Many (or most) of you are probably on LinkedIn to some extent (if you’re not you should be– www.linkedin.com). LinkedIn is an awesome tool for getting results in your job search. But are you really getting the value out of it that you could be? Use LinkedIn to advance your search in three ways: More
When you answer an online ad, you are competing with hundreds, or often thousands, of other applicants. In fact, I was recently talking to an HR Executive at a Fortune 500 company who shared with me that they received 6,000 resumes for one Customer Service Manager opening! Because of this situation, the filtering process (either human or computer) looks for as close to an exact match as possible. So, you could have a great resume and cover letter, but statistically speaking the odds are still against you making the cut. More
This post first appeared on the Five O’Clock Club’s website
In Part 1, I summarized how performance reviews can help individuals and the organization as a whole. In this blog entry, I’ll share with you some of the key details that can help you to conduct the actual review and get the most out of the process. More
In LinkedIn’s blog and a recent Wall Street Journal article, a new LinkedIn capability was described. Career Explorer is designed to help college students use LinkedIn’s network to make career decisions; it’s now being tested in 60 schools. More
The Five O’Clock Club has a four-step approach to salary negotiation that I have used to help clients (and myself!) negotiate thousands more in compensation. Thought I would mention a few highlights from this approach. More
Difficult interview questions fall into a few different categories, including stress questions (“I don’t think you’re good enough…”), seemingly off-the wall questions (“how do you find a needle in a haystack”), behavioral questions, including those that assume a negative (give me an example of a time when you had a difficult employee…”) and “greatest weaknesses” types of questions. In answering these questions, the key thing to remember is, as we say at the Five O’Clock Club, to play the interview “game”. More
Below are four of the areas that I focus on with clients when helping them to prepare for a job interview.
1) Be a consultant (take a strategic approach to the interview)
This is a whole mindset that can change the dynamic of the interview. You do this by figuratively sitting on the same side of the table as the interviewer, helping the interviewer solve her or his business problems. It’s NOT about just memorizing the answers to their questions and then asking three of your own (this is the way many job-seekers approach the interview). It IS about preparing extensively through research (like any consultant would), anticipating what issues they face, and gaining the understanding needed to demonstrate how you can help them.
2) Seek to tell two or three “stories” about your experience that are relevant to the interviewer, and that you’ve practiced beforehand.
Make it your goal to get these stories out in the interview. Use them in answering most of the interview questions you receive. Telling a story, or illustrating your expertise (i.e. saying “I have strong analytic skills, for example…”), can make all the difference between a lackluster interview and a powerful, compelling presentation. I tell clients to use a storytelling format, such as “problem, action, result” (or PAR), and make it interesting!
3) Surface objections to your candidacy by asking these two questions at the end of the interview…
1) How do I stack up against the other candidates? 2) Any reason you couldn’t see me in this position? These questions are essential to conducting an effective followup (see below). There’s a saying that the sale doesn’t begin until you find out what their objections are.
4) Follow up effectively (like any consultant would)– don’t write a thank you letter– write an influence letter.
Use the answers you receive from the questions above, and other questions you asked about their needs/issues, to write that powerful followup. Address their objections to your candidacy, if any, and show how you can help them solve their problems. The follow-up is often more important than the interview itself– I’ve seen numerous cases where candidates have turned a “no” into a “yes” from an effective followup.
If you feel stuck in your search, understanding where the problem lies is the key to moving forward. To diagnose your search and find the “cure”, ask yourself these questions, split into three broad categories: Your targeting, your marketing, and the volume in your search. If your answer to any of these questions is not clearly “yes”, you may have a gap that you need to address.
For the targeting, consider– am I going for the right position for me? Is it a fit with my background as I’m presenting it, or is there a mismatch? Is my search focused enough, or am I trying to be all things to each target? Am I pursuing 2 to 5 clearly defined targets in sequential but overlapping order? (At the Five O’Clock Club we define a target as a combination of three parts: 1) specific position or job description, 2) company type or industry, and 3) geographic area. Changing any one of these parameters may require different positioning.)
For your marketing, consider– are your pitch, resume, and cover letters/emails all sending out the same message for each target? Are they written clearly and with the appropriate message and tone for the audience? Do you have a marketing plan, listing the organizations you are interested in by target, and are you showing this plan to those who could help you?
Are you marketing yourself by using all four ways to get interviews (networking, direct contact– directly contacting people you don’t know, search firms, and ads), and are you prioritizing the first two? Networking and Direct Contact have been shown in Club research to be far more effective in landing interviews. In interviews, are you asking the right questions, and following up assertively to influence the outcome? Are you speaking to your target audience about how you can help them, or are you just talking in terms of the last job you had? All these areas get to the quality of your marketing effort.
If your targeting and marketing are correct, then it becomes a numbers game. You want to go for 6 to 10 things in the works with your “Stage 2” and “Stage 3” contacts. The reason we say this is if you go for 6 things, five of them will fall away through no fault of your own. Using the Club’s terminology, “Stage 2” means contacts you are talking with who are in a position to hire you or influence the hiring manager, but have nothing open now. “Stage 3” means the same “Stage 2” contacts, but now you are talking about a specific open position. So, do you have six to ten things in the works?
If you don’t have six to ten Stage 2 or Stage 3 things in the works, maybe your “pipeline” is running dry. Stage 1 contacts– essentially everyone that you know, are the people who can help you get the Stage 2 & 3 meetings. You should aim to get the word out about your search to 200 people in Stage 1 (including family and friends, co-workers you haven’t talked to in years, your dentist, etc.). Are you?
Similarly, on average you need to be targeting enough “potential”, roughly 200 potential positions, to end up with a job offer in a reasonable time. By “positions”, I don’t mean open positions, but rather a specific position in a company whether it is open or not. This number will vary depending on the industry growth rate. So, are you targeting enough positions?
If the volume is not there, are you spending enough time on your search? If you’re currently not employed, at the Five O’Clock Club we recommend spending 35-40 hours a week, and if employed 15-20 hours a week.
Employment Trends: Health Care Hot, Real Estate Not
by Rob Hellmann • Career Change, Getting Interviews, Job-Search Strategy •
Indeed.com, an online job-search engine that aggregates job postings from across the web, released an analysis of employment trends by industry and geography. Their findings could be helpful to those of you who are looking to develop job targets– I recommend checking it out. My observations from their data: