Monthly Archives: February 2012

The Landing Expert Principles

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I am a practicing career coach and have noticed that in most cases, I guide my clients through 10 certain deeply held beliefs of mine that have evolved over my years of practice. I decided to call the concepts the Landing Expert Principles—naming them after my Web site, www.landingexpert.com

  • Job seekers should have their résumés written by a recommended, professional résumé writer known to produce excellent résumés. In today’s economy, just plain “very good” résumés don’t make the cut.
  • Based on the theories of Albert Mehrabian, professor emeritus of psychology at UCLA, an interviewer judges a candidate 55% on visual appearance, 38% on voice, and 7% on words.
  • The interview is a competition. The winner is the one who outshines other candidates, who knows the rules of the game, and who knows how to deploy all the tools.
  • The hiring decision is made during the interview, based on the impression the candidate leaves behind, which in turn is based primarily on the interviewer’s gut feelings. Unfortunately, such decision making is certainly not pure science.
  • The interviewer knows the candidate is there to sell himself, but the interviewer is not ready to buy everything the candidate wants to sell—except when two conditions occur:
    • The candidate recites facts and gives evidence about career background and ability to do the job.
    • The candidate uses adjectives or other kinds of self-descriptions in sentences that are in the third person—that is, the otherwise self-descriptions were said by others.
  • Interviewing is like dancing: it cannot be learned from a book but only from practice. The more one practices, the better one becomes at it.
  • Interviews are counter-intuitive: they’re not about the candidate; they’re about the candidate’s skills and experience as they relate to ability to solve the interviewer’s problems.
  • The interviewer is listening, but his hearing is selective: that is, when the candidate talks about himself, the interviewer barely hears it; when the candidate talks about how he can solve the company’s problems, the interviewer becomes more interested and attentive and is thinking, “Louder, louder!”
  • Before you answer each question during an interview, ask yourself in turn the question “So what?” which will force you to recount significant and meaningful examples pertinent to the questions.
  • To convey the most credibility as a candidate, provide facts via success stories from your professional past. Often use the expression for example and then (1) briefly describe a job situation needing resolution, (2) list the specific actions you took to resolve the situation, and (3) end by pointing out the resulting benefits to your team or employer.

More help for Job Candidates

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JTL Services, Inc. today announced a new division that is going to assist job candidates in their search efforts.

To be considered for this program candidates must be qualified.  Submit all resumes for review to: jeff@careercoachplus.com or jeff@jtlservices.com

 

Free Q & A today: Feb 14 @ 3 pm eastern

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Entertaining, empowering, no BS answers to your questions based on 22 years of working with hiring authorities.  You’ll find them addicting – many of the same people attend whether they have questions or not.   Recording always provided.  Register at www.AskFindthePerfectJob.com

Thank you for providing the Q&A sessions and the recording. This was my second Q & A teleseminar with you.  I asked you a question about some things you can say to a first time contact at a networking meeting, which you answered and provided some examples of how one could bring up something in a conversation with a first-time contact that the other party might find interesting (if not useful).  It was a helpful answer and also told me I’d better start networking now to avoid finding myself in the same position again down the road.  Thanks for your passion.
—Ed B.

Judi Perkins
The How-To Career Coach
www.FindthePerfectJob.com

Do You Want a Job or the Right Job?

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As a career coach, I talk mostly with two kinds of people: employed or in transition to another job. Sadly, people in both groups have one thing in common: most of them are unhappy. For those in transition, the unhappiness is self-explanatory, but why such a high level of unhappiness for those who are lucky to have an employer?

Several recent articles cover this subject. People who still work spend longer hours at it, and they face higher levels of stress. There’s no question that employee satisfaction is at an all-time low and that it has an impact on people’s health as well as relationships with family and friends.

A 2010 study found that in the United States, 55% of employees were not satisfied with their jobs! This is the highest level of dissatisfaction ever recorded, and the trend toward such dissatisfaction has strengthened steadily in the past 25 years. That means that unhappiness in the workplace is not directly related to the current economic downturn.

Unhappiness at work is not isolated. Unfortunately, it affects not only the unhappy people themselves but also those surrounding them. A recent Swedish study found a direct link between one’s relationship with one’s manager and the impact that that relationship has on one’s health: men who had toxic supervisors increased their risk of heart attack by 50%. A different study revealed that people of average height who felt unhappy at work added as much as five pounds to their weight.

A different, long-term study dealing with the impact of unhappiness at work confirmed that there is a strong correlation between one’s job satisfaction and one’s life satisfaction. Clearly, our thoughts, our emotions, and our performance on the job affect our behaviors away from the job and thus are affecting our loved ones.

What a job seeker can learn from all this is that it is of utmost importance to find out about a company’s culture, about the work conditions there, and as much as possible about the person one will report to before accepting the job. The sad—but practical—part is that even if one gets a great job at a great company with a great boss, in today’s economy things change so fast, and many of those changes are totally out of the control of the employee. So, what does one need so that work life harmonizes relationships and doesn’t destroy them? Luck—lots of it.

10 ways to sabotage your job interview

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If you’re job search isn’t yielding the results you’d like, chances are you’re sabotaging your own efforts.  Over the course of 22 years as a recruiter and 3 years as a coach, I have repeatedly seen people get in their own way and not realize it.  Here are 11 ways in which you might be compromising yourself.

  1. Not knowing what you want – Are you answering any and all ads that address your function, with little thought to title, the job description, your background, the size of the company, and how they interrelate?   Are you saying “I can learn it,” or “Piece of cake; I can do that in my sleep,” and applying little to no discernment?  Take an hour and plot, based on your entire career, what size company you prefer, how much creativity you need, if you get bored easily and need the stimulus of fixing or growing something, and what kind of environment you excel in.  Then focus on the job descriptions that meet that and ignore the rest of them.
  2. Being too picky – Some people time researching companies, trying to ascertain if they’d want to work there or not.  Often they’re looking for ways to screen it out so they don’t have deal with possible rejection.  Either way, you can’t possibly gauge the answer to that until you interview and find out about the job and the company, first hand, on a face-to-face basis.
  3. Carelessness – in your spelling and grammar.  Carelessness, coupled with poor English skills, seems to be increasing at an alarming rate.
  4. Failing to communicate your uniqueness through the results of your actions – 99.9% of all resumes list job descriptions for the bullets.  Job descriptions don’t differentiate your resume from everyone else’s.  If there are ten people with the same job title, and the same job description, there will be ten different results.  Make sure you communicate yours, because that’s what shows a hiring company what you can do.
  5. Using a generic cover letter – All companies are not created equally.  That’s because they’re run by people and people differ, which means each company, and each job, are going to be slightly different, even if the titles are the same.   Ads tell you what the company wants, and they want to know how your experience fits with their needs. Sending a generic cover letter is the same as telling a car dealer you want a sun roof, and he talks about how great the radio is.
  6. Having too much fun with Facebook – Every time you make a post or add a picture, ask yourself, “Is there anyone I wouldn’t want to see this?”  Don’t rely on your Facebook privacy settings.  Contrary to what some might think, this tip isn’t only for those in their 20s and 30s.
  7. Not following directions – “No calls please” means don’t call.  “Please provide salary requirements in your cover letter” means – to me – at least address the question rather than ignore it (there are ways around giving them numbers).  “Only online applications will be considered.” Yes, snail mail is better.  Unless they say don’t do it.
  8. Not writing a thank you letter – Incredible that so many don’t do this.  It’s extremely bad etiquette.  No excuses.
  9. Not researching the company – Yes, people wing it.  What were you thinking when you assumed you could fake your way through it?  You can’t.  Next time don’t bother to show up, because you wasted everyone’s time, including yours.
  10. Lack of enthusiasm – if you aren’t excited to learn more about the job, why are you there?  Some job seekers think that smiling, showing interest, and exhibiting vitality is unprofessional.  No, it just looks like you don’t care if you get the job or not.
  11. Having a lousy resume – What’s a lousy resume? Any or a combination of the following:  teeny font, bad  layout, difficulty determining one job from another, too many sections for each job, having a section called “selected accomplishments,” having an objective, having no summary/profile at the top, and most of all – which almost every resume has even if the rest of the problems aren’t present: having boring bullets that don’t communicate your uniqueness.

Finding a job is a skill.  If you’re not satisfied with how your search is going, you can change that.

Judi Perkins
www.FindthePerfectJob.com
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