Tag Archives: job interview

Where Life Leads

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Job searches need to be active and positive. To sit around and wait for something to happen is no recipe for success. But as we navigate this maze it behooves us to listen, to watch, to receive impressions from our environment, because they may draw us toward that unimagined path of fulfillment and prosperity.

IMG_0074Life has a way of leading us in new directions. Sometimes the new path is suggested by something you keep bumping into, or from a casual conversation with a friend. Other times it springs from a sudden yearning within your heart. But whatever it is, or wherever this new direction comes from, quiet your busy-ness so that you can hear it.
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Our anxiousness during a job search can make the escape of mindless multi-tasking a form of self-medication. We are able to forget our fears when we are checking our favorite websites on our smart phones, or texting a friend, or posting on Facebook. The trouble is these “moments” extend into lost hours that are better spent elsewhere. Our real-world problems require real-world solutions, not virtual ones. And living in the real world may lead me down the unexplored path that solves the riddle of this maze called “job search.”

You Like Challenges…Then Why Don’t You Like Interviewing?

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I meet these people often. They are accomplished, professional and driven. They relish challenges and look forward to tackling tough assignments. But they don’t like interviewing for a job. Why is that? Isn’t it a challenge?

It’s because challenges get our competitive juices flowing while mismatches do not. A challenge is something difficult. A mismatch is something bordering on the impossible. It is like handing the car keys to someone who has never driven before, telling them where the accelerator and brake are located and then sending them out on Germany’s autobahn. Ciao! Buena suerte! Rottsa ruck!

The reason why the job interview is a mismatch is because it requires us to do something we’ve never been trained to do–sell. People who aren’t experienced in sales make a hundred rookie mistakes. They try too hard and appear uncomfortable, even desperate. But that is not the only thing making the job interview a mismatch. We are required to sell the most complex, difficult product: ourselves. Then, as if that wasn’t enough, we need to do it in the most pressure-packed arena there is; the job interview. It is a contest where only one person finishes first and there is no medal for second place.

No Medal For Second Place 7-9-13So what is a jobseeker to do? Become a salesperson? No, but you need to learn how the process works or you will adopt a sales style that fails miserably in the interviewing arena. The following link will take you to three sample chapters that reveal how our inability to meet this sales mismatch is only one of the problems we must overcome.

http://bit.ly/15BW2DZ

Emotional Tuning Forks

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Tuning forkPeople are emotional tuning forks. If there is a depressed person in the room, those around him will feel depressed. Same thing goes for an upbeat person. And guess who people prefer to be around? That question wasn’t very hard to answer, was it?

Since the interviewing process is all about being as attractive as possible, then our being always positive is critical. For as soon as we turn negative–express bitterness toward a boss or company, express fear or self-doubt–we repel hiring authorities. They don’t want to be around us. They look for someone else to hire.

Since we are emotional tuning forks, and it is critical that we are tuned to a positive frequency, we need to make sure we steer clear of negative people. People who doubt you, doubt the job market, doubt your chances, are filled with fear, anger, bitterness, are people to be avoided. Because their vibration will rub off on us and it will hurt our chances of being hired.

The Unwanted Gift

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It is difficult to think of job loss in these terms, but being unemployed CAN be an unwanted gift. Too often we are like sleepwalkers wandering through our routine existence, barely conscious of our surroundings, but losing a job changes this. It rattles our world and shakes us awake, and can lead to a  journey of self-discovery.

IMG_0205A successful job search campaign forces self-discovery upon us, because it requires us to understand what it is we bring to the hiring table that is valuable to a potential employer. Take, for example, the process involved in developing a value statement, aka the elevator speech (the first subject of the “You’re Hired!” radio show, hosted by me, that will begin on October 7, 2013).

Most people have an awful value statement, and there are several reasons why they are universally bad. One of them is they take a great deal of time and effort to get right. Like any good piece of writing, they need to be edited and re-edited many times. But it is one of life’s many ironies that getting back to work takes a great deal of work, and few people put in the required effort.

Another reason why producing a good value statement is so difficult is because it is your brand. Developing a branding statement is hard. It requires you to capture your core, but who knows what there core is? What are your strengths, weaknesses, interests and values? What defines you as a person? Some people will take a variety of assessment courses to help them find this out, and I recommend going down this path. Myers-Briggs, DISC, StrengthFinders, and so on, are helpful ways to gain insights into what it is that makes you unique. Then once you find this out, your brand becomes easier to define.

Had you not lost your job you might not have learned so much about yourself, and what you have to offer the world. It is a gift that unemployment can give you. We don’t ask for it, or want it, but like every test and trial it can enrich us in ways we never anticipated.

Navigating the Job Interviewing Maze

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the-comedy-and-tragedy-masksLife is funny… in a disquieting way. We are born into a maze that requires right turns and we have an innate predisposition to turn left. We see this perverse process acting out in the lives of countless jobseekers when they are interviewing. Almost all are doing the exact opposite of what they should be doing.

Why? How could such a large, diverse, often well-educated group be so consistently wrong in their interviewing approach? It is because the job interview is one of the many counter-intuitive mazes that we are required to negotiate. We turn left because it is the irresistibly appealing option.

For example, when I ask jobseekers, “Is the hiring decision rational or irrational?” they usually answer, “Rational.” After all, who wants to believe that such an important decision is irrational? So, during the interview, they turn left and bombard the interviewer with 100 reasons why they should be hired. Unfortunately, they should have turned right, because it is an irrational decision. People hire people they like, people they feel comfortable with, and the world of feeling and emotion is not rational.

Here’s another wrong turn. When I ask jobseekers if they sell during an interview they respond, “No way. I hate the idea of selling.” They are turning left in a maze of right turns, because any presentation that promotes a product is a sales presentation, and during the interview they are promoting themselves. Unfortunately, they’ve adopted the worst presentation style imaginable. Their data-dump of achievements and reasons why they should be hired is no different from a salesperson’s presentation of feature after feature. I can still see the horror on their faces when they finally realize they have not only been selling, but selling very badly.

No Medal For Second Place 7-9-13There are other reasons why jobseekers turn left when a right turn is the only correct choice, but if you want to discover what these wrong choices are, and how to fix them, then I would invite you to click on this link http://bit.ly/15BW2DZ and read the first chapter of my book, No Medal for Second Place: How to Finish First in Job Interviews.

Unless you’ve had professional training in the art of interviewing, it is highly likely you will answer the most asked question, “Will you tell me about yourself?” poorly. I’ve coached too many people to believe otherwise. You will likely hurt yourself when you answer the suicide questions–the questions that invite you to commit suicide–like, “What are your weaknesses?”

And I doubt you are employing the most powerful interviewing tool of all: stories. If you are–congratulations–but are you telling well-crafted stories that help your cause?

The bottom line is this: Continually turning left in a maze of right turns is frustrating, maddening and can cause a person to quit. If you are tired of finishing second in the interviewing race, and receiving a canned rejection letter instead of a job offer, then perhaps you need someone to help guide you through this counter-intuitive maze called the job interview.