Job Search Solution Blog by Tony Beshara

I found a 1965 study at McGill University that found  hiring authorities made a decision about their hiring or not hiring a candidate in the first four minutes of the interview… That was 1965 and the study was trying to encourage hiring authorities to spend more time interviewing properly…

I contend that inspite of all the literature, coaching, teaching, training and ‘management development to help managers do a better job of interviewing and hiring, the four minute decision is still not far off from reality…

No manager or hiring authority is ever really going to admit to this reality… what this teaches a job seeker in today’s market is that you’d best make a good impression in the first four minutes of an interview… what you say, your body language, etc. sets the tone for the interview…and may decide on your being hired.

interviewing takes practice… most candidates don’t practice enough… interviewing doesn’t come naturally…

So, how would you evaluate the first four minutes of your interviews?

One of the most difficult challenges in a job search… especially in today’s market is maintaining a positive attitude. Unfortunately, the majority of things that happen to job seeker are negative… in fact, my estimate is that there are 15 negative things that happen for every positive.  It is very easy to get what Zig Zigler used to call “stink’en think’en”… Just the emotional strain of having to find a job can put people into a negative spiral.

I suggest that job seekers… or anyone, for that matter… be constantly reading positive, motivational books and listening to positive CD’s… here is a list I recommend…some are old “classics” and some are relatively new… 15 to 30 minutes of this kind of reading every day makes all the difference in the world…

Acers of Diamonds by R. Conwell
As a Man Thinketh by James Allen
Awaken the Giant Within by Anthony Robbins
Beyond Strength: Psychological Profiles of Olympic Athletes by Steven Ungerleider & Jacqueline Golding
Blink by Malcom Gladwell
Devotional Classics by Richard J. Foster
In Pursuit of Excellence by Terry Orlick
In the Zone: Transcendent Experience in Sports by Michael Murphy and Rhea A. White
Inner Athlete by Dan Millman
Inward Bound by Alexander Everett
Man’s Search for Meaning by V. Frankl
Psycho-Cybernetics by Maxwell Maltz
Purpose Driven Life by Rick Warren
Selling the Invisible by Harry Beckwith
Seven Spiritual Laws of Success by Deepak Chopra
The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen R. Covey
The Achievement Zone by Dr. Shane Murphy
The Book of 5 Rings by Miyamoto Musashi
The E-Myth by Michael Gerber
The Inner Game of Tennis by Timothy Gallowey
The Intention Experiment by Lynne McTaggart
The Job Search Solution Tony Beshara
The Laws of Spirit by Dan Millman
The Peaceful Warrior by Dan Millman
The Richest Man in Babylon by G. Clason
Talent Is Overrated by Geoff Colvin
Outliars by Malcom Gladwell
Drive by Daniel Pink
Predictably Irrational by Dan Ariely
Wooden onLeadership John Wooden
Willpower by Roy Baumeister and John Tierney
Flow by Mihaly Csikszentmihaly
Great by Choice by Jim Collins and Morten T. Hansen
How We Decide by Jonah Lehrer
Willpower Roy Baumeister and John Tierny
Nerve by Taylor Clark
Subliminal by Leonard Mlodinow

Spiritual books, like the Bible, the Koran, the Bhagavad-Gita, Tao Te Ching, books of prayer, etc., are also essential.

I would recommend “Horatio Alger” type stories, like the story of Helen Keller, Colonel Sanders, or any inspirational stories that talk about lessons people learn by living and succeeding in a terribly “unfair” world. Stories about people overcoming a fear, insurmountable odds to triumph in the end, inspire us all.

RECOMMENDED AUDIO CD’S

Norman Vincent Peal,  Anthony Robbins, Phil McGraw (Dr. Phil),  Dennis Waitley, Brian Tracy,  Zig Ziglar,  Wayne Dyer,  Dan Millman, Steven Covey and Michael Gerber

In www.thejobsearchsolution.com, I provide a guided imagery session that gets tremendous results for the users…I received two emails this week from users who credit the session to not only their interviewing well but actually getting their new jobs…

Their emails reminded me of how important it is for job seekers to envision success throughout the job search…that means running movies in your mind of getting interviews and performing well on those interviews…it also means ‘replaying’ all the negative things that happen…not getting the interview…not doing well on the interview…anything that needs to be ‘replayed’ in a positive way…and done immediately after the unfortunate result…

The majority of things that happen in a job search are NOT positive…there are probably 15 less than positive events for every positive one..face it, looking for a job in today’s market is emotionally and mentally challenging…

A job seeker has to be constantly ‘replaying’ with positive thoughts and ideas…they have to ‘overlay’ all of those unfortunate, negative events.

…lately, I’ve been running into some small issues that could make a big difference in getting interviews … so, pay attention.

Make sure your phone number is on the top of your resume, easily found next to your name and e-mail address…three or four times a day, I get a resume with a phone number of the candidate at the bottom of the resume or the bottom of the first page of the resume…twice last week,  I received resumes with a phone number, name and e-mail address literally written along the side of the resume so you actually had to turn the page horizontally to read the phone number…  be aware that your resume is “scanned” by the reader…  if the reader sees something it likes, you want your phone number to be so accessible they can dial you up immediately… don’t make people search for your important contact information… they’ll simply quit and move on to the next resume if it’s too hard…

Your voicemail… make sure you confirm the number of your cell phone AND your name with your recorded voicemail message… you want to be sure that people know exactly who they are reaching…be sure to record your voicemail message in a quiet place…not while driving…not while in a Starbucks … not only is it unprofessional, but the caller may not call back if they can’t understand exactly who they’ve reached…(by the way, many of us keep resumes for specific types of people for many years… from my own experience, if I call a phone number that is more than two or three years old and I’m not sure the phone number is of the person I’m trying to reach, i.e.  they don’t state their name in the voicemail message,  I may not leave a message and simply hang up…)

Leaving a voicemail… make sure  the voicemails you leave for people you’ve interviewed with are also direct, to the point and short… remember that most hiring authorities  have near full voicemails and they have their finger on the delete button to eliminate as many of them as they can…while hearing your voicemail, they’re focused on either one of the ones previous to yours that is highly important or an important one they are  anticipating… you need to be sure they can remember the message you leave so they can call you back…( for the best script you could use in leaving a voicemail, go to www.thejobsearchsolution.com.)  Also, when  leaving a message be sure to state your call back phone number twice and do it s-l-o-w-l-y so the person listening to it gets a chance to grab a pen and write it down … the reason you state it twice is because, especially from a cell phone, there’s often distortion of one or two of the digits you’re speaking … and it certainly doesn’t hurt to repeat your name twice, once in the beginning of the voice mail and again at the end … again, compensating for distortion

These are little things but they may keep you from getting interviewed.

Evil exists…it is just as mysterious as God’s love…we don’t really quite understand it..we never will

…pray for all departed souls…pray for their families..forgive..pray for the soul of the shooter…

Eternal rest grant unto them, O Lord, and let perpetual light shine upon them. May they rest in peace. Amen.

The interview with our candidate seemed to be going well… the hiring authority was interested because the candidate had done exactly what they wanted and they were pleased.

The salary range the company had was $80,000-$85,000 a year and since the candidate was only making $73,000, it was going to be good for everyone.

We had discussed money with our candidate and explained that with the salary range of the company and them offering him $80,000, while he was making $73,000, it would be a nice bump in earnings… in the initial part of our presentation of the job to him, he agreed…

But when he got into the final offer stage, he got greedy and literally told the hiring authority that when they made him an offer, he had done his research on the Internet and was worth a $90,000 salary…

Our client had offered $80,000 thinking they were giving him a very generous raise and when he came back with this comment, the hiring authority was taken off guard… the hiring authority  said “well, the best we can offer is $80,000 because that’s what the job is worth… this is a very good company and you would do well to be here.” The candidate stated again that since he found his value on the Internet was $90,000, he was going to stick to that figure.

We are still trying now to patch this thing together. In this market, it is unlikely that anyone is going to go from $73,000 a year to $90,000 a year just because a salary survey on the Internet says the person is worth $90,000. The hiring authority didn’t know whether he was disappointed in the candidate because the candidate was  passing up a good opportunity or that the candidate was foolish enough to believe a salary survey on the Internet was going to be his reason for wanting that much of a raise.

Our candidate did a poor job… he got greedy… he thought that since the  interviewing process had been going so well, a $17,000 salary increase was in order.. and his reasoning, “well I saw on the Internet” made it even more awkward.

We are still trying to get these folks back together… trying to get the candidate to understand that no one has any intrinsic value… what you are “worth” is what you can get on the market and that going from $73,000 a year to $80,000 a year is not only reasonable in this market but an excellent opportunity especially with such a quality company.

Our plea to the hiring authority is to beg for forgiveness on the part of the candidate for this lack of experience and changing jobs and negotiating a salary… we tried to chalk it up to inexperience and ignorance.

The lesson is that to go into any kind of negotiation and say something stupid like “well I saw that I’m worth $$$$ on the Internet.” isn’t going to get you very far.  No salary survey on the Internet should have anything to do with your getting a new job. Negotiate in good faith, but be smart about it. No hiring authority is going to pay any salary because of an Internet survey.