Job Search Blog

…i have been finishng my third book…gonna give you excerpts over the next few months…

we are asked every day, “why do employers take soooooo long to decide anything…to interview and then to decide on who to have back…then who to hire….why does it take so long?”

well, it isn’t a simple answer but here is why…when the economy is good and companies are making money, they operate out of “vision of gain”…
when the economy is tough and companies don’t know when they will recover, they operate out of “fear of loss”

whenever companies and the individuals in them operate out of “fear,” they slow everything down…everything …

and when it comes to making any kind of decision the fear of “making a mistake” is even greater…we hear it daily..”we don’t want to make a mistake”

so, hiring authorities look at you and as they interview you, they think, “how will this candidate not work out?”
they don’t see the upside, they see the downside…

sooooo, it all takes longer…any decison out of fear takes longer…

this is simple…record your name on your vm message on your cell…so folks know who they are calling when they leave a message…

“but they see my number on the resume,” you say…

look, companies keep your resume..you hope…and when and if they call you a year or so from now you want them to be sure it is you…

can’t tell you the number of times i have gone thru my data base, seen a candidate i recognize and need that i spoke to two or three or five years ago..call his or her number…get a vm that simply states a number…and hang up…

i’m not sure who i’m calling, so i don’t leave any message at all…

so, be smart, record your name on your vm so when your potential new employer calls you two or three years from now, they will know it is you…

one of the companies and hiring authorities i “warm” call every three months or so, presenting an excellent sales candidate,  has never called me back…for five or six years…never!

a week ago monday, i leave a message for the hiring athority…(the guy was even a candidate of mine quite a few years ago)…it was a typical monday…hard to get started…and the day never got into any kind of a flow…

at 5:35, the hiring authority calls me and tells me he can see the candidate at 7am the next morning…

great candidate..i call chayson…he says. “where do it go?”…no hemming and hawing…no “well, geez, this is awfully short notice..” or “well…who is it with?”

and that is what i would hear from 98% of the people that think they are serious about looking for a job…NOT!

don’t know if he will get hired..but i called the employer and left a message that chayson would be there and how impressive it was that the guy didn’t hesitate…he figured out how to make it happen…

of course he did well on the first inteview…that kind of sense of urgency is really hard to find…made all those years of calling worth it…

marcia has been with the same fortune 500 firm for 22 years…she has had a metioric rise and, especially as a woman, been told how wonderful she is..

they keep promoting her, helping her get her MBA…and working her to death and, of course, not paying her all that much…(they don’t pay anyone on her “director” level all that much)…but they get the security of working for a well recognized, presigeous firm…

she works at a very narrow job, supporting a division on a world-wide basis..has to travel at a drop of a hat…all over the world…which sounds like fun until you have to do it all the time..and by the way…no social life…but her company doesn’t care…

so, for the past few years, she has gotten more and more frustrated with the company, the job and, most of all, beinig underpaid and underappreciated…

so, she is gonna show ’em…she will just leave and find a better opportuntity where she is apprecaited and paid well..

of course, she wants a director’s job…and $100,000 more a year than she is making…’cause she is worth it (her words) and since she has had a phenominal trajectory up the corporate ladder and she is a woman, she knows she can get it..just ’cause she knows she can get it

so, she gets referred to me and proceeds to tell me what she will and won’t accept…how much she will or won’t take…blah, blah, blah..

she has been “looking” for six months…had only two inteviews…didn’t even give them the time of day…she was simply better than any of those jobs..couldn’t see promotion in the near future…wanted to know “where will i be in five years”…

she is gonna be looking for a very long time…and, likely stay where she is…she won’t like it, but that is likely to happen…

look, 99% of american companies don’t run like your fortune 500 firms…her skills are excellent but they don’t apply to most companies…and, she certainnly isn’t gonna get $100,000 more in salary..

it is kinda sad…she has been drinking the company potient that she is exceptional…but they have boxed her in…and they did it on purpose…they promote her, underpay her…and now she is mad as hell and is gonna show them…

the kind of thing she has been doing is so narrow and so specific to the company she works for, she isn’t conna find anything like it…not likely she can find a director’s job…and certainly not likely to get a $100,000 raise..

she is mad as hell…but that won’t help..

look, all that stuff they tell you at your big company… at your MBA school doesn’t mean poop if the real market won’t bear it…

marcia…settle down…quit being mad…quit feeling indignant and taken advantage of…look for a decent job at a level you can get hired at…work hard…get promtoted..the money and title will take care of themselves

jake really prepares for the interview..he goes into them having done research…an i mean research…he has read every ‘white paper’ written by every expert in the industry…he has done competative research…even called and spoken to the competitors about my client that he was inteviewing with..

he calls customers of my client…looks up Gartner reports..every bit of analysis he can find…prints it all out and writes a summary about all of it..

he writes out three ‘case studies’ of clients he knows of that he would call on to present the client’s service if he were hired..

he does a power point comparrison of ‘where the market’ is for the company’s service…finds analyst’s predictions for the next five years for the company’s industry..

he wirtes a 30-60-90 day plan centered around the BIGGEST problems the comapany has with their customers and how he would help solve them..

by speaking to people both in the company and people associated with the company, he ‘reports’ to the hiring authroity the three biggest internal problems the company has…as well as how he might be able to help solve them

he ‘uncovers’ three new markets the company’s service can be marketed to…writes a plan about how he would approach each of them…

he makes a presentation of himself and all of this stuff in 45 min…using the techniques in www.thejobsearchsolution.com….after which he has an ‘informal’ discussion with my client where he asks 20 questions that he has prepared

my client tells me that in 23 years of hiring people, he has never had a candidate do such a good job of presenting himself and interviewing..
along with interviewing the company

what normally is a two or three week process of interviews with four or five
executives, became condensed into a one week process…and yes, jake interviewed them as efficiently as they interviewed him..

my client hired jake…gave him a $25,000 raise…yea…in this market..he starts the new job May 1st..

oh, the power of the interview…good job jake!

..chris..he is an excellent candidate..10 years in the last place..`150% of quota every year for the past 8 years..as good as is out there…the kind of candidate that needs very little coaching…all i had to do was “point” him and he would do so well in the interviews..and his track record is stellar..his company was sold, so his reasons for looking for a job are good..

well, he gets past three interviews with a great company and they tell him that they are going to fly him to corporate for the final interview..

he had, of course, been going over www.thejobsearchsolution.com every step of the way, so i kinda quit coaching him to do that at the last step..

the hiring authority tells him..”it is in the bag…this is just a formality…no worries…corporate always lets me hire who i want”…blah, blah, blah..

i simply forgot to remind chris to go over the portion of www.thejobsearchsolution.com about corporate visits…and, since it was going oh so well, he bought the idea that “it was in the bag”…

sometimes i’m a lousey teacher…he had done everything right, had momentum, was the only guy going to corporate out of six candidates…i got sloppy..my fault..

he gets to corporate..goes thru six interviews..he adopted the attitude of “since i have the job, what do you expect of me, etc.”…this attitude resonated OK with everyone BUT the Sr. V.P. of Sales…the MOST important interview…

the SVP tells the regional manager that “you can do what you want with chris, but i have my reservations about him… he just didn’t sell me on why we should hire him”

no RM in his right mind is going to hire anyone when the SVP has that kind of attitude…if chris gets hired and doesn’t do well, the SVP is going to say “i told you so”…so chirs didn’t get hired..

chris’ mistake was that he simply didn’t sell himself…no matter that he had 10 years of expereince with this firm’s competitor…had kicked their butt in numerous national accounts…that everyone in the company was thrilled to get him away from the competitor and on their team…he made the assumption that he “had” the job….and the SVP didn’t like it..

i warn about this and many other “watch out fors” in www.thejobsearchsolution.com…but i simply thought chris would know…

i’m a lousy teacher…chris isn’t going to get hired…the company is starting all over to look at candidates…and another problem now is that, since they have seen a quality candidate like chris, they aren’ likely to see one as good..

even after 36 yeras of doing this, i have so much to learn…sorry, chris

when i called james with a great opprotunity, he told me that he knew the company and that he would never go to work for them…he knew the management and didn’t like them…didn’t like waht they sold and besides, he was under a non-compete…and they couldn’t afford him anyhow

the V.P. and hirng authority was a reasonable guy and my candidate’s reputation in that field was excellent even though his ego is gigantic…

the V.P. agreeed to talk to him on the phone…the company had just fired a disasterous employee so this replacement needed to be a sperfect as possible…

after two telephone interviews, the V.P. said that the next step was to come to corporate…but he warned james that he didn’t want him to go to corporate unless he was committed to “take the job”…well, james couldn’t committ to that…

so james took another job with a money guarantee that sounded too good to be true…they were going to guarantee him $250,000 to simply show up…

the V.P. was irritated but understood…meanwhile, i find him another great candidate…almost as good a james…in fact, he was a peer of james at one time…

steve goes thru the whole interview process with the V.P….gets the same instruction, “don’t come to corporate unless you are willing to do the job”…he agrees…goes to corproate..impresses the CEO and everyone else…gets the offer..

he turns the job down..$4500 in travel expenses…a committment to take the job if offered, and he turns it down…

the V.P. is furious…can’t blame him..

it has been three weeks since james had gracefully bowed out…out of some whim (..i.e. desperation) i called james… asking him how his new deal is going..

that day he laerned that his new company had just had their next round of funding postponed…that guarantee he got wouldn’t mean a darn thing if they didn’t get funding…and the woudn’t know for another month…

james was still reluctant to speak with the V.P. who he had turned down…but the very smart V.P. had just hired a V.P. of marketing that worked with james at one time…

the V.P. has his new hire call james…james gets excited… because his reference was excellent and his reputation was so good, he meets with the V.P. and accepts the job…

lesson: …it ain’t over till it’s over…some things are just meant to be

one of my candidates, walt, has had a really rough year…he was let go from his job six months ago…the same week that his wife of fifteen years asked for a divorce..the custody battle has been awful
he is a great guy, but his sales performance over the last three years has been dismal and he has changed jobs three times in three years…that hasn’t helped…
as a recruiter who has to present top performers to our clients…especially in this tough market, it was going ot be hard for me to get walt interviews..
walt, however, understood this…he followed just about every step in our on line program: www.thejobsearchsolution.com …
he would call from time to time and give me a report on how he was doing..
it has been a very long, diffcult road for him..but friday he called and said that he starts his new job tomorrow..
here is how he got it..
he volunteered…along with all of the other things i recommend in jss, last december, walt started volunteering at the local food bank…
he struck up an acquaintance with one of the other volunteers last january..
the other volunteer turned out to b a sales manager at one of the local companies…
he liked walt so much that when a sales job became available, he hired walt..
the company is totally different than walt has been in and the money isn’t as great to start with, but walt is soooo very greatful…

good job, walt!

p.s….walt told me that the one good thing that volunteering did was to get him to focus on others…he was pretty depressed about his own, personal situation…he even told me that in some of the interviews he got in the beginning of his search,  he expressed to the hiring authorities his disappointment about his poor performance on his recent jobs and his devastating divorce…and even the cutody battle….(..NOT GOOD to do)…the volunteering got him to focus on people that were less fortunate than he was…

he felt better and got a new job…

double way to go, walt!

OK…you get asked to show your W2’s to prove that you have earned the kind of money you say you have earned..
over the years i’ve had tons of candidates that claim that is an invsion of privacy…none of their business..blah..blah…blah..
well, it is their business and if you don’t produce your previous W2’s, you probably won’t get hired..
the lesson is to tell the TRUTH about what you have earned…nothing will eliminate you faster than to say you have earned $XXXXX and the hiring authority looks at your W2’s to find out you earned a lot less…