Job Search Solution Blog by Tony Beshara

One of the strongest ways you can get yourself noticed by potential employers or enhance your position in the interviewing process with a potential employer is to ask for advice. Now, this has to be done in the right way and it can’t be done so often with the same person that one becomes a menace at worst and annoying at best.

When you are initially looking for a job and just getting started in the process, it’s a good idea to try to talk to as many people as possible it might be able to interview you or hire you. You simply call them up or reach out to them through LinkedIn and simply ask if they know of anyone that might need someone of your skills. 97% of the people you ask this of in the initial part of your search are going to tell you that they “don’t know of anyone that might be looking for your skills.”

It is important in this situation to, first of all, ask permission to call them back in 30 days or 45 days to see if anyone has come to mind. Ask them if you can send them your resume and then to follow up. After a while you will have an ongoing group of people on a daily basis that you were calling back. Each time you ask them again if you can call them back in 45 days or 60 days. It’s amazing the number of people that you’ll call back the second or third or even fourth time and they’ll say something like, “oh yeah, that department has been looking for is someone for a few months, here is who to call…….”

The reason this happens is that the fact that their company might need someone like you is not uppermost in their mind. What they’re doing at the moment is important to them and the last thing they are thinking about is an opening in someone else’s department, let alone your need for a job. They are reading emails, getting ready for meetings, preparing reports etc. and just don’t have the company’s job opening foremost of their mind. Okay, fine! But when you then engage them with the question of “might I ask you your advice?” You have now involved them personally and you’ve asked about their personal expertise. Now you’ve got them engaged, and they’ve got some personal “skin” in your game.

This question is especially an excellent one at the end of an interview, especially when you get the feeling that the interview did not really go all that well. (I teach the four basic questions that a person needs to ask after every interview in www.thejobsearchsolution.com., But the answer to these questions tell you how you stand in the interviewing process.) If you pretty much get the idea that you’re probably not going to be one of the finalists, a great way to engage the interviewing or hiring authority is to simply ask, “May I get your advice on my interview? How would you evaluate it and how might I have done better?”

In rare instances, I have had hiring authorities actually “help” the candidate reestablish their value and help them by almost “moving on their side of the desk” and helping the candidate to sell themselves. All of a sudden the hiring authority is helping the candidate make a clearer and better presentation of themselves. If there were any misunderstandings in the formal part of the interview, they are likely to be clarified here.

Now, candidates should not hold their breath. Turning the interview around at this point is not very likely. But if nothing else, the candidate might get a better idea of how they might have sold themselves in the interview and, obviously, how they can do better in the future.

It is not uncommon for candidates to not be as clear as they should about their experience, background or accomplishments. Often, hiring authorities feel like that they are, just that, “authorities” and have to act like they understand exactly what a candidate is communicating. Many times they won’t admit that they don’t understand when they don’t. Asking for advice might open up the door for any clarification that might be needed.

This seems to be a really popular mantra these days. In the past two weeks I’ve heard it at least five or 10 times and here is what followed:

• “I’ll go on the interview but you know I want at least $20,000 more. I know that I’ve been out of work now for three months, but if I go backwards in my salary I’ll never be able to make it up.”
• “It’s just too far to drive. I know it’s a better job than I’ve ever had and the company is really good, but it’s 15 miles more and I’m driving 10 miles now.”
• “Well, it’s simply the first offer that I’ve gotten and I read where I ought to get three to be able to choose from.”… (even in a Covid economy?)
• “Well, we know your candidate is the best one we’ve seen, but why would a candidate this good want to come to work for a company like ours?”
• “That just doesn’t sound like the kind of company or job that I’d really be interested in. I’ll keep doing my part time job until a better interview comes along.”
• “I’ve thought about the interview that you got me, but my husband thinks I can find a better situation.”
• “We can’t pay your candidate $65,000 because the guy that we are promoting out of the job is only making $60,000. I know it’s taken us a month to find him, but I guess we’ll just have to keep looking”.
• “I’ve never really had any luck hiring someone I didn’t know. But my boss told me to call you since we’ve been looking for three months and can’t seem to find anybody. Just want you to know how I feel….just never hired anyone I didn’t know.”
• “I know you set up a face-to-face interview for me, but I’d like to talk to them over the phone first to qualify them to see if it’s what I want.”
• “Smart, personable and humble” on the very top of the resume

Being “transparent” may at best to be ignorant and at worst, stupid. We always give the benefit of the doubt to ignorance, even though it’s very frustrating.

This is credited to the Stoics. It means premeditation of evils. They use it in the context of preparing for a catastrophe. In other words, “what are we going to do if things go wrong…how can they go wrong…what if.”

Every candidate whoever interviewed for a job should prepare themselves for “what can go wrong in my interview?” Very few candidates ever even imagine that things can go wrong. Most every candidate I’ve ever interviewed thinks that they interview extremely well to begin with and never even imagine that things can go wrong. And, when things do go wrong, they have no idea how to respond.

What is most important for job seekers to understand is that they prepare themselves for everything to go right and things rarely do. Traffic is going to be bad. If you’re flying somewhere for a corporate visit, especially in the winter, expect plane delays or even cancellations. What are you going to do if you get lost, didn’t leave for your destination soon enough…and  YOU are late. What if you arrive on time, but the interviewing authority is late. What if the interviewing authority turns out to be somebody different than who you thought you were going to interview with? What if you get a question you’ve never been asked before and you have absolutely no idea how to answer it.

A teach in the Job Search Solution (www.thejobsearchsolution.com) is about all of the things that could go wrong in just about every level of interviewing. It is one of the least reviewed sessions. I’d be willing to wager that things go wrong in some way, shape or form at least 33% of the time. The key is to try to come up with what you might think would be the major things that can go wrong and prepare for what you’re going to do if and when they do.

One of my candidates got hired last week by an employer I sent him to…eight months ago. The candidate kept calling the employer even after he had been eliminated, not too often, but every two or three weeks. The employer never did call the guy back, but timing is sometimes everything. When my client’s first hire resigned after eight months, my candidate just happened to call and……he got hired after one meeting…

You never know…don’t hold your breath…but hang in there.

One of my candidates who studied my online program …www.thejobsearchsolution.com, was one of four finalists for a V.P. of the West for a company. He goes into the executive interview with the CEO, the Exec. V.P. and two other V.P.’s…he makes a presentation of what he would do in the first 30-60-90 days with a plan modeled after what the program taught him.

He gets the job. Turns out he is the only candidate that did anything like that….$250,000 base and with bonuses he will make $500,000…not bad for simply following instructions.

Other forms of collateral materials:

• psychological test results
• intelligence test results
• business cases
• recommendations…previous employers…clients
• certifications
• publications of books or articles authored
• honors and awards
• “brag books”….documents, letters, recognition of performance, sales or performance rankings..

Anyone can come up with their own collateral materials. Just remember that they can set you apart from other candidates.

• leave a phone number and the voicemail is full
• leave a phone number and the message says, “this number cannot take any messages… try again later”
• don’t put a phone number on their resume (… and then wonder why they are not getting calls)
• put their phone number at the bottom of the resume
• don’t realizing that anyone looking at the resume is looking at 150 others and if they don’t see a way of reaching them…immediately…. they call someone else
• don’t respond to an email or voicemail immediately from a prospective employer
• have “Google voice” answer their phone requiring the caller to identify themselves….and not being able to do it
• don’t remember at all who they sent their resume to so that when someone calls them they have no idea who it might be (how bright does that appear?)
• having a cockamamie email address that is not easy to use
• have resumes that don’t tell what their company does, what they did and how well they did it (realizing that if an employer can’t detect what the person does in 10 to 15 seconds, they’ll move on to the next interview)
• lie …once, twice, three times or more on their resume
• have their LinkedIn profile and resume mismatched
• have unprepared references
• can’t find their references
• don’t have any references

Employers and interviewing authorities:

• who never let candidates know how or where they stand
• who publish job opportunities that they never really intend to fill
• whose advertisement becomes a “black hole”
• who advertise that the candidate needs to have “good written and verbal communications skills”
• who tell you they are strongly considering you and then never call you
• who hire people they ‘like’ over people who are most qualified
• who rely on a resume instead of interviewing to determine the quality of a candidate’s ability to do the job
• who keep postponing a hiring decision because they are “afraid of making a mistake”
• who are inconsistent in their interviewing process
• who believe that the only “good” candidates are the ones they know
• who interview out of “fear of loss” rather than “vision of gain”
• who focus more on “why they shouldn’t hire you” rather than on “why they should hire you”
• who don’t tell you where you stand as a candidate relative to others
• who simply blow you off