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.

…gratitude

i have been doing this since 1973…i have seen and experienced just about every aspect of an individuals job search as can be imagined…

one of the spiritual practices that makes searching for a job easier is to practice gratitude…

so, you say..”look, tony…i got fired…lost my job…haven’t had an interview in four weeks…just got rejected…and you want me to be GRATEFUL..are you nuts…what do i have to be grateful for?”

well, just the chance to wake up every morning and start looking for a job…for one thing…

just this week two of my candidates were diagnosed with different types of cancer..and another just got home from a colon cancer operation..finding a job isn’t quite as important as it might seem

begin each day being grateful…simply thank God you are alive and are capable of dealing with the challenges in front of you…

this habit won’t keep unfortunate things from happening to you…it won’t really help you get an interview or keep you from being turned down for the job you thought you were going to get…but it will help you put those issues in perspective…

be grateful…even if it isn’t easy

By Tony Beshara|2009-02-12T22:21:35-05:00February 12, 2009|communication|

…as long as we are talking ‘spiritual’

as long as we are on this subject let me share with you a practical way of “giving”…and the wonderful return

it has to do with being as kind, patient, understanding and even forgiving to and with people you encounter in your job search that could irritate you and down right make you mad, angry and frustrated..

these are the people, hiring authorities, interviewing authorities…anyone you encounter in the job search, that are rude, or tell you what they think at the moment that turns out to not be the truth…(lie!) .

you know that you are vulnerable..looking for a job is very emotional and difficult…you are senstive to what people tell you and how they treat you…and often, it just isn’t nice..

welllllll…forgive them…get over it…they are spiritual beings acting human….they are so wrapped up in themselves, they don’t know they are running you over…

since you are sensative, you take it personally…it isn’t personal…soooooo, forgive them, pray for them..be even kinder to them…let them know you appreciate their sitaution if you get the chance..

the big payoff…it will make you feel better

By Tony Beshara|2009-02-09T22:41:08-05:00February 9, 2009|communication|

…so what do you pray for

so you read the last topic and you say, “so what do i pray for?”….good question

since 1973, i have had candidates that let me know that they prayed …i didn’t take a pole…and i don’t ask everyone about it…but it comes up from time to time…

here is what i learned…the people that seem to get the most out of “praying”..don’t pray for a better job..they pray that they get God’s help in doing a thorough job search…that they get God’s help in interviewing well…and after that, they pray that “thy will be done”..

this kind of prayer really seems to work…praying for the ablility do deal with what ever happens…not praying for a particular outcome, but the strength and courage to accept and deal with what ever happens…

By Tony Beshara|2009-01-30T21:36:47-05:00January 30, 2009|communication|

….extra help by praying

i have been hearing from people all over the country about how difficult it is to deal with the economy, being laid off and having to find a new job…

it doesn’t do any good to say that this recession isn’t as bad as past ones or that it will be over soon…when we are faced with immediate challenges, the past or the future don’t help pay tuition or the mortgage or buy groceries..

one stategy that does really help is to pray…now don’t go off on me about this…i know it works…it may not change the way things are, but it does change the way you feel about how things are…

i have hundreds of stories from people telling me how their prayer life got them through the toughest times in their job search…

it works…you do have to believe…but it works..

By Tony Beshara|2009-01-27T22:42:11-05:00January 27, 2009|communication|

..working for friends

..heard from a candidate of mine over the weekend…”well, you told me so..” he began

frankly, i had forgtotten what i did tell him…it was six months ago and i have slept since then…he remnded me that, when he told me he as going to go to work for a good friend of his, in that friend’s small company, i shared with him that it rarely works out…that you loose a friend and usually the job in a relatively short period of time…

and that is exactly what happened..it was even more difficult because my candidate thought that his friend was sidestepping the law on certain issues…i.e. payroll taxes…

apparently it got ugly and my candidate is looking for a job again and did loose, what he thought, was a good friend….

i guess anything is possible, but really think twice about going to work for friends..even “distant” ones…if you have to feed your family and that is the only job you can find, you may not have much choice…but ask yourself before you do, “how easy will it be to quit?”.. “what happens if they fire me?” …”am i willing to loose ‘friendship’ over this?”

By Tony Beshara|2009-01-04T09:13:24-05:00January 4, 2009|employers|

…should you be the first, second, third or last interview

we are often asked: “if there are multiple candidates, should i be the first, second or last interview?”..tough question

here is our experience…if there are only three or four candidates and they are all being interviewed on the same day, it really doesn’t matter much if you are first, last or in the middle…

now if there are more than that, like six or seven on the same day..or the inteveiws are spread out over a few days, it is best to be dead last…if you can’t be last…be first…

if you are first, you “set the bar”…and you had better be good!…over the next day or two after the interview, email or call and remind the hiring authority who you are and how good you are by reinforcing what he or she said they wanted….

if the interviewing process is carried out over a long period of time…like days or weeks…try to be last…it takes advantage of the “law of recency”…people remeber best what they saw last…

so often, hiring authorities leave the decision to hire someone to the very last moment…lets face it, hiring is an emtionally difficult thing to do and since it is uncomfortable, it gets left to the last moment…soooo, if you are the last candidate interviewed, you have a better chance…

now it only ammounts to a 15% or 20% better chance of being hired, so don’t let it go to your head…however, you need all the advantages you can get

By Tony Beshara|2008-12-10T23:26:54-05:00December 10, 2008|interviewing|

…don’t answer a question you don’t understand

…my candidate didn’t understand one of the questions he got asked …and he knew he didn’t understand it when it was asked…

instead of simply saying, “i really don’t understand, could you state it again,”…he started to answer it…he actually started to answer everything he thought the question might be…he went on and on…

the only way he could have said less was to talk longer…and he did..

end of interview…

lesson: if you don’t understand the question, get clarification then answer…

By Tony Beshara|2008-12-02T23:07:41-05:00December 2, 2008|interviewing|

….what to expect from your recruiter

most people don’t know what to expect from a recruiter…they will act like they do because the don’t want to appear ignorant…

there are at least 9 or 10 different types of recruiters and they often function very differently…retained search folks, contingency recruiters, “placers,” internal corporate recruiters…all work quite differently..

often when potential candidates contact or are contacted by a recruiter their expectations are not met because the recruiter failed to set them and the candidate didn’t ask…

read the article on the Babich web site that discusses the different types of rercruiters…those of us with lots of experience always try to expain what we expect from our candidates and what our candidates should expect from us

the imporant lesson is to be sure you aks, “what can i expect from you?”…that way, you won’t be disappointed

By Tony Beshara|2018-07-25T13:39:45-05:00November 12, 2008|job search strategies|

…stories

one of the most powerful strategies you can develope in the interviewing process is to be able to tell stories about yourself that prove you are a good employee and that you will be an assett to any organization..

stories tell…they are more than enertainment, they train us in the art of being human…stories remove the listener’s immediate prejudices to you as a person and get them to focus on what you are talking about…

so, as you develope the presentation portion of your interview, make sure you tell stories that demonstrate your advaqntages and benefits..

keep the stories short and to the point…they will make a difference in how you are received

By Tony Beshara|2008-11-05T22:42:02-05:00November 5, 2008|interviewing, job search strategies, psychology|

…dealing with “bruised credit”

we hear it weekly…candidate gets into the finals of the interviewing process…is told they are a finalist…will have their references and credit checked…

then, oh my, the candidate reveals that they have “bruised” credit…this can be everything from very, very bad credit to poor credit…

in these difficult economic times, it is not suprising that many people’s credit is “bruised”…slightly to very badly..

these days, employers are more prone to check credit on most candidates, even if the position is not a financial oriented job….it use to be that a candidate’s credit was checked only when the job had to do with financial positions…i.e. where money was involved..

these days, though, hiring authorities have a hard time checking references with previous employers, who, more often than not, adopt a “we don’t give references of any type” policy…so, they resort to other objective reports like criminal records and credit reports…

the assumption is that, if your credit is poor, you are a poor employee…

it does no good to argue this issue…if you have bruised credit, best assume you will be eliminated from most any financially oriented job…we even had a candidate lately who was eliminated from an insurance adjusters position because of his poor credit…

we recomend not sharing a poor credit issue unitl you find out that your credit will be checked…(by the way, you can’t refuse this being done without immediately being eliminated from contention)..

once you are informed, tell the hiring authority that your credit has been bruised and ask him or her if that will be an issue…you might share with them the reasons for the situation…we had a candidat a few years ago whose identity was stolen and she was still “recovering” from a poor credit issue through no fault of her own…

some hiring authorities may be able to work with you if they really like you…sometimes they may not have any choice depending on company policies..

you want to be sure that, if you find that a credit report will be reviewed and you have had challenges, the employer does not find out from the credit report itself…especially if you are told that the report will be part of the screening process…

if an employers thinks you are withholding information from him or her, you won’t get hired…

By Tony Beshara|2008-10-31T21:04:33-05:00October 31, 2008|interviewing, job search|