Job Search Blog

I’ve been in a polemic for the past few weeks with a number of people on LinkedIn going back and forth about people feeling discriminated against because they are “too old.” There have been a number of writers and commentators bemoaning the fact that they are being discriminated against because of their age.

My contention is that you’re getting hired or not may not have anything to do with your “age” so much as it has to do with the things that come with your age. So, when people don’t get hired, they claim they were discriminated against because they’re too old. Let me give you an example of what happened today.

The candidate comes to our office. He was 22 years with the same organization. He left that firm making $160,000 base salary and a total of $250,000. He was a salesperson for this organization and had been laid off…. a year ago! He told us that he couldn’t find a job because he was 58 years old and nobody wanted to hire a 58-year-old in the business that he was in (he worked for a data storage manufacturer.) He was convinced that it was his age.

Upon asking him how many interviews he had in the year he had been looking, he said that he really had only had one or two. He told us that he was looking for a position with one of his competitors…he did not under any circumstances want to go to work for a value-added reseller or a manufacturer’s rep and he wanted a base of at least the $160,000 that he had been making and if he couldn’t make $250,000, it wasn’t worth his doing.

He claimed that he was worth the $160,000 and that it took him 15 or 16 years to get to that level and he wasn’t about to take a step back and that he didn’t want to lower himself to work for a VAR or the channel, because those people “just don’t make enough money.” He claimed that he had a chance to interview with a couple of VAR’s and a channel and he just wouldn’t take the interview, because he was better than that.

You see what I mean? This guy has been out of work for a year. He claims that it’s his age. The fact is that it took him a number of years to get to the base of $160,000 and a total earnings of $250,000. For some crazy reason he expects that he has an intrinsic value of $160,000 and a $250,000 package simply because he’s been with the same firm for so long and performed so well. Nobody has any intrinsic value.

The fact that this guy can’t find a job doesn’t have anything to do with is age except for the fact that it took him a number of years to get to the base salary that he was making and the total earnings. If he were 35 years old and insisted upon the same kind of salary and wouldn’t consider any kind of opportunity except exactly the kind he had before, he’d also be looking for a job.

What we tried to convince our candidate was that he needed to consider a lower salary, maybe going to work for a value-added reseller or someone in the channel. He may have to take less money and basically do what he really didn’t want to do which is “start all over.” But, my goodness, he’s been out of work for a year. This is crazy. If he has to start all over, he has to start all over.

So, quit complaining about your age. Take a look at the silly stuff you might be trying to demand that the market won’t bear.

This is a reading from our Mass last Sunday. Every time I hear this quote about faith, hope and love by St. Paul, in Romans, I think about all of the challenges most job seekers are faced with in looking for a job today. Even in this economy, there are tons of people that are either unemployed or underemployed and have a phenomenal difficulty in finding a job.

Especially in my profession, which only places maybe 1% or 2% of the people we interview, we hear from people all the time about the difficulties and challenges the ones we cannot help are facing. This is especially true when you’ve been out of work for six months or more and have never had to face this kind of challenge. When people lose their job, through no fault of their own or have never had such a difficult time in finding a job, going months without even an interview, even on a professional level, I’m reminded of their afflictions.

Unfortunately, we are not in a position where we can console, much less listen to everybody’s story of their afflictions when it comes to looking for a job. Often times losing a job leads to all kinds of unintended consequences like divorce, depression… I’ve even had a few such candidates since 1973 commit suicide. I try to remind people of what St. Paul wrote here in Romans.

If we try to remember that no matter how difficult being out of work or needing a new job can be, we have to pray for faith, hope and love. I know that’s really easy to tell someone else, especially when they are going through a phenomenally difficult time and we are not. But we all have to believe, even know, that no matter how difficult the affliction, it can lead to endurance that helps our character and gives us hope.

Even for one brief moment every day, if people who are going through this kind of seemingly unending affliction could realize that the affliction could lead to hope and hope, through the Holy Spirit cannot fail to lead to good, their life can be better. Seeing the blessings of hope in just about everything we experience is really hard to do. We can always see it for the other guy or gal, but it’s really hard to see it for ourselves.

Have faith. Endure!

Our candidate already had a couple of offers. He says that both of those firms only interviewed him a couple times and then plain old decided. Our client has now interviewed him four times and has asked him to come back for a fifth interview. This has taken almost 2 weeks. And, they still can’t tell us when they will make a decision. He’s getting frustrated and made the statement above. He does have a point, and even after 45 years of doing this I still wonder why so many organizations have to have so many interviews. (I do know the reason. It’s because no one wants to take responsibility for making a decision and by having this many people involved in the process, they can spread the responsibility/blame.)

He was getting so frustrated and plain old  pissed off about it, that at one point, he told me to tell them to just forget it, that he was going to take one of the other offers. I had to calm him down at least twice this week. And I had to remind him that this kind of activity and relative inability to decide does not mean that the job is any better or worse than another one. In fact, in spite of what anybody might tell you, my experience has been that the number of interviews that a company may require of a candidate as well as the length of time it takes for them to make a decision has absolutely nothing to do with the quality of the job.

So, the job seeker cannot judge the quality of the opportunity based on the number of interviews she/he has to go through. Some companies think that they hire better candidates by requiring more interviews and extending the time of the interviewing process longer. Take it from me, they don’t hire any better or lesser candidates because of it. Nor is the job any better or worse based on the number of interviews.

Make a judgment about the job based on business reasons. Try to take the emotions out of it as best you can.

It’s amazing that last week I wrote about “get over it.” So, today, I get an email from the candidate of mine who sees an ad advertisement about a job that I publish on Linkedin. The company is looking for a VP of sales who has had experience selling and managing a sales force in mobility products sold to the department of defense. They want exactly than experience and I made it very clear that these are their parameters.

The candidate had called me and explained that she had worked at a mobile phone manufacturer and at another job worked with the DOD because she had served in Desert Storm. I explained that I was sure that her experience was good but that it didn’t fit what my client wanted, which was a vice president of sales for a company that developed mobile devices or software to the department of defense. She writes me and tells me that “you are discriminating against me for being a woman, a woman of color and a veteran. Because men I have talked to that have engaged with you have had different experiences.” What???

This is as much a victim mentality as I have seen in a long time. She just plain doesn’t fit what the client is looking for. I’m convinced she could probably do the job, but as I explained to her, doing the job and getting the job are two different things. She does not have the qualifications for the job. Compared to the candidates that I recruited today, she doesn’t even come close.

It’s to my best interest to please my clients. If I send them people who are obviously, unquestionably not qualified, not only will they not get hired, but I’ll lose the client. And on top of that the thought that I was discriminating against her for being a woman, a woman of color and a veteran is totally absurd. And to say that I talked to men than it had different experiences is nuts. I only talk to four people about this position …all of them today. I’m going to present three of these people and one of them is a woman. But she’s qualified.On top of that I’m quite confident that the candidate that emailed me doesn’t know any of the candidates that I’m presenting. I have no idea what “men” she might be talking about.

This kind of thing is so frustrating. Some people just want to be victims.

“I turn on the tube and what do I see                                                                                                           A whole lot of people cryin’ ‘Do’t blame me’                                                                                             the point their crooked little fingers at everybody else                                                                           spend all their time feelin sorry for themselves                                                                                       Victim of this, victim of that                                                                                                                          your mom is too thin and your daddy’s too fat                                                                                           Get over it!”

— Eagles, 1994

you lost your job, you got fired, your company Went broke, you screwed up the interview, he came in second for the offer and you knew you were going to get….. And it just ain’t fair!

Get over it! The sooner and more quickly you get over it the better you’ll be able to find a new job. Just today I had an excellent candidate with an excellent track record go to an interview with a client I’ve known for a number of years. The kid was perfect for the job.

My client really wanted to like him…said that he tried every way in the world to like the kid. But the kid kept talking about how his company was screwing him over. The hiring authorities said that the kid use that term no less than four times in the first 10 minutes of the interview. What is interesting is that the kid is working for a competitor of my client and everything the kid says is true….but you just don’t keep saying it in an interview.

When I told my candidate that he turned my client off by being so adamant about how he got screwed over, instead of saying, “you know, I shouldn’t put it that way. I need to be more careful,” he says, “well it’s true! And I just can’t get over it.”

I explained to him that if he talking this way about his previous employer and if he doesn’t quickly “get over it” and continues to make such statements, he’s going to be looking for a job for a really long time. He’s a kid. He’s very good at what he does but, he’s still a kid. He then spends two or three minutes defending himself to me and telling me the same things he had told me in my face-to-face interview with him last week and what he told my client.

I told him he needed to get over it and I really don’t have time to try to explain it any more than that. I explained to him that, if he can’t get it, it’s senseless for me to get him any more interviews.

He calls the back 45 minutes later and tells me that I’m right and that he’s going to do everything he can to “get over it,” because he needs to find a new job. Of course, I didn’t rub it in. There’s no reason to do that. He does have a good track record. He just needs to get over his hurt feelings and move forward.

The sooner you get over all of the negative things that are going to happen to you that either caused your job search to begin or happened in your job search, the better off you are.

And as the Eagles sang: “the big, bad world doesn’t owe you a thing. Get over it!’

We had an engineering candidate this last week who was in serious contention for a position with one of our clients. The client is a small engineering firm and the owner is always afraid of making a mistake in hiring. He’s a typical engineer who has a tendency to see the glass is always “half-empty.”

The kind of candidate that he was looking for is very hard to find. In the past four or five months we have only been able to discover two or three of them. Of the ones that we presented him, no one was really that interested in working for him…except this last one.

Everything went along really well during the initial interview and the subsequent interviews. Admittedly, he had about 80% of what the hiring authority was looking for, but for the money, the candidate was just about perfect. The employer, however, got scared about the candidate’s ability to do the job and when he went to offer him the position, he decided that he wanted to make it a “temp to perm” job offer. This means that he was going to hire the candidate on a “temporary” basis…90 days… and then, if everything worked out, hire him on a “permanent” basis.

We tried to explain to the owner of the company that, especially on this level, hiring a candidate in this manner does not give the candidate a lot of confidence in the company or the owner’s ability to make a good decision. The owner of the company said that he “didn’t want to make a mistake,” so he wanted the flexibility of the temp to perm relationship.

The owner of the company and the candidate had already come to a conclusion about salary, etc., but when the candidate got this news, he turned the job down. He said that he was looking for a permanent position and nothing that would hint of “temporary.”

We tried to explain to the owner that no engineer on this level is going to take a job like that, especially in this market. They simply don’t have to. There are too many other opportunities around where the idea of temp to perm doesn’t even come up.

We tried to explain to the candidate that this kind of thing is really not a big deal. If he performs well, he’s not going to have to worry about the future. Just do your job and you get to keep it. Pretty simple.

Unfortunately, both parties didn’t seem to be aware of the reality that every job is temporary…life is temporary… only death is permanent. The owner of the company lost a great candidate. We tried to make him aware that even when you hire a candidate “permanently,” you can let that employee go at any time. We tried to explain to the candidate that whether he is hired “temp to perm” or permanently, he could be let go at any time, and he could leave at any time.

Not only did the whole thing crater, but the employer was mad at us because the candidate wouldn’t take the job. He claimed that we wasted his time and that he would have to find an engineer on his own. No problem, but it is just kind of sad that he made this more complicated than it needed to be. We understand the candidate getting scared. He had a job and was leaving it to take this one. Although this was a better opportunity, at more money and a better future, the candidate got real nervous when the owner came up with the idea that he would like to “try before you buy.”

We do understand both sides of this situation. The owner of the company should have just hired the candidate on a permanent basis, realizing that he could let him go just about any time. Most candidates know that, except for illegal reasons, they can be let go at just about any time and, likewise they can leave the job at just about any time.

Everything in life is temp to perm!

I wrote about him a couple weeks ago. I wrote about the fact that he was so smart to  take his Number Two candidate to lunch with his other sales guys and explain to him that it was a close race but they were going to make the offer to another candidate.

The candidate, although disappointed, couldn’t be too unhappy because Michael was so darn nice about telling him no.

Well, guess who Michael hired this week… this same candidate. Michael went to offer his Number One candidate the job, and the candidate put him off for one week, then hesitated another day or so. Meanwhile, our candidate kept emailing Michael, checking in with him, letting him know that he was still available, even though he was interviewing at other places, and still liked Michael’s opportunity. Michael got tired of his Number One candidate’s attitude, so he called up our candidate and offered him the job.

Michael made a great choice. (Interestingly enough, our candidate was in the process of getting another offer. Our candidate wanted to go to work for Michael because not only was it a better job, but Michael is an outstanding manager).

You talk about people
That you don’t know
You talk about people
Wherever you go

You just talk
Talk too much

Joe Jones sang the song in 1960… unfortunately it still happens today. Here is a conversation I had with the hiring authority this week:

Tony: John, how did it go with my candidate?

John: Well, Tony, the interview lasted 45 minutes… and she talked for 44… her divorce, her ex-husband, her kids… I can see from her résumé and track record at one time she was really good, but the only way she could have said  less would be to have talked longer… you really need to coach her to shut up!

What’s so sad about this is the candidate is still really good. Unfortunately she hadn’t practiced interviewing like I thought.  She had  been tremendously successful in the past for quite a number of years. Unfortunately, she assumed, that just because she’s been out of market for the past five or six years her ability to sell herself well would simply “kick in.”

Here’s the lesson. Interviewing takes practice. Nervously running off at the mouth is not going to get your hired. Ironically, she was one of the best candidates who could’ve been interviewed. She just talked too much… and what she had to say wasn’t relevant to the job. So, practice interviewing.

Joe Jones ends his song appropriately: “You can make me scream”

Don’t talk too much!

The purpose of your résumé is to get you an interview. You want people to look at your résumé and think, “I really got interviewed by this person!” Remember that your résumé does not get read, it gets scanned. People think, “Oh, my résumé gets read!” No, it doesn’t. It gets scanned and the people who scanned them are looking for a few key things: how long you have worked at the companies you’ve worked for, i.e., exact dates, what you did for them, in very clear terms, and how well you performed. It’s that simple.

You have to remember that these people are reviewing 180 to 200 résumés a day. They don’t read any of them. They scan them to look for some of the things they are looking for. So, this means that you have to, when you write the name of your company on the résumé, explain what that company does. There are 7.1 million businesses in the United States and I guarantee you the people looking at your résumé don’t know what 98% of them do. I get résumés every day from candidates who write down “ACME INC. 2015 – present” and never explain what Acme Inc. does. So, make it real clear, if it’s not obvious, in parentheses next to the name of the company what the company does.

Then make the title of what you did very clear in terms that anybody can understand. A title of Analyst I can mean hundreds of different things. Change the title on your résumé if you have to make it clear what you’ve done. Sometimes candidates say to me, “Well, that’s what my title was.” Okay, fine, put it down if you want to, but if people don’t understand what the hell an Analyst I is, you’re screwed. I’ve had numerous candidates over the years who had titles like customer advocate, customer liaison, client specialist and a few other esoteric inventive titles that really meant “customer service.” So, in writing a résumé, simply write the title “customer service.”

Last, and probably most important, right down how you performed in as many concrete terms as possible. Remember, stories sell and numbers tell. If there’s any way, put in your résumé statistics or some kind of figures – that you bold – so they jump out at people. Increased profits 23%. Decreased department costs 10%. Was 120% of Sales quota. Decreased turnover 12%…The more you can express your performance in measurable terms, the better off you are.

The statement you are making with your résumé is this:

• Here is who I’ve worked for…What they do in very clear terms that anyone can understand.
• Here is how long I worked for them.
• Here is exactly what I’ve done. And here has been my performance.
• I am an excellent employee and what I’ve done for them is what I can do for you!

And, by the way, your résumé needs to be in chronological order. Ninety-five percent of functional résumés (the kind that have paragraphs about all of the things you’ve done and then the list of who you worked for at the very bottom) get pitched before they get scanned.

I forgot to mention, 60% of the people that are going to initially scan your resume don’t really know what they are looking for, professionally. They are usually some underlying, albeit they are nice, sincere and well-meaning, they really don’t know anything about the profession that you are in. They were instructed by one of their superiors to, “look through those resumes and find me a few that I ought to interview.” They may be qualified to know what they’re looking for, but most of the time they’re not.

So, look at your resume and ask yourself, “is someone who really doesn’t know what they’re looking for looks at my resume are they going to see the quality of person that I am?”

If a résumé “scanner” likes what they see, they simply pick up the phone and call you about an appointment. That is exactly what you want

Not a day goes by that I don’t get a resume from a candidate who has somewhere on his or her resume, in between jobs, a job function called “consultant.”

But most hiring authorities see the word “consultant” and make the assumption that the candidate has just plain been out of work and is trying to cover up by appearing to be a “consultant.”

So here is the message. If you have been a consultant, you’d better well have actually been a consultant and be able to document the kinds of people and organizations you have actually consulted to or for. List every company that you consulted with, exactly what kind of project you consulted for and exactly the amount of time you spent on each one. Offer even a specific name of someone who can attest to your consulting ability. In other words, a good reference. Even if they were brief consulting gigs, put them down.

This is short simple advice. But if you simply put the word “consultant”, it is going to be automatically assumed that you have been out of work.