Job Search Blog

I probably get asked this at least five or six times a week, if not daily. Why is there $47 billion in cash sitting on the “side line” that businesses don’t wish to spend…WAKE UP AMERICA! …the solution to the problem is pretty simple…

There are 7.5 million business establishments in the United States and they average 16 employees… we’re a nation of small businesses. In 2009,  the average business owner in the United States made $259,000… that’s the average business… 3.75 million of them made more than 3.75 million; most of them made less…

For the most part, these business establishments offered healthcare to their employees. So now the government comes along and, if Obamacare survives, guarantees that my insurance rates will go up for my employees… don’t give me that garbage that my rates won’t change…they will…the day before yesterday, we were informed that the health insurance for our company… and we have a PEO so we are lumped in with 75,000 other people..  was going to go up 15% next year…  after raising 20% last year.

If our present political administration stays in office, we have been told that the top half of those business owners… the ones earning above $259,000 are going to have their taxes increased… I’m not sure how much but I know they’re going to go up pretty drastically…

So here’s the deal…I’m scared… healthcare costs are going to go up for the 30 people in our company and my taxes are going to go up… and I don’t know by how much on either account… our controller is trying to get a better insurance program but it’s going to be hard because the average age of a person in our company is 54 years old… we are boomers…

Am I going to hire people?… maybe, but I’m going to be really, really, really careful about it… I’m not willing to take risks because the economics of my company are very uncertain…

If we change administrations in November, I’ll feel a lot better… until then, I’m going to be really careful… I won’t expand very much and I think just like the vast majority of those 7.5 million business owners…

As the threat of skyrocketing healthcare costs, regulation costs and taxes are in front of me, I’m reluctant to hire and expand… pretty simple…

The reason this is important for you to know is that, if you are a candidate and you are interviewing with the average business manager or owner in the United States this is exactly the way he or she is thinking… if you are going to be a valuable employee for them you  need to convince them that you are a sure bet… that you are a perfect candidate… then you’re going to make them money and save them money and you’re going to do it very quickly… so the next time you go to an interview you know what that hiring authority is thinking and feeling… it’s pretty simple… and it’s pretty ugly…

Got it?

Although James was surprised to receive an offer from the firm he got so pissed off about… who treated him rudely and left him hanging for at least a week… he turned it down.

Before he received the offer, he was interviewed by a very decisive client of ours. They spoke to him on the phone on a Thursday… the executive vice president flew to Dallas to see him the very next day… by Monday he had an interview with another executive vice president over the phone… Tuesday he had a demo of the product… Wednesday I checked his references and Friday they offer him a job.

The offers from both firms were not that different but the professional feeling James received from the second organization made all the difference in the world.

The truth is that a company that dragged the process on for so long is a very good one… the people are really quite good and the future with them would be bright. In spite of their quality, however, their interviewing process was just too long and convoluted. The company James went to work for was determined, decisive and expedient.

James did the right thing.

From two weeks ago… he got so frustrated with the hiring folks at our client, who hadn’t been communicating with him… he got so pissed off, he really let them have it as to why they were inconsiderate and lousy managers…as well as a bad company.

Well, you won’t believe it… he actually got an offer from that same company today… the candidate they tried to hire ahead of James past the job up, so they called James… amazing!

It shows that truth is stranger than fiction and you can never out guess the nature of an  organization when they need an excellent employee … and James is one… in spite of the fact he unloaded on them and apparently, by all standards, burned his bridge, he still got the job offer….it simply proves that when you are good..you are good…

Wonder if he’ll take the job?

The frustration in looking for a job is immense… you go through a bunch of interviews and many of the people you speak with don’t have the courtesy to let you know how you stand even when they say they’ll  get back to you. For the life of me, I don’t know how to help candidates become less frustrated… it’s kind of sad and it’s not a very nice way to treat someone…but hiring and interviewing authorities do it anyhow.

This week, our candidate James, who had been speaking with an organization for four weeks, made it to the finals of the interviewing process. One of the hiring authorities even told him he was their “number one” candidate and they told him they would be in touch with him in a few days. James waited and waited and waited. He emailed and called; then he emailed and called. He got absolutely no response. This went on for a whole week and James got more frustrated and madder.

In the middle of the second week, he had about all he could take and wrote a real ‘venting’ email to both the hiring authority and his boss. It was clear James was a very good candidate. He made it through four weeks of interviewing and outran nine or ten very qualified candidates. In the final analysis, James came in #2. While the hiring authority and his company were checking the references of their #1 candidate, they simply let James languish. Not very nice, but that’s what they did…( and this is one of those companies that is recognized nationally as one of the best companies in the country to work for…go figure).

They eventually told James he had come in #2 and they wanted to let him know that if anything came up in the near future they would call him. James lost his cool…I totally understand… and he told them to stuff it where the sun don’t shine  in very explicit terms.

The best way to handle this would’ve been for James to be graceful and smart in spite of his frustration and anger. He was actually told he was the #1 candidate, but until you receive a job offer, you can’t bank on anything. Objectively, James knew that, but it didn’t keep him from going emotional.

Unfortunately, James has likely burned his bridge with the hiring authorities of this organization. I understand and empathize with him, but it’s not worth it. Somewhere down the line he may very well run into these guys and there’s simply no reason to tarnish your relationship that way.

Again, as I’ve preached before, if the candidate focuses on the process and is not too distracted by the result, it isn’t as likely that James would be as upset as he was and lose his cool.

I know this is easy to say and a lot harder to practice. Always be graceful, even if it’s hard. Don’t let your emotions get the best of you.

It seems like I spend a lot of time writing about people not thinking through the interviewing process and saying stupid things that end up costing them a job…

This week we had one candidate who, in a final phone interview with an HR director… right before they were going to offer him a job… was asked why he left one of his previous jobs… he said he thought for a moment and then said, “well, they told me it was because of sexual harassment, but I didn’t do anything and I really don’t know what they were talking about.”

In speaking to the candidate, he told us his old company owed him $60,000 and according to his contract, if he was fired for cause they wouldn’t have to pay money. Okay… fair enough. He said he had absolutely no idea where the sexual harassment accusation came from, but that’s what their lawyer told him when he asked why he was let go. He never investigated or questioned the dismissal. He simply let it go.

There was absolutely no reason for him to tell the HR director he was dismissed because of a sexual harassment charge. It is nowhere in his record. He was never given any reprimand… nothing. Why would anyone tell an HR director they were dismissed for sexual harassment if no one has a record of it and, more importantly, it didn’t happen? This was not some low-level, rookie candidate. He was a guy with 20 years of experience who had earned well into six figures. So he can’t claim ignorance. Maybe stupidity… but not ignorance.

Another one of our candidates told  one our clients he was dismissed “with cause” but didn’t know what the cause was. He claimed he knew he was fired for a good reason but couldn’t remember what the reason was. Even after we asked the candidate to think really hard about what he said, he still claimed he couldn’t remember exactly why he was fired.

This week, another one of our candidates was asked by the hiring authority if he had any questions.  According to the hiring authority, the candidate said, “geez, I never thought of that question…I guess I’m not prepared.”

Another one of our candidates, upon arriving in the hiring authority’s office, announced that she only had 15 or 20 minutes to interview because she had to go pick up her kids at school.

 Our organization deals with highly educated, very professional people in just about every discipline. And I’ll admit these are only a few examples of the hundreds of candidates we talk to and work with.

People have to think!…THINK… they need to ask themselves, “how does this sound to a hiring authority?” What HR director in their right mind is going to recommend hiring somebody who tells them they were fired for sexual harassment.

I don’t know what else to say…

Jonah Lehrer’s book Imagine addresses how creativity works… excellent book …it comes to a number of conclusions about the fact that creativity is really not as much a gift as it  is a developed trait..

Psychologists, in recent years he claims, have studied the relationship between persistence and creative achievement and have cited the fact that most creative people have a phenomenal ability to stick with their work in spite of all the difficulties and challenges they’re faced with… technical term he uses for this trait is grit..

It made me realize that one of the reasons we have so many people in America who actually just give up looking for a job when they need one is that they lack grit…

Many of these people who give up looking for a job just plain don’t know what to do… after talking to a few friends and family they resort to hitting the send button with their resume thinking that is the work of “looking for a job.”  Grit in looking for a job has to do with developing a job search strategy and executing on that strategy no matter how hard or difficult it may be… putting up with the ups and downs of the job search… the rejection, the refusal, the  not getting called back, being told you’re the “best candidate” and then never hearing from the folks who told you that… grit is what it takes to keep on keeping on in spite of setbacks…

Grit is focusing on the process and not worrying about the results even when it’s emotionally difficult…

Got grit?

Often, when I’m coaching candidates to be very aggressive and ask the kind of questions I wrote about last week, they say things to me like, “well, Tony, I don’t want to appear desperate and coming on that strong makes me look like I am.”

This couldn’t be further from the truth. It all depends on the attitude you take in asking the questions… if you ask the questions in a nervous, desperate, fearful manner, you will appear desperate.

The way to keep from appearing desperate and still  be intense comes along with the idea of focusing on the process and not the result. If as a matter of the interviewing process, you get in the habit of asking everybody you interview with, “are you going to hire me?” or “are you going to recommend that I be hired?”and you practice these questions so well they simply become a part of your natural interaction with an interviewing or hiring authority (i.e. part of your process), then they will come across as confident with no fear of the answer.

If you focus on the process and even get a “no” for an answer, you’ll simply move on to the next opportunity. If you get a “yes,” you will simply move on to the next step in the process.

That’s the difference between being desperate and intense… focusing on the process and not worrying about the result.

It happens at least three times a week… I coach and teach my candidates that they need to ask three questions at the end of every interview:

“How do I stack up with the other candidates you’ve been speaking with?”

“Do you have any concerns about my ability to do your job?”

“What do I need to do to get the job?”

If they are speaking to someone other than the hiring authority that may be a screening interview or or an interview beyond the hiring authority:

“Are you going to recommend that I be hired for this position?”

I can’t tell you the number of times I ask candidates if they asked these questions… even after I told them… they say something like “Well… it just didn’t seem appropriate… we were running out of time… it just didn’t like the right thing to ask… blah, blah, blah.” In other words what they’re saying is, “I just didn’t have the guts to ask the cold hard question of  ‘are you going to hire me’… I just couldn’t bring myself to get the courage to run the risk of being told ‘no’… I just couldn’t do it.”

Last week, I sent five candidates to one of my clients. I instructed them all to do the same thing and sent all of them to www.thejobsearchsolution.com which teaches in absolute detail exactly how to ask these questions. Only one… I repeat, only one had the courage to ask these questions.

My client said, “It was kind of amazing that only one of the five actually asked for the job. Tony, I thought you said these guys are really solid professionals. Only one had the courage and guts to ask if I was going to hire. I want that guy to come back.”

I know this takes practice and I know it takes courage, if you really want to set yourself apart from all your competitors you absolutely have to ask these cold, hard questions in an interviewing situation. You need to know if you’re a candidate or you’re not and you need to know what you need to do to get the job.

I can’t make it any more clear than that!

Poor poor pitiful me
Poor poor pitiful me
Lord have mercy on me
Woe Woe is me
—-Linda Ronstadt, 1973

This happens often with candidates who have been “done wrong” by everybody from their present boss, passed bosses, present company, past company, parents, ex-spouses, present spouses, teenage kids etc., etc., etc….and they let it all hang out in the interview.

Everybody has wronged them… they had a miserable life… they can’t get a break… they blame everyone… and they try to get sympathy on the part of the hiring or interviewing authority by sharing their woes…

STOP! you can never go into the interview singing “poor pitiful me”… I don’t care how hard life has been, how lousy you’ve been treated, how unfair life is, how you can’t get a break… you just can’t come across as pitiful.

At least three times a week, we have to warn  candidates to stop complaining … employers and hiring authorities DO NOT WANT TO HIRE PITIFUL PEOPLE… they’ve got enough problems and don’t need anymore pitiful people in their organization…

Sometime back, we had a candidate who was going through a rather hateful divorce… unfortunately, she shared her plight with the female hiring authority… when we told her that it was a bad idea to do that, she told us it didn’t turn out to be such a bad idea because the hiring authority had just gone through a terrible divorce and they spent at least half of the interview sharing their terrible situations…

Unfortunately, the hiring authority thought the candidate’s skills were good but refused to hire her because, ” — she’s going through a terrible divorce like I did and I was so pitiful for so long I couldn’t function, I just couldn’t hire anybody knowing what bad shape they would be in when they tried to work.”

So, please share your “pitiful me” stories with your therapist, priest, rabbi, counselor… anyone but a hiring authority…