Tony Beshara

It seems like I spend a lot of time writing about people not thinking through the interviewing process and saying stupid things that end up costing them a job…

This week we had one candidate who, in a final phone interview with an HR director… right before they were going to offer him a job… was asked why he left one of his previous jobs… he said he thought for a moment and then said, “well, they told me it was because of sexual harassment, but I didn’t do anything and I really don’t know what they were talking about.”

In speaking to the candidate, he told us his old company owed him $60,000 and according to his contract, if he was fired for cause they wouldn’t have to pay money. Okay… fair enough. He said he had absolutely no idea where the sexual harassment accusation came from, but that’s what their lawyer told him when he asked why he was let go. He never investigated or questioned the dismissal. He simply let it go.

There was absolutely no reason for him to tell the HR director he was dismissed because of a sexual harassment charge. It is nowhere in his record. He was never given any reprimand… nothing. Why would anyone tell an HR director they were dismissed for sexual harassment if no one has a record of it and, more importantly, it didn’t happen? This was not some low-level, rookie candidate. He was a guy with 20 years of experience who had earned well into six figures. So he can’t claim ignorance. Maybe stupidity… but not ignorance.

Another one of our candidates told  one our clients he was dismissed “with cause” but didn’t know what the cause was. He claimed he knew he was fired for a good reason but couldn’t remember what the reason was. Even after we asked the candidate to think really hard about what he said, he still claimed he couldn’t remember exactly why he was fired.

This week, another one of our candidates was asked by the hiring authority if he had any questions.  According to the hiring authority, the candidate said, “geez, I never thought of that question…I guess I’m not prepared.”

Another one of our candidates, upon arriving in the hiring authority’s office, announced that she only had 15 or 20 minutes to interview because she had to go pick up her kids at school.

 Our organization deals with highly educated, very professional people in just about every discipline. And I’ll admit these are only a few examples of the hundreds of candidates we talk to and work with.

People have to think!…THINK… they need to ask themselves, “how does this sound to a hiring authority?” What HR director in their right mind is going to recommend hiring somebody who tells them they were fired for sexual harassment.

I don’t know what else to say…

Jonah Lehrer’s book Imagine addresses how creativity works… excellent book …it comes to a number of conclusions about the fact that creativity is really not as much a gift as it  is a developed trait..

Psychologists, in recent years he claims, have studied the relationship between persistence and creative achievement and have cited the fact that most creative people have a phenomenal ability to stick with their work in spite of all the difficulties and challenges they’re faced with… technical term he uses for this trait is grit..

It made me realize that one of the reasons we have so many people in America who actually just give up looking for a job when they need one is that they lack grit…

Many of these people who give up looking for a job just plain don’t know what to do… after talking to a few friends and family they resort to hitting the send button with their resume thinking that is the work of “looking for a job.”  Grit in looking for a job has to do with developing a job search strategy and executing on that strategy no matter how hard or difficult it may be… putting up with the ups and downs of the job search… the rejection, the refusal, the  not getting called back, being told you’re the “best candidate” and then never hearing from the folks who told you that… grit is what it takes to keep on keeping on in spite of setbacks…

Grit is focusing on the process and not worrying about the results even when it’s emotionally difficult…

Got grit?

Often, when I’m coaching candidates to be very aggressive and ask the kind of questions I wrote about last week, they say things to me like, “well, Tony, I don’t want to appear desperate and coming on that strong makes me look like I am.”

This couldn’t be further from the truth. It all depends on the attitude you take in asking the questions… if you ask the questions in a nervous, desperate, fearful manner, you will appear desperate.

The way to keep from appearing desperate and still  be intense comes along with the idea of focusing on the process and not the result. If as a matter of the interviewing process, you get in the habit of asking everybody you interview with, “are you going to hire me?” or “are you going to recommend that I be hired?”and you practice these questions so well they simply become a part of your natural interaction with an interviewing or hiring authority (i.e. part of your process), then they will come across as confident with no fear of the answer.

If you focus on the process and even get a “no” for an answer, you’ll simply move on to the next opportunity. If you get a “yes,” you will simply move on to the next step in the process.

That’s the difference between being desperate and intense… focusing on the process and not worrying about the result.

It happens at least three times a week… I coach and teach my candidates that they need to ask three questions at the end of every interview:

“How do I stack up with the other candidates you’ve been speaking with?”

“Do you have any concerns about my ability to do your job?”

“What do I need to do to get the job?”

If they are speaking to someone other than the hiring authority that may be a screening interview or or an interview beyond the hiring authority:

“Are you going to recommend that I be hired for this position?”

I can’t tell you the number of times I ask candidates if they asked these questions… even after I told them… they say something like “Well… it just didn’t seem appropriate… we were running out of time… it just didn’t like the right thing to ask… blah, blah, blah.” In other words what they’re saying is, “I just didn’t have the guts to ask the cold hard question of  ‘are you going to hire me’… I just couldn’t bring myself to get the courage to run the risk of being told ‘no’… I just couldn’t do it.”

Last week, I sent five candidates to one of my clients. I instructed them all to do the same thing and sent all of them to www.thejobsearchsolution.com which teaches in absolute detail exactly how to ask these questions. Only one… I repeat, only one had the courage to ask these questions.

My client said, “It was kind of amazing that only one of the five actually asked for the job. Tony, I thought you said these guys are really solid professionals. Only one had the courage and guts to ask if I was going to hire. I want that guy to come back.”

I know this takes practice and I know it takes courage, if you really want to set yourself apart from all your competitors you absolutely have to ask these cold, hard questions in an interviewing situation. You need to know if you’re a candidate or you’re not and you need to know what you need to do to get the job.

I can’t make it any more clear than that!

Poor poor pitiful me
Poor poor pitiful me
Lord have mercy on me
Woe Woe is me
—-Linda Ronstadt, 1973

This happens often with candidates who have been “done wrong” by everybody from their present boss, passed bosses, present company, past company, parents, ex-spouses, present spouses, teenage kids etc., etc., etc….and they let it all hang out in the interview.

Everybody has wronged them… they had a miserable life… they can’t get a break… they blame everyone… and they try to get sympathy on the part of the hiring or interviewing authority by sharing their woes…

STOP! you can never go into the interview singing “poor pitiful me”… I don’t care how hard life has been, how lousy you’ve been treated, how unfair life is, how you can’t get a break… you just can’t come across as pitiful.

At least three times a week, we have to warn  candidates to stop complaining … employers and hiring authorities DO NOT WANT TO HIRE PITIFUL PEOPLE… they’ve got enough problems and don’t need anymore pitiful people in their organization…

Sometime back, we had a candidate who was going through a rather hateful divorce… unfortunately, she shared her plight with the female hiring authority… when we told her that it was a bad idea to do that, she told us it didn’t turn out to be such a bad idea because the hiring authority had just gone through a terrible divorce and they spent at least half of the interview sharing their terrible situations…

Unfortunately, the hiring authority thought the candidate’s skills were good but refused to hire her because, ” — she’s going through a terrible divorce like I did and I was so pitiful for so long I couldn’t function, I just couldn’t hire anybody knowing what bad shape they would be in when they tried to work.”

So, please share your “pitiful me” stories with your therapist, priest, rabbi, counselor… anyone but a hiring authority…

Our client had just let go a VP after only four months on the job… and that’s a big deal for a $50 million company… the guy had made two or three major mistakes with one of their larger customers and it was plain the guy wasn’t going to make their company better… so they fired him.

They called us and, over a period of four weeks, interviewed a number of very qualified candidates… after a number of lengthy interviews they came to the conclusion that Joe, one of our candidates, was the most qualified to do the job so they sent Joe to visit with the CEO

Everyone in the company was so afraid of making a mistake, they were thinking of all kinds reasons that it “wouldn’t work” with just about every candidate we presented… including Joe. The CEO was no different and felt like, even though Joe could do an excellent job for the company, he wasn’t as charismatic as they might like. So, the CEO decided to pay a retained search firm to do a nationwide search for possibly a more qualified, more charismatic candidate. They explained their situation to Joe in a very business, but kind way. They did not tell him it was his charisma they were concerned about. They simply told him they felt like they needed to talk to other candidates.They made it clear that the answer wasn’t “no,” it was just “not now.”

Joe wasn’t wild about the decision but he had a good job and although he was disappointed, he was smart enough not to burn any bridges. After four months of the “search,” at least they admitted they hadn’t found any candidate better than Joe, so now they are ready to engage with Joe again.

We don’t know if Joe will get the job or not… hopefully he will… he should, because he is very qualified. Here is the lesson. When Joe was told that he was not going to be hired, he didn’t get upset or pissed off or let his pride get in the way by saying something stupid like, “okay you guys, forget me as a candidate…” Joe was smart. He was very graceful about being told “no.” He wrote everybody in the company whom he interviewed with that he understood about them wanting to do a nationwide search to compare and then expressed the thought that if they didn’t come up with a great candidate he would love to still consider the opportunity.

He left the door open for them to reconsider him. By being graceful and smart he gave himself an advantage. Most candidates wouldn’t have done that. They would have “taken their ball and gone home.” I guess there’s a chance that Joe may not take the job even if it’s offered…and it hasn’t been offered. But the point is Joe was smart enough to leave the door open even though he was faced with refusal… at least for the moment.

Good job Joe!

Love is patient…be patient with yourself and all the employers who didn’t hire you
Love is kind…be kind to all of those people who shun you, who wouldn’t interview you or turned you down
And is not jealous…of those that got hired instead of you
Love does not brag…when you are close to getting a job offer
And not arrogant…graceful and understanding when you’ve found a job
Love does not act unbecomingly… if  you don’t get the job that we were counting on
It does not seek its own…hope that everyone gets hired
Is not provoked…when you are postponed, told one thing to find out another thing happens
Love does not take into account a wrong suffered…when you are led to believe we are going to be hired or simply forgotten by the people you interview with
Loves does not rejoice in unrighteousness…life isn’t fair…get over it
But rejoices in truth…and sometimes only you know the truth
Love bears all things…the ups and downs of the job search                                                                                                                                               Believes all things…you know you will find a better job
Hopes all things…for better interviews tomorrow
Is grateful for everything… “In whasoever state I am, therewith be content”
(with apologies to St. Paul)

I spend a lot of my time explaining to people that, even though they think the market is getting better… and it is… most folks are still having difficulties getting interviews and performing well on those interviews because hiring authorities and the companies they work for want as many immediate results as they can possibly get. What this means is that the idea of hiring the “best athlete” we hear about in theory doesn’t really work in practicality.

I have candidates, daily, explain to me that they know they can do the job they see me post or send to my contacts. They  are convinced they would get the job because they have been successful in every job they’ve ever had. The truth is that they probably can do the job but there’s a difference between being able to do the job and being able to get it.

What it comes down to is that the candidates who are getting hired are the people who can most accurately prove they can provide immediate results for the company they are interviewing with.

Either directly or implicitly, hiring authorities want to know “what can you do for me… today… right now… not next year, not the year after… but right now.” The candidate who can communicate the most confidence in being able to provided quick results is usually the favored candidate.

I know this isn’t necessarily “fair.” I see hundreds of candidates who would make excellent employees lose out to “lesser” candidates because the lesser candidates interview well and communicate, “I can make your company better or more profitable… right now!”

So the lesson is, the more immediate, positive impact on an organization you can communicate you will have the better your chances of getting hired.

Often, when people are laid off or let go from their job and all of a sudden find themselves unhappy, they express their depressed state by letting themselves go and quit the little disciplines that used to help them feel good about themselves and increase their self-esteem. On top of being mad and angry, they all of a sudden have all kinds of time on their hands as well as being fearful of the daunting task of having to look for a job.

Rather than begin a massive action plan of looking for a job, they rationalize “taking a small break.” They start sleeping in ever day, postpone job search activities and literally get lazy. They delude themselves by thinking they are looking for a job by searching the Internet in their house slippers and pass the time of day “getting ready” to look for a job.

The little disciplines of life that used to help them with their self-image are eliminated and open the door to self-pity.

We all know how emotionally devastating and downright debilitating being laid off or fired can be. Even if you have a job you don’t like or you know can end at any moment due to the erratic economy, your emotional state is low. This kind of low emotional state can lead to some pretty unfortunate results.

This is a time in one’s life when a person should become even more disciplined than they were before. My experience has been that if people are self disciplined when times are difficult they rebound from the emotional strain faster. I’ve written before about routines and rituals in the job search and how important they are to effectively rebound.

An emotional blow like being laid off or fired and being faced with time on your hands in a depressing state perpetuates the problem.

So, some of the things you can do to rebound quickly is to “double” the personal disciplines you had when you were employed. Get up every day at exactly the same time, make your bed, be disciplined about dressing in your business “uniform” for job search activities. Cleaning up your garage… on Saturday morning… never when you should be interviewing… makes you feel better about yourself. Keeping your car clean and tidy makes you feel good when you get in it and drive.

These little disciplines will help in maintaining your self-confidence. That kind of self-confidence will carry over into the discipline of getting more interviews and performing well on those interviews. You’ll feel better and you’ll do better.

118…average number of resumes received for every job posting

16…the average number of employees in an American company

7.5 million… business establishments in the U.S.

16..the average number of interviews it takes to get a job offer

60 months…projected length of this ‘jobless recovery’

7 million…decline in the number of jobs in U.S. since December of 2007

1 in 10…the number of Americans who move annually, down from 1in 5 in 1985

20%…proportion of men in the population not working today, up from 7% in 1970

23%…drop in rate of new businesses creation since 2007…resulting in 1.8 million fewer jobs

21 million…jobs needed by 2020 to return to full employment in the U.S.

1.5 million …estimated shortage of college graduates in the workforce in 2020

40%…proportion of companies planning to hire that have had openings for 6 months

58%…employers who say they will hire more temporary and part-time workers

refer to the “Stockdale paradox”…further explains these stats