In all the years that I’ve been doing this, I never met a candidate who thought they were any kind of a risk to a perspective employer . Every candidate I ever met thought that they demonstrated being an absolutely perfect employee in every regard. What’s so paradoxical about this idea is that when hiring authorities are interviewing and hiring, they look at every candidate in the most critical fashion. But when these hiring authorities become candidates, they don’t seem to see the risks that they pose to a potential employer. They don’t apply the same critical eye to themselves as they do to others.
Every candidate, no matter how perfect, poses some kind of risk to a potential employer. The candidate that has had three jobs in three years communicates the risk of being a short-term employee. The candidate who has been in their last job or company 10 years presents the risk of, “why would anybody be in the same job, or with the same company 10 years?” The candidate with a phenomenal, stellar track record is often considered “overqualified.” The candidate with a poor track record is considered a risk in spite of circumstances that may be beyond his or her control.
Risk factors account for 40% of a hiring decision. No hiring authority wants to run the risk of hiring an employee who doesn’t work out. Most hiring authorities are extremely sensitive to the risk factors that a candidate might pose. Many hiring authorities get grossly oversensitive to some of the “risk factors” they even imagine they see in a candidate. “Well, he really didn’t come after the job very hard…” “why did she answer a question that way?… I would’ve said…” “I don’t know, I just didn’t get a good feeling about him…” “he wore a custom-made suit to the interview, when we are casual here”… “he didn’t finish his degree so therefore he must not be a person who finishes things…” “I never heard of the firms she worked for…” Just the other day a client told me that, “the candidate is just too perfect… there’s got to be something wrong with somebody who is too perfect…”
Every job candidate poses some kind of risk factor to a potential hiring authority, even if they are a “perfect” candidate. It’s absolutely essential that every candidate know what their risk factors are when they go into the interviewing situation. They need to be able to offset those risks during the interviewing process with, preferably. good business concepts. Even if one or two of those risks are offset by the reason that, “I made one great big business mistake. And if I had to do over again, I’d do it differently.” (and a statement of, “this is what I learned from the mistake…” goes a long way to making lemonade out of the lemon.)
Every job candidate needs to ask themselves, “in the eyes of an employer, what kind of risk do I pose?”
