Tony Beshara

since 1973, I have never met a candidate that thought they were a risk… Every candidate that I ever interviewed thought that they would be a glowing employee and that hiring them would never be any kind of risk for a hiring authority…

But the truth is, every candidate is a risk in some way … and every hiring authority, whether you like it or not is looking at what kind of a “risk” you pose to them…

The hiring authority is asking himself or herself, “if I hire this candidate what is in his or her background that is going to cause me to regret hiring them … are they going to be here a short period of time … are they going to fail on the job … am I going to have to fire them? ”

“risk factors”come with every one … a number of years ago,  I placed a candidate with a company who had a heart attack and died about a month into the job … the hiring authority, when he called me, implied that I should have known that the candidate had a bad heart… Go figure?! … now I realize that he was simply venting his frustration, but how could I know the candidate was going to die?

30% of the hiring authority’s consideration of  you as a candidate is going to be based on what kind of “risk” you are … in other words how is it not going to work out with you as a candidate when you become an employee?

Some “risk factors” are obvious … if you have had three jobs in three years, the hiring authority is going to be concerned that if he or she hires you you’ll only be there one year… If you have made significantly more money than the job pays, the hiring authority is going to be concerned that even if you take the job, you will keep looking for a higher paying job… If you’ve been the president of the company or the owner of a company, the hiring authority is going to be concerned that you’re going to come into the organization and “tell them” how they ought to run it… If you have been a bit of work for an extended period of time, the hiring authority is going to wander why you haven’t been able to find a job … never mind that unemployment is high and good jobs are difficult to find, you’re still going to get this question…

So, as you prepare to interview, think about what kind of “risk factors” you pose to a potential employer … don’t give me that business of “I’m not a risk”… because every one poses some kind of risk to a perspective employer…

Be sure, in your presentation of yourself to perspective employers that you offset the risks that you pose … and you know what those risks are … if you’ve had three jobs in three years be ready to offset that concern … if you’ve been out of work for an extended period of time be ready to offset that concern…

But offset these risks in the presentation of yourself BEFORE they come up or you have to be asked, … you can even make them a positive … something along the line of, “I realize that I’ve had three jobs in three years so, whoever I go to work for is going to get a five year to seven year commitment from me and as long as they’re around, I’ll be there… I can’t afford another short stint on my resume. ”  Do  this before you are asked, “why have you had so many jobs in the last few years? ”

Think about your risk factors … deal with them!

I’m continually annoyed with people who put “fillers” in their speech patterns, especially in the interviewing situation. I know they’re not conscious of their using these “lip loads,” but they are still annoying.  Here are the ones I hear most often:

“You know… you know… you know”… it makes you sound so stupid

“Honestly”… as though you haven’t been honest with me and the other things you’ve said?

“Let me be honest with you”… which means you haven’t been honest with me up until now?

“Trust me”… and you say it so many times that I have to really wonder if I can or should.

“Let me be transparent”… as though you’ve been hiding stuff from me throughout the whole conversation.

“The truth is”… as though everything else you said hasn’t been the truth.

If you are in the habit of using these kinds of “fillers,” you need to practice getting them OUT Of your vocabulary, especially when you are interviewing. Interviewing and hiring authorities are making very quick judgments about you and everything about you based on very little information. Most of that information is communicated in what you say and the manner in which you say it.

These kinds of lip loads are used because people are very nervous. And worst of all they are uncomfortable with silence so they fill the void with these kinds of sayings. None of them amount to much, but in a 35 or 40 minute interview if you say them fairly often, that’s what people will remember you by. It takes about 10 to 14 days of practice but you can be rid of these things and quit embarrassing yourself.

It sure crept up on you awfully fast, didn’t it? You have absolutely no idea that much time could pass since you were working. It just kind of crept up on you. After you lost your job, you took a little time off because you “hadn’t had a vacation in a while.” Then you started casually looking around thinking, “last time I looked for a job, it didn’t take me that long.” It took six or seven months for you to all of a sudden get serious about finding a job and then, all of a sudden, you found out how darned difficult it was to do.

So, now you’re beginning to get interviews because the economy is getting a little better and you have to try to explain why it’s taken so long for you to find a job or why you have been out of work so long. After the first couple of interviews like this, you really understand that an employer is very cautious, even dubious about the fact that you’ve been out of work so long and will normally discount all of your excuses. You will have caught on that a hiring authority is much more likely to want to hire someone who is either presently employed or, if unemployed, for only a short period of time. Every time you go to explain you become more and more self-conscious and you can literally see the doubt on the hiring authority’s face. Since most of them have not been out of work that long or even experienced that kind of thing, they have absolutely no idea the challenge you have had. In fact, their attitude is, “What’s wrong with this person?” They think, “There’s got to be something wrong with somebody who can’t find a job in a whole year.” And then they move on to the next candidate.

There isn’t much you can do about this attitude, except when you get the chance to get in front of them for an interview you cannot try to make excuses for being out of work for a year, blame the economy, etc. You must take full responsibility for it by saying something along the line of, “I really had no idea it would be this difficult to find a job. In years past when I’ve looked for positions, I’ve always been able to find one relatively rapidly. I have been actively getting as many interviews as I possibly can. (It is not a bad idea to have on hand the names of the companies that you have interviewed with or the kinds of positions you have interviewed for.) I have come close on a couple of opportunities and decided to pass on a couple of others because I didn’t think it was a good opportunity for the company I was interviewing with or for myself. I want to be very careful to be sure that the next opportunity is a long-term one.” Then, shut up about why you’ve been looking for a job for so long and ask questions of the employer about the present position you are interviewing for. It’s that simple.

If you do anything other than this, it is going to dig a deeper hole of doubt, uncertainty and fear on the part of the hiring authority regarding you as a candidate. If you make excuses, you’ll sound like a whiner. If you go on and on about why you started so late to look for a job and express the bad luck in getting interviews, you simply won’t look like a wise business person. Most every way you try to explain this problem will be very treacherous. The “mea culpa”, simple quick statement above is the best way to do it.

If anyone has come up with some great “lip loads” to deal with this issue, please share them with us.

Perseveration. It occurs when candidates who are having a particularly difficult time finding a job play their issues and failures over and over in their mind.

“Why can’t I find an interview?…What’s wrong with me? … Why didn’t I do better on that interview?…They told me they were going to call me back and they didn’t.… I thought I was perfect for the job.… They told me they were going to hire me and then they didn’t.…I’ve never had a problem in getting a job before, what’s wrong with me?… I must be doing something drastically wrong.… Don’t these people understand how hard it is?… This just isn’t fair.… I was making that kind of money 10 years ago.… The gal I interviewed with, I should be her boss.… Those people couldn’t even tell a good candidate if they saw one.… I know I didn’t do very well in the interview but that shouldn’t make any difference.… Those people that interviewed me don’t know what they’re doing.”

Pick any one of these statements and read it over and over and over and over again. That’s perseveration. It’s depressing and it is not the way to look for a job.

Everyone who reads this is going to agree that they shouldn’t do it. But they do. And it further depresses them. So, when this kind of conversation in the head begins, a well-grounded candidate will stop themselves and begin this kind of self-talk:

“I knew it was going to be hard, but I didn’t know it was going to be this hard. I have to work harder at getting interviews. I have to do the right things in order to get interviews.”

“I can’t do anything about the past and I can’t do much about the future. All I can do is control what I do right now. Right now, I’m going to take massive action.”

“Let’s see, what did I do wrong in that interview? I need to figure it out so I can correct it.”

“I did the best I could, but I do have to get better. That was a learning opportunity and I’ve grown from it. Now I know things are difficult, but I’ll get better.”

Well, I think you get the point. Negative perseveration leads to nothing but disaster.

The importance of rituals and routines in your job search cannot be overemphasized. Whether you’re looking for a job full-time or looking for a job while you have one (which is like having two jobs) it’s very important to develop specific patterns of  living (rituals and routines) that allow you to focus your mental and emotional efforts on doing everything you can to find a job.Good routines are designed to prepare a job seeker for their best performance, mentally, physically and emotionally.

Routines and rituals mean that you set a schedule that you follow every single day of your job search. If you’re looking for a job full-time, it’s writing out a specific schedule that you don’t deviate from so that you don’t have to “think” and spend mental energy on inconsequential decisions. Inconsequential decisions like, “What time should I get up tomorrow?”… “Which shirt should I wear today?”… “What suit should I wear?”… “What should I have for breakfast?”… “What time should I eat lunch?”… “Who should I call about an interview?”… “What plan should I have for today?”    “Should I simply blow today off and go play golf?”… added together take a tremendous amount of mental and emotional energy.

The result of too many of these inconsequential decisions is called decision fatigue. There have been a tremendous number of psychological studies showing that even after making a number of inconsequential decisions that are just that, inconsequential, people get emotionally and psychologically tired and they don’t do as well on cognitive tests.

Decision fatigue is further exacerbated when someone is looking for a job because of the emotional strain of looking for a job and, if it’s the case, trying to keep a job they don’t like which they are leaving as well as trying to find a new one. Decision fatigue can happen really quickly and put the individual in a debilitating mood. I’ve often wondered how much this factor plays in those 94.7 million people who are out of work with 50% of them reporting that they just plain quit looking.

Routines and rituals help minimize decision fatigue. Minimal decision fatigue frees an individual’s mental and emotional efforts to focus on the process of looking for a job, i.e. getting interviews, performing those interviews, etc. It’s hard enough to function well in the job search process without decision fatigue. Bluntly, there’s always going to be some of it, but the idea is to minimize it as much as possible.

Are your rituals and routines helping you?

One of my candidates was speaking to me this week about her disappointment in not being further in her “career.” She was lamenting the fact that her career had seemed to stall when she had made the decision to take a few years off to stay at home with her children. She was fortunate enough, economically to be able to do that. She is now in her mid-40s and, although in a good job, she would like to move faster. She expressed the idea that maybe if she hadn’t taken the 3 1/2 years off to stay home with the kids she might have been able to go further.

Now my expertise is helping companies find really good talent and helping great candidates find new jobs. I’m not a psychologist and the philosopher in me (as well as the “psychologist” in me) is simply  a result of the experience I’ve had in helping people since 1973 and paying attention to what I’ve seen and experienced.

As I’ve mentioned before,raising kids is the hardest job in the whole world. From a father’s (male) perspective being a mom is the most difficult challenge a woman could probably have. I expressed to this lady my sincere belief that raising kids is a whole lot more important than any career. At the end of our lives and especially in the twilight of our lives the way our children have turned out will far surpass our position on the corporate ladder. Her career will be, at best, a footnote to the impact she had on the world by raising children. A successful career is third or fourth place compared to being a successful parent. One of the reasons our society is so messed up is that we have put a career on some pedestal confusing it with “success.”

Some women absolutely have to work to make economic ends meet in the family. I understand. And my heart goes out to them. Nobody said that life was easy…for any of us. We all have our burdens and our challenges. But it is how we meet those burdens and challenges that make the difference.

I advised my candidate that when she looks back on her career, it won’t be anywhere near as important as the raising of her children. We only get ONE shot at raising children. Careers, jobs etc. can come and go and, at least in America, we can start all over as many times as we wish. We can’t “start over” at raising our children.

I suggested to my candidate that the “career” aspect of things and how far along she might get or have gotten is maybe the wrong focus. Maybe the focus should be the quality of her work And how well she accomplished what she was doing. Did she do her work the very best she could? Was it just a j-o-b, or did she throw herself into her work and do the very best she could? Did she personally grow in the process of doing what she did? Was she, in the metaphor of Martin Luther King, the best street sweeper she could be? Did she do everything she could to perfect the gifts that God has given her?

Our perspective is usually defined by our own experience. The personal growth that I’ve experienced in my career would not have been possible had it not been for a wonderful spouse, Chris, who was a “career mom” doing the yeoman’s work of raising five wonderful children. And now she is having the joy of being a wonderful grandmother. We were blessed and I, particularly fortunate, to be so lucky.

But even the business that I nurtured, pales in comparison to the impact that raising children has. Again, for those women that have to do both our prayers are with you. However, our society’s emphasis on our being a “business career success” at the expense of being a fine parent, especially a mother, has our laddr on the wrong wall.

I’m not saying that people shouldn’t be concerned about their career… both men and women. I am saying  that we need to stop and think about how what we do, professionally, meshes with our being a parent. I repeat, you only get a shot at that ONE time.

At the end of your life, it won’t be your customers, your CEO, your business associates who will be easing your death.

One of the things that seems to help people going through an emotionally charged experience like a job search is to start a prayer list. It’s so simple it’s almost stupid, but we have found over the years that people who do this seem to have an easier emotional and psychological experience in difficult and tough situations.

My sense is that, even aside from being a “believer,” offering up spiritual thoughts and prayers for other people, one of the most important things this practice does is to help all of us focus on people who are less fortunate than we are. There is such a tendency toward self-pity the longer a job search goes on and the more difficult it becomes. No matter what anyone says, the experience is lonely and often loaded with fear.

Most of us will have a tendency to wallow in our own misery…until we encounter someone or hear about someone who is much worse off than we are. How often have all of us rocking along in our lives with ordinary challenges and difficulties and then all of a sudden find out that either a close friend or an acquaintance has been diagnosed with cancer or experienced  deaths in their family, of their spouse, child or parent or more profoundly, dies. Just last month one of our candidates who had also been a client of ours for a number of years had a heart attack and died at 53 years old. This kind of thing sobers us up really quickly and all of a sudden we put all kinds of things in perspective. We realize that all this craziness of life with its normal ups and downs aren’t anywhere near as difficult as we think.

So, one of the ways of being more proactive with humility in our own struggles is to start a prayer list. Every time you hear about someone who has had a challenge in their life, be it small or large, write their name down on a list. You don’t even have to tell him that you’ve done this. And every day or two look at the list and offer up the words or thoughts of, “God bless them.”

Having practiced prayer all my life, I’m very aware that it is still a “p-r-a-c-t-i-c-e.” I will never perfect it. And probably wouldn’t even know the perfection of it if I did. I will admit that it is still a mystery to me and, truthfully, sometimes admit to myself a little bit of doubt in its efficacy. But, I and others keep praying because we do believe that it helps others.

If you’re not a believer, that’s all right too, you can adopt Pascal’s theory, that even if you aren’t sure, if there’s a chance that belief in prayer works, it’s certainly worth doing. It costs you absolutely nothing and, if nothing else, helps you focus on other people. You may not have to be a believer in goodwill to offer others goodwill.

Lest we get too philosophical here, start a prayer list. Offer up some positive spiritual thoughts for other people. You’ll be amazed at how much of that kind of gift will come back to you.