Tag Archives: interviewing

Do you know who your friends are?

As I venture out to do some different things with my career and try to give flight to some of my long-held dreams, I was excited to come across the following story I first encountered years ago.  I am a fan of John Maxwell.  What follows is an excerpt from his book Your Roadmap For Success:

When you’re trying to realize your dream, sometimes you’ll be surprised by which people want to light your fire and which ones want to put it out.  Let me tell you a humorous story that vividly illustrates this point.

A Canadian bird decided that it was too much trouble to fly south for the winter.  He said to himself: “I can brave winter.  A lot of other animals do it.  It just can’t be that hard.”  So as all the other birds flocked away toward sunny South America, he stayed behind and waited for winter.

By the end of November, he was having serious second thoughts.  He had never been so cold, and he couldn’t find any food.  Finally, he broke down and realized that if he didn’t get out of there soon, he wasn’t going to make it.  So he started flying south all by himself.  After a while, it began to rain.  And before he knew it, the water was turning to ice on his wings.  Struggling, he recognized that he couldn’t fly any longer.  He knew he was about to die so he glided down and made his last landing, crashing to the ground in a barnyard.

As he lay there stunned, a cow came by, stepped over him and dropped a plop right on him.  He was totally disgusted.  Here I am, he thought, freezing to death.  I’m about to die.  I’m on my last breath, and then this!  What an awful way to go.

So then the bird held his breath and prepared himself to die.  But after about two minutes, he discovered a miracle was happening: He was warming up.  The ice on his wings was melting.  His muscles were thawing out.  His blood was flowing again.  He realized that he was going to make it after all.  He got so excited and happy that he began to sing a glorious song.

At that moment, the farm’s old tomcat was lying in the hayloft in the barn and he heard the bird singing.  He couldn’t believe it; he hadn’t heard anything like it for months, and he said to himself, “Is that a bird?  I thought they’d all gone south for the winter.”

He came out of the barn, and lo and behold, there was the bird.  The cat crossed over to where he was, pulled him gently out of the cow plop, cleaned him off – and ate him.

There are three morals to this story: 1) Not everyone that drops a plop on you is your enemy; 2) not everyone who takes a plop off you is your friend; and 3) if somebody does drop a plop on you, keep your mouth shut.  The same can be true for you as you realize your dream.  Some people you consider friends will fight your success.  Others will support you in ways you didn’t expect.  But no matter which people criticize you or how they do it, don’t let them take your focus off your dream.

Is your job search going mobile? It should.

Here are some quick stats to get you thinking about one way you should approach your job search.

  • 1 in 5 of all job searches are now made via mobile (Google)
  • 30% of company traffic is now coming from a mobile device (WRC)
  • 63% of passive candidates used mobile to search for their next role (Educate)
  • 90% of smart phone users use mobile to read emails and search the web (ALP)
  • 61% of users will go to a competitor site if you do not have a mobile site (Forbes)

In my life there have been two distinct job-search worlds; one when I graduated from college, the other just recently.

Here’s what my job-search world looked like when I graduated from college:

I graduated in May of 1995.  The next month I got married.  At that point, we certainly had no money and only an idea of what we wanted our future to look like.  Obviously, the first priority was finding me a job.  It seemed only fair.  At that point, my wife had two.  Actually, I was working a retail position.  But it was time to find that ever elusive “career” track.

Back then I read the want-ads in the Sunday paper and circled the best possibilities.  Because we did not have a home computer or printer I would find some time during the week to go over to my father-in-law’s office and use his.  I would update my resume and write a cover letter, print it out and put it in the mail.  So after reading an ad on Sunday I would be lucky to have my resume/cover letter in the mail by Wednesday or Thursday.  Talk about lag time.  Obviously, it was not the quickest or most efficient system.  But I had to use the resources available to me the best way I knew how.

Contrast that to what my job-search world looked like when I was searching for a new position just a few months ago:

This time, no want ads.  It would have been difficult to do that since I haven’t had a subscription to the paper in several years anyway.

I did lean on all the other avenues available to me, however.  The most valuable was my network.  I have spent the intervening 15+ plus years since my post-college job search building it and I knew it would be a powerful tool.

I also created several job-search agents on various job boards that met specific criteria I entered.  The various systems would then email me the daily results.  By the time I woke up every morning, I would have anywhere from a handful to several dozen opportunities waiting for me in my inbox.  Even before my feet hit the floor in the morning, I could respond to any particular opportunity I chose by submitting my resume which was stored on my smart phone.  I use the Galaxy S II and am a huge fan.

I had several versions of my resume to reflect various aspects of my career.  I could choose which one to send based on the details of the opportunity.  If a particular opportunity required me to make additional changes to my resume I would get on my laptop, make the changes and store the new version on my phone as well.

If a lead came through that looked really exciting I would get on Linked In and see if anyone in my network worked at that particular company.  I would then reach out to them and ask for their help in networking with the right people at the target company.

The best example I can think of to illustrate how things have changed in my two job-search worlds is this story:

I was meeting a member of my network for lunch.  I got there early and as I was a waiting, another member of my network who happened to be located in Pennsylvania had forwarded me a really good job lead.  I looked through the details, composed an email/cover letter and sent it off with the appropriate version of my resume.  By the time my lunch was over I had already received a response from the recruiter.

It’s fascinating to me how things have changed.  Years ago, looking through the paper it took days to respond. Today, anyone can receive and respond to opportunities in real-time all thanks to advances in technology, their network and their smart phone.  Did I mention I love my Galaxy S II?

If you don’t use your mobile device for your job search, you are missing out on a lot of opportunities.  The ability to respond to opportunities in a timely manner is essential.  Don’t miss out.

To get the job would you do this?

This is by far one of my all-time favorite recruiting stories.

Years ago, a co-worker was working to fill several administrative positions.  Part of her responsibility was to verify the information a candidate would enter on their application.  It was common for her to ask candidates to send in copies of their high-school or college diplomas as a way to verify their education.

One day she stopped by my cube and handed me a fax and with a big grin on her face asked “does anything look out-of-place to you?”  It was a copy of a high-school diploma.  The copy was a bit grainy but it was still fairly easy to read.  I read it three times before I finally started to believe what I was reading.

Keep in mind that a candidate was submitting this document as proof of their high-school graduation.  It had not one…not two…but three typos on it.  I must say, it was quite an accomplishment to pack so many typos in a document that had so little verbiage.

As if that wasn’t significant enough, the signature for the district’s superintendent was not the correct name.  It was fairly common knowledge who the superintendent was because that particular school district was in the news a lot and they were currently on the hunt for a new superintendent.

To this day I still do not know what would possess someone to submit a document like that.  I understand there are some people who are willing to lie, cheat or steal.  But in this case, if they are willing to falsify employment documentation, don’t you think they would have someone look it over?  I guess that story ended the way it should have.  Cleary, my co-worker passed on the opportunity to hire this individual.

How should you submit a resume via email?

In your job search, a recruiter or hiring authority has asked you to send them your resume directly.  Or, perhaps someone in your network has told you “I heard about an opportunity you would be perfect for.  I know who you need to send your resume to.  Here’s the email address.”  They provide you with the email where they would like you to send it.

Ideally, the subject line should contain only three things: 1) your name 2) the word ‘Resume’ and 3) the city or location of the opening.  It should look like this:

Chris Gustafson Resume – Dallas

Those elements in a subject line tell the recipient everything they need to know about what the email is for and what it contains.  There’s no guess-work or excess information.  If there are any other details you believe should be included, I recommend you leave that for the text of the email.  I recommend adding the city because all too often recruiters or hiring authorities have multiple positions in multiple markets.  Listing the location is a very simple way for them to know where the candidate is located.  It also makes it easy for future searching.  Presenting your information this way prevents the recruiter from having to guess what email your resume is in or opening multiple emails trying to find the one with your resume in it.  Additionally, if it gets forwarded, more often than not, nothing needs to be changed in the subject line.  It’s already ready to go.

And another quick suggestion is to label (name) your resume with your name only; first and last.  Don’t put the date it was last updated or anything else.  It just makes things confusing. Ultimately, you want to make the experience of receiving your resume via email an easy experience.  Who ever you send it to will want to name it based on their system so having a lot of additional information is unnecessary.

No matter what your line of work, you’re in sales.

After recruiting sales people almost exclusively for the past 13 years, I have come to view the job-search process as a sales process. Here’s why I think you should too.

If you are looking for a new job, you will be required to sell yourself, your skills, experience and training. Like it or not, you are now officially in sales. It makes no difference what your background may be. If you make the connection and see the similarities between the sales process and the job-search process, it will be much easier to navigate through it.

Some people have a difficult time tooting their own horn. Others find it difficult to even list the successes they have had in their career on their resume. They become uneasy in their own skin when circumstances require them to do so. If it has been awhile since you have had to create a resume I understand how difficult it can be. And by ‘awhile’ I mean 10 years or more. Things have changed dramatically since the last time you had to dust off your resume. I’ll address crafting a resume in subsequent posts.

At its most basic, the sales process consists of only a few steps:

  • Prospecting – What companies or people do you want to seek out? This also includes networking and getting referrals.
  • Setting appointments – How many interviews are you scheduling?
  • Making your presentation – Performing well in the interview.
  • Handling objections – Address their questions about your background and sell your skill and experience as the solution to their needs.
  • Closing the sale – Ask for the job!

Let’s start with prospecting:

You have lost your job and now you’re looking for another. Tell everyone you know. Your first thought might be to keep the information to yourself and I understand that. However, you need to overcome that initial instinct so you can prepare for what’s to come.

Telling your story often you will find you can never know where the next lead or opportunity will come from. They can literally appear from out of nowhere. Until you opened your mouth, you had no idea your neighbor of 15 years is a good friend with the hiring authority for that choice position you are after. Or, the high school or college buddy you haven’t seen or talked to in the past 20 years reaches out unexpectedly. You talk and find out he or she is well-connected in the industry you are trying to get into.

In these situations, you will need your connections to refer you to the people you need to get to. Likewise, the more people you talk to, the more referrals they are likely to provide. They can provide job leads you were unaware of, they can give you names and contact info of people at your target companies and they can uncover additional sources of leads. All of those activities can be considered prospecting. And you thought you weren’t good at sales.

Next is setting appointments:

On this step there is no direct correlation between the sales process and the job search. In sales, one can call prospect after prospect until they have the necessary number of appointments set to meet their goal. When looking for a job, unfortunately you cannot call every company you would like to work for and set interviews with the hiring managers. It would be nice if it worked that way but I’m quite certain those hiring authorities will have something to say about that. Instead, be ready when your phone does ring and a recruiter wants to schedule an interview. The goal is to have so many opportunities working at one time that you can have multiple interviews in any given week.

There is a good chance that your first interview will be a phone interview. If you successfully pass that test they will be scheduling the follow-up face-to-face (F2F) interview. And like the professional sales person you are, you want to schedule that next interview before you are off the phone. It may not always happen. But at the very least you want to ask the question: “Let’s go ahead and set that interview now. Is Thursday at 2:00 or Friday at 11:00 better for the hiring manager?”

Phrasing it that way is called the alternate advance. Give them an option to choose from. If neither of them works for the hiring manager they have to say so and will more than likely come back with yet another alternative.

Making your presentation:

This is the F2F interview. You are prepared, your resume is letter-perfect and you are exhibiting confidence and energy. Thinking like a professional sales person, what are they really good at doing? Asking questions. A professional sales person likes to get the other person talking. They listen more than they talk. Your job in the interview is to ask questions as well. What are the potential employer’s pain points? What are their biggest problems? If you were to start tomorrow what needs addressing right away? Find out by asking.

Handling objections:

By uncovering their issues you can craft your responses specifically to their needs; all based on your skills and experience. It is important to keep in mind that nothing about this process is about you. It is all about them and their needs. Solve their problems and you will be certain to stand out above all the other candidates.

Closing the sale:

After you have made your presentation and overcome their objections it is time to review a few things before closing the sale. You should review the process with them and ask about next steps. Some good questions to ask are:

  • Is there anyone else I need to speak with as a part of process? (Companies these days are notorious for not wanting to make a hiring decision. To support this behavior, many of them will throw in additional interviews at that final stage for additional reinforcement of their decision to hire or not hire.)
  • What is the rest of the process? (Do they know or does it sound like they are making things up as they go?)
  • When do you intend to make a decision? (Listen carefully to their answer. You will be holding them accountable to this if it drags on.)
  • How many other candidates am I competing against? (You want to know as much about your competition as possible.)
  • When can I expect an offer? (You know what their offer would look like because the salary has already been discussed. More on this in subsequent posts.)

If they dance around any of the questions pin them down. You can do that in a professional manner. Do not leave the interview not knowing the next steps and timeline. Sure, things can change but that just gives you permission to continue following up.

If you can envision yourself working there be sure to ask for the job. Tell them you can see yourself working there and would like the opportunity to do so. Keep in mind there are professional sales people who have difficulty doing this and it is their career. Feeling a little nervous is ok. But it is important to overcome that fear.

The salesperson that never asks for the business will never feed their family. It’s the same way in looking for a new position. When interviewing, you can never expect an offer if you do not ask for it. You would be surprised how many candidates never ask for the position at any point in the process.