Tony Beshara, Author at Tony Beshara Blog

About Tony Beshara

Tony Beshara is the owner and president of Babich & Associates, established in 1952, and the oldest placement and recruitment service in Texas. It is consistently one of the top contingency placement firms in the DFW area and has been recognized as one of the “Best Places to Work in DFW” by the Dallas Business Journal. He has been a professional recruiter since 1973 and has personally found jobs for more than 12,000 individuals. He sits behind a desk every day, working the phone literally seven hours of the twelve hours a day, making more than 100 calls a day. He is in the trenches on a day-to-day basis. Tony has personally interviewed more than 30,000 people on all professional levels and has worked with more than 75,000 hiring authorities. Babich & Associates has helped more than 100,000 people find jobs using Tony’s process. Tony is one of the most successful placement and recruitment professionals in the United States.

…your linkedin picture

Like most recruiters, I use LinkedIn a lot. I’m continually blown away by the ridiculous pictures that people put on their LinkedIn profile. People seem to forget, or totally ignore that employers looking at your LinkedIn profile are trying to make a business decision about whether or not they ought to interview and hire you. Here are descriptions of some of the pictures that I have seen over the last two days and an interpretation of what a potential employer thinks when he or she sees them:

an artistically drawn caricature of the candidate… What the hiring authority thinks? “Is this guy or gal a cartoon?”

A candidate bouncing her one-year-old on her knee… What the hiring authority thinks? “This gal is gonna want to stay home with her baby rather than be at work.”

A candidate standing with his golf club on the #1 tee, smiling… What the employer thinks? He sure loves golf. Probably be more interested in being on the golf course than at work.

A group of six women “quasi” partying… What the employer thinks? “Well which one is the person I’m trying to review? Looks like they’re having fun. Not very professional. I’ll keep searching.”

A picture of the candidate coaching his kid (or group of kids) in baseball… What the employer thinks? “This guy’s more interested in coaching his kids that he is in working. He’ll probably spend a lot of time doing that instead of working.”

A blonde 30 something year old who’s head looks like an egg with a candy cane like band around her forehead…the caption says: “professional salesperson.” What the employer thinks? “Professional? Are you kidding me!!?”

No picture at all… What the employer thinks? “A) This person doesn’t want to go to the trouble to put a picture on their profile. B) They are ashamed of the way they look, or C) They don’t want to reveal that they’re old. Any or all of the above!”

Well, I’m sure you get the point. At least 10% of the pictures on LinkedIn profiles are going to actually keep the candidate from getting an interview. Think!!!!

By Tony Beshara|2015-04-06T08:23:55-05:00April 3, 2015|Job Search Blog, job search strategies|

…lies

it happened again today…oh, my goodness..this is soooooo sad..

a candidate I placed started his job last week..the company finally got around to checking his background and found that he lied about having a degree..they fired him on the spot..

in the last month, we have had three candidates who were either fired or had their offer rescinded because the client company dug into their background and found something that was either a cover up (i.e. a job they didn’t have on their resume… usually a short one)or an outright lie (i.e. degrees, dates of employment, etc.)

since 1973, i have never understood why people lie …especially about something so easy to check as a degree..you either have one or you don’t and it’s so easy to discover one way or the other. There are also so many services that can dig into a person’s background and find literally all of the places they have worked even if they aren’t on their resume.

(I had a candidate tell me one time that he really had graduated from the University of Oklahoma, but that the reason they didn’t have a record of his degree is that the registrar’s office had burned down. I’m not sure which is dumber, the lie or the story.)

DON’T LIE..it is dumb…dumb…dumb

By Tony Beshara|2015-03-27T22:02:22-05:00March 27, 2015|communication, Job Search Blog|

… if you are the smartest guy in the room, you are in the wrong room

this is kind of a sad story that centers around how a person’s ego can get bigger than their game and it winds up doing them in…

Mark was an VP… and I say “was” because, up until the beginning of this week he was…for a $200 million company. When he inherited the region, it had never made its goal. He fixed that real fast… he fired the right people, hired new ones and managed a team of 12 executives for the last few years. He did do a really fantastic job in turning the thing around.

Even though he was the top producer in the company, the company had been going through some pretty rough times. He let it be known more than once that he disagreed with management and that things should be done differently. He was always the smartest guy in the room. (His reminding folks, from time to time, of his 4.0 gpa from a prestigious MBA program didn’t help either. And the name dropping was pretty obnoxious.) He didn’t mind sharing his opinions with a number of his peers and other people who would listen. After all, he was the top VP in the company and was pretty convinced that they would never mess with him.

From time to time, he didn’t mind entertaining other job opportunities. Over the last few years he, apparently, went down the road with a number of these firms for leadership positions, but for various reasons, didn’t get the jobs, or couldn’t relocate or turned the jobs down. To make things worse, he didn’t mind letting it be known to some of his peers and other people in the company that there were “lots of other organizations who would be interested in him.” He didn’t seem to mind letting his peers and others know how “valuable” he might be to others. There was also an implied, “these guys don’t know how good they got it with me…they should listen to me more” attitude. After all, he was the top VP in the country and, I guess, was feeling untouchable.

When a promotion opportunity became available, he was passed over. It really pissed him off. He let that be known too. He asked the powers to be why he wasn’t being considered and, even he, realized he got some pretty weak, ingenuous excuses. He moaned about that to just about anybody that would listen. But keep in mind, he was still producing the best results in the company.

Well, last week, he got canned. His boss called up and just told him they were gonna let him go. It didn’t seem to matter that he was a top producer. What mattered was they just didn’t trust him. He tried to defend himself by saying that even when he looked for a job, he didn’t do it on their time. “Everybody looks for new opportunities all the time,” he said. “We are all kind of free agents, aren’t we? Just look at people’s LinkedIn profile, everybody’s always open to new opportunities.”

What is sad is that Mark is a good guy. He did perform well. But having to be the smartest guy in the room got old. He didn’t keep his ego in check. He thought he was a little bigger than the company and he let folks know it. None of us are ‘untouchable.’

If you gotta be the smartest guy in the room, someone will decide you are in the wrong room.

By Tony Beshara|2015-03-21T12:05:46-05:00March 20, 2015|keeping the job you have|

… kudos to Michael

A large part of the reason that so many people stay out of work for so long is that they don’t have the courage to push a prospective employer to interview them. They say things to me like, ” well, I called them once, and they never called me back.” (“Poor, poor pitiful me!”)

So here’s what happened. I tell Michael about a company that I have presented him to. I tell him about the SVP who is probably going to do theinterviewing and give him every bit of ammunition about the job, the company, how we should sell himself etc. My client, the SVP, who has also been a candidate of mine and I’ve known for 15 years, is one of those kind of guys who hardly ever returns a call, emails me in the middle of the night telling me that will have to catch up in the next couple of days, but doesn’t seem to get around to it. Having done this for so long, it only bothers me because when I get an exceptional candidates it’s hard to get a hold of the SVP, and both he and the candidate lose out on a great opportunity. I called the client at least 25 times about Michael… even tried him on Sunday mornings because he told me I could do that,… evenings… anytime I thought it was a good moment.

Now there lots of recruiters and other people who would say that it’s just not worth it to do that kind of thing. If the guy isn’t interested in calling you back or emailing you back he’s not much of a “client.” But, I have to tell you that his company is wonderful and he has three or four excellent opportunities. He’s going to hire somebody. It’s not much effort to make the calls. My ego is in check and I just don’t have any expectations to expect a call back. And, of course, I’m getting Michael other interviews.

So, after calling me two or three times about the appointment that I just can’t seem to get Michael, I keep telling him I’m trying. (Damn weak excuse for a recruiter who is suppose to know what he is doing.) So, guess what? Michael calls me today and says he has an interview with the company on Monday with five of the managers he needs to be talking with. Michael didn’t sit around and moan and groan about the fact that he wasn’t getting this interview (or blaming his lousy recruiter). He picked up the phone and he left four or five messages for my client, the SVP, explaining that based on what he had learned from me, he was absolutely perfect for the job and the SVP really needed to interview with him. Success! The SVP’s internal recruiter called Michael today and arranged for a full day of interviews.

Now, this kind of thing won’t work all the time. Michael still hasn’t talked to the SVP. But that’s okay! He’s got five interviews on Monday. Kudos to Michael for making it happen. if more people were this aggressive about getting interviews like this, more people would go to work.

Good job, Michael!

Next week…why more folks don’t do this.

By Tony Beshara|2015-03-14T09:46:54-05:00March 14, 2015|communication|

…the $90,000 ego mistake

‘Never let your ego get bigger than your game,’ …excellent candidate, Mark…needs to find a new gig..we present him an excellent opportunity …he interviews on two management levels..does real well…going to the next level… hiring authority says he’s the best he has seen…

In debriefing Mark about the two interviews he had with the firm, he says: “You know, you don’t remember it, but you all got me a job offer from this outfit three years ago.” “Really,” we say, “what happened?” “Well,” he says, “on top of a good job offer they even offered me 1000 shares of pre-IPO stock. They are now public and the stock is at $90 a share. I ought to have my ass kicked.”

He continues, “What happened was that they first offered the job to another guy. He turned it down. They then offered it to me. I got pissed that I was the #2 choice so turned it down. My ego got the best of me. I really should have taken the job. The company is doing great and now that they are public, I’ll be able to buy stock if they hire me, but i could be $90,000 richer today had I taken the job then, and I probably wouldn’t be looking for a job.”

never let your ego get in your way…could cost you $90,000

By Tony Beshara|2015-03-08T21:18:06-05:00March 7, 2015|job search|

… “I was just too busy to spend that much time”

We have for candidates interview for an excellent opportunity. Tim and Cindy go into the interview with business plans after doing research… Cindy has a printout of every project currently underway or in the planning stages that she is doing that applies to our client’s business… Tim has a 30-60-90 day business plan that he would implement if he got the job. Each of them followed our instructions to the ‘T’, i.e. called some of our client’s customers, some of the people that worked there..Tim went to LinkedIn and found two people he knew who had worked for our client in the past, called them and got a report. They were both very prepared. They followed our interviewing tutorial, and then some.

Sam, the third candidate, did some research on the company and the hiring authorities. He called a potential customer with whom he had done business with before who might use our client’s products. He asks them to look at the product and report their thoughts on the product, But by the time he gets to the interview he had not heard back from them.

Michael, the fourth candidate does some research on the company and the two interviewing authorities he was to speak with. He comes up with some ideas on how to sell the product that are quite different from the way the client is presently selling their product. (Where he came up with this idea, we have no idea.) He bombs the interview when he brings his idea up. (They wanted to hear what he could do for them not how he could change their selling process.)

When told that they aren’t going to be moved forward in the interviewing process because they were simply outsold by their competition, Sam and Michael were downright pissed. Sam’s response was “if I knew that’s what they were looking for, I could’ve put something together, too.” Michael’s statement was, “I was just too busy to spend that much time.”

It appears that our client is trying to figure out how to hire both Tim and Cindy. It hasn’t happened yet, but they are trying.

We run a very large recruiting firm and we hear, on a daily basis, “I can’t believe I didn’t get the job… I’m perfect for it!” Both Sam and Michael were surprised… Sam, even shocked … that they weren’t moved forward in the interviewing process. The reasons are obvious. Even after our coaching and their reviewing the interview tutorial module of www.thejobsearchsolution.com, they still screwed up. They just didn’t care enough to do the work that it took to interview well.

So, the next time you hear someone complain about not getting the job, question them about how much effort they put into the interviewing preparation. Funny, Sam and Michael, on paper, were infinitely more qualified than Tim and Cindy.

By Tony Beshara|2015-02-27T18:58:32-05:00February 27, 2015|interviewing|

… things can come back to haunt you

We had a candidate who was an employer of ours who hired people from us…four years ago, he was interviewing candidates and, as many employers do, he didn’t really communicate with all of the candidates he interviewed.. in fact…he was rude to them…telling them he’d call them, then never do it…telling them they were good candidates but never following up with them..totally rude

Now everyone is busy, but it is courteous to do what you say you will do…many, many hiring authorities don’t do this..in fact, it is one of the biggest complaints we hear, that the hiring authority says they will call them and follow up with them, or have them back and then don’t ..

Well, one of the guys he treated this way is now a hiring authority…we presented our candidate ..who was the original hiring authority, the one that was rude to the now hiring authority…

Our client laughed laughed and said there was no way he’d ever interview him even if he was the last candidate on earth..because he’ been so rude four years ago…

what goes around…comes around

By Tony Beshara|2015-02-23T12:30:02-05:00February 20, 2015|interviewing|

talking about money on the first interview

The rule of thumb is to never talk about money on the first interview. I’ve had more candidates over the years get eliminated probably by making this mistake than most any other in the initial interview. The biggest mistakes that people make are asking stupid stuff during the initial interview like, “What does this job pay? I making $XXXX now and I want to be sure that what you all are paying is in line with what I need.”

Anything, frankly, in an initial interview that even smacks of, “what can you do for me?” Is going to send the interview in the wrong direction. if you give companies good enough reasons of why they ought to hire you, they will give you good enough reasons as to why you should go to work there and you don’t have to worry about the money or anything else. Now you may not accept the job…for lots of reasons…but you want to be in the drivers seat and get the offer.

The only comment you should make about money in an initial interview should center around a statement of what you are making now and then postponing a discussion of what you might be looking for. So, when you are asked “what kind of $$$ are you looking for?” The answer: “well, I am presently making $XXXX (…or was making $XXX) and I’m not as concerned about the money as I am the company, the people, and the opportunity. I have found that if all of those things come together, the money usually takes care of itself. I’m sure we will get a chance to discuss that down the line.” And leave it at that…don’t say any more.

If you are pressed by the interviewing authority to talk more about money, insist again that money is just one aspect of an opportunity and, just like the company will do, and you will take that into account with all of the other factors about the job.

Remember, again companies are often more flexible about the money they’ll pay the more they like you as a candidate. We had a CFO candidate sell himself so well that, even though they told us the job would pay $150,000 they wound up offering our candidate $250,000. Now that’s a pretty drastic difference and not one we see daily, but nonetheless it happened primarily because the candidate didn’t discuss money during most any of the interviews.

By Tony Beshara|2015-02-13T20:10:11-05:00February 13, 2015|interviewing|

… your LinkedIn profile

If you are looking for a job, and even if you’re not, it’s really, really important to have a very professional LinkedIn profile. At least twice a week in my own personal practice, which is placing IT salespeople, sales managers and VPs, I have at least two candidates get eliminated because of their poor LinkedIn profile. So, here are some pointers:

Make sure your picture is a professional one. Pictures of you with your kids, your cat, your car, the latest fish you caught, bumming around on the beach are NOT professional. Pictures taken with your iPhone, or ones that are out of focus, blurry or with bad light will help you. Pictures taken with your Skype camera that make your head looked like an egg aren’t good either. P-R-O-F-E-S-S-I-O-N-A-L!! And by the way, if you don’t have a picture employers will think you are either very, very, very old or very lazy. They ask, “what’s wrong with this guy or gal that they don’t have a picture?”
Make sure that the content of the jobs you had is consistent with your resume. 40% of the time… Yeah you read it right, 40% of the time people’s LinkedIn profile do not agree with their resume. You’re sitting there thinking “that’s stupid” and you are absolutely correct. It is first class stupid. Please don’t be stupid. Fix the damn thing.
Quit with the 555 endorsements. Nobody cares about your endorsements. They care about what you have done and how well you have done it.
As with your resume, make sure it is very, very, very clear what And how well you performed at each one. I can’t tell you the number of resumes and profiles I review where the candidate doesn’t even make it clear what the companies he or she has worked for do. It’s as though they think the whole world knows their company. There are 7.1 million businesses in the United States and 98% of them are known to very few people.

Don’t discount or pooh-pooh your LinkedIn profile. More and more employers are using the profiles to preview candidates. Make sure your profile is perfect.

By Tony Beshara|2015-01-30T23:18:43-05:00January 30, 2015|communication|

…inattentional blindness and your job search

Daniel J. Simons is a professor of psychology at the University of Illinois. He studies human’s attention, perception and memory. In most every study he has ever conducted, he has discovered that most all of our skills regarding attention, perception and memory are nowhere as good as we think. His most famous study was conducted in 1999. He asked subjects to view a video of six people passing two baskeballs back and fourth. The subjects were asked to count how many times three players wearing white shirts passed the basketball while ignoring the players wearing black who passed their own ball.After a few passes a person wearing a gorilla suit expectantly walks through the scene. 50% of subjects failed to notice the person in the gorilla suit. ( You can find this video on YouTube.)

Simons’ proves the theory that there is a big mismatch between what we see and what we think we see. This condition is called “inattentional blindness.” He has even tested the effects of this in real world conditions. Subjects were asked to follow an experimenter on the backof a truck while they were jogging. While jogging, they were to monitoring how many times the experimenter touched his hat. As they were jogging along a predefined route, they ran past a simulated flight scene in which two other experimenters were “beating” a victim. They found that even in broad daylight, only 56% of the subjects noticed the fight.

So, the lesson is that people see about what they want to see and forget to look at the rest. This applies to the interviewing and hiring process more than most people will ever admit. Employers especially will get hung up on one or two issues in a candidate’s background… sometimes for better or for worse… and disregard or don’t pay attention to other aspects of it. One prime example of this is the candidate who is had three jobs in the last two years. The vast majority of employers are going to get hung up on that fact and hardly go beyond it to delve into a candidate’s experience or performance. They simply stop and move on to another candidate. Candidates often do the same thing when they consider looking at a company and get hung up on what other people might say about the company, its size, the kind of business they are in and literally hundreds of other things that distract them from really investigating the company.

What this simply means is that, if you’re a candidate, you need to be aware of the things in your background or experience that may distract a potential employer from interviewing you or realizing all of your abilities and potential once they do interview you. There may even be some positive issues that will distract a potential employer from your negative ones.

Just be aware that inattentional blindness is a reality and it has a phenomenal impact on your job search.

By Tony Beshara|2015-01-23T22:35:42-05:00January 23, 2015|employers|