psychology Archives - Tony Beshara Blog

…i didn’t cause it, I can’t change it and I can’t cure it

this is one of the many mantras of Alcoholics Anonymous and it applies to many of the aspects of, especially, a job seekers emotional reaction to much of the rejection and refusal they receive in their quest. It’s so important to remember this mantra, because it reminds the job seeker what they can and can’t control.

Here are some of the things they don’t cause, they can’t change and they can’t cure:

Knowing that they are very qualified to perform on a job… If they can get the interview.
Not being able to get their resume read by people who would really understand.
Not being able to get an interview, even though they tried everything they can.
Not hearing anything From a prospective employer after applying.
Being told they would get in an interview and then never hearing from the company
being told they are a “great” candidate and then never hearing from the company
being told that they are “in strong consideration,” and never hearing anymore
being told they would be brought back as a “finalist” and then hearing nothing
being told they would receive an offer and then never hearing anything from the firm

Remember, as a job seeker you can only control your actions and your emotions. If you do your best to get lots of interviews and try to get into as many interviewing cycles as you possibly can, you won’t have to worry about what you can’t control or influence. Focus on the things that you can cause that you can change And that you can cure.

By Tony Beshara|2018-11-02T21:16:58-05:00November 2, 2018|interviewing, Job Search Blog, psychology|

…”God is great…beer is good…and people are crazy!” …Billy Currinngton

I love this song and I find myself humming it or singing it quite often. It expresses to a T the kind of things that we see on a weekly basis in our company. Candidates want to know why they don’t get hired… Just this week we had in our organization:

a female candidate use the F bomb in an interview
the candidate showed up 20 minutes late for an interview, and never apologized or even acknowledged it
a candidate who overwhelmed the client we sent him to with his cologne
a candidate immediately sat down at the interview with a notebook, and before the employer could say anything started asking a series of questions like: “How much does this job pay… What are the hours… Can you describe the benefits…and can I work from home?” And when we asked him after the interview where he came up with these questions, he said that he read it in an interviewing book.
a candidate who, after seven minutes of waiting, announced to the admin that she was tired of waiting and left the interview
a candidate who stood up in the middle of an interview with the hiring authority and stated that he was “overqualified” for the job and walked out
the candidate who claims that he just didn’t have time to look on the internet to look up the company and he really knew nothing about them

Now, please remember that not all of our candidates are really this challenged. Our company gets close to 100 people a week an interview. So, when you consider the low ratio of stupid things that people do, these things may not have that much of an impact. But it’s just that these kinds of ridiculous things happen daily and it keeps candidates from getting hired.

Now, before you jump to any conclusions that it’s always the candidate who screws up the interview, let me share with you some of the things that employers did this week in interviewing some of our candidates:

One of our illustrious clients asked the candidate, “Just exactly what are you interviewing for?”
Another one spent 10 minutes telling the candidate why you would want to work at the company
Another hiring authority told one of our candidates that he was the 15th candidate that he and interviewed and that his company really didn’t know what they were looking for
One hiring authority asked the candidate how old she was
Another hiring authority told the candidate he was just too old to be working in a place like that…that he wouldn’t fit in culturally.
Another hiring authority was 45 minutes late for the interview and told the candidate that he (the employer) had “a hard stop in 10 minutes.”

People are crazy!

By Tony Beshara|2018-10-03T09:44:04-05:00September 30, 2018|interviewing, Job Search Blog, psychology|

…”lying?!! But everybody’s doing it… look at Hillary”

This is what I heard from a candidate this week. And this wasn’t some entry-level kid. This was a 20 year veteran who been an EVP at a well-known company. He was complaining because one of our clients was considering him for a regional VP job and just plain stopped when they found out that he lied. He worked at a company for about six months a number of years ago and didn’t have it on his resume. It was 10 years ago and he figured that it didn’t have anything to do with his most recent career so he left off his resume. It so happens that one of the people working at our client company recognized his resume, said that he knew him because they had worked together a number of years ago at the company… that wasn’t on his resume. Our client interpreted this as lying, which in the strictest sense, it was. So, unfortunately, they passed on him.

It was devastating to all of us, including our client firm’s CEO. Most everyone had their heart set on hiring this guy and he had his heart set on taking the job. I have started my 43rd year in this profession and I have to admit that I’m still torn about this kind of thing. Being educated from childhood by Benedictine nuns, Augustinian and Jesuit priests, I’ve always been taught to never lie. (Of course, the Jesuits would probably also consider the philosophical relativity of lying.) Even Sister Mary Peter, In third grade told us that, “if somebody comes to the door and asks if your mother is home and she’s not, you can tell them that she is, but she just can’t come to the door right now.” Or, when we were in seventh or eighth grade and read The Diary of Anne Frank and discussed in religion class a hypothetical question, “What would you say to the Nazi trooper who came to the door and asked if there were any Jewish people in your house.” Of course we would lie.

Regarding getting a job, I have known thousands of candidates over the years who eliminated short stints on their resumes, took sole credit for accomplishments their team actually accomplished, fudged on their title, embellished on their performance, elongated the time they were at a particular company, lied about the amount of money they made, who they knew, their name change (I still will never understand the why of this), their marital status, whether or not they had a drivers license, an undergraduate degree, a graduate degree, where they were born, how long they have been married, how long it took them to graduate from college, languages they were fluent in, their golf handicap, why they left their last job and the jobs before that, where they lived, the number of DWIs they’ve received, the ages of their children… Well, I’m sure you get the idea. Some people lie about important stuff as well as the most inconsequential, ridiculous stuff you ever heard of.

In spite of modern technology that can verify just about any fact, candidates still lie about things like having a degree when they don’t, length of time spent at a job, titles and some of their last positions etc. This is crazy! One phone call can reveal, for instance, if a person has a degree from any school. Why would someone lie about this? It can be “fact checked” so easily. The resume a candidate sent over the Internet three years ago is likely to be somewhere out there in cyberspace. If that same person’s resume is a lot different today than it was three years ago, the candidate will be eliminated if it is discovered. It’s that simple

I’ve come to the conclusion that there is no right answer for this dilemma. The most moralist among us would justify lying under certain circumstances. Regarding a job search though, the job seeker needs to realize that they are going to be held to a higher standard than Hillary Clinton, Donald Trump and all of the rest of the politicians who lie/embellish/stretch the truth/deny what they said/forget/reframe.

I have to tell people “don’t lie.” It probably isn’t going to do much good, people will lie anyhow. Just remember that employers are looking for just as many reasons not to hire you as they are to hire you. If anyone lies about anything in their job search, a prospective employer has no choice but to eliminate that candidate. It has nothing to do with the candidate’s ability to do the job or not. It has to do with the fact that if the candidate is hired in spite of the known lies, a hiring authority will be held responsible for an inept, downright stupid decision to hire a liar.

I can understand people feeling like the risk is worth running. The job someone had for three months 10 years ago probably won’t make one bit of difference in person’s performance on the job they are seeking today. The same might go for a DWI a person got 15 years ago. Does it make a difference on how people perform if they have a degree? I know a number of very high level managers in the city who lied about having a degree, even the schools they attend. They do a hell of a job. But there’s still liars.

It’s pretty sad that we will accept outright lying from our politicians and be appalled by those who may “embellish” about their grade point in college. That’s reality! Cursing it doesn’t matter one iota.

Don’t lie.

By Tony Beshara|2016-09-05T12:50:31-05:00September 5, 2016|interviewing, Job Search Blog, psychology|

…SHUT UUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUP !!!

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote about saying stupid things in an interview even when they are sincere, honest, etc., but still stupid. Well, this week we had a situation that was really difficult and a lot more understandable, but still required as much personal discipline has saying stupid things in an interview.

The issue centers around sharing with people in your company your frustration about your job, and your desire to leave as well as your activity in looking for a new job. We had two candidates come to see us a few weeks ago from the same company. They were both reeling from a new management dictatorial style as well as a drastic “realignment” of their pay structure. They were both really pissed off and really ready to leave. Neither one of them could wait for that wonderful day that they can go in and tell their boss to stuff it where the sun don’t shine and walk out.

So, their job search began. We warned both of them that it would be better not to discuss their job search with anyone in the company, including each other. We emphasized that it would be better if they didn’t share where they were getting interviews, or how the interviews were going… Anything! Unfortunately, people don’t always listen to what we say and every day they would talk with each other about the interviews they were getting, how they were going, etc. One of them even told one of the companies they were interviewing with about the other one and suggested that the company interview the other candidate also. In spite of our warnings this went on for at least two weeks. One of them, after we got the other one an interview with one of our clients, called us and wanted to know why we hadn’t gotten her the same interview as we had gotten her friend. We had been constantly telling them to quit sharing their job search activities with each other.

Well, all of a sudden one day at the beginning of the week one of these candidates called and said that her friend in “crime” of looking for a job had all of a sudden clammed up and started avoiding her. She told us that they had not spoken all week and her friend all of a sudden seemed to be a little closer to and warmer to the Nazi they were working for. Now, the second candidate is worried that the first candidate is going to leak the fact that she is looking for a job to the Nazi manager. She is absolutely terrified and has called every day to ask if we had any better advice about what she should do. We advised to just keep her nose to the grindstone and, again, don’t discuss any of her job search with anybody. We will see how things go, but she’s as nervous as she can be.

A number of years ago we had two sales candidates come to see us together because both of them were upset with their company and what was going on. We told them the same thing we told these two ladies, to keep their mouth shut and not share with each other their job search activities. Like the ladies, they didn’t listen and were sharing everything about their job search. About a month into their job search, one of the guys got promoted to manager of the area, and the very first thing he did was fire his “buddy” because he knew he was looking for a job and, as he explained to his ex-friend as he was firing him, with his new job he couldn’t afford to have anyone on his team that was looking for a job.

I’m sure you get the message. If you’re looking for a job while you have one, keep your mouth shut. You can’t afford to have anyone at your work spill the beans.

By Tony Beshara|2016-12-22T12:52:46-05:00August 19, 2016|job search strategies, keeping the job you have, psychology|

… don’t be afraid of paranoia

There’s nothing like a good dose of daily paranoia to get you going. Don’t let anybody kid you, every one of us, even the most experienced and successful wakes up every day with a bit of paranoia wondering, “can I do it again today?”… “Am I really that good?”

Those of us that have learned to live with paranoia find it to be a tremendously healthy emotion if it’s used in the right way. There is unhealthy paranoia and healthy paranoia. We often go berserk with unhealthy paranoia when we should’ve been dealing with it in a healthy way, making it healthy paranoia a long time earlier. In fact, in the business situation, no matter what level you are, if you don’t experience some paranoia you probably aren’t doing your job. And if someone tries to tell me that they have no paranoia… even the slightest bit… that’s the time I remind them that they should be afraid as hell, because they’re probably at one of the biggest risk moments of their life and they don’t even know it. This feeling of invincibility is the first step towards self-destruction.

Unhealthy paranoia is the kind of fear that most people get. They’re afraid of everything. They’re afraid the economy. They’re afraid of their company’s ability to survive the difficult times. They’re are afraid if things are too bad, they’ll go broke. They’re afraid that if things are too good, everybody and their company will get apathetic and expect success. They are afraid to enjoy success because they know it, too, will end. They spend a few hours of their day commiserating with other paranoid people looking for things to be paranoid about. They begin every sentence with, “I’m afraid…” And usually follow it with probability of how things won’t work. No matter how successful they become they are still “afraid.” Even when they should be on top of the world, enjoying success, they remind themselves and everyone else how afraid they are. They are no fun at all even with millions of dollars and everything money can buy. Unfortunately, they have no courage. Most often they implode and “fail” internally despite seemingly external success. They most often die with their money but no one cares.

Healthy paranoia, on the other hand, excites. It puts us on edge. But it’s a healthy fear. What separates healthy paranoia from unhealthy paranoia Is that healthy paranoia leads us to take massive action. When we lay out a massive action plan and then follow it, we can usually work our way out of of our most difficult fears. These people with healthy paranoia begin every day realizing that anything can happen and they need to be ready for it.

These people with healthy paranoia look back on all of the setbacks they’ve had, from going broke, to losing their job, to losing their businesses, to losing loved ones prematurely to death, to experiencing just about every human difficulty you can imagine and somehow they learn from these experiences. They realize the words of Frederick Nietzsche, that “what doesn’t kill me, makes me stronger.” This awareness gives them courage. Even though they have fear in the pit of their stomach, they know that since they’ve conquered it before, they can conquer it again. These are joyous, grateful people even in the gravest of situations, even with fear in their gut.

So, if you’re one of those people who operates with unhealthy paranoia try to change the way you see and experience things. Focus on the good things paranoia has helped you to attain. Try to see how that fear in the pit of your stomach can also motivated you. Hang around, even go to work for, someone with healthy paranoia and simply ask them how they do it. Ask them what kind of “self talk” they do.

Don’t be afraid of paranoia… Make it your friend and motivator.

By Tony Beshara|2016-08-13T12:01:03-05:00August 13, 2016|career development, Job Search Blog, psychology|

…some of the myths of hiring

Our company has experienced ten recessions and expansions in employment since 1952. In many ways, they’re alike in the sense that the economy is more difficult and hiring slows only to be followed by an expansion. We all know objectively that these expansions and contractions are always going to happen. None of us know when. The mistake most of us make is to “read our own press clippings” and think that we’re smart enough and wise enough to outsmart and outrun a downturn in the economy. If we survived two or three recessions we realize that, as one of our ex-presidents successfully campaigned, “It’s the economy, stupid.” A good economy masks many sins.

Here are some myths about hiring that many hiring authorities use as criteria for hiring. The most successful hiring authorities realize that these are myths:

“We’re really good at hiring.” Numerous studies show that the typical employment interviewing process is only 57% effective in predicting subsequent employees’ success. That’s only 7% better than flipping a coin.

“We’re so busy; we just don’t have time to screen candidates. Someone else needs to screen the best candidates.” And of course, everyone doing the screening knows exactly what “best” is, even if the HR person doing the screening has only been on the job three weeks or it’s somebody’s admin trying to “take a load off the boss.”

“We never make a mistake hiring.” You’re either a liar or you’ve never hired anyone.

“Don’t send us anybody resembling the last person who didn’t work out. We want to avoid anyone who is too short, too fat, too old, a woman, a man, had a degree, didn’t have a degree, had too much experience, didn’t have enough experience, (or whatever the reason why we think that person didn’t make it.) It couldn’t be that we just made a mistake and so did they.

“We have a proven system for hiring. I’m just not sure what it is this week.” These “systems” seem to change with every management change.

“The more money we pay, the better candidate we can hire.” We do get what we pay for. However, it takes more than just money to attract a good candidate.

“Hiring good people is one of our highest priorities. That’s why it’s taken six or seven weeks to get through the process.” Do the paychecks show up this way too? What quality candidate is going to wait for this? Your actions are speaking so loudly that the candidate can’t hear your words.

“We need young people because they’re highly energetic.” People who have energy have energy. It has nothing to do with their age.

“We need someone with ten to fifteen years of experience.” The question should be about the quality of the experience. Some people have one year of experience ten times and it doesn’t mean their ten years of experience is better.

“MBAs are better.” American society has deemed that more education makes a person better. It simply isn’t so.

“Why would someone with an MBA, a Ph.D., and a graduate degree want this job? A person with that much education is overqualified.” Unless it’s a scientific or academic position, (and even then, the degree level has nothing to do with capabilities), it’s hard to prove any degree causes someone to be underqualified or overqualified for any position. Let the candidate decide.

“We have to have a degree.” Ditto to the above. There are some professions, such as accounting, engineering, and scientific research, where a degree indicates an inclination toward and proficiency in a particular profession. Companies often require a degree to avoid having to interview more candidates than they wish and to let someone else, i.e. the school, “certify” the candidate. There are an amazing number of apprenticeships that companies can develop that can do the same thing.

“No online degrees. Only degrees from top-tier schools, and no foreign universities.” Within a few years, every university in America will offer online degrees. Some studies show that online students are more diligent and hard-working than classroom students. The question should be: “What did you learn?” A degree from a foreign university like Oxford might also be ok!

“People with high GPAs are smart.” Maybe book smart, but that doesn’t always translate into common sense and diligence.

Next Week: the other fifteen…

By Tony Beshara|2018-07-25T13:14:05-05:00July 15, 2016|interviewing, psychology, recruitment|

…the spiritual side of your job search

Having done this since 1973, I guarantee you that there is a spiritual side of looking for a job that is tremendously overlooked. Those of us that believe in a relationship with God are profoundly aware of the spiritual encounter, but even those with more of a secular, humanistic “connection” with “the universe” will benefit from spiritual practice.

Looking for a job is a tremendously emotional endeavor. It is an emotional roller coaster. Enduring it is easier for those who practice spiritual giving. Here are some of the things that I’ve learned from candidates and employers along the way. (I discuss these in-depth in our online job search program www.thejobsearchsolution.com. )

Be nice… even when other people aren’t. You are going to experience a tremendous amount of rejection and frustration. Focus on being nice when they don’t feel like it.

Create flow… clean out your garage, your attic, your car, your office. “Stuff” blocks flow.

Practice forgiveness… especially when other people are rude and what you perceive to be mean. Forgive those that put you on hold, forget about you, tell you they’re going to get back to you and don’t, etc. Send an email to an old nemesis forgiving them.

Start an intentions or prayer list… pray for those that are less fortunate than you. Be specific about the individuals, even people who don’t know. Write their names down. Hopefully, others are doing the same for you.

Volunteer… soup kitchens, Habitat for Humanity, etc. Give time to those less fortunate than you.

Be grateful… every morning when you wake up and at night before you sleep, acknowledge every blessing you have regardless of every difficulty and challenge.

Seek peace… spend 10 or 15 minutes twice a day quietly sitting alone getting in touch with your feelings and thoughts. Just let them flow.

Pray… even if you don’t believe in it. It works

Meditation… not far off from “seeking peace.” It’s the practice of clearing the mind and finding that gap between conscious and subconscious.

Let go… the anger, the disappointment, the frustration. While you are seeking peace envision those feelings and send them far out into the horizon and drop them in the ocean. Do this for five times with each difficult thought or emotion and you’ll be amazed at the relief.

Release resistance… what you resist, persists! Fighting the “woulda, shoulda, coulda” thoughts that ruminate in your head leads to frustration. Release the resistance to them.

Practice acceptance… “Dear Lord, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.”

Laugh a lot… even if you have to read jokes yourself out loud. Listening to children’s laughter has an amazing effect on your spirit. The joy and laughter of a three-year-old is pure and infectious.

Practice empathy… in spite of the fact that you are seeking empathy from others. To receive, we must learn to give.

Sacrifice… fast one or two days a week, give up alcohol for a week at a time or give up your favorite food once or twice a week.

Journal… once a day or at least two or three times a week, write out your thoughts on recent events. Journaling is cathartic.

Love… briefly think of all of the people who have wronged you, been rude to you, etc. and send them thoughts of kindness and appreciation. Even if it is hard to do.

Feeding your spirit in emotionally stressful times can change your world!

By Tony Beshara|2015-06-29T07:14:40-05:00May 23, 2015|Job Search Blog, psychology|

…a few other “don’ts”

as long as were talking about things to do or don’t do, let me mention a few things that have happened:

One of our candidates got fired because he posted on his LinkedIn profile that he was always open to new opportunities. He couldn’t believe that it happened. We explained to him that it’s perfectly legitimate for a company to fire anybody who’s actively looking for a job. His claim was that everybody does it. That may be a good excuse when you’re 10 years old, but not as a grown-up. My sense is that they were trying to get rid of him anyhow. Point is, don’t broadcast or advertise that you are looking for a job or you’d entertain the idea.

… Along the same line, one of our candidates got fired when his company found out he was looking for a job because, are you ready for this, he sent his resume through his office email….over a dozen times. Duh! What’s even more amazing, he was pissed about it. He called us and asked if they had a right to do that. And this was a mid-level manager with 15 years of experience and an MBA. Go figure!

A number of years ago two guys came to our organization to look for a job. They were both looking to leave their company and wanted to do it at relatively the same time. We warned them that it was not a good idea to look for a job “in tandem” by comparing notes, talking about the interviews they were having, etc. Even though they thought they were helping each other, we explained to them that that kind of thing could eventually put them in conflict with each other. They rocked along in their job search for five or six months, still doing the same thing, informing each other about each other’s interviews, comparing notes and so on. Then all of a sudden one of them was promoted to be the manager over the other. And the very first thing he did was fire his previous peer. Friendship aside, the new manager had to protect his new department from turnover. He knew his friend was looking for a job and was intending to leave. He couldn’t afford to keep him around. End of job…end of friendship.

Two months ago one of our candidates was bragging to an out of work friend of his about the interview he had with one of the firms we had lined him up with. His “friend” went to LinkedIn, found someone he knew at the company, called and eventually reached the manager that our candidate had interviewed with. His “friend” interviewed and got the job. He was even so bold as to tell the hiring authority that he was a friend of the first candidate he interviewed and then he was really a better candidate than his buddy. He obviously convinced the hiring authority and got the job.

A few months ago, one of our clients was checking the reference of one of our candidates in order to hire him. He got into a very deep conversation with one of our candidate’s references, found out that the reference was more qualified than our candidate and eventually hired him instead of our candidate. (Now there’s really nothing anybody can do about this kind of thing. But it simply demonstrates that there really isn’t much loyalty in human nature when it comes to hiring the best people.)

The lesson is that it isn’t so important to distrust people when you’re in a job search as it is to avoid putting people in a position to where you have to worry about trusting them. Human nature will always prevail. As Teilhard de Chardin stated we are all, “spiritual beings acting human.”

By Tony Beshara|2015-05-02T11:40:39-05:00May 2, 2015|Job Search Blog, psychology|

….taking responsibility

I want to be kind, empathetic and understanding. I don’t want to be a right-wing screaming fool who condescendingly talks down to people who are less fortunate or poor or underprivileged are out of work and blame them for their plight. As kindly as I can I have to say that I am so darn tired of people not taking responsibility for themselves and, not so much their situation, but how they respond to their situation.

We have become a nation of dependent whiners who want to blame everyone else for their situation and refuse to take charge of their circumstances and do something about it. Hardly a day goes by that I don’t talk to some job candidate who can’t find a job who blames the economy, the government, their age (too young… too old), their race, their gender, their weight, their lack of education, their mother, their father… everything you can imagine but themselves for their inability to find a job.

One particular candidate this week was a 61-year-old woman who had been out of work for three years. She had a reasonably good track record of jobs before that. She has just about every excuse I mention above. I asked her how many interviews she had had. She told me in the last year she had had one interview and blamed her not getting hired on age discrimination. One interview… In one year… One interview!

In the 40 years I’ve been doing this I don’t think I’ve ever seen our society so lacking in taking individual responsibility. Maybe it’s because we’ve become so entitled to think that everyone deserves a job and when it isn’t automatically given them, they blame someone else. We don’t take responsibility. We don’t adopt the attitude that, “If it’s to be, it’s up to me!”

Then comes Larry. He’s a 52-year-old black guy with a felony. The felony is 10 years old and it involved money. Larry made restitution, but it still shows up on his record. It’s certain he’ll never get a job as an accountant again, but he takes responsibility for that. He lost his job as a trucking company dispatcher a month ago. He has excellent references and so far, he has found himself nine interviews. He’s got three more scheduled next week and two of the nine he has been on are having him back. Okay, these are not jobs for a CFO, but their jobs. Larry admits all of his mistakes. Takes responsibility for even his felony. The company he was recently with simply had to downsize. He is’t pissed or angry, he just needs a job. He’s got a great attitude and because he keeps interviewing, he will find a job …he takes responsibility.

If folks were more like Larry and less like the lady, Ann, our country would have less unemployment and more people working. Larry takes responsibility. Ann doesn’t. Larry certainly has more reasons to blame other people, his race, his age, the fact that he got laid off etc. than Ann. He just doesn’t choose to. He takes responsibility.

My personal speculation is that most of this started in the late 60s, when the Great Society was going to “take care of everyone.” It was a sincere attempt to help people who, supposedly, couldn’t help themselves. The attitude that the government would make things more “fair” and “equal” took away individual responsibility. And this attitude wasn’t just for poor folks or minorities, it trickled up and permeated all of society. “It’s just not my fault” and “I just can’t do anything about it” is so pervasive that it keeps Ann from getting interviews.

It takes an average of 16 interviews to get a job offer. It takes about 100 calls to discover one opening where a person might get an interview. It takes discovering about 10 openings to get one interview. In other words, it takes a hell of a lot of work to find a job. The jobs and the interviews don’t come to you. You have to look for them and go to them. You have to take the responsibility to find the job.

In most instances people don’t find work because they don’t take on the responsibility of doing so. Ann can’t find a job because she hasn’t had any interviews. Whose fault is that?

By Tony Beshara|2014-10-31T22:12:37-05:00October 31, 2014|psychology|

…being shy

I listened to a TED talk by a psychologist who claimed that more than 50% of the people in the United States consider themselves shy… A quick Google search seems to find that there are many articles that confirm this fact… So if you put 50% of the people in the United States who consider themselves shy in an emotionally stressful situation… like looking for a job… It’s no wonder that people have such a difficult time finding a job…

I have to admit that for the past few years, after writing four books on how to find a job as well as an online program that is almost foolproof at helping somebody find a job, I’ve been wondering why so many people still have a difficulty in finding one…why so many people are out of work for so long and, after a year, almost become unemployable. It just didn’t make sense, or at least I wasn’t smart enough to figure it out. Being an extrovert and being surrounded by extroverts who are in some cases downright aggressive, I just simply didn’t think about it. What’s worse is that even after more than 40 years of dealing with people, I should have known that many people, lots of people…shy people… have a real hard time getting interviews and selling themselves hard enough to easily get a job.

It isn’t so much that it’s insensitivity…although it is…as it is just not paying attention… After all these years and having interviewed more than 26,000 candidates face-to-face, I should know that some people are so shy their shyness overwhelms their ability to sell themselves and get a job… And, like most people, the longer they go without a job, the harder it is..

So here is what shy people have to do…they simply have to push themselves to get interviews, by cold calling and running the risk of being rejected…they then have to practice, practice, practice, practice, practice, practice and practice interviewing and asking for a job so that when they get into an interview and they are phenomenally, terribly nervous, they do what they need to do. Keep in mind they don’t have to give a stellar performance of A+ interviewing. All they have to do is be able to sell themselves well enough to get a job. I know I sound like a broken record when I talk about the practice it takes, but it does.

If you are shy, you have to practice to the point where interviewing well becomes what psychologists call “unconscious competency.” (… Look it up) it is practicing so well that no matter how nervous or even distracted a person is, they interview well. I realize that this is not easy… but it is necessary…

And, think about it, 50% of the people that you’re interviewing with are also shy and they will have a tremendous amount of empathy for you…

By Tony Beshara|2014-08-19T09:23:31-05:00August 15, 2014|psychology|