How to land a great job in two weeks (and how a mirror can help!)

By Neil Patrick

I have had an interesting few days. Two weeks ago I had a wonderful challenge land on the doorstep quite literally!

It was in the form of my step daughter, who had struggled through her first year of university due to some unfortunately timed health problems and had been forced to admit defeat and abandon her degree, return home and try and find a job.

She wasn’t in a great place mentally. She felt as if all her aspirations had gone up in smoke and that she didn’t have enough good work experience to land a great job, or even a not so great job for that matter. Not an ideal place to be in when you need to find work fast.

She’s independently minded too and likes to do things herself without help. Given what I write about on this blog and my great contacts, you’d have thought she’d be enthusiastic to take advantage of my assistance, but no, I had to persuade her to accept it!

But I am pleased to report that she relented and we set about the task together and now, just two weeks later she is starting work at the end of August. She has a brand new job, but not just any job, a good job with a great firm on our doorstep and a job that I know she’ll excel at.

She applied for just one job, went through a four stage selection process and beat about 200 other applicants.

The four stages were:

• Online application 
• Telephone interview 
• 3 hour assessment centre 
• Face to face panel interview 

So I thought I’d share the process we used to get the desired outcome from start to finish in just two weeks.

 
Research the market

We started by deciding what sort of firms we would target. The criteria in this case were:

• They must be nearby (less than 20 miles away) or the travel costs and time would be a problem.
• They should be expanding so that she’d have career growth opportunities
• They should be a recognised market leader
• They should have a good track record of investing in their people and helping them develop.

This was actually a rather quick step. We easily found the firms locally with a bit of help from Google and the local press online that were accredited as Investors in People and who were getting media attention because of their success.

We also found that the better firms had good websites which provided information on the type of people they were wanting to hire. We read this information closely to focus our search down to the best targets. 

Know a lot about the employer and job you are targeting

This was a quick process too. Once we had the (very) short target list, I showed her how to use advanced searches on Google to quickly find the right information about these firms. As it turns out, I happened to know the firms we’d identified quite well. I hadn't worked for any of them myself, but I knew people that did and I knew they'd help us with some inside information.

But being the independent woman she is, she decided that she’d do all her own research and turned up some recent facts and contacts, that I wasn't aware of. This was to prove invaluable later in the process, enabling her to prove that she was serious about wanting this job. She'd also be able to talk intelligently about the business, which would both impress her interviewers and make the experience less stressful too.

Get the application right

The first step was an online application. But before we even began to complete this, I sat down with her and her own draft of her resume and rewrote the whole thing. It was not looking good when we started. She had been working in a bar for the last year and had previously worked in high street fashion stores. Hardly the sort of job history that would make her look like a high flyer. Plus we had to address the potential negative that she’d become a college drop out.

But after I’d rewritten her resume, things were looking much better. It wasn’t any magic on my part, I simply went through the job description and highlighted all the keywords that were in it. Then I went back to her draft resume and rephrased her descriptions of what she had done, so that it was describing how she’d already done these things in her previous job. I should point out that everything we said was completely true, there were no exaggerations or fabrications.

Only once we’d done this and she had verified with me that the facts were all totally accurate did she take this information and place them into the online application. 

Excel at the telephone Interview

Within 24 hours of sending the online application, an email came back asking to book a telephone interview. Things were looking up!

This was going to be important and so we sat down for a couple of hours and discussed all the points we wanted to get across in the telephone interview as well as the questions I knew would be asked, like, ‘Why do you want to work here?’ and ‘What do you know about this business?’.

We rehearsed how she would talk about her failure to complete her degree. We distilled this into a little story that explained her history in a way which minimised the negatives and maximised the positives. She was preparing her own version of her life history which was showing she was now the perfect person to be hired for not just any job, but this job in particular.

We also rehearsed all the things she was going to want to talk about during the phone interview, to ensure we got over the points we wanted – she would be actively influencing the discussion, not just passively reacting to the questions. She prepared a little list of bullet points of topics that she’d talk about at the appropriate time.

We also practised delivery. For her, we decided, she’d perform best by standing in front of a mirror whilst on the phone and that she would smile frequently during the phone interview. These three things - standing, watching you own face and smiling are actually audible during a phone conversation. If you take these steps, they will introduce a subtle but noticeable change in your voice. You’ll sound positive, happier, more energised and more focussed.

After the phone interview, I asked how it went. She was happy, it had gone well and she’d actually enjoyed it! The next day, she was invited to attend an assessment centre the following week. 

Stand out for the right reasons at the assessment centre

We were still along way away from our goal. But again focus and preparation were the keys.

We went back again to the job description and isolated the behaviours and personal characteristics the firm wanted for the role. These would form the basis of how she was to present herself and behave during the assessment centre.

Based on this we then prepared: 

• The most suitable outfit for the day 
• The precise schedules and travel arrangements to guarantee she’d not just arrive on time, but with plenty of time to get relaxed and perhaps talk to some people in reception. 
• How she would interact with the other candidates and organisers. In this case we decided that she’d not try and dominate but would instead be helpful and friendly with everyone there and take the initiative to engage with the others who would mostly all be feeling at least a little nervous and anxious. 

We also practised rhythmic breathing so that if her nerves were starting to get the better of her, she could get them back under control 

Have the final interview thoroughly rehearsed

Towards the end of the assessment centre exercises, she was asked by one of the organisers to leave. She was crestfallen. In fact, the reason was that she was being whisked away was for a final interview and the organisers didn't wish to alert the other candidates to the fact that they had in fact not been chosen.

The final interview was her chance to ask all the carefully selected questions we had worked out in advance. Again, all designed to prove to the employer that she was the perfect person to hire.

The final interview was she says quite easy! But that’s because we’d prepared and rehearsed every step in advance and left nothing to chance.

The following day, she was telephoned and offered the job, together with a starting date of the end of August. So in two weeks, we’d turned around her life from university drop out to a new career. We applied for a total of one (very carefully chosen) job, and got one offer. That’s all we needed.

Total time investment by both of us I estimate was about 50 hours, which I think would be impossible if we were going after more than one job. And yes she had to beat 200 others, but I would estimate that from the 200 or so online applications, about half would have been telephone interviewed, and half of these invited to the assessment centres which were run over three days.

At every stage, even as late as the assessment centre, candidates were in their own words ‘winging it’. Reminds me of the old cliché, ‘failure to prepare is to prepare to fail.’

Mission accomplished!

The Lazlo Emergency Commission Report

By David Hunt, PE

I love science fiction. Being an engineer I love reading about the technology / science dreamed up to solve problems like interstellar travel, disease, creative aliens, etc. But I also – contrary to many engineers – enjoy the human elements of the stories too. (Side sci-fi plug: Frank Herbert’s Dune is, IMHO, the greatest sci-fi novel of all time. I read it, didn’t understand most of it, and the moment I finished the last page flipped back and started it again. I read it annually, and still find new things in it that I hadn’t seen, or new insights into human nature that I, now older and hopefully wiser, hadn’t grasped before. That’s the beauty of truly great literature.)

So what’s sci-fi got to do with things? Life imitates art.

In the novel The Forever War (link has spoiler!) mankind is engaged in a life-or-death battle with a race called the “Taurans.” And after the war has gone on for centuries, humanity decides to genetically engineer soldiers into someone’s idea of a perfect soldier – and I’m going from memory here as I can’t find my copy of the book: A combination of the Praetorian Guard, the Nazi SS, the Russian Spetznaz, etc. These soldiers were vicious, incredible athletes, worked together seamlessly, placed no emphasis on individualism or their own survival… and they got cut to ribbons costing humanity many critical battles.

Today’s employers use personality profiling on candidates to search for people who most closely match their particular vision of an ideal <fill in position here> in order to create perfect teams who will minimize interpersonal conflicts. As I wrote on my old blog in a post Diversity of What?:

Just think about how insidious this is. Companies are screening out people based on the ability or inability to show the proper personality for a given position. Just imagine – a group of Accountants who all think alike tasked with developing a new way to achieve a faster end-of-quarter closing. A team of Engineers who all think alike assigned to brainstorm, create, test, and launch an innovative new product. And so on.

More terrible, the hidden implication is that by hiring a person to be the “perfect engineer” (or whatever) a company is hiring to fill that slot with little-to-no consideration of the person’s future potential. Sure, companies have a need for an engineer, but one of the roles of Personnel (note, I used the right word this time) is to work to bring on board people who can grow and develop in the organization in addition to helping fill the immediate needs.

(Sidebar note: My essay in the New Hampshire Business Review reprises some of the points from the above blog post regarding the need for “fresh eyes” to drive innovation.)

So the first point that I’d like to make is that people are not robots. Every person has arrived at today via a unique path, and to think that there is some factory “out there” creating perfect fits for a position is folly. We also have unique personalities, and even if two persons have similar backgrounds and career paths – even tested personality types – personalities and egos can nevertheless result in clashes.

The second point, though, is more significant, and goes back to Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs.

While many people are dedicated to their jobs, employers, and careers, most people work to live, not live to work. Unless a person is a “company man” of a kind rarely seen in this era of rapid job shifts – the average longevity of a person in a company these days being on the order of three years – they place more value on their personal life than their company life. More importantly, they place their ability to sustain that life above any loyalty they might feel when the news is filled with stories of entire departments being slashed, and kept around only long enough to train their overseas replacements.

Which brings me back to the Lazlo Emergency Commission Report, cited in the novel. Despite having created teams of ideal soldiers, the effort was a failure that almost cost humanity its survival (I won’t truly spoil the novel’s conclusion – it’s a good read). The conclusion was that we won battles when we had soldiers who were well-trained, well-equipped, and who fought like hell for their own individual survival. The program of engineering idealized soldiers was abandoned.

Teamwork is good, and people need to subsume some of their individual goals for the good of the team. Most people can, and do. Further, teams can be very useful for generating ideas and alternatives and considering multiple viewpoints, analyzing failures, etc. But, given Maslow, great leaders recognize that people are ultimately at work for their own individual survival. Pay games, personality tests for idealized profiles, relative rankings of employees against other employees – all can result in a perception that the employer is pitting employee against employee. Even when this perception is mild, often there is the implicit message that if a person does well, they will only get the “employment continuation award”; the hidden threat is that they might be on the edge and thus better strive even harder to continue getting that award.

When all is said and done, people value their ability to meet their life goals above their ability to meet their employer’s goals. The key to organizational success is to lead with a vision to inspire, not threaten, people. I remember a key line from the classic epic Lord of the Rings by JRR Tolkien, in which an orc in charge of a military unit opines “Where there’s a whip, there’s a will.” I still remember thinking, even in my tender years when I first read that line, that the only inspiration this provides is to do the minimum needed to avoid being whipped. (And it has the second disadvantage of creating resentment of the one doing the whipping.)

We herd sheep, we drive cattle, we lead people. Lead me, follow me, or get out of my way. – General George S. Patton

Only by inspiring people to see their self-interest as being aligned towards a higher goal do great leaders motivate people, as highlighted by this short anecdote:

A man was touring the construction site of a medieval cathedral. He saw a young man roughing out a stone and asked what he was doing. “I’m carving a stone,” was the answer.

He then saw a somewhat older man carving a bas relief on a stone and asked the same question. “I’m helping build a cathedral,” the second man replied.

Then he saw a man taking these intricately-carved stones and fitting them together and once more asked his question. “I’m glorifying G-d,” said the oldest of the three.

So, a few conclusions.

1. Trying to screen candidates to form a perfectly-functioning team built to an idealized vision and that works together with minimal conflict will, in the long run, backfire. (IMHO conflict is where the best innovation arises!)

2. People arrive at the present through unique paths; there is no such thing as an ideal candidate. (Ironically, companies tout diversity while using personality profiles to eliminate it.)

3. People may work in teams, but for the vast majority of people their own survival takes precedence over the organization’s goals. Only when they’re not worried about lower-levels of Maslow’s hierarchy (like their employer’s control over their ability to put food on the table) can they truly focus on the higher ones (like work goals).

4. A good leader will use fear only sparingly, but will instead inspire and find ways to – on a person-by-person basis – align the team’s goals with the self interest of each team member. (Note – I am by no means saying this is easy!)

With shameless self-reference, check out the quote on this image which I posted earlier.

I am dedicating this essay to David Hildreth, my first boss when I joined Ford Motor Company. Of all the people for whom I’ve worked, he is the only one who – if he called me tomorrow and asked me to come work for him again (which would require relocation to a place I’d rather not live) – I’d seriously consider it… because it was he who asked. He inspired me to be a better engineer, and set me on the path to being a better person to boot.

Would your subordinates – past or present – say that about you?

(c) 2013, David Hunt, PE

David Hunt is a Mechanical Design Engineer in southern New Hampshire looking for his "next opportunity" that allows him to design new products and shepherd them to stable production. His LinkedIn profile is: www.linkedin.com/in/davidhuntmecheng/; he blogs at davidhuntpe.wordpress.com and tweets at @davidhuntpe.

The perfect fit, isn't: the imperfect fit may be the perfect choice

By David Hunt, P.E.

Hiring "the perfect fit." It's the fantasy of every employer. The problem is, this fantasy hurts companies because it increases employee turnover, increases downtime, and promotes corporate complacency.

Perfect frustration
As an engineer currently "in transition", I've been quite fortunate during my job search. Unlike lots of people, I get interviews. But, agonizingly, I don't get many employment offers. My problem? I'm not a perfect fit. Since my credentials and accomplishments are very good, I've taken to wondering what a perfect fit is -- and whether companies are deluding themselves that perfect fits are the best hires.

The feedback I get is positive. I interview well. I have excellent qualifications and I am articulate, sincere, and results-driven. My engineering experience is solid and includes significant accomplishments in product design, cost reduction, and process improvements. I've even got two patents -- plus masters-level degrees in both Engineering and Management.

I've met quite a lot of imperfect fits like me who share my frustration. The consensus is two-fold. First, companies fear hiring a poor performer or someone who will leave soon. Second, they want someone who has done the job already and can drop into the position and be effective with no learning curve.

The pigeon problem
On the face of it, given the seemingly large pool of available talent, the desire for a perfect fit seems smart. After all, a perfect fit (assuming one really exists) can hit the ground running. But ironically, the closer to a perfect fit a candidate is, the more likely that person is to leave soon because the narrow job definition is likely to create dissatisfaction. In other words, I think people take new jobs for new experiences and the chance to learn new things -- not to get pigeonholed.

I pursued a Masters in Engineering to break out of a specialty into which I'd been pigeonholed. But the only position I found after receiving my degree was doing it again -- I was a perfect fit. No wonder I left within a year. That same danger applies to everyone taking a position identical to one they've done before. Employers should bank on the fact that most will keep looking because few employees want a stagnant career. Pigeons leave and the job is once again left undone.

Analysis paralysis
The cost of leaving a position unfilled can be significant, not only because work is left undone and schedules slip, but because other functions that depend on the empty position are affected, too. The question is, does it cost more to leave a job undone, or to hire a worker who needs a bit of a learning curve?

In his book Winning, Jack Welch addressed the debate about hiring someone who can hit the ground running versus someone capable of growth. He'd choose the latter. Additionally, he acknowledges the risk of making imperfect hires and considers it preferable. After 30-plus years of hiring, he says he got it right only 80% of the time. Any hiring is risky and there are no guarantees. Ultimately, dithering and delaying in hiring produces "analysis paralysis." Hoping to avoid unavoidable risks, jobs are left unfilled, the employer's needs are left unmet and customers are left unhappy.

But there is another danger to discounting imperfect fits. While hiring a perfect fit is a good tactical move, it can be a strategic error in an economy that is increasingly dependent on rapid innovation and revolutionary, not evolutionary, thinking.

Do the job or solve the problem?
Companies make a strategic error when they hire people who are easily pigeonholed. Pigeons will peck away at a task because they've done it before. The imperfect hire asks, "Why?" Imperfect fits see opportunities that aren't obvious. For example, I worked in automotive lighting, and then transferred to climate control. My "outsider's" lighting experience led to an unusual idea with the potential to save my company over $750,000 annually. Insiders doubted it would work, but the idea was completely validated -- ironically, just weeks before I was laid off.

In another case, my imperfect attitude led me to question why the company was scrapping so many parts purchased from a certain supplier. The parts were failing our test procedures. Rather than focusing on the part itself, I asked whether our tests were unnecessarily stringent. It turned out the parts functioned just fine -- the problem was with the testing process, not our parts vendor. Suddenly, expensive parts were no longer being scrapped and our productivity improved. The experts were doing the job the way it was always done. They made assumptions and blamed the supplier. It took a fresh-eyes perspective to see the reality and to solve the problem.

The perfect choice
Nobody has a lock on all the best practices. Few problems are new or unique to any one industry. New solutions come from a fresh look at problems. That's why it's dangerous to hire narrowly. Imperfect fits bring new perspectives and experience to a company. Continuous innovation and growing, enthusiastic employees are critical. In learning the industry and in bringing outside experiences, imperfect fits will find innovations that just might be hiding in plain sight. Further, growth opportunities actually reduce the risk that an employee will leave since they are not repeating stale tasks that have been done the same way for years.

Innovation means new products, new solutions, and money saved. Employees who are free to meet challenges in new ways enjoy career growth -- and that means long-term retention for employers. In other words, the imperfect fit may very well be the perfect choice.

http://www.asktheheadhunter.com/gv060106.htm

David Hunt is a Mechanical Design Engineer in southern New Hampshire looking for his "next opportunity" that allows him to design new products and shepherd them to stable production. His LinkedIn profile is: www.linkedin.com/in/davidhuntmecheng/; he blogs at davidhuntpe.wordpress.com and tweets at @davidhuntpe.