12 ways to make a recruiter love or loathe you

By Neil Patrick and Axel Kőster

I usually write this blog from the perspective of job seekers. And I often criticise employers and recruiters, but also give praise when I think it is merited. Sadly the former group is much larger than the latter.

So I was pleased recently to receive a very honest and heartfelt email from my good friend Axel Koster, the General Manager of the Manhattan Group, a major global recruitment firm based in Melbourne, Australia. In case you don’t know Axel, he is a specialist in recruiting employees for the global hotel industry. From chefs to general managers and CEOs and everything in between.

But Axel isn’t an average recruiter. For a start he has over 660,000 followers on Twitter. He’s taken the use of social media for recruitment to a level that no-one else has in his industry. This level of exposure places him in the top 10 most influential people online in Australia. That’s no mean feat considering there are at least two members of the Minogue family in that list too!

Axel Koster GM of the Manhattan Group

So today we are going to turn the lens around and look at things from a recruiter’s perspective. For job seekers, understanding how recruiters think and FEEL is critical to understanding why they do what they do. It’s called empathy. If you can empathise with someone rather than simply judge them, you are in a much better position to influence them.

And surely having influence over a recruiter is much better than simply resenting them if you don’t get the outcome you seek?

Of course no amount of empathy is suddenly going to turn you into a must hire candidate. No recruiter on earth is going to drop everything to ensure you get hired.

But when you read what follows from Axel, you’ll discover the amazing amount of nonsense, unprofessionalism, rudeness, lying, laziness and unreasonable expectations from job seekers which he experiences day in day out, 24/7.

And you will also discover how not to shoot yourself in the foot when dealing not just with Axel, but in my opinion ANY recruiter.

Simply by avoiding these obvious and sometimes not so obvious mistakes, you will ensure you get at least fair treatment by recruiters and possibly even get them to come a little more onto your side…

Remember empathy begets empathy!

And if nothing else, Axel’s comments will reveal the truly crazy expectations that some jobseekers have.

Here’s what Axel has to say:



I’ve thought long and hard about expressing my views about recruitment, candidate search and follow through and so here it is at last…note that I speak purely for myself & not the industry as a whole.

I feel terrible some days (and I do really mean that) because I just do not get the time to respond to all mails and messages sent to me via direct mail, Skype, SMS, LinkedIn, Twitter , phone and Message bank to name just a few.

Believe it or not, I'm on the job seven days a week, working long hours and always with my phone next to me. So even over dinner, or using public transport or relaxing at home or any other location, I spend my time reading messages and answering as many as I can - time is unfortunately a commodity in itself and I simply just don't have enough.

A few years ago, we established some custom built recruitment programs for our clients and in general we work mostly on retainers. Moreover, our clients actually pay us up front - and in full. We are often trusted with the most attractive jobs on the market and we enjoy a close relationship with many senior managers. These people are not just our clients but often they become our applicants as well. It is not unusual for other recruiters to ask us to share their candidates; however we never do.

9 out of 10 times we receive a clear profile of the candidate requirements. This usually consists of regional experience, a specific skill set, preferred nationalities, time lines and employer names and sometimes sex and age. In Australia, it would of course be illegal discrimination to reject applicants on age or gender etc., but many other countries have different laws, preferences and practices.

But let's face it, only one person can secure the position. Only one individual will be appointed; so from let's say 100 applicants (sometimes many more), 99 will be disappointed. The very best applicants make it quite clear why they should get the position. They explain to us WHY they are the IDEAL candidate.

Our shortlist usually incorporates a maximum of 3 people, sometimes more. If they are all turned down by our clients, then we try our utmost to find out the reasons why, so we can communicate this back to the applicant. You can be assured if we introduce you to our client, that you are matching the client’s profile. And yes we argue (we call it a discussion!) with our clients too. I do understand and respect that careers are vital for families and lives and I will go the extra mile to assist you on your journey. Many candidates of mine have over the years stayed in close contact and have become friends.

I have no time for nonsense and those people who know me understand that I hold honesty and integrity very close to my heart as this is how I was brought up.

Here are the top twelve things that candidates do which antagonize, dismay, alienate, annoy and frustrate me. Some are obvious, but I am sure some will astonish you that they happen at all!

 
1. I am not your servant: Someone sends me an invite on LinkedIn and as soon as we have connected, I receive a message – “I need a job!” (every new LinkedIn connection of mine receives a response mail very clearly stating how to approach us, even my email address is stated, and where to find open positions – do not tell me to ‘check your profile’! 

 
2. I am not responsible for your life: Don't write me letters telling me that your future or your life is in my hands as I do not own you; it’s ridiculous. It is time for many to take responsibility for their own career and choices and stop blaming others for their misfortune.

3. I am not here to do your work for you: Asking us to check your profile as you don’t have the time to apply correctly ...(I match suitable candidates for positions who are actually applying). 

4. Don’t expect me to put you forward without a resume: Applying back to me through my regular alerts but not being able to attach a resume (I clearly state on my mail that I'm working out of the office and therefore need a resume with all applications). 

5. I execute my clients’ wishes, not yours: Some people DEMAND to be forwarded to a client! (Actually you are not paying me....it is the client who pays me to find the right candidate.) 

6. Do not hide behind alleged confidentiality: Sending resumes where the last position is confidential or a cover letter masking gaps or whatever by claiming your work was confidential...if your work is confidential then please just don't apply - if you work for the CIA, better stay there. Believe me I have better things to do than to tell the world that you are looking for a new job. 

7. I am not able to provide everyone with free coaching: I do many sessions offering free advice, correct resume set up, career mentoring, etc. for people I have met but please don't demand this service from me, especially if I have never even spoken to you before! 

8. Don’t expect me to provide you with my clients’ contact information: I will never provide my clients’ and connections’ names, email addresses or telephone numbers as I work with complete confidentiality in all my placements. 

 
9. Don’t think you can jump the queue: Asking me just to set up an interview with company A or B and ‘you will do the rest’...(it never works this way and just shows me your arrogance and naivety).

10. Don’t lie: Don’t mail false resumes or place false profiles on LinkedIn ...(missing jobs, incorrect employer names, time frames wrong or false titles)...remember, if this happens I will never deal with you again and thanks to our comprehensive database you will definitely be red flagged...like the “owner representative” in Cambodia or the “general manager” in the Maldives. The list goes on...caught and never forgotten. 

11. Treat me as you would wish to be treated: Writing a personal letter to me and you can't even get my name right or you address me as Dear HR manager or Accor , or Interconti etc ...(And you are supposed to be so proud of your attention to detail?!!!) 

12. Don’t try to bribe me: Offering me money or other inducements if I manage to place you…(Once again, we charge our clients and NOT our applicants).

I hope the suggestions above are helpful. I know that in today’s jobs market, it can be hard to find the right job at the right time. But if you understand me and my life, then you will also understand how the system works and how not to sabotage your own endeavours to find a job. We may not like the ‘rules’, but the system works the way it does and none of us can change that. Trying to cheat or trick the system is a surefire way to lose.

To try and be as helpful as I can, I have set up several online resources designed to help jobseekers in the hotel industry find their next job more easily. If that’s you, you’ll be welcome to join and engage with us on our two LinkedIn Groups:

Upcoming Hoteliers & Careers Group http://ow.ly/4nlEm4 (designed for all levels in hospitality)

Hoteliers & Careers Network http://ow.ly/4mPZB7 (Department Head onward including owners, CEO's, VP's etc)

How to be perceived as a real leader

By Neil Patrick


Leadership is the number one competency employers seek today – but how can you prove you have it?

I've been investigating the data about the most desirable competencies employers are seeking today. Here is Indeed.com's list of the top 10 professional attributes that employers want to see in their employees, in order of importance:

1. Leadership skills

2. Interpersonal skills

3. Problem-solving skills

4. Self-motivation

5. Efficient

6. Detail-oriented

7. The ability to prioritize

8. Team player

9. Reliable

10. The ability to multitask

The list wasn’t particularly surprising. I suspect most people could second guess most of this even if it might be a little harder to guess the exact priority order the data reveals.

But the question this prompted in my mind was:

“If leadership skills are the most desirable competency, how can an employer discover what an applicant’s true leadership skills are and more importantly, fairly assess and rank competing candidates against this criteria?”

Barack Obama and the Dalai Lama in 2014 by Pete Souza 

Mike Sweeny at MAS Recruiting provides this answer to the question:

Organizations use a variety of assessment tests and/or tools to attempt to determine leadership as well as other personality traits in candidates. Overall, the results are very mixed.

Recruiting is not an exact science. You can't "test" your way to hiring people with strong leadership skills. I advise your hiring team to focus on a candidate's leadership track record. Ask each candidate to relate how they demonstrated leadership in various scenarios during their job history. Prior to the interview, have your team develop specific examples that relate to the job at hand. For example, the position being interviewed for may be a production supervisor in a manufacturing facility that has a poor quality record. During the interview session, have your team probe candidates to discuss their history at solving similar problems.

Past work history, combined with solid reference checking, is the best way to hire people with leadership skills. Assessment test may provide additional data to help in your hiring decision, but they are no substitute for probing past work history.

Fair enough, but this approach has several weaknesses:

1. Only candidates selected for interview are assessed against the number one competency

2. The measures are subjective and not quantifiable

3. References are unlikely to be able or willing to provide a great deal of reliable data on this characteristic, they after all are unlikely to have any data which records, let alone quantifies their employees’ leadership skills.

So job seekers are left with a quandary:

The number one most desirable personal attribute has no independent meaningful measure attached to it. And this means there is little we can do to provide independent verification of our leadership competencies.

To look at this in another way, there is no way currently in which HR and recruiters can reliably measure candidates against their most desired attribute.

This is a catastrophe. Especially when we consider that real leaders are not usually those who shout the loudest about themselves. The greatest leaders influence not by shock and awe tactics, but by a consistent influence, inspiring those around them by their behaviours and attitudes in a humble and collaborative way.

But there’s good news. Things are changing and they are the greatest opportunity yet for employees to demonstrate their leadership in a way that no-one can ignore.

Time and again, it is repeated that job seeking is a sales and marketing job, and the most successful candidates approach it in this way.

The rise and rise of digital and social media and ‘big data’ (I promise that’s the last time I’ll mention that in this post) are at last reshaping how HR and recruiters approach their hiring processes.

This revolution is having profound impacts. And it has given rise to something that it’s of immense value to marketers and job seekers alike.

It’s called social proof.

Businesses now use this all the time to prove their credibility in their online and offline marketing. The types of proof vary according to the nature of the business. And the immense value of social proof is deployed within the marketing tactics of most leading businesses today.

Hotels and restaurants covet their user ratings on online media. Writers seek favorable reviews of their books on Amazon. And at a more personal level, we all wish to achieve and retain a good feedback score from our buyers on Ebay.

The huge value of social proof resides in that it reflects what others think of us, not what we say or think about ourselves.

HR and recruiters are at last waking up to the potential this unlocks for them to get better and more quantifiable insight about candidates.

And it’s not rocket science to work out what this means.

Let’s work through a simple example. Faced with two otherwise identical candidates, which person would you assess as having the greater leadership skills?

Person A

• LinkedIn : 800 connections, 12 recommendations and 250 endorsements

• Twitter : Following 300 people, followed by 1500 people

• Klout score : 60

Person B

• LinkedIn : 200 connections, 1 recommendation and 30 endorsements

• Twitter : Following 750 people, followed by 150

• Klout score : 35

At this point I am sure that some of you will be howling in protest along the lines of, “these measures are unreliable and misleading because…” (place your protest of choice here).

And I would probably agree with your arguments assuming they relate to the facts that these measures are all prone to weakness and exploitation or gaming.

But I’d remind you of my opening point:

Presently there is no measure of leadership that is helping recruiters and employers reliably assess, measure and compare candidates against their expressed number one competency – leadership.

Yes the metrics I have selected are flawed. Yes they can be manipulated – (if you spend a really long time doing so) and yes they don’t tell the whole story.

But in the absence of anything better, what will employers do? My prediction is that these metrics will become more and more important. And therefore we ignore them at our peril.

As I have said repeatedly here and elsewhere, there’s no quick fix. The only way to capitalize on this situation for employees and job seekers is to invest steadily in building your online profile.

And for most of us this means a fundamental reassessment of how we prioritize our daily tasks. Yes it’s another thing to add to your already too long to do list. Yes it won’t deliver instant results. But it’s the only way you’ll become person A instead of person B.

Like it or not, your whole career future may hinge on this.

Why more and more people are dishonest on their resumes

By Neil Patrick

Are you more honest than a banker? Under what circumstances would you lie, or cheat, and what effect does your deception have on society at large?

Over the last couple of weeks, I've looked at the rise and rise of lying. Specifically on LinkedIn and then last week on resumes.

And I suggested why I thought this might be happening. But I’m not a psychologist and I wanted to understand better why people lie about themselves more and more in their professional life.

After a little more research, I think I have found some answers. And here’s what I think is going on.

Most people are mostly honest most of the time

There are very few out and out frauds and cheats. People who deliberately set out to deceive and cheat at every single opportunity. Equally, there are very few people who are scrupulously honest in every single aspect of their lives. And if you don’t believe me, think about the last time a friend or spouse asked you for feedback on something they had made or done. Are you always brutally honest?

Of course you are not…your wish to make the other person feel good (or at least not so bad) far outweighs your worries about being slightly deceitful in your response. Which brings us to the second point which is that: 

Lying is circumstantial

The situation we are presented with may increase or decrease our propensity to lie or gild the truth. And the factor which has a profound effect on this is the perceived distance between our actions and the people that our lies affect. The greater the perceived distance and noise that obscures our vision, the greater our propensity to lie.

In the job hunting situation, this is why so many lies are exposed at interviews. It’s much easier to tell a lie on LinkedIn or our resume, than it is to repeat that lie face to face when questioned about it. The evidence shows that time again, when challenged face to face, people ‘fess up.

The growth of digital media opens up our ability to communicate with more and more people. But it also creates a sense of greater separation between us and others when for example we are looking for a new job. If we see a job vacancy online, do we feel as close to the employer as we’d do if we saw a card in a shop window asking for new staff to help out? 

We try to rationalise our lies

Most people wish to think of themselves as being good and honest. But when the temptation to lie becomes too great to resist, we try to make ourselves feel better about it, through rationalization. Like, saying to ourselves, “How much harm can it really do?”, or “It’s not really anything much”.

The stakes influence our choices

In a low stakes situation, our propensity to lie is also low. But as the stakes increase, so the propensity to lie does also. And if we are desperate for any reason to get a new job, the stakes are high. So our propensity to tell lies is increased. Ironically, this fact actually supports the choice that recruiters and HR people often make to choose only from the ranks of those currently in jobs. I still don’t think it justifies such a policy, but it does have this attraction to employers.

The stakes were also high in the financial world pre the 2008 collapse. The distance between the lies and those it affected were great. The actions which we now know caused the collapse could be rationalized however spuriously. So we had a perfect set of conditions for cheating. Overlay incentives which reward the wrong behaviors and we have the perfect recipe for the 2008 meltdown.


Online job applications and Linkedin are a perfect set of conditions to encourage lies

Looked at in these ways, the epidemic of resume and Linkedin lies can be explained and understood: 

• The deception is thought of as small and therefore can be justified 
• The distance between the liar and the people it harms is seen as great 
• The rewards for getting away with it are high 

And last but not least, if we are told that everyone is doing it, then there’s a peer pressure effect which creates a vicious circle. If everyone else is cheating, then I need to as well, or I'll be disadvantaged.

What do you think? Are we headed towards an ever increasing downward spiral of lies, or is there a hope for a return to greater truthfulness? And if so, how might it be achieved in the digital age…? Do please post any thoughts below.

I'll return to this topic again after I have gathered some reactions and ideas.

Finally here’s some really insightful background from Dan Ariely, one of the world's leading authorities on human motivation and behavior, which amongst many other insights explains just why so many financial people deceived us and themselves for so long.

Why are salaries such a secret?

By Neil Patrick

I've noticed a worrying trend in job advertisements. It’s been going on for a while now, but seems to be becoming the norm.

Job advertisements which use terms such as, “attractive salary and benefits”,  “salary negotiable based on experience”, or similar.

This is such a waste of everyone’s time including the employer's.

Employers and recruiters are struggling to handle the volume of applications received for many positions.

This omission of such critical information makes this problem worse. Without the benchmark of salary, both under- and over-qualified applicants will apply when many of them would either not take the job if were offered to them because the salary was too low, or will be too junior to be a serious contender.

It reeks of deviousness and destroys brand value.

What message does this send to the world? That you are open and transparent? That you are trustworthy? That you care about your employees? I’d argue that it is rightly or wrongly interpreted as, “We’ll see who applies and then with luck we’ll be able to hire someone who fits the spec, but whom we can pay far less than the market rate for the job”.

All those carefully crafted brand values are brought into question by this one simple omission.

To apply a less negative viewpoint, it’s also possible, that they are thinking, “If we get an absolute superstar applying who we have to pay over the market rate for, we don’t want to put them off applying”.

I’d argue that this is wishful thinking. Not specifying the salary or even the range, will mean that the real superstars assume the worst and ignore the vacancy. After all they are probably already being generously remunerated in their present position and they know that if someone really wants them, they’ll come knocking.

There’s no excuse.

I accept that in advance of appointing someone, it's often impossible to know the exact salary that is appropriate. An employer doesn't know who is going to get hired and what their precise experience level might be. But they’ll have a clear idea. So there’s nothing to stop them specifying a range of salaries.

I think it's just plain dumb and helps no-one including the employer.

I’d love to hear what job seekers, HR and recruitment people have to say about this, so do please post any opinions below.

The dark side of positive thinking

By Neil Patrick

There’s power in positive thinking. But as dogma, it’s dangerous. It’s taken hold to such an extent that it risks blinding us to the reality of situations. Worse, when it becomes group think, that myopia becomes massively amplified. And the leveraging of delusion has created some catastrophic consequences.

In the world of work, positivity has become almost a mandatory pre-condition for employment.

It doesn’t matter how smart we are. How much experience we have. If we don’t fill the world with cheerfulness and positivity, employers don’t want us in their fold. The greatest virtue you can possess as an employee is the willingness to joyfully execute whatever task you are assigned.

The same mantra is provided to those looking for a job. Jobseekers are told that they must think positive. Their lack of a job is not a problem, it’s an opportunity. They should stride out into the world with a great big smile. True, but this is much easier said than done.

Freedom and blind enthusiasm cannot easily co-exist

This blind enthusiasm and mandatory cheerfulness is also a hallmark of the control systems of dictatorships. All that loving devotion to a leader and joyful exuberance at political rallies. We were mostly bewildered by the manipulated mourners at the funeral of Kim Jong-il in December 2011. But although more subtle, the same cult of positivity also underpins many codes of behavior in the west.

The statues of Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il on Mansu Hill in Pyongyang

 CC BY-SA 3.0 J.A. de Roo

The financial collapse of 2008 was foreseen by plenty of people. The trouble is, they were isolated, shut up and drummed out of the party by the rest who were just having too much of a good time to countenance any cautionary advice.

Too much positivity is as dangerous if not more so than too little.

I think of it as a continuum. At one extreme is the viewpoint characterized by thinking such as the cult of the power of attraction. The idea that we can have anything we want if we just want it enough and imagine it enough. This idea is that by some as yet unknown force of nature, we can have anything we desire – we just have to want it enough.

The power of attraction has found a convenient alibi in quantum physics. All those phenomena that fly in the face of conventional scientific thinking. If normal science cannot explain everything, anything is possible right? Well, no actually it isn’t. There’s plenty of stuff we cannot explain, but that doesn’t automatically prove the correctness of any random idea that comes into our heads.

At the other extreme is the idea that we are all victims of an inevitability that we are really powerless to stop. Forces which are so much more powerful than we are, that we are all doomed. This ideology of fearfulness is characterized by the survivalists – those folk that have abandoned all hope in the world avoiding Armageddon and have decided to take to their bunkers to survive whatever horrors are about to descend.

Both extremes are wrong. We can change things and we have a lot more power than we often recognize. But the key isn’t blind cheerfulness and all charging together lemming-like over the cliff, or self-isolation and hunkering down to ensure our families can survive the unimaginable perils of the future.

The power to effect change is by developing our abilities to discriminate between right and wrong. To vigorously pursue our ambitions and to engage with others with whom we can share mutual support and help. And to have the courage to confront and challenge our leaders when they are at risk of getting it wrong.

Sure, doing it with a smile on your face and joy in your heart is no bad thing. Just don’t place too much faith in group think.

My thanks go to Barbara Ehrenreich, whose RSA video here inspired me to write this post.

Priorities and time management for an effective job search

By Neil Patrick

The myth we can have everything continues to delude us

There’s an explosion of self-help books, podcasts, webinars, forums. It’s become a multi-billion dollar industry. People spend their money AND time so they can change something about themselves they are not happy with.

People think they want to start a business. They think they want to lose weight. They think they want to become an expert musician. But they don’t REALLY want it. What they fall in love with is the pure attractiveness of the thought. And the myth that we can have everything.

People become enamoured with the idea of their goals rather than the reality of the commitment that’s required to achieve them.

They want to have it all.

Well we cannot. Not you, not I, not anyone.

Everything in life costs time or money or both

Everyone who is a true star at something has a talent for sure, but also dedicates themselves to it.

The idea we can have everything sets us up to fail from the start. But we persist in the belief that we can always have more, we just have to find a bit more time to get it.

So one thing that everyone seems to want more of is time. Including jobseekers.

Tim Ferriss, spotted this emerging market early and made I am sure a very good return on his bestselling book “The Four-Hour Work Week”.

Who wouldn’t like to work just four hours a week and spend the rest of their time doing…well whatever they felt like?

It’s a very seductive idea of course. And the many thousands who bought that book prove this. But it's the idea, not the reality involved in achieving this nirvana which seduces us.

Our number one excuse is time

We deceive ourselves that our lives would be so much better if we had almost infinite freedom to do just about whatever we wanted.

Being too busy is the most tempting excuse. We kid ourselves that if we had more time we’d achieve more.

Well we can’t. And we won’t. Time is finite. Everyone has the same amount every single day.

The only choice we really have is how we spend those hours.

And we still waste that time every day

A while ago I was facilitating a workshop with a group of senior managers. It was about project management. I asked them how much time they spent on their A tasks…the things that they needed to do to achieve their personal objectives that they would be appraised on.

I thought this was a fair way to get them to focus on the most important things they needed to do every day.

And almost all of them said they spent the first couple of hours every day reading and replying to emails. Whilst I am sure many of them worked more than 8 hours a day, that’s still around 25% of their available time spent on admin.

Moreover it was their best time...the time when they were most alert and able to be productive.

Next I asked them what were the biggest organisational problems they faced? The number one answer was communication. Huh?

The urgent stuff was stopping them doing the important stuff

Or what they thought was the urgent stuff.

And the reason they had a communication problem was that no-one actually talked enough to their colleagues. They were all too busy reading and replying to their emails.

What really mattered was communicating the important things and doing it fast. And the fastest way I know to communicate with someone isn’t to send them an email. It’s to speak to them.

How can that be you say? An email is instant. Except it usually isn’t. It’s usually a chain of back and forth commentary and remarks which often spreads out over days. And how long does it take you to write an email? Unless you’re an expert touch typist, I bet it’s much longer than it is to actually say it…

A person to person live conversation is two way and simultaneous. It allows you to reach a conclusion. Not next week, but NOW.

That’s where we fail. We let the things which are most demanding of our attention get it. Even if we know that it’s not really the most important or valuable thing we have to do that day.

The trouble is that we feel so much better when we know we’ve answered all those emails. We think that our team isn’t kept waiting for our decision. Our boss has the information he needs for his report. Our peers won’t accuse us of holding them up or being uncooperative.

That’s a good feeling right? Yes it is. But it also means we have sacrificed one of our most important assets - time - just to get that good feeling.

“I cannot do x because I’m just too busy”.

Bullshit. You either want to do something or you don’t. We often like the idea of doing something, but when it comes down to it, we don’t actually really want to do it.

This isn’t just time management, it’s success or failure

But here’s the problem. Just about every professional person I know that has a job is money rich and time poor. And just about every unemployed person I know is money poor and time rich.

Except they are not. Their time is simply gobbled up by the non-productive tasks in their job search.

Or what they tell themselves is their job search activity.

I’m networking. I’m searching for vacancies. I’m polishing my resume. I applied to 20 jobs this week alone! I’m so busy!

That’s the danger. Letting the most at hand tasks get in the way of the most important ones.

And if you are jobseeking that needs to be the activities which are most likely to lead you to getting hired fast.

Why this is even more critical when you’re job seeking

You may think I am talking nonsense. That I don’t understand just how demanding a schedule you have set yourself. And how hard you are working.

So ask yourself this question:

How do you rank the priorities and most value-producing activities involved in your job search?

If you cannot answer this question, then you have your answer…you need to know what they are.

I cannot make that list for you. But I can suggest some likely candidates for it.

Some things that I think should be at the bottom (or not even on) the list are:

• Searching job boards
• Browsing newspaper and magazine job ads
• Uploading your resume to online databases
• Emailing people asking if they know of any vacancies
• Calling up recruitment firms
• Improving your resume
• Getting more qualifications

Some things which probably should be towards the top of the list are: 

• Creating a search optimised Linkedin profile
• Setting up newsfeeds for organisations in your sector
• Improving your social media profiles
• Following relevant people and organisations on social media
• Sharing and commenting on the content of relevant thought leaders
• Talking to people in your network who already work in your target sector
• Growing your network of connections in your industry
• Making appointments to talk with people that may be able to help you

And last but not least, getting off your computer and talking to as many relevant people as you can face to face. At every opportunity.

You may not agree with my lists. That’s fine. But I am sure that somewhere in your daily schedule is something that you know is robbing you of time. And if you’re really honest with yourself you already know what it is…

Being early – a secret way to access the hidden jobs market

By Neil Patrick

Fortune favours the punctual. Here’s why.

I post a lot of information here about techniques for getting hired in this hyper-difficult jobs market.

And they all involve some amount of effort. But here’s one which doesn’t. It just requires an adjustment of your schedule.

I was talking yesterday with a friend who’s a job search coach and he told me an interesting story.

He had a client who had applied for a job and got asked to attend an interview. She actually arrived almost an hour early and after signing in at the desk began her wait.

At this point, most people will sit down quietly in a corner waiting to be called to their interview. They’ll browse the magazines and newsletters, or read their resume and the job description over again.

This lady didn’t though. It was a busy open plan office and people were coming and going through the reception area constantly. Instead of quietly sitting down, she chatted with a few people. She told them she was there for an interview. And a little about what her background was.

Because she had prepared properly and knew a good deal about the business, she could talk about some of the things she knew the company was doing. She had also perfected her elevator pitch and used this as an opportunity to practise it. One person even asked her for her contact details.

She actually discovered a few more things about the firm that were useful snippets of information for her interview.

She had the interview. And a few days later she was called back to be informed she’d not been chosen.

She wasn’t in the least bit disappointed though. Because before she got this call, one of the people she’d talked to in the reception area had called her already to ask if she’d be interested in taking on a role they needed filling.

The job hadn’t been advertised. It was more senior and better paid than the one she’d interviewed for and she didn’t have to compete with any other candidates. Needless to say, she took the job.

Now this story isn’t statistically proven. It an anecdote. No more no less.

And will it happen to everyone who arrives early for an interview? Of course not.

But neither does it cost you anything. There’s no downside and a lot of possible upsides.

But what I like most about this story is that it shows how thinking outside of the box can make a big difference to outcomes. If this lady had just done the normal thing and quietly sat down waiting for her interview, speaking to no-one, she’d not have been hired. But she didn’t. She didn’t even plan this as a strategy; she just thought she’d make the best possible use of her time while waiting.

It just goes to show – fortune favours the brave…and the early!

An extra way to get found by recruiters when you are jobseeking

By Neil Patrick

I’m always thinking about ways I can make this blog and my Twitter account more valuable for jobseekers.

And this morning I had a flash of inspiration.

I have a lot of recruiters who follow my Twitter account - 500 at least. I also have a lot of job seekers.

But it occurred to me that jobseekers usually don’t have a lot of recruiters following them on Twitter. And recruiters are always looking for ways to find candidates.

So I have decided to try something new.

I have set up a new list on my Twitter account that any jobseeker that wishes to can appear on. Just send me a tweet if you are jobseeking and I’ll add you to the list.

The list is called “My job seeking friends”.

I have no idea what the results will be. Or how many people will join the list. All I know is that the people that join it first will be the most visible because they will be at the top of the list.

There’s no cost, no catches and no downsides that I can think of. It’s no more and no less than it appears.

I’d suggest that if you do this, you also make sure that your Twitter bio contains a link to your Linkedin profile. That way recruiters can go straight to your Linkedin profile.

It’s an experiment I admit, but you have nothing to lose if you are job seeking. Just let me know and I’ll be happy to put you on the list.

I’ll also tweet about it to encourage recruiters to view the list.

It might be a total flop, I don’t know.

But I’m ready to give it a try!

If you are a jobseeker or recruiter I’ll be happy to hear what you think!

Why you need to do less to get hired

By Neil Patrick

We have a problem. The odd thing is we not only know about it, we’re celebrating it.

Last week a friend called me up and mentioned he was really busy at work. He’s not alone. Just about everyone I know who has a ‘proper’ job says the same thing. They almost seem to wear it as a badge of honour.

Shortly before the call, I had been out walking along the riverbank. I do this daily. It’s time to reflect and marshal my thoughts. It is always a more productive time than if I were to stay at my desk.

But I have to force myself to do this. I love my work and the default is always to think, ‘Another hour at my desk and I can tick off another task on my to do list’.

A great post on this topic by Greg McKeown dropped into my Linkedin stream at about the same time. It was called, “The Number 1 Reason You’re Too Busy”. You can read his post here.

Whilst I agree with Greg’s points, it occurred to me that the condition he describes for people at work, is magnified even more in the lives of those who are seeking work. And it’s doing them a lot of damage.

Here’s the gist:

Digital communications are filling all our lives with noise

When we are job hunting, it’s easy to subscribe to job boards. We can follow recruiters on Twitter. We can spend hours every day just on Linkedin. It makes us feel better for a start. We are really busy hunting! And that makes us console ourselves that we are doing all we humanly can to find the next job.

Job hunters send out their resume to every possible position they think might be suitable

I’ve lost count of how many times job seekers have reported that they have sent out their resume hundreds of times – every week! I’ve not achieved anything like that number in my whole life!

The cult of more is served well by its biggest disciple – digital media. Digital media makes it too easy to think we can leverage our job seeking activity. But all it is really doing is accelerating the competition for jobs, making it ever harder for recruiters and hiring organisations to find the right people in the deluge of poorly targeted internet derived applications.

Many positions now attract around 200 applications

Which means the basic odds of getting hired are 0.5%. Getting hired isn't a lottery. The successful candidates win because they are better prepared and more impressive at every stage of the process. And that’s not down to luck. It’s down to detailed preparation and attention to every last detail of the requirements the hiring company wants to satisfy.

You are never going to achieve this by luck. You may achieve it by investing many hours in researching the organisation, polishing your resume so that it precisely matches every requirement and practicing and preparing for the interview over and over again.

No-one can do that for hundreds or even dozens of jobs. But you can do it for a carefully selected handful.

The myth of being busy

If you still think that it’s better to be busy., Greg makes an interesting point. He describes our obsession with busy as nothing less than a bubble:

Why are we so irrational in our behavior? We’re in the midst of a bubble; one so vast that to be alive today in the developed world is to be affected, or infected, by it. It’s the bubble of bubbles: it not only mirrors the previous bubbles (whether of the Tulip, Silicon Valley or Real Estate variety), it undergirds them all. I call it “The More Bubble.”

The nature of bubbles is that some asset is absurdly overvalued until — eventually — the bubble bursts, and we’re left scratching our heads wondering why we were so irrationally exuberant in the first place. The asset we’re overvaluing now is the notion of doing it all, having it all, achieving it all; what Jim Collins calls “the undisciplined pursuit of more.”

This bubble is being enabled by an unholy alliance between three powerful trends: smart phones, social media, and extreme consumerism. The result is not just information overload, but opinion overload. We are more aware than at any time in history of what everyone else is doing and, therefore, what we “should” be doing. In the process, we have been sold a bill of goods: that success means being supermen and superwomen who can get it all done. Of course, we back-door-brag about being busy: it’s code for being successful and important.

And that’s the key. We kid ourselves that being busy equates to the greatest possible effort we can invest and therefore our chances of success in our endeavours are as great as we can make them.

Big mistake.

I’m not saying that if we put our feet up, success will automatically flow to us via some mystical karmic force as yet unrecognized by science.

What I’m saying is that focus and the prioritization of the important things over the urgent things is what makes for success in any endeavor.

But it’s not just a question of prioritization. We all need to be ruthless in eliminating the things we spend time on which are sucking the time away from the important value adding things.

Fortunately this isn’t as difficult to practice as it might seem.

Here are the things job seekers can do right now to avoid being sucked into the black hole of busyness:

1. Get the foundations of your search correct

This means having absolute clarity about the type of role you are seeking. It goes hand in hand with a ruthless evaluation of what your personal competencies and aspirations are. Eliminate everything from your search which isn’t a great fit. Do not be tempted into thinking any job is better than no job.

I know that’s hard to say when the bills are piling up, but the hard truth is that unless there is a perfect match between you and the role, you are wasting your time going after it. And in the unlikely event you do get hired, sooner or later you or your employer are going to regret the decision and seek to dissolve the ‘marriage’.

2. Rest well to excel

K. Anders Ericsson found in “The Role of Deliberate Practice in the Acquisition of Expert Performance” that a significant difference between good performers and excellent performers was the number of hours they spent practicing.

What few people realize is that the second most highly correlated factor distinguishing the good from the great is how much they sleep. Top performing violinists slept more than less accomplished violinists: averaging 8.6 hours of sleep every 24 hours.

3. Don’t add more – discipline yourself to swap

For every new activity you add to your rota, take out one which is a time-sucking waste of your time. Individually they might seem small…but cumulatively, they can devour hours of your time every day.

Unsubscribe from email lists which are filling your mailbox with jobs you are not interested in or suitable for.

Take down your resume from job boards which only get you calls from the wrong people.

Leave the Linkedin groups which are not providing you with real value and suitable new connections.

4. Invest more in your most important relationships

Don’t accept every social media invitation that comes your way. It’s counter-intuitive to say no to good opportunities, but if we don’t do it then we won’t have the space to figure out what we really want to invest our time in.

Invest more in the relationships which are potentially most valuable to you. Just as you only need one job, you only need one conversation to change your future. But when that conversation arises, you need to be delivering your A game, not squeezing it in between a dozen other tasks you have scheduled at the same time.

Less will become the new more

I cannot put things any better than Greg has done in his post, so I’ll leave you with his conclusions:

A hundred years from now, when people look back at this period, they will marvel at the stupidity of it all: the stress, the motion sickness, and the self-neglect we put ourselves through.

So we have two choices. We can be among the last people caught up in the “more bubble” when it bursts, or we can see the madness for what it is and join the growing community of Essentialists and get more of what matters in our one precious life.



Greg McKeown is the author of Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less. His "why" is inspiring people to design their lives and careers in order discover their highest point of contribution.

How to earn money while you look for your next job

By Diana Schneidman

There are millions of things you could do while you look for your next job.

• You could mow lawns or shovel snow. 
• You could return recyclables or take a metal detector down to the beach. 
• You could work breakfast shift at the local fast-food outlet or babysit your nephew. 

Here’s a better idea: You could practice your proven work skills as a well-paid freelancer or consultant working with businesses.

Why businesses? Well, because that’s where the money is. Businesses are more likely to have the funds to hire the assistance they need than individuals are, even if the individuals do have a need that service providers can fill.

This strategy is easier to implement than you may think, and if you have a little gumption, applied with forethought and taste, you can be earning good money quickly in a few weeks or less. 

The secret to success is to get busy with marketing efforts that directly connect you with valid prospects while postponing nice-to-have but optional brand positioning and internet marketing for later.

I’ve been unemployed several times and each time I followed the same three steps to land work as a freelance writer / editorial consultant serving the insurance and asset management industries.

These steps are:

Step #1: Offer a service as similar as possible to what you did in your last good full-time job.

You can jump into marketing with confidence because you understand which companies are most likely to want your services and exactly which benefits they desire. You also know the job titles of those most likely to hire you.

Also, it’s easiest to work independently when you have already polished your skills and can do the work without guidance from others.

Some may advise that you should do what you love and the money will follow. Sounds persuasive but this saying is not always true. Your hobbies and other “love interests” may be in overcrowded fields or talents that are challenging to monetize.

So why not start where you are and offer the service you know best?


Step #2: Contact the best prospects individually . . . and since today’s marketing gurus recommend developing personal relationships, why not start with a no-pressure, simple phone call?

Over the years I’ve made thousands of phone calls on behalf of my services and I only remember one person who hung up on me.

My calls are nothing like the nuisance calls you get at home while at the dinner table.

Since I only phone businesses, I call during business hours. I make the calls myself. I phone live - no recordings for me!

I only phone people who are likely to want my services.

I get to the point quickly and don’t waste time on useless happy chatter.

Sure, some people say “no,” but it’s all in a day’s work. I don’t consider a simple “no” as rejection.

Step #3: Get real! Let’s define getting work quickly as within 30 days, not 30 minutes.

Every marketing technique, from Twitter to advertising, relies on large numbers. So does phoning.


Why not give this simple three-step system a try? Access everything you need to know to achieve success with Diana Schneidman’s new book on Amazon: Real Skills, Real Income, A Proven Marketing System to Land Well-Paid Freelance and Consulting Work in 30 Days or Less.

(http://www.amazon.com/dp/0991015304)


Diana offers an informative blog and other free advice on how to market freelance and consulting services at www.StandUp8Times.com.

Why the wrong people get hired and how to turn this to your advantage

By Neil Patrick

There are a lot of very average people that get hired simply because they fit a template. 

It’s not because these people are special. It’s because archaic approaches to selection have proved to be astonishingly persistent in many organisations. If you don't believe me, I think you'll change your mind, when you read some of the examples below, at least some of which I am sure you'll have personal experience of.

When these flawed approaches are combined with some bizarre thinking, it’s unlikely the best person for the job will be selected.

You cannot change this fact, but if you know what the process flaws are, you can use this knowledge to your advantage.

I’ve been talking to several recruiters recently about their businesses and how they and their clients go about the process of selection. And it’s clear the best person for a job is often not the one that ends up getting hired.

How can it be, when this is such an important decision and so much time, money and effort is invested in it, that so many poor decisions are made?

Well my conversations revealed that the supposed science of selection is frequently distorted and corrupted by a whole range of instinctive, almost primitive beliefs and practices.

1. Managers define the person rather than the job

Most job descriptions are written so that the desired person’s personal characteristics are much more specifically defined than the characteristics of the job requirements. These personal requirements presuppose what the person hired ought to have in terms of background, skills and experiences. Such profiles not are not job descriptions, they’re ‘person descriptions’.

Since clear definitions of work success have repeatedly been shown to be the main driver of personal performance, it seems obvious that managers should carefully define the work that needs to be done before defining the person they think can do the work.

Specific, key performance objectives should be the main part of a true job description. Not vague and generic characteristics like, “good communication skills”, “self-motivated”, or “results-orientated”

2. Getting the job requires a whole different skillset to doing the job

In an election, when deciding who to vote for, we often judge and choose based on our perception of the candidate’s presentation skills, not their ability to do the job.

Managers do the same with job candidates. They overvalue first impressions, likeability, and communication skills. They instinctively exclude those who are “different” in some way, temporarily nervous, or those who are not slick and polished interviewees.

 
3. People with personal connections are treated differently

People who are connected to the interviewer in some way are evaluated more fairly than a complete stranger. Strangers are assumed unqualified from the outset.

Ordinary candidates are assessed on the depth of their skills, level of direct experience, personality and first impression. These have been proven by research to be useless as predictors of future performance and fit.

The connected person has an automatic advantage – it’s assumed that they will fit with the team and culture of the organisation. Those who are unknown are not given this approval. They have to prove it and that can be difficult.

4. Managers ask irrelevant questions and assess people on meaningless facts

Brain teasers were proved to be of no value in selection processes long ago, but they remain a persistent feature of numerous interview and selection processes.

I heard of one CEO who predicted team skills based on whether or not the candidate picked up the coffee cups before leaving the interview room. I worked with a senior manager who co-related strong organizational and planning skills with a tidy desk, and would regularly carry out desk ‘inspections’, in the belief this would help him know who was performing and who wasn’t.

More recently, I heard about a manager who assumed that any person that could not keep to the appointed interview time for any reason at all lacked a strong work ethic.

5. The decision process is based on candidate features not benefits

Filling jobs with those who tick the largest number of boxes is a poor but common substitute for hiring the best person possible. The latter involves a dialogue aimed at acquiring an in-depth understanding of a person’s capabilities, aspirations and fit. There’s more give-and-take in the negotiation process. Both sides balance their long and short-term needs.

So, I have no doubt that the hiring processes in many, many cases are flawed and that the best candidates are often not the ones that get hired.

What can you do about this? Yes it’s unfair and counter-productive for everyone involved. But you have to face facts and ignore the things you cannot change, and focus instead on the things you can.

1. Pay close attention to the job description, however flawed it may be.

If the JD has been thrown together without due care and attention to detail, play them at their own game. Make sure that you include every clichéd key word from the JD in your resume AND then verify that you have that qualification, by means of providing an example of how you have delivered that result, or shown that capability in your previous job(s).

2. Recognise that the job interview will place undue importance on how well you present yourself, probably much more than how well you can do the job.

Approach the interview not so much as an exercise in showing what you know, more as an opportunity to seduce the interviewers. This is why you should pay close attention to every detail of your dress and personal presentation.

Understand that if you show an interest in the organisation and the job by asking appropriate questions, you’ll actually make the interviewers like you more and they will thus rate you more highly.

3. Adjust your target jobs to prioritise those where you may have a connection to the person hiring

This is where long-term investment in building a good personal network can really pay off. The bigger your network, the more chances you will have of finding vacancies where someone you know personally can come into play…whether it’s by giving you a confidential inside track, or in the best situations, actually putting you forward for consideration.

4. Don’t lose self-confidence following a rejection where you were the best candidate but still didn’t get hired.

I know this is easy to say and hard to do. But if you spotted any of the above process weaknesses I described above in your selection process, you can take heart from the knowledge that: 

• It was poor process by the hiring firm not your unsuitability that meant you didn’t get hired. 
• If the firm can’t get this key process right, maybe, it wasn’t such a great firm to join after all. 

For all the talk in HR circles about process quality and selection science, the sad fact is that the process flaws I describe above will probably never be banished completely. But at least if you know what they are, you have a chance to counter them.

How recruiters use LinkedIn to headhunt

By Neil Patrick

What goes on inside the head of a headhunter?

Last week I met up with a recruiter who is an old friend of mine. He’s been a recruiter for over ten years and for once we had time to just chat. That’s a rare situation, so I took the opportunity to quiz him about how he and his colleagues use LinkedIn to search for job candidates.

Here’s what I found out:

Recruiters use LinkedIn all the time to find the candidates they seek

If you want to be recruited, you need to be on LinkedIn. But that’s simply not enough. You need to be an active rather than a passive user.

According to a survey carried out by Bullhorn, 48% of recruiters ONLY use LinkedIn for candidate searching vs. 1% that use Twitter and Facebook.

So it’s clear which social media platform job seekers should prioritise.

What’s more, on average, recruiters add 18.5 new LinkedIn connections every week. And you want to be one of them.

ACTION: If you’re not already on LinkedIn, set it up now. If you already have a LinkedIn profile, the following tips will tell you what to do to become more visible and impressive to recruiters.

So how do you go about this?

LinkedIn isn't everything, but it is more or less universally used by recruiters. Recruiters often have several thousand first degree connections, which expands to an immense network of people at the second and third degree.

ACTION: You need to have your relevant recruiters in your LinkedIn network. I know that’s harder to do than say, so I have provided a cunning strategy to help you do this here.

Recruiters use keyword searching by geographic location

Recruiters use LinkedIn's Advanced People Search function to find people within a certain geographic radius who possess the skills, education or experiences they are seeking for their clients’ roles.

Now if you perform a search yourself using keywords, your results will be different to a recruiter’s because the LinkedIn Search algorithm customizes your search results to you based on your network.

A partial solution to this is find a friend that doesn't have your in their LinkedIn network, but is a member of LinkedIn and ask them to search the keywords relevant to your area and find out where you come in their search results.

Next look at the top half a dozen results and see what their profiles, group membership and postings look like. These will give you a template to apply to your own profile and activities.

What matters is that within a radius of say 50 miles, you rank on the first page of Linkedin results when someone carries out a search for your key skills.

ACTION: Don’t just fill your profile with keywords. Instead, incorporate them into the bullet points that describe who you are, what you've done and how you have achieved it. Monitor your rank position, and aim to get to page one. If you are on page one, already aim to get as close to top as you can.

Recruiters join industry and skill-based LinkedIn Groups, and monitor the discussions

They use this tactic to quietly observe what leaders are talking about, and who else contributes to the discussion. This way they can see who really has the knowledge and the skills that they seek. Moreover, they can see who is actively sharing it.

ACTION: Join LinkedIn groups relevant to your skill set and industry to keep up with what is going on, and make constructive contributions to the discussions.

Recruiters follow thought leaders and key influencers

A significant part of a headhunter's value is knowing "who's who" in a particular field.

My friend freely admitted that his biggest personal asset was his huge network of contacts. But he doesn’t just build contacts randomly. He targets people that he can see are the thought leaders and biggest contributors to specialist insights.

So recruiters collect contacts and this is a key reason that you should always aim to nurture your relationship with a recruiter, even if you have an experience which doesn’t initially result in you getting hired.

ACTION: Follow the people whose status and specialism will reflect well on you. Don’t worry if you are not a thought-leader yourself…yet. Your association with those that are will build your profile and make you more visible to recruiters.

Recruiters follow their connections' LinkedIn behavior

Part of the headhunter’s art is understanding the timing of what is going on in people's lives, and the signals they give off which demonstrate that they are open to an approach.

Recruiters are alert to people's LinkedIn behavior patterns to determine when someone is about to begin a job search. Sometimes, a tip-off is obvious, like when a person checks out a recruiter’s profile… or, when someone who has been quiet suddenly starts making frequent status updates.

ACTION: Often people are nervous about letting their current employer or others know that they are in the market for a new job, for good reason. Get smart. You don’t have to proclaim “ I am looking for a new job” to put the right signals out to just the people that matter.

Not all recruiters ignore those who are currently unemployed

Yes it’s true that many recruiters are only interested in those that currently have jobs. It’s unfair and it’s not the best decision in my view. But it’s a fact.

But not all recruiters think like this, especially in the wake of the recession, when so many talented people found themselves unemployed through no fault of their own.

ACTION: Whatever your situation might be, focus on the positive. Demonstrate your knowledge, and your leadership. Capitalize on the fact that you probably now have more time than usual to invest in some powerful personal brand building. 

You can use the latest features of Linkedn to upload presentations and videos that showcase your skills and insight. These can really set you apart, so use them.

Present yourself as a professional (who happens to be currently unemployed), rather than as a person who used to be whatever and is now out of work.

Recruiters don't want to guess

Don't make recruiters have to guess about who you are and what you have to offer. You know exactly who you are but they don’t. And they don’t have time to solve riddles. But avoid the temptation to try and present yourself as someone you are not. Sooner or later you will get found out and you’ll be wasting everyone’s time including your own.

ACTION: Be completely clear about who you are and even more clear about what value you can deliver in your LinkedIn profile. Keep your profile up to date and build long-lasting relationships with quality recruiters.

I have written a post which reveals some secret strategies for using social media to build valuable relationships with recruiters here. Just remember that everything you do online is key to building better professional relationships in the real world.

See it as nurturing your career asset rather than just solving today’s problem and you’ll not only land your next job faster, you’ll be creating a long term career asset which will pay you back over the long term too.

The 6 job interviews you can never win

By Neil Patrick

There are six job interview situations, in which it doesn’t matter how good you are, how excellently your perform at the interview, you will not get hired.

For all the talk about excellent hiring practices, process quality, talent management, investing in people, the hiring process has always been and will continue to be imperfect.

If you are struggling to understand why you didn’t get hired for a job you were easily the best candidate for, I’m willing to wager that one of the following six reasons applied.

Here they are:

1. The comfort factor. These are legitimate reasons from the employer’s point of view. They include your current or previous salary level, relocation requirements, and recent experience. You may be perfectly willing to settle for a lower salary than you have enjoyed previously. You may also be perfectly happy to up sticks and move to the other side of the country. And learn any new skills that may be required. But the employer will perceive that these adjustments will make you feel uncomfortable and hence less motivated. Result: you’re rejected. 

2. Your age. I’m not just talking about discrimination against older candidates here either. For some roles, the grey hair factor is a definite plus. Of course it’s nonsense. And yes it’s also illegal, but it’s so easy to dodge the accusation of age bias, that plenty of employers can and do. 

3. The internal candidate. Firms will sometimes advertise a position even when they have no intention of hiring because they have an internal candidate lined up. But the company wants to legitimise this decision, so they benchmark the internal candidate against who else is available. The odds are heavily stacked against you in this situation. The internal candidate, who is a known quantity is almost guaranteed to get the job.

4. You’re better than your boss. Again, this is almost impossible to win; the hiring manager feels that you are so competent that you could do their job. Even if you don’t want their job, and are fully prepared to be a supportive sub-ordinate, they will worry that your expertise may expose shortcomings in their own. The outcome is they will choose a less well qualified candidate. 

5. Looks matter. Nepotism is alive and well. So is positive discrimination that favours the physically attractive. The sad truth is that if you’re up against someone with film star good looks, they’ve got an automatic bonus card over you. I won’t even discuss what happens when a hiring manger feels a strong physical attraction to a candidate. 

6. Incompetent interviewers. Hiring managers are rarely trained interviewers. This has always been a problem, and it’s become worse. In the tough times we have gone through, interview skills training for every manager is a luxury few can afford. The result is that at best your technical competencies will get a fair appraisal, but your other soft competencies and value adding capabilities will not. Worse an untrained interviewer may be easily influenced by a less competent candidate that can dazzle them with slick talking.

If you have an interview failure and any one of these situations applies, you can at least take consolation that even though you were not chosen, it doesn’t reflect badly on you.

Yes, it’s not fair. Yes it may be counterproductive for the employer. But you can walk away with your self-confidence intact…and that’s exactly what you should do. Never take such situations personally and move on, safe and confident in the knowledge that you were not beaten by a better person.

If you've experienced any of these situations, do please share these in the comments below.

How to get people to say ‘yes’ – the science of persuasion

By Neil Patrick

Whether you are applying for a job, pitching a sale, negotiating with a customer or even just going about your day to day work, how much is it worth to you to get more people to say ‘yes’?

There are scientifically proven methods that have a massive impact on this. Better still, they are simple, ethical and almost completely free.

The interesting thing is that these methods are especially relevant in the online world. Whether it’s how we engage with people on social media, how we set up a website, or what we say on our Linkedin profiles, the applications of this knowledge are endless and astonishingly powerful.

These tips are also short-cuts. Success is found by working smarter not harder. Knowing these principles you’ll find dozens of applications whatever kind of work you do.

If you want to know the 6 principles of persuasion so you can apply them, this simple and insightful explanation from an RSI Animate video will give you all you need to start to benefit straight away.

The video is presented by Dr. Robert Cialdini and Steve Martin, co-authors of the New York Times, Wall Street Journal and Business Week International Bestseller “Yes! 50 Scientifically Proven Ways to be Persuasive”.

Totally recommended viewing!

Job fit - the key to understanding who gets hired

BY MARCIA LAREAU

Recruiters talk a lot about finding a good fit. Do you know what this really means? The answer may surprise you as Marcia La Reau explains here.

After an interview, jobseekers often say, “I hope I get that job…it’s a good fit.” 

When I read Human Resource and Recruiter blogs about hiring, they are constantly asking about job fit. And yesterday, a potential client spent about 90 minutes telling me about her current job, which could be summarized by, “It’s just not a good fit.”

What amazes me is that everyone is talking about something different. Job security is greatly dependent on fit, so attending to this single factor is critical. 

* * *

Sam was escorted to a room for his interview. There was a table with a chair and a few other chairs were pushed against the wall. A small side table sported a few magazines.

He checked the papers in his portfolio and felt his tie to make sure it was straight. He was early. He picked up a magazine and found an interesting article.

A young man entered the room and sat down at the table. He was wearing shorts, a wrinkled tee shirt and tennis shoes—no socks. He sat down at the table and placed a tablet and some papers on the table. Sam nodded and returned to his magazine.

After several minutes, the young man said, “Hi. I’m Cam…Cameron.” Sam smiled and said, “I’m Sam.” …and returned to his magazine as he checked his watch.

After a few more minutes, Cam said. “Well, how about if we get started with the interview.” Sam couldn’t believe it. THIS was the person who was going to interview HIM?

The interview continued for about 10 minutes and finally Cam said, “If you are having a problem with me, and that’s obviously the case, then this place is not going to be a good fit for you.” The interview was over. 

* * *

Recently a client was telling me about a lesson learned earlier in his career. He reported to the CEO of a large multi-national firm. They were interviewing for a Senior Vice President of Sales for North America.

After a finalist left the CEO’s office, my client said, “ He seems to be a perfect fit.” The CEO replied, “We will not be hiring him. His suit was slightly wrinkled, and it didn’t quite fit.” The decision was final. 

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Job fit—by whose definition?
When I have a spare moment, I spend my time reading and listening to hiring professionals from recruiters, HR professionals to hiring managers—anyone involved with the hiring process.

What do recruiters look for?
This topic is central. Jorg Stegemann is a leading international recruiter with Kennedy Executive. In a recent post, How To Hire Someone: Checklist (7 Tips), Jorg asks if the candidate has 70% of the technical requirements and 100% of the personal requirements.

Other questions on Jorg’s list included:

1. Do I trust the candidate?
2. Do I want him to represent the company when I’m not around?
3. Can I imagine the candidate with my team? Does it look good to me?

Only one of his seven points address skill sets. The other six are about fit! Now do you see why I blog about this topic a lot? Most jobseekers think it’s all about their skills! It isn’t.

Candidates tend to focus their idea of job fit on skills and experience. Managers concentrate on the ramp-up time and the energy it will take to get a candidate to the point of adding value.

How about HR? Same as recruiters…or different?
A recent survey of online HR chat can be summarized in this article on the top 10 HR issues.

The top three issues cited here are retention, recruitment, and productivity. 

Here are a few quick excerpts that reinforce the point:

• Employees are the lifeblood of the company.
• Your business will also have invested significant time and money into ensuring maximum productivity wherever possible.
• The second major challenge facing the Human Resources’ department is recruitment of talent. Finding staff with the correct blend of skills, personality and motivation is difficult.
• The HR department needs to provide each employee with the right combination of culture, remuneration, and incentives.

My point is this: Human Resource professionals define job fit in terms of productivity. Also consider that when a company doesn’t make its profit margins, HR gets blamed for not hiring the right people…no pressure huh?

Please consider reading this article on The Science of Hiring. It focuses on job fit from the HR perspective.

What is important to the hiring manager?
The criterion of Hiring managers may not be essentially different than HR, however, the manner in which it is expressed will be.

Hiring managers look for the candidate that will be able to quickly become a member of the team and bring tangible value. It’s a combination of the time it will take to integrate into the team, embrace the tools to do the job, and produce the product that meets the need at hand.

This article sites three essentials and all of them assume that the skill sets, education, and experience are in place.

What are the essentials?

1. Credibility and reliability. The real issue was dependability.
2. Teamplayerism. This was about social skills.
3. 110-percentism. This addresses “self-directed enough, without a lot of hand-holding…”

Note that none of these are tangibles like an MBA or 7 years experience in a lab, or the ability to use specific software. The success factors deal with personal attributes and character traits.

And what about the jobseeker?

Jobseekers rarely think in terms of the concerns outlined here. Their idea of “fit” focuses on how comfortable they are with their colleagues, whether they get along well. Jobseekers concern themselves with the energy level of the environment, whether they can work at home, and if there will be work-life balance.

There is nothing wrong with those concerns and they are prime considerations. However they should not be the focus during an interview. The consequence of taking this mind-set into an interview is to send the message, “This is all about my comfort in the office.” That won’t win an interview.

Do business ALWAYS look for job fit?
The answer is YES and NO.

A careful read of a job posting should reveal whether the position is part of a change initiative. When a company is going through change, then they may look to hire people who have a different approach to problem-solving than the current staff. AND…yes, most companies are going through continuous change.

However, a prime candidate will be someone who can bring change with the least amount of angst—someone who can smoothly work through change without undo interruption to productivity as work-flow processes adjust to meet new business directives.

Understanding the differences in the needs of each player in the hiring process is critical and I hope this article helped. The next step is to clearly and succinctly demonstrate your attributes on your cover letter and résumé so each audience understands your value.

Need help?
That’s what we do in the Forward Motion Differentiation Workshop. This workshop is offered all over the U.S.

Called a Creative Thinker, Career Futurist, and a person of unusual solution, Marcia LaReau founded Forward Motion, LLC in 2007. Since that time, she has become a recognized leader in the employment industry, and Forward Motion has spread across the United States and abroad to help jobseekers find jobs that fit.

Website: http://forwardmotioncareers.com/
Blog: http://forwardmotioncareers.com