputations online. These services help their clients deal with negative personal information and enable them to monitor the web and influence what people see when they search for them online. Some of these services will not only monitoring your online presence, but also check your formal business references for you.

With these kind of challenges became reality a few years ago, many candidates were surprised that companies paid attention to this “social” type stuff. Some candidates use to simply blow it off and dismiss it. Others get downright mad about it. The bottom line is that it is very serious stuff and it can cost people, not just a job, but their career.

By |2011-07-03T16:30:10-05:00July 3, 2011|Job Search Blog|
Go to Top