Job Search Blog

Most people would answer the question of “Why are recruiters in the business?” with the idea that if you’re real good at it (and that’s pretty rare) that the person can probably make some really good money. Once in a while, you’ll find somebody that will give it a little more thought and come up with, “to help people.”

This week was really fun and gratifying. One of our newer recruiters, Amanda Martinez (been here right at a year) placed a lady in a human resources manager’s position. The lady was so thankful and joyous; she started crying with joy when she accepted the offer. Of course, that’s the first time that’s happened to Amanda and, I will admit, I don’t ever remember it happening before. The lady was so overjoyed at getting the job she thanked Amanda profusely.

The feeling this gave Amanda will last for as long as Amanda remembers the experience. The money will always come and go. It will go long before this feeling will ever end.

It is moments like this that is the real payoff in this business. That’s why we’re really here!

Not a week goes by that at least two or three candidates turn down excellent job opportunities because of “advice” from other people. Instead of using common sense, they convolute the decision making process by becoming phenomenally confused because they ask the opinions about what they should do from people who really have no idea what they’re talking about. They get so many opinions from so many people they get confused. Confusion leads to fear and fear leads to them doing nothing.

Advice about changing jobs or what kind of job you ought to take is like advice about marriage. Everyone who has ever been married thinks they know something about it. Many people don’t know their own marriage very well, let alone, someone else’s. Most people know very little about what kind of job might be available for someone else, but because they have looked for a job or found a job before they will give their advice as though it was absolute and global.

So, the first thing a job seeker ought to do is to limit the number of people they get job search advice from. The second thing is to be sure that the people they ask are credible. Do they know you? Do they know your industry or profession you are in well enough to give valuable advice. Your loved ones, spouses, family and your close friends may know you really well, but they may not know the perspective of the kind of business you are in. They may act like it, but most of the time they don’t. Heavily consider the qualifications of the people you seek advice from. Your mother may think that your the best oceanographer in the world, and you may be, but she has absolutely no idea of the prospects of you finding a job in Dallas, Texas… (Very poor… we don’t have any oceans here).

Feature this, your pastor or spiritual adviser may know a great deal about spiritual life and even your spiritual practices. But he or she may not know squat about the accounting profession, or sales or engineering. Your spouse loves you but doubtfully knows the landscape of your profession. They probably think… In fact I hope they do.. that you ought to be the president of the Western world. Let’s face it, they love you and want what’s best for you but they really don’t know how you might get that job.

I have found that even 60% of the advice about finding a job on the Internet isn’t incredible and some of it is flat out awful. I’ve written in other posts about some of the junk posted on the Internet written by people who have either found a job or two or hired a few people and then write about ideas that are absolutely foolish. Quick example: there are literally hundreds of articles on the net about how to apply for job by sending your resume to a company’s job posting. These authors teach people how to “customize” their resume to the posting, etc. Out of close to 100 articles I reviewed, not one of them…NOT one..explains that 30% of the job opportunities that are “posted” are not really open or that the odds of finding a job in this way are 1 in 375. 99% of the people writing these articles are authors, researchers, professors, HR professionals, ex-HR professionals etc., most of whom have, at best, a very narrow perspective…theirs..of what’s going on with the job market.

So, get advice from whomever you wish. But realize the perspective from where the advice comes from. Take it with a big chunk of salt and compare it to what you are experiencing. Unless the people you are getting advice from are in the trenches, helping people find jobs every day be careful.

I don’t think I’ve had this happen five or 10 times in 49 years. And looking back on it, it’s usually for crazy reasons. Like a company being sold, a total change in management or poor references after an offer has been made. But, this one takes the cake. And there are lessons all over the place.

This was the vice presidency’s position, for $400,000. My client had been interviewing for six weeks and finally settled on an excellent person. On Thursday, the human resources director calls the candidate and makes the final offer. The candidate says that it looks fine but he’s giving up a lot of stock where he is presently working and he would like our client to make it up. The human resources director gets together with the executive VP, who talks to the CEO and, amazingly enough, they come up with something that, he says, will make him happy.

He then tells the human resources director that he has to talk it over with his wife (mistake number one: he refers to his wife as “the boss.”). He says he can’t make any decision until he talks it over with, “the boss.” He also explains that he has to go out of town Friday and over the weekend to a sports tournament with one of his children, and he may not be able to talk to his wife until Monday. He then calls back the human resources director and explains that he has a golf tournament on Monday and he may not be able to speak to his wife (“the boss”) until late Monday.

He didn’t communicate correctly or the human resources director didn’t understand it, but she communicated to the Executive Vice President that the candidate was playing golf all weekend on Monday and wasn’t going to be able to give them a decision until Monday evening. The candidate claims that he made it clear to the human resources director that the weekend was devoted to one of his kids, out-of-town tournaments and that he and his company were actually hosting a golf tournament on Monday. It was work.

When Monday rolled around, the Executive Vice President was furious. First of all, he couldn’t believe that the candidate kept referring to his wife as, “the boss.” There was a slight miscommunication between the HR director and the executive VP. The executive VP was under the impression that our candidate was playing golf all weekend, as well as on Monday. Our candidate thought that since he had explained the situation to the HR director about going out of town for the weekend with one of his kids athletic events and being a sponsor for a golf tournament on Monday, it would get communicated to the executive VP in just that way. Well, it didn’t.

The executive VP couldn’t imagine why the candidate couldn’t talk to his wife (“the boss” still rankled him) and let them know Monday at the latest. The executive VP just plain old had it with being postponed. He had gone to the CEO and gotten more stock than they originally offered. And when he felt like the candidate had better things to do than decide about the job, he figured there ought to be a candidate available who would be more grateful and committed.  We started the search all over.

This is one of the saddest situations I’ve experienced in many years. My candidate missed a phenomenal opportunity. I found the company another really great candidate, so it worked out well for my other candidate and the executive VP.

I’m really sorry for my first candidate. I don’t mind if the candidate loses out on an opportunity for really good business reasons. But this wasn’t one of those situations. I take responsibility here for not encouraging my original candidate to let my client know on Friday, the day after he got the offer.

P. S. Don’t refer to your spouse as “the boss.”

“Well Tony, three of us were interviewing him and we asked him if he could give us an example of where he put together a deal and how he did it from scratch. We thought he was going to start an example of what he had done in the past and all he did was talk in circles for five minutes. Then one of us asked him, “Just give us an example of where you’ve been successful. And after a long pause, he said, Let me think about it a minute.”

That pretty much ended the interview and my candidate’s opportunity to get hired. He didn’t have a story of where he’d been successful. Ironically, he had lots of successes in his background, but he just hadn’t practiced them for the interviewing situation.

This is a short lesson. It’s really a sad lesson. It doesn’t matter what kind of position you are interviewing for, you’ve got to have stories of where you’ve been successful. If you’re a candidate, you only need two or three of them. But you have to have them. This guy lost a job at a $150,000 base salary with an absolutely phenomenal company.

I had given him access to “the job search solution,” our 60 hour tutorial on finding a job which has a whole section on how to tell stories. But, unfortunately, he said he just didn’t have time to do it. And, besides, “I’m really good at interviewing.” Famous last words…

A wise man learns by mistakes, the wiser person learns by others mistakes. Please, please, please, if you’re a candidate looking for a job, you better have some really good stories as to how you’ve been successful.

The CEO of one of our long-term clients, writes me an email: “We’ve been looking for a controller through you all for almost six weeks. How come we haven’t gotten any candidates?” So I call our associates in the accounting division and I asked him why we haven’t been able to get this guy any good candidates, and here is what they tell me:

“Here’s why we don’t send this guy good candidates. He makes us send a resume, instead of just seeing the candidates that we tell him are qualified. He tells us to send their phone number and he’ll call them some time. We are getting our candidates interviews right and left at specific times, with specific people… face-to-face. If we tell a candidate that hiring authorities going to call them some time, they aren’t interested. And why should they be? We don’t like to tell them that because we never know when the CEO is going to call them. And if they get caught off guard, they are not going to interview very well, so it’s a waste of time, especially when we can get the candidates we have other really good interviews.

Besides, sometimes he sits on the resumes for a day or two and we never know whether or not he’s going to interview the candidates. And then, instead of just interviewing the candidates we tell him he ought to interview…there just aren’t very many of them…he tells us we have to send him the resumes. He’s just not worth the investment of the time and effort. We like him and he’s a nice guy, but while he’s asking us to jump through hoops, other clients are interviewing our candidates face-to-face…and hiring them!”

This is the kind of market we’re in today. Candidates are really hard to find. We are very fortunate here at Babich, because we have more than 100,000 candidates in a database that we have interviewed face-to-face and we are contacting these candidates all the time. So, we can always come up with some good ones. But we ask our clients that they need to interview quickly and decisively, because it is not uncommon for us to be able to get our candidates three or four interviews very quickly, as well as offers.

So, if you’re a hiring manager, please, if you need to hire someone, please listen to our advice.

It’s often very hard to explain our business works. Some people think we simply send a few resumes, make a couple of appointments and charge a big fee. I quit trying a number of years ago to explain to people how it works. And even after all these years, it’s still a mystery. And frankly, I’m humbled by the whole thing, every day.

But once in a while things happen that make it just plain so much fun. And last week one did. I placed a candidate. I got him only two interviews. It took me 25 years to do it. When we met 25 years ago, obviously we were both a whole lot younger. I got him one interview then and he didn’t get the job. Every three or four years, he would call me when he needed a new opportunity. Every three or four years I would call him with an opportunity for his kind of background. The timing for each of us was off every time we connected. When I would call him, he was happy with what he was doing and wasn’t interested in moving. When he’d call me in need of a new opportunity, I simply couldn’t find anything for him. I couldn’t even get him an interview.

But last week, an opportunity came along that fit him perfectly. I made two calls, got him the interview and after two subsequent interviews with our client, he got the job. He did it all within three days.

Our profession is simply one of timing. It’s really simple, but really hard to do. Sometimes it just takes 25 years.

• There is nowhere near the number of candidates available to you that you thought there were.
• The candidates you do see are going to come into your interview with two or three offers.
• Most candidates are going to be a little cocky about the situation their in because for the past few years, up until lately, you were rude to them, didn’t given the time of day, didn’t call them back, took forever to let them know how they stood (if you did it all) …and they remember it.
• Candidates are “in control” and they know it.
• Over the last 10 years, most employees (maybe including you) have developed an attitude of “there is no loyalty on the part of the companies I’ve worked for, so, I’m going to get everything I can that’s good for me., these companies have treated me like a “rented  mule” for all these years, and there’s no reason for me to feel compassion for them. I’m going to get all I can.”
• Candidates are going to accept your job and then leverage it with two others, or try to get a counter offer.
• The longer you drag out the interviewing process, the less likely you are to land the candidate you want. The candidate you want, others want too.
• You are likely to have to pay more money for the kind of candidate you want than you did even six months ago, which of course is going to infuriate all of the other people in the department, which will cause them to ask you for more money or leave.
• Everyone in your company knows that the market is hot, so be nice and be appreciative of everybody (the major reason why people leave their job is that they feel unappreciated…especially if they are underpaid.
• Expect that all of the people in your company are being recruited by your competitors.
• Pursue at least three or four candidates at a time to the final stages of an offer. If you hone in on one candidate and drag the process on for more than a week or so, there’s  a good chance you’re going to start all over.
• Expect candidates to negotiate from a position of strength.
• Don’t make the negotiation adversarial.
• No matter how your best candidate turns you down…. even by calling you up the day before they are supposed to show up for work and tell you they’re going to work somewhere else…be graceful. You may need this candidate again down the line. (If you have two or three good candidates in the queue, you don’t have to worry about this.)
• Cut down your interviewing process to no more than three people and do all the interviewing within a week.
• Realize that you may not get all of the experience you might really like for what you would like to pay. So, look for as much “athleticism” as you can find in lesser experienced candidates.
• Until your new employee has been on the job for at least 9 to 120 days, don’t be surprised if they come into your office one day and explained that they got an offer “they simply can’t pass up” from someone  they had been interviewing with when they were interviewing with you.
• For all kinds of reasons, expect these market conditions to last for another two years.

• there are nowhere near the number of candidates available to you that you thought there were
• the candidates you  do see are going to come into your interview with two or three offers
• most candidates are going to be a little cocky about the situation the’re in because for the past few years, up until lately, you were rude to them, didn’t given the time of day, didn’t call them back, took forever to let them know how they stood (if you did it all) …and they remember it
• candidates are “in control” and they know it
• over the last 10 years, most employees (maybe including you) have developed an attitude of “there is no loyalty on the part of the companies I’ve worked for, so, I’m going to get everything I can that’s good for me. , these companies have treated me like a ‘rented  mule’ for all these years, and there’s no reason for me to feel compassion for them. I’m gonna get all I can.”
• candidates are going to accept your job and then leverage it with two others, or  try to get a counter offer
• the longer you drag out the interviewing process, the less likely you are to land the candidate you want. The candidate you want, others want too
• you are likely to have to pay more money for the kind of candidate you want than you did even six months ago, which of course is going to infuriate all of the other people in the department, which will cause them to ask you for more money or leave
• everyone in your company knows that the market is hot, so be nice and be appreciative of everybody (the major reason why people leave their job is that they feel unappreciated…especially  if they are underpaid
•  expect that all of the people in your company are being recruited by your competitors
•  pursue at least three or four candidates at a time to the final stages of an offer. If you hone in on one candidate and drag the process on for more than a week or so, there’s a good chance you’re going to start all over
•  expect candidates to negotiate from a position of strength.
•  don’t make  the negotiation adversarial
•  no matter how your best candidate turns you down…. even  by calling you up the day before they are supposed to show up for work and tell you they’re going to work somewhere else…be  graceful. You may need this candidate again down the line. (If you have two or three good candidates in the queue, you don’t have to worry about this.)
•  cut down your interviewing process to no more than three people and do all the interviewing within a week
• realize  that you may not get all of the experience you might really like for what you would like to pay. So, look for as much “athleticism” as you can find in  lesser experienced candidates.
• Until your new employee has been on the job for at least 9 to 120 days, don’t be surprised if they come into your office one day and explained that they got an offer “they simply can’t pass up” from someone  they had been interviewing with when they were interviewing with you
• for all kinds of reasons, expect these market conditions to last for another two years

This is a message for any candidate interviewing for a job as well as any hiring authority interviewing candidates. Over the past few months, since the pandemic forced lots of organizations to interview candidates via some kind of video technology, it has become popular for people to interview candidates for 30 minutes.

It appears to be that among many other unintended consequences about video interviewing, people think that they can accomplish a thorough interview in 30 minutes. It’s very rare for in person interviews to ever only last 30 minutes. But for some reason, the 30 minute video interview is perceived to be effective. Let me tell you, IT ISN”T!

In fact, they’ve turned out to be a disaster, especially for candidates. It seems like these 30 minute interviews are more prominent when candidates go beyond the first or second interview. Three times this week, three different candidates of mine had their final interview with three different CEOs. All of them seemed totally hurried. One of them lasted 40 minutes and the second one lasted 45 minutes. In both cases the candidates told me that, once the interview got to 30 minutes, the CEO, in both cases seemed hurried, distracted and really wasn’t listening at all. The third interview was abruptly stopped by the CEO because she said she had to move to another meeting. My candidate said that he was in the middle of a sentence, answering one of her questions when the CEO stopped the interview. All three candidates were totally disappointed because they were not only interviewed poorly, but felt dismissed. None of the candidates got hired.

These situations made me look back over the last six months and I have come to the conclusion that candidates should not agree to 30 minute video interviews. Interviewing or hiring authorities should not insist upon this type of interviewing either. I’m absolutely convinced that it’s unfair to everyone.

In all three of these situations the candidates were absolutely stellar. One of our hiring authorities in one of these situations has been trying to hire someone for three months. He’s interviewed more than 20 candidates and he was absolutely convinced our candidate was the very best one that he saw. The candidate had gone through three other management interviews and all of those managers claimed he was stellar. But the interview with the CEO was so bad, the CEO told the hiring manager he shouldn’t hire the candidate. The CEO really didn’t give much of a reason as to why he rejected the candidate, but he didn’t want to hire him. The candidate said that the conversation was so hurried and disjointed, he didn’t even think the CEO knew who he was talking to. The CEO admitted that he didn’t have the candidate’s resume in front of him and didn’t even offer to look at his LinkedIn profile. The hiring manager was furious. He even asked, through his superior, if the candidate could interview with the CEO again. The answer was no. (The hiring authority is now so frustrated, he sent me his resume.)

The other two interviews were just as bad. Another unintended consequence of video interviews is that hiring and interviewing authorities for some reason, get terribly distracted by the background of the candidates video environment. I’ve had a phenomenal number of candidates disqualified because the interviewing or hiring authority thought the background of the candidate’s video environment was distracting or in bad taste. One employer disqualified one candidate because he had comic books on his bookshelf. Another one eliminated a female candidate because her earrings were too big and distracting. Another female candidate was eliminated because she interviewed with a bed behind her and the interviewing authority thought it was “too intimate.”  With in person interviews, I can’t remember anybody ever complaining about “the background.”

So it appears that 30 minute video interviews are to no one’s advantage. Keep in mind that this has been going on since the pandemic, but I’m just now realizing what the disadvantages of these kinds of interviews are. So, I’m going to share this with all of the employers that think they want to do a 30 minute video interview and I’m going to tell my candidates to try not to agree to a 30 minute video interview. As with the “background” phenomenon there’s something about a short, 30 minute video that is inherently poor.

One thing is certain. Person to person interviews would rarely last only 30 minutes. Very little information can be exchanged or understood in only 30 minutes. And that would be true for even a person-to-person interview. The medium of video interviewing seems to accept the idea that a thorough interview can be given in 30 minutes. It can’t.

So, on either side of the desk, please don’t perform a 30 minute interview. They are to no one’s advantage.

Well, Tuesday I heard from a candidate of mine who brought up the proverbial future problem that was bound to arise. Greg has only been on his job for three months and his company has told him that he’s going to have to take the vaccine in order to keep his job. Greg calls me because I’ve known him for a number of years and he asks me, since he doesn’t want to take the vaccine (he’s only about 40 years old)  that if he quits his job or gets fired, could I find him another job?

Now this is a real dilemma. I understand people not wanting, basically the government, telling them what they can and can’t do regarding their own health. This is especially true with the Covid vaccine. There is so much medical and political stuff being bantered about it’s really hard to know what is right.

Keep in mind, there is nobody in the world who dislikes “mandates” more than me. When I was young and the military draft still existed, I filed for conscientious objection. I understand religious and faith-based objections. It took me almost 4 years to obtain the conscientious objection status, first through the US Army and then through my draft board, a very conservative one in Tulsa, Oklahoma. It was very difficult and a real test of commitment. I understand how passionately people need to feel to adopt a commitment like that.

Now also keep in mind that I got the vaccine…all three of them. My sense is that whatever downside the vaccines might have, at 73 years old, the downside of Covid is probably worse. So, I took the risk of the vaccines. However, I have a keen appreciation for Greg’s dilemma. (I had two friends of mine, both in their 60s, who refused to take the vaccine. They both died of Covid within the last two months.)  I will admit that this is a personal decision, and maybe a person feels differently about it when they’re 40 years old.

But, my calling in life is to help people find jobs and advise them about keeping them. Greg is going to have a phenomenal uphill battle if he gets fired or resigns because he will not take the vaccine (he has no medical reason, as he is quite healthy) because he just objects to it morally or religiously. Here is why. He has been on this job for only three months. How is he going to appear to a prospective employer if he goes into an interview and explains that since he wouldn’t take the vaccine he left his job before he got fired and that’s why he’s looking for another job?

Even if a prospective employer totally disagrees with the vaccine mandate and empathizes with Greg’s situation, the employer is going to think to him or herself, “Greg gave up a job over not taking the vaccine! Hmmmm, I don’t know this guy at all. Is he a malcontent? If I hire him and he just doesn’t like something down the line is he going to walk out or get fired like he did in this last job? Well, I may very well agree with Greg on the particular issue he has explained, but I can’t run the risk of hiring someone that might walk out on me after three months for any kind of reason when I have all these other candidates available that are probably just as qualified. So, I’m going to pass on Greg. It just doesn’t make sense to run the risk. Besides, if I hire him and he leaves or gets fired for some cockamamie reason, the boss can ask me why I even hired him in the first place. This is too much of a mess and I can’t afford to run that risk. I really like Greg, but I’m not going to hire him.”

I explained this scenario to Greg. I told him he was going to really have to think about it. My humble opinion would be to take the vaccine and keep the job. This is not because I agree with the mandate, because I don’t. But the scenario of him trying to find a job is going to be awful. Like I mentioned, it really doesn’t matter if the employer Greg would interview with agrees or disagrees with the mandate, he or she doesn’t know Greg well enough to know if they might run into problems over other issues if they hire Greg. It’s just not worth it for them to run that risk. There are too many other qualified candidates.

This is a very sad state of affairs. I personally do not think it’s right for the government or any big company to put anyone in this kind of awkward precarious position. It’s wrong. But losing your job over protesting the situation is the worst of the evils. Again, it doesn’t matter what I or anybody else thinks, the issue is how it’s going to appear to a prospective employer.

So, Greg has a real dilemma. Let’s hope he does the right thing.