Tag Archives: job search

The right words to end an interview

Posted on October 13, 2021 | Leave a comment

I once had a candidate end an interview with “How soon can I take my vacation days?”. Unsurprisingly, that did not end well. The CEO was already planning on hiring him. That candidate didn’t get the job.

When you end your interview with the wrong words, your interviewer often says, “They didn’t want the job. They never really expressed an interest in it. So we are offering the job to someone else.”

I rarely hear this about my candidates because I tell them exactly what they should say right before they leave. It should always be a variation of, “I want this job.”

Examples

“This is the kind of company and job I thrive in. I think we could work well together. Can we set up the next step in the interview process right now?”

“I have really enjoyed talking with you. Thank you for interviewing me. The job is something I would definitely like to do. Based on everything you have learned about me so far, is there any reason you would NOT hire me for the job?”

“I would like to work here. I enjoyed meeting the team. I can do an outstanding job here and I really want to go to work for you. Can we set up a time for our next meeting right now?”

“This is a great job. I would love to work with you. Can I have the job?”

“This is a great job in a great company. When can I start?”

If it all seems a little too gutsy to you, then go back and read the second paragraph. 

I only occasionally hear, “He didn’t want it enough”, from employers. That is when my candidates do not ask for the job.

Something to do today

Do you have a list of all the jobs you have applied for and the people you have talked to? That is another good list to keep in your job journal.

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Posted in Interviews

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Keep learning, and you’ll never be out of a job

Posted on August 27, 2021 | Leave a comment

My grandfather was a modern farmer in 1930. The local farm bureau agent came by and said, “The government will pay you to rotate your crops.” Grandpa replied, “That is the stupidest thing I ever heard. I already rotate my crops because I can grow more that way. My land doesn’t get worn out. It gets renewed.”

Grandpa was stubborn and wouldn’t take the government’s money to do something he knew he should already be doing. The guys from the conservation bureau had problems with him. He always implemented the latest ideas without waiting for them to come up with a program to get him to do it. Crazy old coot? Really, he was a visionary farmer.

Do you have to be paid to prepare yourself to earn more money? 

Reading about your field, reading books, or even listening to audiobooks on your way to work is the best way to keep current in your field. College courses in the evening are a great way to build the basics you need for a foundation for growth. Enthusiasm will get you into seminars and conventions. Pay for it yourself if you have to. It is worth it.

Don’t wait for someone to come and tell you what you need to do and learn. Go out and learn it yourself before that happens. 

Something to do today

Find new articles, books, or audiobooks in your field and write down a few things that stand out or are new to you. How can you apply that to your work?

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Posted in Finding jobs, Focus, Resumes, talent, Time management, Training

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How to be persistent with your job hunt

Posted on August 16, 2021 | Leave a comment

Kids can be a practically irresistible force. I have 10 children. Usually I can resist them. Not always. Sometimes they have to admit defeat, but with kids they don’t admit defeat till they have exhausted every avenue towards success. Here’s how they win.

  1. Be totally, irresistibly, and eternally committed to a world changing idea
  2. Jump up and down with enthusiasm
  3. “No” means not now
  4. “Not now” means try again in 5 minutes
  5. Laugh, smile and tickle your dad
  6. Run around and get all the other kids excited out of their minds
  7. Ask dad for help to figure out how to do it
  8. Cry if dad is not listening
  9. See if you can turn it into a school project
  10. Ask mom to talk to dad about it
  11. Bring a partially completed task to dad to be fixed
  12. Change your plans and try again in an hour
  13. A small explosion in the yard will get dad’s attention
  14. Make it a game

Kids win because they are too excited to accept defeat. They are willing to try every possible way around an obstacle. When I am the obstacle and they are really really determined, they know they can win.

Is there a job you really really want? Why not job hunt like a kid?

Something to do today

Take a pen and paper and translate each of those 14 things into something you can use for job hunting or working for a promotion in real life.

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Posted in Finding jobs, Interviews, Negotiating, Promotions, Resumes, talent

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Demand attention from the hiring manager

Posted on August 6, 2021 | Leave a comment

A giant cockroach steals the hero’s gun and swallows it, So the hero taunts the cockroach until it eats him. A few minutes later the cockroach explodes and our hero is standing there holding the huge gun the monster ate a few minutes before. Men In Black was a lot of fun. In that case the only way to save the world was to survive in the stomach of a giant bug.

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There has to be at least 5 great job hunting analogies there. Create your own, then read mine. I bet mine is different.

The giant bug wants nothing more than to get into its spaceship and get away. Of course the earth will be destroyed if it gets away, but that is not the bug’s problem. The two puny humans must do everything they can to keep it from leaving. They taunt it, harass it, insult it, and step on small earthly cockroaches (relatives and friends) to get it to delay its departure. They figure out what the bug can’t ignore and get it to come back and deal with them.

Hiring managers are like giant cockroaches. They just want to hide in their offices and get away from you. You are a waste of their time unless you tell them something that proves they need you. They would rather have their receptionist shred your resume than take the time to talk to you. Take three lessons from the way the Men In Black fought the giant bug:

  1. You have to find the right words
  2. You have to engage them in conversation
  3. A relative or friend may be able to get them to talk to you

Over the next three articles I will show you how to do each of these things. The giant cockroach, the hiring manager, will give you all the hints you need. I’ll show you what those hints are.

Something to do today

What do you need to do to get a hiring manager to need to talk to you?

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Posted in Attitude, Career choice, Finding jobs, Interviews, Negotiating, Resumes, Selling

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Are you buying a hirer’s attention?

Posted on August 2, 2021 | Leave a comment

Google is one of the most outrageously priced stocks in the market today. They give away services that competitors charge an arm and a leg for, and they make a profit. Google is the best company in the world that is in the attention business. If you are looking for a job or a promotion, you are in the attention business too.

Google started out as a search engine. It was a simple catalog. Then the owners started selling simple ads, but in a different way. That difference changed the internet. Macbook, Laptop, Google, Display, Screen

Go out and Google “jobs”. Everything you see on that first page is a response to your attention. There are a few ads at the top and to the right of your results. The results you see on the first page were also paid for by savvy marketers. Your interest and attention to “jobs” is a valuable commodity. Google is in the business of finding out what you will pay attention to, and serving it up with the least fuss and the most profitability. Google finds out what interests you and then shows you ads you really want to see. Their ads solve your problems. 

Now the scary part. Can anyone find you? My query about “jobs” produced 5,320,000,000 hits this morning. Even Google is selective about the information they present to me. They sell more by presenting less information. That’s why there is a first page of Google.

Let’s cut down the competition. Google “biomechanical engineer” in quotes and you get 69,600 hits, and a lot of the ads disappear. Google your name inside quote marks. I got 18,800 hits on “Bryan Dilts” because I am a blogger and businessman. Can anyone find you? Google is expert at finding what interests me and presenting the most important information in the first page. People can find me, can they find you?.

This is why you are in the attention business. To get a job, you have to get a hiring manager’s attention. You have to be at the top of his employee search. There is a huge amount of competition for his attention. He has to stop and look at you as a person. He has to call you, bring you in for an interview, and introduce you to the team. Then he has to decide to stake his career on hiring you. He has to pay a lot of attention to you. Are you doing what is necessary to be at the top of his search?

The next few days are about getting the attention of people who will hire you. Google is going to play a big part in the discussion, so go out and have some fun with it.

Something to do today

Cut a paragraph or phrase out of your resume and Google it. Do the same with a job ad. Have some fun.

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Posted in Career choice, Finding jobs, Interviews, References, Resumes, Selling

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Everyone judges a book by it’s cover

Posted on July 26, 2021 | Leave a comment

A woman teaching my daughters held up a copy of a magazine with scantily dressed women on the cover. She asked, “What do you expect to find inside?” The answer was, “Pictures and articles about sexy dressing and attracting men.” 

She handed the magazine to a girl and said, “Open it and read from any page.” Inside those covers was a religious magazine. The teacher made the comment, “If you dress on the outside like the women on the cover of this magazine, no one will bother to find out that inside you are a woman of character. They won’t even consider it a possibility.”

In the last article I wrote that perception really is everything. How you are perceived is always critical, especially to yourself. Over time your character is altered by all the little things you do. At first you act to give an impression, but eventually you act from the bone deep character you have developed while impressing others. 

Benjamin Franklin was brought up short one day when he realized he had developed a less than brilliant character. He was a smart, hard working man, and becoming successful. He had noticed that some people would cross the street to the other side when they saw him coming. He realized he had a poor reputation in many things. In his autobiography he describes his plan to improve his character. The simple device he used thrust him forward to prominence in the fields of writing, science, diplomacy and politics. 

As Benjamin Franklin started working on his character he wrote, “I was surpris’d to find myself so much fuller of faults than I had imagined; but I had the satisfaction of seeing them diminish.” He found that if he pretended to have a virtue long enough, he developed it as a part of his character.

I strongly recommend reading and re-reading Benjamin Franklin’s short autobiography.

Become the person you would admire.

Something to do today

What’s on your cover?

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Posted in Career choice, Finding jobs, Interviews, Resumes, talent

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Their perception will change your career

Posted on July 23, 2021 | Leave a comment

There are 10 extremely ripped bodybuilders making $1,000,000 a year teaching others to exercise. Each year a hundred men and women get PhD’s in exercise physiology and they will only become high school gym teachers. The guys making the big money work hard every day on how the world sees them. Perception really is everything in their world.

Actors and Actresses? They have personal trainers, chefs and makeup artists who make more than most business executives. They won’t leave their house without 2 hours of working on how you and I will perceive them. Perception is everything to them.

Glasses, Reading Glasses, Spectacles, Eye Wear, Reading

In every job there are people who, “Don’t care what others think.” They are rarely the best paid person in the shop. The ones who do care about “what others think” either succeed wonderfully or alienate others beyond belief. The ones who succeed make sure their bosses know what they have accomplished and what their team did. The ones who fail tried to grab all the credit for everyone’s work, not just their own. They fail because the perception becomes that they are conniving, scheming and untrustworthy.

Who do you respect? Did they earn that honor? If you respect a computer programmer because he “never sold out”, hasn’t he sold that perception? A musician who is famous for “never going commercial” cultivated that precise image. They all care for their image as carefully as Hulk Hogan of pro-wrestling fame. A great salesman who never counts his commissions carefully implants that perception in his customers. That is what he sells: perception of himself as only interested in the customer’s success.

Figure out how you want to be perceived. Be that person. Prove to your boss that you are that person with weekly reports that show it. That same proof can be applied to your resume. Show what you have caused to happen in the past and you’ll get the chance to do more in your next job. Perception will be reality. 

Something to do today

Ask a coworker or an ex-coworker how they perceive you. How do you want people to perceive you? What can you do to attain that new image? 

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Posted in Career choice, Finding jobs, Interviews

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Everyone wants a better bargain

Posted on July 21, 2021 | Leave a comment
Desert, Drought, Landscape, Sand, Tree, Nature

Buzzards circle overhead. Struggling across the desert mile after mile, a hiring manager finally can walk no further. He starts to crawl. A candidate drives up in a jeep with 100 gallons of water. He offers the hiring manager a ride to a hotel and all the water he can drink if he’ll split the cost of gas. The hiring manager says, “I’ll only pay you for the water. You are going that direction anyway.” The candidate shakes his head and drives off.

Everyone wants a bargain. It is just a fact of life that candidates want more money and hiring managers want to pay less. Your lifestyle is affected if you earn less. Thus is the lifestyle of the hiring manager. Managers are evaluated based on overhead. Even if they are rewarded on output, they want to cut overhead. It is their nature.

There is no magic chart that tells what you should be paid as an employee. I know one programmer who got a 40% raise when he finally realized he was worth more. He went to his manager and said, “Everyone else on my team is earning $50,000 per year. I’m better than most. Why am I earning so little?” What bothers me the most is that the manager and the employee felt good about the raise. How about a bonus to make up for the previous years? 

Even if you are the only person in the country who can save his company, the owner is going to look for a bargain. They just do. In the same vein, you will want a raise immediately after finishing training the company pays for. For some reason, a man dying of thirst still wants a bargain on a bottle of water. That’s why you have to be worth 10 times as much to be paid 2 or 3 times as much. 

Something To Do Today

Where have you been out-bargained in your job search? What can you change about you, to be a better bargain?

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Posted in Career choice, Counteroffers, Finding jobs, Interviews

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Measure and beat your competition to the job

Posted on July 14, 2021 | Leave a comment

James Bond, 007, has the best enemies. They are ruthless, evil and totally bad. When he “accidentally” kills one, you cheer. 

In your job search you don’t have to kill or destroy your opponents. All you have to do is get rid of them. It is a very simple process. The people competing against you must be known, measured, and either beaten, eliminated or enticed elsewhere.

Fight, Fight Club, Boxing, Sport, Punch
  • Known

Who else is applying for the job you want? Is it college graduates, high school kids or guys who have been in that industry for 20 years? You have to know how they are like you and how they are different. If you are exactly like everyone else, you won’t be noticed. If you don’t fit in at all, they probably won’t hire you either. If you don’t know who is applying, call up the company or recruiter and ask.

  • Measured

I call and ask why the people applying for a job are not getting hired. I ask HR and hiring managers exactly what skills and traits they are having trouble finding. You can certainly call HR or a recruiter and ask. They can’t fire you. You don’t even work there yet. You can also see if you can find old ads for the same job. Look at what has changed from the old ad. They are probably emphasizing the hardest to find traits in newer ads. Another possibility is to just think a bit. What are the hardest to find skills they are asking for? Do you have any of those skills?

  • Beaten

Since you know and have measured your competition, beat them flat out if you can. Emphasize your strongest qualifications. Tell them how well you can do the job. Prove you have done similar things in the past. Say what is different about you. Mention in passing how you have all the traits every other applicant has, but do something to stand out.

  • Eliminated

I prefer to eliminate the competition entirely. The best way to do that is to have someone tell the manager to call you without even presenting a resume. Okay, you may have to give them a resume to hand to the boss. Either way you can eliminate the competition by leapfrogging the qualification process. Get in front of the hiring manager before he sees anyone else. He may decide it isn’t worth his time to look any farther than you. 

  • Enticed elsewhere

Some jobs and companies are so wonderful everyone is applying for them. If you know you can’t beat the great masses of people, you are going to have to go somewhere else. Look for a job where the masses of people are not applying. It may be in a very small company. Ask everyone you know, “Who needs someone with [my skill]? The masses are enticed elsewhere. They see high profile jobs. You will be looking for the less obvious openings. Become an expert in locating companies that could use your skills, but aren’t widely known.

Your competition is easier to get rid of once they are known and measured. Then they can either be beaten, eliminated or enticed elsewhere.

Something To Do Today

Write in your job journal about what is unique that you’ve accomplished in the past. It needs to sound exceptional. 

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Posted in Career choice, Finding jobs, Interviews

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Guts and Glory Job Search

Posted on February 9, 2018 | Leave a comment

Knights charging into battle

Do you want what you earn from a “guts and glory” job search?

A 5000 email spam campaign may get you a job.  That’s why there are people who will legitimately email or fax your resume to a boatload of recruiters.  If you want to spend the money on it, go ahead.

But the risk and reward are small.

Putting your resume on a hundred job boards may get you a job.  I used to have a link to Resume Rabbit, who would do it.  If you want to spend the money, go ahead.

But there is no hard work and little reward.

The Guts and Glory way

How to REALLY get a great job is personal contact. Here’s why: if I put an ad in LinkedIn or on a job board, 50 to 1000 job seekers will reply.  Most of those will be unqualified for the job.  Basically, I have to wade through spam to get a few gems. Similarly, last week the same resume was sent to me 5 times.  It was from a guy in Texas who tries to hide where he is from so I will call him with a job “anywhere in the US”.  It is spam.  I delete a lot of spammed resumes.  I call 1 out of 50 of them.

The people who get my attention every time are:

  1. Recommended to me by their friends, or
  2. Call me personally and introduce themselves, or
  3. Are recruited by me when I call them directly at their jobs.

All three are guts and glory ways of contacting someone.  Getting a friend to recommend you or calling yourself is a very high risk and high reward way of looking for a job.  Sending an email or applying online is a no risk and very low reward way of looking for a job.

Cowardice is too strong of a word, but an effective one.  Email is not cowardly, it is just the least effective avenue of attack you have.

Personal calls and recommendations from friends are the most effective way to get that job you really want.  Hiring managers insulate themselves from job hunters so they aren’t bothered by unqualified and ill prepared job seekers.  If you are absolutely qualified and prepared why not use the absolutely most effective job hunting techniques you can?

Do a search for “networking” on my blog site archives.  I have written a lot of articles on how you can find the people you need to contact.  Look for a title that includes “networking”.

The easiest way, however, is just to call the company.  Ask, “Who is in charge of US sales?” or, “Who is the head of computer programming?”, or “Which VP runs commercial lending?”  Then call that person and ask them what you can do for them.  Say, “I’m Jim Tarrington.  At my company I report to the guy who does your job.  I’m looking for a job.  Is there a place I would fit into your group?”  Then listen.

Try a high contact, high risk, and high reward way to job search.  Give it a shot.

Something To Do Today

Which 3 companies would you most like to work for?  Or, which 3 advertised jobs do you want the most?  Get a friend to recommend you, or call in yourself.

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Tomorrow:     Absolute proof it is time to leave your job

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Posted in Finding jobs, Followup, Networking, Perseverance, Uncategorized

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