This confidence game isn’t the same as the scam. This one applies to those who have been hunting with no results and are becoming discouraged. Rapidly.
Let’s go back to how most people search, because that’s where the problem – or problems – are. Your cover letter neglects to tie you to the ad and your resume fails to entice. Or perhaps your cover letter sells and your resume is full of accomplishments, but you’re answering unrealistic ads. Or perhaps you’re targeting ads wisely, but being overly picky, forgetting that ads tell if you want to interview, not if you want to work there.
Most people stick with the job boards, unwilling to do the work necessary for cold approaches and afraid of putting their ego on the line for follow ups. They’re fed up with trying to reach recruiters, generally because they’re doing it in an ineffective manner. Consequently, between the cover letter, the resume, and the search method, nothing much happens. Competition is stiff these days, and only one person reaches the finish line.
Frustration sets in. Discouragement piles up. The shoulders slump. The mouth isn’t smiling. And then the thoughts begin: “Why is no one hiring me?”, “I’ll never get a job!”, “Why doesn’t anyone respond to my resume?”
Discouragement breeds negative thoughts, which breed more discouragement, which breeds more negative thoughts, which are compounded by money worries, or how much you hate your job, or the lousy traffic, or the weather, or whatever. The worse it gets, the more it bleeds into everything else.
Then the phone rings, and someone wants to schedule you for an interview. After a moment of happiness, your discouragement from the lack of response translates into self doubt. If you’re so good, why didn’t all those other companies call you? You hope this one goes well, but you wouldn’t be surprised if it doesn’t.
And guess what happens? It doesn’t go well. Would you be surprised to know you created that outcome? Thoughts are energy, and they influence the results. If you’re thinking negatively, your body language will depict lack of confidence and joy, your tone of voice will be small and hesitant, and your sentences won’t come out with assurance. Instead of sitting up straight and asking discerning questions, you’ll be a less than stellar interview.
You don’t feel confident, so you don’t project confidence, thus you can’t sell yourself. Why would you get hired?
And an overwhelming percentage of the time, the discouragement that perpetuates these negative situations has nothing to do with your capability, skills, or marketability, and everything to do with things that can be changed, which then change the outcome, which then change your perception of yourself, which then brins about more positive results….and it spirals up, instead of down.
If nothing is happening, get help. Find out what the problem is. And in the meantime, be aware of what you’re telling yourself, because 90% of the time it isn’t you, it’s what you’re doing – or not doing. And you’re taking it personally. Contrary to what people think, job finding is a skill that can be improved, thus improving the outcome and your disposition.
One reason why prep and homework are so important is because you remember the contributions you’ve made to your previous employers. This helps to bolster your self confidence, diffusing the uncertainty and fear. When you’re consciously reminding yourself of what you can bring to the table, you think, “I’m good! Someone is going to see that sooner or later, and they’ll get a great employee!” And that’s what comes across instead.
Stay aware of what you’re thinking. Stay aware of what’s taking place with your demeanor. And if you find it going downhill, find a way to boost yourself back up. Because if you don’t, all you do is perpetuate the problem.
A job interview is the final step before getting the job. It’s the most critical step because if the candidate does not convince the decision maker of being the ideal candidate, the job goes to someone else. Preparing for the interview is not to be taken lightly. To win this tough competition, one needs to invest time and effort, must feel commitment, and must persevere. Following are a few practical steps.
1. The single most important thing to do during interview preparation is to hold live mock interviews with someone experienced and competent in this area.
Practice the 20 most common interview questions again and again until you feel confident.
Focus on learning about the prospective employer’s problems and immediate needs.
Prepare for reciting fact-based success stories from your past that are relevant to what you’ve learned about the hirer’s needs.
Practice, practice, and practice some more. You’ll be happy you did!
2. Learn as much as you can about the company.
Begin with the company’s Web site, and look at every page. Drill down into details to mine specifics you could talk about with the interviewer.
Find out who are the people you’ll interview with, and evaluate their LinkedIn profiles.
Check out who they’re connected with on LinkedIn.
Attempt sleuthing into the company via these connections to find out about the company’s culture and, possibly, specifics about the position.
Find out what your interviewers are tweeting about. This might be challenging because people sometimes use pseudonyms. Use topsy.com for your research.
Do searches on YouTube and Vimeo. Don’t underestimate what you can find out in these hidden places.
Look for and review blogs posted by your contacts at the company.
Use free tools to gain additional knowledge—for example, klout.com and blog.linkedin.com.
Do Google searches on both the interviewers and the firm. Go through several pages of the results.
3. Answer the following questions.
Do you fit into the organization?
Do you have the skills, education, and experience required?
Do you possess experiences and skills to offer in support of the company’s mission statement?
Can you recite via a vignette or two some past experiences that would serve as a natural evolution into company growth?
4. Engage with the interviewer via questions that prove your value.
Ask questions you already know the answers to.
Show the interviewer that you’re very familiar with the industry and the company’s competition.
Preparing for a winning interview is hard work and takes many hours, if not days. By doing such preparation, one gains not only specific knowledge but also a lot of confidence.
One of the most basic rules in economics deals with supply and demand. Today’s job market certainly has a significant supply: 13.9 million people looking for jobs. But demand has been meager for the past several years; it probably will continue to be for the near future; and—at least at this point—it does not show any robustness. The immediate impact of this discord manifests itself by only a few people getting jobs.
In theory, the process of getting a job is simple: human resources department employees, outside recruiters, and hiring managers review multitudes of applicant résumés and eliminate all except outstanding ones. There are many of the latter, and less-than-outstanding résumés get filed in the black hole. A further elimination process is in place via phone or video screenings, with the target objective to request applicants appear for in-person interviews—but typically, no more than three to five of the seemingly best prospects. Ultimately, of course, only one is going to get the congratulatory letter.
In practice, since more and more job seekers know the rules of the game, they’re trying to maximize their chances by getting outside help. There’s been a significant uptick in the trend of job seekers’ hiring professional résumé writers, followed by the trend of working with career coaches to specifically improve interview skills. Both professional résumé writers and people who offer career coaching services appear to be costly. Plus the expense comes at a person’s time of trauma, anguish, and high frustration level, but what is the cost of those things combined with lack of a steady paycheck?
Most people realize that job seeking has become very competitive in every occupational field. Even most colleges, as part of their applicant-screening process, interview potential incoming students before making final determinations. As a career coach specializing in the interview process, I see more and more such college student applicants who engage my services. Furthermore, many military veterans returning from years of service find themselves unprepared for the next phase in their lives, and they reach out for assistance with job search counseling and interview skills enhancement.
It’s not enough to be able to say you did great things in past; you now need to sell that to someone who’s willing to pay you. Do you know how to do that?
After introductions and small talk this would be the time to ask a question to start the interview on the right foot. Say it in your own words but this question sets up the interview for you:
“What kind of person are you looking for and what are you looking for this new person to do for the first 6 months to a year?”
This now gives you insight to what the interviewer is looking for. Your response should be catered around what they have told you. You need to make sure that when you answer to be specific and that you use real examples of your past to back it up.
So many people base their interview on a job description rather than the interviewer. Job descriptions are just a guide to what the company has posted and perhaps the hiring authority or manager is looking for something more specific. That is why when meeting with multiple people you should ask that same question.
Some other questions that you should consider to ask towards the end of the interview would be:
What are some of the departmental goals?
What are some of the goals of the organization overall?
Where do you see this company in the next 5 years?
What’s the upside potential of this position?
Remember that an interview is a two way street. You need to find out the questions that are important to you so that you can determine if you want to work there. If you are working with a recruiter you want to stay away from salary and benefit questions and leave that for your recruiter to work out for you.
For more: Interview preparation
Thanks to Fisher-Price, as babies we learn a concept that we seem to forget by the time we’re adults: you can’t put a square peg in a round hole. And people are doing this more than ever in this market, as they continue to go about job searches totally backwards and how they give themselves away on the interview.
We do the “square peg in a round hole” especially with relationships and with jobs. If we don’t know what we’re looking for, we become obscured by what we’re attracted to. And then we don’t realize we’ve reverted to pounding the round orange peg into the hole on that plastic table right in front of us when it’s the square blue peg that fits.
These days, job seekers don’t care. They want a job! Any job! Ironically “these days” this concept is even more important than it is when the hiring market is healthier.
But because people need a job, they’ll continue to force it – and with a lot of hard work, sweat, and stress – it can be made to fit, but never very well and never for very long. Eventually that peg is going to explode out of the hole into which they’re trying to mash it.
And by the time they realize it’s not fitting, they’re so far in that instead of realizing what’s happened and getting out, they try harder to make it work or else they do nothing. In both cases, not only does the fit fail to improve, it becomes more tenuous with time.
Failing to define what they want is where it begins. And unless luck intervenes, it’s not long before the new job – or new relationship – isn’t as satisfying as it initially appeared. Additionally, when they realize that what they have isn’t what they want, they wait too long to leave. And in leaving one job for another, desperation does not breed objectivity.
Avoiding the “unhappy at work” syndrome can be solved in a few simple pro-active steps especially if you don’t get bogged down in the discomfort and fear of the minutae along the way.
- Acknowledge you hate your job and want to be elsewhere – and realize it before you feel you have to leave at any cost
- Get a solid idea of what you like, don’t like, what motivates you, at what you excel, under what circumstances you produce your best work, etc, by examining your previous jobs
- Identify exactly what you want in your next job and under what circumstances you’re willing to bend your needs
- Actively go find it, and exclude anything that doesn’t match it or come close
- As you interview – and learn more information about each opportunity – pursue it if it fits and dump it if it doesn’t
You’re looking for the company that meets your profile, and is looking for an employee like you. Every person is unique, and every company and job is unique. Job hunting isn’t that different from dating. In a bad match, both parties will be unhappy and resistant to being changed by the other. But when the bad match is your new job, you’ve gotten married a whole lot sooner so there’s a bit more involved than just breaking up and going home.
Beyond knowing what you want in your next company, you need to be aware of why you’re valuable, what you have to offer, under what circumstances you can best contribute to a company, and how and why you will be an asset and a value-added employee.
Because otherwise, whether you’re tempted by the salary, blinded by the desperate need to pay bills, operating under a haze of assumptions or – having stuck your resume on a job board and waited for a miracle – finally having found something, you might soon discover it’s not the Utopia you thought it would be.
So pay attention to that long-ago lesson you learned sitting on the living room floor. Know if you’re a square blue peg, a red triangle peg, a green rectangle peg or whatever you are before you go looking so you’re able to spot the place you want to be. Not only will you find you slide into place and rest there contentedly much easier, but you’ll find you get a job much faster, too.
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BIO: Judi Perkins, the How-To Career Coach, worked with decision making, hiring authorities for over 22 years. She’s seen over 600,000 resumes and knows how hiring authorities think and how they hire. As many of her clients who have found jobs in 4 – 12 weeks agree, her perspective and method is much different from that of other career coaches, because her unique background results in a very counter-intuitive but holistic approach encompassing skills, psychology, and sales. Clients come to understand why the typical strategies in finding a job so often fail, and learn what to do instead, why, and how, yet never hiding or sacrificing who they are. She’s been on PBS’s Frontline, Smart Money magazine, articles for CareerBuilder, MSN Careers, Yahoo Hot Jobs, and the New York Times, among others. She’s also been featured as an expert in numerous career books. Sign up for her free newsletter and receive a comprehensive resume report in return! www.findtheperfectjob.com
