AP Photo - Adrian Dennis
Years ago, I had a large office in the Wall Street area with a personal secretary screening my phone calls, opening mail, taking dictation, and managing my calendar. Since then of course, the business world has changed. The next phase had executives sharing a pool of secretaries using floppy discs working on word processors. That was followed by an administrative assistant supporting at times an entire group.
Whereas years ago the hiring process and the hiring decision were the exclusive domain of the executive, nowadays—since so-called teamwork has become a major part of the work environment—hiring decisions are often shared and thus made by several team members. That process supports the concept that a group decision is better than an individual decision. As a result, the process has become convoluted, protracted, and not necessarily better—in my opinion.
Today’s job market is flooded with lots of very qualified candidates chasing very few openings. The way hiring happens has also changed. Technology has infiltrated the process, and today’s submission of one’s candidacy is purely mechanical. Nobody sees the candidate’s skills and qualifications unless the hiring manager’s keywords match those on the résumé, and only then is the original résumé reproduced for reading. Once that happens, several candidates get reviewed via a selection process.
To save time and money, a phone interview, or screen, is the next hurdle candidates face. It’s usually accomplished by someone junior in the human resources department who does not fully understand the hiring department’s particular needs. If an external recruiter is the intermediary between the candidate and the hiring company, then the recruiter’s financial motivation is playing a key role. That’s because recruiters work for the company paying their commissions.
Decision Making
Decision making is a complex process because several parties have a say and a stake in it. For example, sometimes the human resources department representative’s opinion carries significant weight, and other times the rep is merely a paper trail processor. Sometimes a candidate is interviewed by several people in addition to the final decision maker. Those others, too, have a say—because hiring managers want to show their support of their teams by demonstrating their collegiality—but to what extent those other opinions matter is probably variable. And what happens when a hiring manager favors a particular candidate but several others who’d be future peers of the candidate show resistance? In addition, in most cases hiring managers know the thinking and mentality of the person they report into, so what happens if their own opinion is opposed regarding the type of person who should be hired?
A recent large survey was conducted among human resources professionals and hiring managers. The survey clearly found that by far, the number one factor in the hiring decision is the fit factor—meaning, the determination about whether a candidate will fit into the culture of the company. Fully 100 percent of the respondents said so! But what is this culture that’s referred to? Who defines it? Who interprets it?
Some companies use exclusively behavior-based or situation-based interview questions. The tenet here is that past performance is a good indicator or predictor of similar such performance. I wonder if those companies can decisively demonstrate that by practicing this theory, they become able to hire and retain a higher-caliber labor force.
Ultimately, of course, it is people who make the final decision about which candidate to offer the job to. The interview process is certainly not a science but an art. Can that art be learned in order to improve one’s chances of being hired? Well, I’m sure you know the answer to the old riddle that asks, Do you know how to get to Carnegie Hall?
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Think what the interview is all about. Sorry, but it’s not about you. It’s about the interviewer’s perception regarding your fit into the organization’s culture combined with your ability to perform the job very well. No interviewer is looking for Mr. Average. So, what does the word perception include here? Primarily two issues: the image you create in the interviewer’s mind and the facts you bring as evidence based on the organization’s specific circumstances or problems it needs solutions to.
Your image
This subject is complex. It incorporates the interviewer’s personal biases, cultural perceptions, and personal likes and dislikes as well as age and gender and all the rest of the items covered in antidiscrimination laws vis-à-vis the organization’s culture. The candidate will get evaluated on appearance, looks, attire, passion, excitement, body language, smile, tone of voice, accent, and many other factors combined.
The facts
The interviewer knows that the candidate came to the interview to impress and sell himself to the potential buyer. That’s why the interviewer is selective and suspicious. It’s because of having to evaluate whether the candidate’s answers represent opinions or facts.
The first impression
When meeting an interviewer for the first time, the job seeker is creating an image. If the impression is a good one, it carries throughout the interview. If the impression is unfavorable, the candidate has to fight a probably losing battle—often without knowing it.
The interview
An interview most often starts with chit-chat or a warm-up period consisting of a few easy-talk sentences. Then, once the interviewer feels comfortable, he signals the beginning of the interview.
There are several common interview questions, and candidates must be prepared for them with the right answers. How many of you have had interviews that didn’t have a starting lead-in such as, Tell me about yourself, or a starting question such as, What are your strengths or accomplishments?
Preparation for the interview must include great answers to such basic questions. The candidate’s objective here has to be to engage the interviewer to the point that the interviewer becomes willing to tell the candidate the specific problems he’s looking for the right candidate to resolve. In answering, the candidate must select the right words, give pertinent answers, use positive phraseology, and not be long-winded. Lack of preparation for that opener or showing nervousness and lack of enthusiasm is a sign of weakness. The interviewer is also expecting the candidate to look in his eyes.
Nowadays, some companies are using what’s called situational, behavioral, or, sometimes, case-study-type questions. The thinking behind this concept is that if in the past one behaved a certain way, then this personality trait will likely be continued. Most of these types of questions start with such wording as, Tell me about a time when, or, What was your strongest, toughest, etc. [fill in the blank], or, Can you cite an example that . . . ? Many candidates are not properly prepared to answer such questions or in fact do not have a rich repertoire of such experiences. With some preparation and guidance, though, anyone can excel—even in the face of such difficult questions.
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As a career coach, I am at times asked for such advice as whether I believe a person is a good fit for the person’s current profession or some future one. Usually, I refer such a case to my business partner, who is a well-qualified and experienced career counselor who meets with clients several times before a mutually agreeable answer is reached.
I’ve seen people change careers even after a very long period in one profession. Such a change is very challenging, because typically, the person has already attained a certain salary level, and starting in a different profession does not afford such a job seeker the credibility and experience needed to compete with others who’ve been already on that track for several years. However, in a different context, parents of juniors and seniors in high school ask my opinion about their children’s future. And in that context, I came across a comprehensive study by Georgetown University. The study focused on the value of having a bachelor’s degree.
The study evaluated 171 majors and found some eye-popping results. For example, the study found that the median annual earnings of someone with a bachelor’s degree can vary from $29,000 for a counseling psychology major to $120,000 for a petroleum engineering major. From that example, one could rightfully question the value of a college degree to start with. About 8 percent of all college majors fall into the category of business management and administration; those graduates have a median annual income of $58,000. About 5 percent of all majors are in general business; those graduates have a median annual income of $60,000. Accounting majors make up 4 percent and have a median annual income of $63,000.
The Georgetown study also looked at the correlation between college major and pursuant profession. For example, 19 percent of physics majors went into computer and management occupations; 14 percent went into engineering. About 18 percent of liberal arts majors went into management; 15 percent went into sales. At the other end of the spectrum are majors that are extremely unpopular—to the point of representing less than 1/100 of 1 percent, or 0.01 percent, of majors—such as nuclear engineering, soil science, and pharmacology.
More interesting and unsurprising facts that the study found are that the nursing major is made up of 92 percent females and 8 percent males, that nuclear engineering attracts 91 percent males, and that elementary education comprises 91 percent females.
The study ranked respondents by race and ethnicity. For example, among African-American students, the most popular major is school student counseling, at 38 percent. For Hispanics, biology engineering is the top major, at 22 percent.
The most fascinating information in the study covered people’s earnings. Customarily, earnings are bracketed as falling in such categories as high, low, and then the 25th, 50th, and 75th percentiles. As mentioned earlier, the major with the highest earning capacity is petroleum engineering, whose 75th percentile is $189,000 annually, whereas the median is $120,000.
A subset of the study dealt with the disparity between male and female incomes. In most cases, males are paid more than females by various percentages, but in some cases—for example, the information science major—females’ median annual earnings are $75,000, whereas males’ earnings are only $65,000. The conclusion is that women earn the most with a degree in, say, pharmacy-pharmaceutical science and administration, and the least in, say, theology and religious vocations.
In summary, nowadays the options and opportunities for young people to pursue their careers’ desires are very complex. A good decision and a good fit can keep a person happy and well compensated, whereas a career based on a poor or haphazard decision can result in many years of misery and a path to poverty.
The formula expressed in the title sounds so simple yet for some is difficult to achieve. So let’s together demystify the two elements for getting a job offer.
The Résumé
Because of the enormously large pool of job applicants nowadays, even a very good résumé may not get singled out when compared with the many outstanding résumés. It’s a competition for sure, and only, say, five résumés might be considered for invitations to face-to-face interviews. So, how does one put together an excellent résumé? That depends: if you have good writing skills, you can draft a résumé and then have some people whose proficiency and judgment you trust review and edit it for you until it becomes excellent. Consult career coaches, human resources professionals, or recruiters. Hopefully, you’ve developed good relationships with such people, who will agree to help by expressing their opinions.
If you are not skilled with language, I suggest you seek a professional résumé writer who has performed work for others and brought them success. This is a good investment, since otherwise, you’re merely spreading around a noncompetitive résumé that brings no action–and you will never find out why. Many people fall into that trap, and they therefore lose time and of course the opportunity to make money. So, how does one know whether one’s résumé is excellent? The answer is very simple: Excellent résumés get action. The rest don’t–or do only very rarely.
The Interview
Congratulations! Your résumé was attractive and intriguing enough to persuade a hiring manager to want a conversation with you in order to explore your candidacy for an opening, competitively with a few others. Now the real competition starts. All of those who have been invited to interview stood out too and could potentially take the job, meaning that they have the skills for it. But the hiring manager has another need to satisfy–and that is whether you fit and will be committed to the company. Ascertaining whether you fit is very much psychological on the part of the hiring manager, who is asking himself whether your future peers would accept you, whether you and he are aligned ideologically, whether his own boss would consider you a good hire, and whether you represent a promising investment. And there are other, similar questions, whose answers can be rather subjective.
The hiring manager’s final area of vital interest has to do with whether you seem committed to the job. He wants to ensure (1) that you have potential for growth within the company, (2) that you won’t move to a competitor if the company goes through some difficult times and someone else is offering you a fraction more compensation, and (3) that you deliberately targeted this company as an employer.
If you can convince the hiring manager that you’re the right choice, if you answer questions properly, and if you project positivity and energy, your chances for getting an offer are good. Good luck on your next job. Feel good about yourself. You deserve it.
Alex Freund is the founder of Landing Expert–Career Coaching. His Web site includes a current and comprehensive list of job search networking groups in New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Connecticut, and the city of New York, and the site is visited by thousands of people every month. Landing Expert is a premier career-coaching service with the objective of preparing job seekers for interviews. Alex’s clients are gaining knowledge, receiving marketing material, and acquiring the know-how to beat the competition.
Alex can be reached at:
609-333-8866
Nobody likes to be a nobody, but unfortunately, that’s what you are at the beginning of the job search process, provided you’ve just joined the ranks of those in transition. Those who are the decision makers about your future do not initially know anything about you, so you have the chance to impress them, and you want to make darn sure it’s a very good impression.
So, how are you going to positively influence hiring managers, human resources folks, and recruiters? To start with, record brief greetings on both your answering machine at home and your mobile phone, and project a clear, mature, businesslike, and overall positive message. Your children are cute, I’m sure, but leave their greetings for sharing with family and friends and not potential employers. Next, get into the habit of answering your phone professionally. Answering with “Hello, this is John Doe,” with a friendly and inviting tone of voice, is best. Get into that habit even if you think you can identify the person via caller ID. Don’t make exceptions to the rule, because you’ll be sorry if you didn’t answer properly when it’s someone you really want to impress. You also want to make sure your e-mail address is nothing less than professional. An address like bigmama@yahoo.com or anything cute or sexy could be detrimental to that first impression.
Your next opportunity to create the right image is via your résumé. This is probably the single most important document you’ll be evaluated by, and it will determine whether the hiring folks want to invite you to an interview or not. Remember that the first impression is a lasting impression. This is an extremely critical stage because résumé readers typically review large numbers of résumés, and having only one opening to fill, their intention at this point is to reduce the number of résumés to three to five final candidates for interviewing. In fact, this process of reviewing the résumé is divided into two parts. The resume reader’s objective is to eliminate résumés that clearly seem to lack something. It might be something as simple as an unattractive appearance, improper use of language or grammar, lengthiness, overly detailed experience, or a lack of accomplishments.
On one hand, many résumés contain listings of job duties as described in job descriptions and not actual accomplishments. The résumé reviewer expects to read about accomplishments on the job. If your résumé doesn’t pass this 10- to 30-second scan, it’s likely that it will be set aside and never resurface again. Unfortunately, you’ll never find out that that was the case—except by the lack of any next steps.
On the other hand, if your résumé passes this first-blush review, it will be read thoroughly, along with another 10 or 12 others, and will be ranked on a competitive basis. Probably only three to five candidates will be called in for face-to-face interviews. With that decision, you move on to the next stage in the job search process, in which you have to get ready for the final test, which is to convince the hiring manager and others interviewing you that you are their ideal candidate. Good luck.
Alex Freund is the founder of Landing Expert–Career Coaching. His Web site includes a current and comprehensive list of job search networking groups in New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Connecticut, and the city of New York, and the site is visited by thousands of people every month. Landing Expert is a premier career-coaching service with the objective of preparing job seekers for interviews. Alex’s clients are gaining knowledge, receiving marketing material, and acquiring the know-how to beat the competition.
Alex can be reached at:
609-333-8866
