How to Fail at Interviewing Before You Start

You might ask “How can you fail at interviewing before you start?”

The vast majority of candidates never get an opportunity to interview in a face-to-face meeting with the hiring manager or executive because they BLOW the phone interview.

These candidates failed at interviewing before they even got started. They’re like a runner who never leaves the starting block on the track.

I’ll use a basketball metaphor to describe this scenario. Many basketball games come down to the last few seconds with close scores. The game outcome is decided by who does a better job making free throws. But what if you never got the chance to get to the line and make your game winning free throws. What if during the game you missed lay-ups, your defense was mediocre, and you couldn’t rebound effectively? You’ll never have a chance to make a game winning shot since you didn’t set yourself up from the start to be in the right position.

Phone interviewing is the vehicle by which candidates set themselves up for success. You’ll never be invited to meet hiring managers if you don’t first ACE the phone interview.

What’s your “accuracy” in phone interviewing? After a phone interview, do you get asked in for a personal meeting with the hiring manager 80% of the time – 50% – 20%. If you look back on all your phone interviews in your current job search, I would bet you’d be stunned at the horrifically low percentage of time you actually get invited to personally meet the hiring manager.

Your minimum goal of interview invitations after phone interviews should be 50% – that’s the minimal acceptable standard. However, if you’re not hitting 80%, batten down the hatches, conserve every dime you have – because you’re headed for a job search that is going to drag on forever.

The big question is: How do you consistently get to 80%?

As many readers of our blog know, Brad and I have written the definitive guide to job search in our workbook titled “This is NOT the Position I Accepted”. The most popular download on our website over the last year has been the FREE Chapter on Phone Interviewing.

We’ve taken this Chapter stuffed full phone interviewing best practices, matched it up with recent real-life examples and stories from members of our LinkedIn Job Search Discussion Group, and put together a one-hour powerful webinar on phone interviewing that will transform your job search and dramatically reduce the time it takes for you to find a new job.

Would you invest an a minimal amount of time and expense to improve your phone interviewing capability to get to 80%. What’s 80% worth to you? What would you do to get 5 more interviews, 10 more interviews, reduce your job search by 50%, or avoid draining your savings account on a prolonged job search.

Join Brad and I for a powerful one-hour webinar on October 31st. If you implement just 5 or 6 of the ideas we’ll be discussing, you’re job search will immediately begin to kick into overdrive. SIGN UP NOW!

Barry

Connectors are worth their weight in gold for your job search

Keith Ferrazi, Author of Who’s Got Your Back, wrote a blog article titled “Seven People You Should Know (Besides Kevin Bacon) to Connect with Almost Anyone”.

Keith describes the power that comes from being connected or linked to “connectors”.

For years, we’ve been advocating candidates in their job search should work hard to find connectors. In our projects where we develop strategic networking plans for executives, we usually discover in assessing their existing networks that there are NO connectors and thus – almost zero leverage in networking.

Connectors are rare individuals who are well connected to others. They have great reputations. Their names constantly surface on every request for people who do similar work. They are on everyone’s short list. They’ve done a great job of personal branding and typically have strong large networks.

Connectors pride themselves on helping others in their network. They love to bring people together. They are constantly providing recommendations, referrals, and introductions. A referral from a “connector” is worth their weight in gold for your job search. A referral from a “connector” is similar to receiving the “Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval”.

Now the question is how do you find connectors with whom to network?

1. A connector is well-known to clients, customers, vendors, and suppliers. For example, I am a connector in Southern California in the Executive Search Field. If a company is seeking a “C” level executive, either myself or my partner will be on their shortlist of firms/individuals to consider. I have an extensive network of over 5000 CEOs and Senior Executives developed over 2 decades through-out the country that I have personally touched in one way or another and still maintain contact. My network is especially strong in Southern California. One strategy of finding me might be to ask other peers who do they use as a recruiter when they are looking for job? You’ll hear the same 2-3 names constantly pop in conversation.

2. Another strategy is to ask hiring executives and managers who do they use as a recruiter to hire top talent executives for their teams. Again, you’ll hear the same names over and over again on the short list of recruiters.

3. A third strategy is to see who has the strongest reputation within the social media space for the individual you are seeking? Do they write a well-recognized blog, are they one of the top 50/100 recruiters on Twitter? Do they get interviewed by major business publications. Do they share the wealth of their knowledge with their network and community?

I’ve used the example of an Executive Recruiter. My example for connectors could be lawyers, accountants, business development managers, benefit consultants, software sales reps – the list is endless.

The key is to identify “connectors” that can provide job leads and referrals in the career path you want to be moving along.

Are you linked to connectors in your network?

To learn more about effective job search networking and the powerful leverage connectors bring to your job hunt, listen and download some of our radio shows where Brad I focused on discussing networking.

Barry

P.S.: Don’t forget to join our LinkedIn Job Search Discussion Group to participate in a wide range of networking discussions.

Hope is NOT a Job Search Strategy

Liz Lynch, over at The Smart Networking Blog, just posted a blog article by this very same title. This is one of my favorite phrases I use all the time in our Job Search Webinars, Workshops, Seminars, and Private Coaching.

Why do most job seekers base their job search on hope and luck?

This is NOT a strategy. Trying to “will” the phone to ring is NOT effective. Liz talked about a candidate profiled on CNN who submitted their resume over 600 times to job ads on job boards and had a response rate of around 2.5%. It’s a waste of time and a useless technique.

Yet, many job seekers continue to base their entire job search strategy on hope and luck centered around answering ads on job boards.

My experience in 25 years as an Executive Recruiter is that most candidates fall into the trap of answering ads and praying the phone will ring because of 3 reasons:

1. This is what they know and what they did 5 years ago. They are trapped in a tribal paradigm of conducting an out-dated job search.
2. They are unwilling to learn how to conduct an effective job search. They refuse to read the blogs of Barry Deutsch and Brad Remillard, Liz Lynch, Jacob Share, Dan Schwabel, Miriam Salpeter and the hundreds of other outstanding experts in resume writing, personal branding, networking, and interviewing. They don’t take advantage of the FREE audio recordings, videos on YouTube, and products and services offered by these award winning experts. I just wrote a blog post on this topic basically raising the question of “Don’t Be the One! Why is Job Search Like Playing a High School Sport?” focusing on why candidates mistakenly feel they have to go it alone in their job search?”
3. Although the techniques of conducting an effective job search are simple, the effort is intense. It requires long hours, hard work, and a disciplined approach. Most importantly, you’ve got to have a great plan and then work your plan. You can’t treat your job search like a hobby. Many candidates are NOT willing to work hard at finding a great job.

Brad and I recently released a new Scorecard to assess the effectiveness of your job search. It’s our FREE Job Search Plan Self-Assessment Scorecard. We were stunned when candidates started filling it out and sharing their “Score” with us. Very few candidates we discovered meet a minimum threshold for having a plan that will lead to an effective job search.

I challenge you to take the Self-Assessment – Score Yourself – See where the holes and gaps are in your job search plan. If you can fix these holes and gaps, you’ll be able to reduce the time it takes to find a great job.

Barry

P.S. Don’t forget to join our LinkedIn Job Search Discussion Group, one of the fastest growing job search discussion groups on LinkedIn. Learn and discuss how you can conduct a more effective job search.

Advice on Personal Branding is NOT Useful

The current popular buzzword of job search personal branding has taken on an almost mythical status.  Almost every article and blog in the job search arena talks about personal branding. Yet, almost all the recommendations and suggestions are so generic that the advice on job search personal branding is NOT useful.

Good intentions – not enough concrete step-by-step tactics for your job search!

Where do you start – what process do you use?

Are there forms or templates which organize your creation of a personal brand?

What are the best practices in job search personal branding?

What works and what doesn’t work?

How do you leverage your time to create the most powerful personal brand possible?

Most of the so-called “experts” miss the most important STEP in Job Search Personal Branding:

What do you have to do before creating a personal brand? How do you specifically STEP-BY-STEP build a defining document that leads to the creation of your job search personal brand. Telling you to create a personal brand is what I term a BHAG (pronounced Bee-HAG), which stands for Big-Harry-Audacious-Goal. BHAG objectives and recommendations sound like:

Get more sales

Achieve market share

Improve Quality

Achieve the gross margin goals

Raise the number of inventory turns

Establish a personal brand for yourself

The secret behind creating a powerful job search personal brand:

Start at the execution level INSTEAD of the BHAG level. Don’t worry about having a personal brand until you’ve gone through the rigorous process of defining who you are and what you want.

What is this rigorous process you might ask?

We call it the Personal Success Profile and it is the Number ONE Step of our comprehensive job search system called the Career Success Methodology.

Thousands of job seekers who have read our new job search workbook, This is NOT the Position I Accepted (a step-by-step workbook to use the Career Success Methodology in your job search), have embraced the process of first creating a Personal Success Profile as the starting point in their job search. Every day, Brad and I receive email messages on how candidates conducting a job search have dramatically reduced the time it takes to find a new great job – and it all started with the creation of a Personal Success Profile.

Before you can develop a job search personal brand, you’ve got to go through the creation of a Personal Success Profile (PSP). This exercise in creating a PSP will help you to develop a strong personal brand, a networking plan, a targeted job search plan, and prepare for interviews. It becomes your guiding light that dictates every move you make in your job search, including how you create your personal brand.

Your Job Search Personal Success Profile defines your capability, competency, skills, knowledge, values – all the key elements a prospective employer might want to know about you. It captures the core elements of what differentiates you from your peers – part of which is your personal brand.

The PSP goes a step further in creating a definition of what’s important to you in a new job – from the type of boss for whom you might work to the type of culture in which you might flourish.  This Profile identifies what you’re willing to sacrifice in accepting a new job and what items are non-negotiable. The PSP provides the foundation for your entire job search.

Get a copy of our book, This is NOT the Position I Accepted, to learn how to create a Personal Success Profile, listen to our Audio Program on building a PSP, or use the comprehensive Job Search Home Study Kit to get a kick-start on moving your job search into high gear.

Brad and I have also discussed the need to start your job search by creating a Personal Success Profile in our weekly Radio Talk Show. You can listen and download our previous episodes to learn why creating a Personal Success Profile is the number one element of success in your job search.

If you’ve downloaded our FREE Job Search Plan Self-Assessment Scorecard as a tool to improve the effectiveness of your job search, you’ll notice that the first item on the matrix is whether you’ve developed a Personal Success Profile.

Barry

P.S. Don’t forget to join our LinkedIn Job Search Discussion Group to participate in learning how to reduce the time it takes to complete your job search, especially the discussions around developing a Personal Success Profile that leads to a powerful Job Search Personal Brand.

Don’t Be the One! How is your job search like playing a high school sport?

You’re probably wondering what your job search effectiveness has to do with high school basketball. It’s the start of the basketball season in California – be ready for lots of my corny basketball metaphors.

We have a saying on our Girls HS Basketball Team that goes like this “DON’T BE THE ONE!” This mantra we use in coaching basketball can be extended into an effective job search.

In our basketball program it means: don’t be the one that makes everyone else run more lines, do more push-ups, stay for an hour longer, or any other consequence for not living up to the expectations of the coaches.

Each of our 30 girls hold each other accountable to a higher level of standards (they hate to run). No one slacks off, cheats on drills, or pretends they are working hard. The peer pressure is intense – no one wants to prolong practice or do unnecessary work.

Many readers of our blog have probably played a high school sport. You know how the peer pressure and accountability works. However, you’re not in high school anymore. You can’t rely on your teammates. Who is holding you accountable right now to a higher set of expectations in your job search and forcing you to accept some form of a consequence for not meeting them?

I’ve been at this game (job search) for a quarter of century – I know it’s tough to conduct a job search. It’s painful, humiliating, and it requires you to do things most people just plain don’t enjoy – like networking, attending events, and asking for help.

If you are at a senior manager to executive level and not using a job search coach to hold you accountable, you could be taking 2X-3X longer to complete your job search. A good job search coaching program will keep you focused, hold you accountable, and open your eyes to job search opportunities that you may never have considered.

Are you the one who is procrastinating, not sending out regular emails/letters to your contacts, building your network with the right people, and preparing properly for interviews? You don’t belong to a team – it’s just you – so there is no peer pressure to hold you accountable. Should you be using a job search coach to help you reduce your job search by 20% – 30% – 50% compared to the length of time it’s taking your peer group?

Who’s coaching you and holding you accountable? One of the services we provide is a job search coaching program intended to leverage every available resource to help you reduce the time it takes to find a new job. Whether you use our service, or you pick another – the key is to improve the effectiveness of your job search through a job search expert.

Although I am a little biased toward our own job search coaching program, there are a number of outstanding coaches out there – many of whom I’ve referenced in our blog. Don’t procrastinate another day – find a job search coach and start reducing the time it takes to find a great job.

I wouldn’t begin to install new plumbing, code my own website, fix my own car – you get the idea.

Why would you consider “going it alone” in your job search?

This “I can do it myself approach” is what leads most candidates into a depressing cycle of not being able to conduct an effective quick job search that lands a great opportunity. Instead, for most their job search is a prolonged, cathartic, painful, protracted battle of walking a thin line between procrastination and seeing their savings rapidly evaporate.

Imagine for a moment if you could reduce the time it takes to find a new job by 1 month, 2 months, or 6 months. How much of your savings could you avoid spending if you could reduce the time it takes to complete a successful job search?

We have developed a structured process for conducting a job search. The process is called the Career Success Methodology. Thousands of candidates have applied this process to dramatically reduce the time it takes to find a new job. We have a wide range of products to reduce the time it takes to complete a job search, services to reduce your job search, and best of all – a wealth of free audio programs, templates, and other tools.

Start down the path of taking time out of your job search by downloading our FREE Job Search Plan Self-Assessment to determine if you are conducting an effective job search.

Barry

P.S.: Don’t forget to join our LinkedIn Job Search Discussion Group

Your Job Search Effectiveness is Predetermined

Liz Lynch, one of the foremost experts on networking, is a guest blogger on The Personal Branding Blog. A few days ago, Liz posted a blog titled “Prep for the Future with Lessons From the Present”

Liz wrote about why some job seekers might be falling short in their job search — and by extension – their career. Many candidates fall into what we call the “Circle of Transition” which is a difficult cycle to break where one jumps from one job to the next without an active management of their career. Frequently, they find themselves at the mercy of arbitrary management, poor job choices, and the economy.

Her recommendations, especially around building your contacts throughout your career is advice all job seekers should take to heart. It’s the focus of one of my favorite authors, Harvey MacKay, who wrote a book called “Dig Your Well Before You’re Thirsty” – a profound recommendation for job seekers – most of whom violate this basic idea.

The Job Search you are conducting right now is predetermined NOT by what you are doing right now, but what you’ve done over the last 2, 5, 10 years to prepare for this moment.

Imagine looking into the crystal ball and easily predicting how your job search and career will fare in the coming years. Liz suggests what you do now in your job, skill development, network creation, building industry relationships, is the primary element of success in your future job search. The economy will once again sour in 5, 10, or 15 years. Will you be ready or will you be a victim of the Circle of Transition.

Why do so few job seekers consider that job search and career management are efforts, tasks, and processes successful people engage in continuously (even when they have a good job) compared to those caught up in the circle of transition who only consider tasks related to job search and career management when they need a job.

Will you be the one out of work for 18 months again, or will you quickly land on your feet within months of being laid off with a great new opportunity?

Learn more about the dangers of falling victim to the dreaded “Circle of Transition”. Download our FREE Graphic Representation of the “Circle of Transition” or listen to our FREE Radio Show Broadcast.

Barry

P.S.: Don’t forget to join our LinkedIn Job Search Discussion Group and join in the conversation on how to avoid falling victim to the “Circle of Transition”

photo credit ben hayes

Job Search: On-line vs. In-Person 1st Impressions

Chad Levitt, a guest blogger at Dan Schwabel’s Personal Branding Blog posted a blog a few days ago titled “What is Your Digital First Impression?” Chad claimed that making a digital first impression was very similar to making a personal first impression. He inferred in the blog posting that when people are searching for you on google, those first few links that come back are your first impression.

By the way, Chad is an extraordinary authority figure on personal branding, particularly in networking and sales. His own blog at The New Sales Economy Blog is one of my favorite.

No disrespect intended, but I think Chad may have defined digital first impressions a little too narrow.

In a personal meeting, you typically have one chance to make a good first impression. Blow it – and it’s over. Rarely will you have another opportunity.

On-line, first impressions are radically different. Not only are your first impressions scattered across a wide array of sites, such as LinkedIn, Google, Facebook, forums, discussion groups, Twitter, and many other indexed sites/comments.

Not only is your first impression scattered across a wide variety of sites as compared to a one-time event in person, you also have the ability to constantly improve, manage, build, develop, and evolve your first impression on-line. What appears today in a Google Search is NOT what has to appear next week.

The major question is: are you continuously working on your digital first impression so that you can be “found” by buyers, hiring managers, senior executives, recruiters, and human resources?

Let’s tackle one small area of starting to more effectively manage your digital first impressions: A few months ago, we posted on our website an 8-point Success Matrix to evaluate the effectiveness of your LinkedIn Profile. The scorecard was intended to determine if your LinkedIn profile was strong enough to let you be found by hiring managers, recruiters, and human resources.

Our research around the use of LinkedIn as a Personal Branding Tool and for Job Search 1st Impressions was depressing. Less than 10% of those who took the challenge to assess their LinkedIn Profile using our Scorecard met the minimum standard for effectiveness.

If you would like to gain a deeper understanding if your LinkedIn Profile can be more effective in helping you to be “found”, download the LinkedIn Profile Self-Assessment.

Barry

Join our LinkedIn Discussion Group where we release first all our new tools, templates, and advanced self-assessments.

Why is building a job search network worthless?

Building a job search network is usually worthless since that is the end goal for most people. Contrary to popular opinion, size does not matter (at least initially). The most important goal of networking is engagement.

Regardless of whether you build your network on-line or off-line, you still need to provide value to your network. Keith Ferrazzi, Author and Blogger at “Who’s Got Your Back” writes in a recent blog posting about the need to be organized to “ping” your network.

Who do you want to communicate with? How often? What will you provide to your network?

The heart of any effective job search networking is to show your network you are a valuable member of their network. How do you do this? You do it through constant engagement.

Do you conduct drip-nurturing with your most important contacts to stay in front on them and have a “top of mind presence”? How often do you call, send interesting articles, provide links to good information, and focus on their specific needs?

Are you a connector in your network, constantly looking for ways to put people together that is mutually beneficial. Do you get constant requests to be connected with others in your network?

Can you publish information (such as through a blog) that your network might find valuable?

Once you take care of engaging with your job search network, you’ll be stunned at the abundance of job leads, referrals and opportunities that drop through the network into your lap. One of the most frequent complaints I hear from job seekers is “I have a large network, but I don’t get any leads – it doesn’t seem like it’s worth it to build a network”. Remember – the operative word is not building – it’s engaging!

Discover if your effective in your job search networking – both in traditional off-line networking activities and in on-line social media networking – to generate an abundance of job search leads, referrals and offers by downloading our Job Search Planning Scorecard. This FREE tool will help you focus on the most important steps to take in your job search, not just in job search networking, but across every dimension of your job hunt.

Barry

P.S.: Be sure to download some the archived radio show broadcasts on networking that Brad and I have posted to our FREE Job Search Audio Library.

Misperceptions about Selling in the Interview

How do you interview? Are you listening or pitching?

Interviewing is a sales presentation. Forget your traditional image of a pushy sales person pitching a canned response. Instead, use solution selling to uncover all the reasons the hiring manager should select you for the open job.

Miriam Salpeter described a recent article in Entrepreneur Magazine in her blog post “Humanize Your Pitch – Use Your Ears” on the Keppie Careers Blog. Miriam made the connection of what top sales billers do when meeting prospects to the interview process when meeting hiring managers. Her contention was that candidates should focus less on “pitching” and more on listening.

Many candidates fail to listen deeply to the hiring manager and then use that information to pose questions. This technique of listening for opportunities, problems, and issues as conversation starters is a key component of a technique in sales called Solution Selling.

Solution Selling suggests that a more powerful outcome can be achieved by listening and framing questions from what you hear as opposed to the traditional process of “pitching” your rehearsed lines and speech. An excellent book on this subject is called SPIN Selling. It should be required reading for every job seeker.

My Partner, Brad Remillard, wrote a recent article on this blog titled “A Critical Interviewing Mistake” that describes why NOT asking questions in the interview is comparable to being immediately rejected.

STOP pitching as Miriam mentions, and start LISTENING. Your ability to ask questions will improve dramatically.

Barry

photo credit by edwindejongh

Don’t forget to join our LinkedIn Job Search Discussion Group

Job Search Plan Self-Assessment Scorecard – NOW Available – FREE

Are you ready to start conducting an EFFECTIVE JOB SEARCH?

Are you ready to take time off in the race to finish your job search?

As promised, Brad I committed to release our long-awaited, deeply researched, field-tested, and validated FREE Job Search Plan Self-Assessment Scorecard.

You can download the Job Search Plan Self-Assessment Scorecard and tool by joining our LinkedIn Job Search Discussion Group. We apologize about this two step process. However, Brad I have made the commitment to our job search community to release all new scorecards, self-assessment tools, templates, and other FREE Job Search Resources into our LinkedIn Job Search Discussion Group first.

We’ve worked very hard over the last few months to put together a FREE simple scorecard and tool that can make a dramatic difference in your job search.

If you take this self-assessment and work very hard to improve your scores from “0” or “1” into the “2” and “3” levels, you’ll be able to significantly reduce the time it takes to complete an effective job search.

Not only will this scorecard help you in overcoming the Top Ten Job Search Mistakes, but it will also help you in your job search by reducing the time it takes to find a great opportunity.

Here’s a great example: If you’re an executive and the average time in this poor job market is 9-12 months to find a new executive level position, this Job Search Plan Self-Assessment Scorecard will help you cut in half the time it should take to find a new job. Imagine saving $30,000-$60,000 in reducing your job hunting time by conducting a more effective job search.

Join Brad and I on our Weekly Internet Radio Talk Show this coming Monday – August 31st – 11-noon PST on LATalkRadio. We’ll be talking about how to overcome the Top Ten Job Search Mistakes and Errors by using our new FREE Job Search Plan Self-Assessment Scorecard.

Barry

P.S.: We look forward to your comments, ideas, and thoughts in our LinkedIn Job Search Discussion Group. How might we improve this scorecard in a future revision? What insights about your job search effectiveness did you gain after spending a few minutes taking the assessment? After you take the assessment, what’s your specific plan to improve your job search?