I’m continually amazed, even after 40 years of being in the placement and recruitment business how lackadaisical and reactive instead of being proactive job-search candidates are. For most folks about the most proactive things they do in a job-search is call a few of their friends, acquaintances, a recruiter or two and then, the ultimate job-search activity… send resumes over the Internet. They send and hope, send and hope, hope and send and send and hope. Hope is not a strategy! And then they tell me that there looking for a job really hard.
The most successful job seekers are the ones that are very, very proactive. They don’t just “send” a resume to a company. They pick up the phone and call the manager of the department that they would be applying to and present themselves as a job candidate and actually ask for face-to-face interview. They don’t sit and wait for the phone to ring. They pick up the phone and they call at least 35 to 40 people a day… people they know and people they don’t know… and make a presentation on themselves to a hiring authority while asking for face-to-face interview.
These people will find Linkedin connections to people and organizations they would like to interview with. They call these connections and ask for support to get an interview. They will actually sit in the lobby of a hiring authority’s office unannounced and try to get an appointment with him or her. They do whatever they can to make as many contacts and get as many interviews as possible. And they don’t stop even when they get rejected and refused. They realize that getting refused and rejected it simply a “no.” They know that they will have to get 15 to 20 “no’s” before you get a “yes.” It’s nothing personal, it simply means that someone else is going to get the opportunity to hire them. I know some of these candidates who actually count the “no’s” and celebrate them knowing that they are one more “no” toward a “yes.”
These kind of candidates push to get themselves interviews. Once they do, they prepare themselves extremely well for the interview. They practice their presentation of themselves so they have it down to as close to perfection as they can get. They are aware of their strengths and weaknesses in the eyes of the hiring authority. They sell themselves to their strengths and are aware of their own vulnerabilities. They sell their features, advantages and benefits. They end each interview by asking the interviewing authority their opinion about how they stack up with the other candidates being interviewed, if the hiring authority has any concerns about their ability to do the job and then they ask, the most important question, “what do I need to do to get the job?”
These people are relentless in getting as many interviews as they can even though they think they might be getting offers. They proactively follow up every interview with, not only a thank you but a summary of the interview and a phone call to the hiring or interviewing authority thanking them for their time and asking for a follow-up interview.
These kind of candidates never stop focusing on the process…the proactive process of getting initial interviews, performing well on the initial interviews, getting follow-up interviews, performing well on all follow-up interviews, making themselves unique in the eyes of the interviewing or hiring authority and then asking for a job. They are always in control of numerous interviewing cycles. They follow this process over and over and over and over until they find a job they really like.
