Getting Interviews But No Offers? Here’s Why

Q.  I’m getting job interviews but not receiving offers. Is there anything I can do to change that?

A. I assume from your question that the interviews are with companies, as opposed to recruiters, and that they are in-person rather than phone interviews. In addition, the company has seen your résumé prior to interviewing you. This means that your résumé is working. Companies, maybe even recruiters, like your background, experience and skills enough to want to meet you so I wouldn’t change a résumé that is working. The problem then is most likely your interviewing skills.

My guess is that you have not done enough preparation in this area. When I coach executives with this issue, the first place we start is by filming the person while I interview them. I suggest you try this. People are amazed at how different they look on video from how they perceive themselves. For example, some studies indicate as much as 70% of communication is nonverbal, i.e. body language. When you review the video, what is your body language saying? How are you sitting in the chair? I know candidates always think they are looking the interviewer in the eyes when answering, however, often the video reveals something different. You will hear exactly how you communicate in your own words. How often do you use the word “like” or “uh” to connect sentences? Do you actually answer the question asked or the one you want to answer? Seeing yourself in an interview may solve your issues.

Q. Should I use a cover letter with my résumé and is there a preferred format?

A. I recommend having a cover letter. As a recruiter, I’m interested in your résumé way more than a cover letter. I have spoken with many executives and HR professionals that expect a cover letter. The important thing to remember about a cover letter is that it is not an extension of your résumé, an addendum to your résumé or held to the same standards as a résumé. Candidates often think because they included something in the cover letter, they don’t have to include it in the resume. Wrong. A cover letter is just that, a letter. It highlights points of interest relevant to the position you are applying for. If something is mentioned in the cover letter, it is imperative that it is also presented in the résumé.

I prefer a one-page, two-column cover letter. One column is titled, “What you seek” and the second column is, “My experience.” This format makes it easy for the reader to quickly align your experience with their needs so they will want to read your résumé. After all, there is only one purpose for a cover letter, which is getting the reader excited enough to read your résumé.

Join our Linkedin Job Search Networking Group. 6,000 other people are benefiting from the discussions and articles. CLICK HERE to join, it is free.

Turbo-charge your job search in 2011 by evaluating its strengths and weaknesses with our FREE Job Search Plan Self-Assessment Scorecard. This will help you and your accountability partner get your search started out right. CLICK HERE to download your scorecard.

Need a great cover letter? We have a free sample cover letter on our Web site that is proven to get you noticed. CLICK HERE to download yours.

If this was helpful to you, then please help others by forwarding it on to your network, posting it on your Facebook page, Tweeting with the link, posting it to your Linkedin groups or status update.  Let’s all do everything we can to help those looking for employment.

I welcome your comments.

Brad Remillard

Work Ethic: What is it and do you have it?

Sabbatical from Writing About Job Search

Brad and I are back after a month-long sabbatical where we’ve been working our hearts out preparing for 2011. We’ve got so many initiatives underway, including a couple of new e-books, an entire on-line learning university, a job board for $100k plus job seekers.

A lot of people tend to think of December as a down month, a month to kick back, relax, take time off, not work very hard. For Brad and I, this was a very busy December and we’re excited about the job market and hiring possibilities in 2011.

What is Hard Work?

Onto the real blog subject – what is hard work?

Candidates claim they have a high work ethic.

Employers desire candidates with a high work ethic.

Why do I want to tackle this subject? It came up in conversation with my girls HS basketball team the other day. We were discussing why we win sometimes and why we lose.

I told the girls that most of the teams we play are evenly matched with us in skill. Sometimes we win because we play with a higher work ethic than our opponents, and conversely sometimes we lose because we have a lower work ethic than our competitors on the basketball court.

Is Hard Work the same as Work Ethic?

How do I define work ethic – I define it as outworking those around you. Those around you could be your co-workers, your teammates, the opposing team, a project team – any group of people who are competing with you for attention, rewards, recognition, influence, promotions, more money, more playing time, etc.

Many of these other people are smarter than you. It doesn’t matter. In the end, outworking others will usually trump pure intelligence and educational background every time. It’s not what you bring to the table in a game or at work – it’s how you apply it in getting results.

Usually the people who have a high work ethic, or who outwork their peers have a variety of traits that support and reinforce their ability to outwork everyone around them. These traits include being proactive, showing initiative, working longer hours, being the first one to turn on the lights in the morning, and the one who turns the lights out at night, doing more than you’re asked to do, going the extra mile, anticipating what needs to be done, and bouncing back from set-backs and adversity with renewed energy.

Who works hard and who doesn’t?

I’m going to suggest that less than 5% of the population has a high work ethic or demonstrated ability/desire to outwork those around them. I’m not referring to workaholics nor am I referring to compulsive disorders. These top achievers simply work harder than everybody else.

The other 95% of the population is satisfied or complacent with being average or mediocre.

A few tough questions about working hard

Where are you on the spectrum from complacent to “outwork everyone”?

Could you offer examples and illustrations in an interview to demonstrate how your work ethic/ability to outwork others – is head and shoulders above your peers? Do you stand a chance of getting a job in a tight job market if you can’t demonstrate these traits?

Perhaps this blog has challenged your conventional thinking about the term work ethic – where most people associate work ethic with the willingness to work long hours – which is a small element of outworking other people.

Who is your role model for outworking others?

Barry Deutsch

Is Your Job Search Focused On Employment or Employability?

My experience from speaking with tens of thousands of candidates over the last 30 years as an executive recruiter is that most candidates focus like a laser beam on employment. Finding that next job is all they think about.  Not bad, but I have found that those that find a job fastest focus on employability first.

Changing the focus will change your search. When candidates focus on only finding a job, they often lose sight of why they are employable. This focus changes how they interview, where they look, the process for finding a job, and ultimately leads to accepting the wrong job, which results in returning to the job market sooner than expected.

Focusing on employment can also lead to desperation in a job search. Download a FREE copy of the “Circle Of Transition” CLICK HERE. This shows up in the interview as fear, poor body language, lack of energy, incomplete answers or rambling answers. It impacts the job search as candidates try to demonstrate how they can do everything, in every industry, and regardless of whether they are a 10% or 100% fit for the job, they scramble after it. This only dilutes their search, sends them on wild goose chases, increases the many highs and lows of a search, and in the end gets the candidate no closer to getting a job.

Instead, what if you changed the focus to employability? This will alter how you view yourself and what you have to offer. It starts the process of realizing you have value, you are good at what you do, the company will be better off because they hired you, your boss will look better to their boss for hiring you, and you know you can and will do a great job.

Employability is about what you bring to the party. It is about focusing on what makes  you better than others. What is it about  you that this employer can’t live without? Every person they interview will probably have the same skills and experience to do the job, so why should they hire you?  It puts you in a position of strength.

Employability will expand your job search, not reduce it. It may eliminate some of the long shots that frustrate many candidates and at the same time it will increase the exposure to positions that have a higher probability of success.  I firmly believe one of the main reasons candidates we coach find jobs faster than most is because we work to change their focus to employability and away from employment.

Employability will help you create a job where jobs don’t yet exist. My last article was about finding the true hidden job market before others and recruiters. Employability helps you to not only tap into the hidden job market but it gets employers thinking about why they need you and your unique set of skills and experiences. Employers start to think about how much better they will perform with you on board. They begin to realize the solutions to their issues of growth, expansion, cost reduction, process improvement, etc, isn’t inside company. You become the savior to these problems. Employability turns you into a solution rather than just another candidate applying for a job.

Focusing on employability is much like what a CEO of a public company said to me many years ago. He said, “The focus of many public companies is the stock price and hitting the quarterly numbers. That will never be ours. We focus on building great products, innovation, customer service, and high quality. If we do that, the stock price and quarterly earnings will take care of themselves.”

If you focus on employability, employment will take care of itself.

To help you focus on employability be sure to download our free radio show recordings. They are in our candidate audio library. CLICK HERE to enter the library.

To validate whether or not your job search is effective, we have put together a job search self assessment scorecard. You can’t fix what you don’t know isn’t working. This free download will help you identify weaknesses in your job search. CLICK HERE to download your free copy.

Tired of sending resumes and hearing nothing back? Try this cover letter. It has proven over many years to increase responses from recruiters and companies. Download a sample by CLICKING HERE

I welcome your thoughts and comments.

Your Skills and Experience Don’t Matter In An Interview

I know most candidates don’t believe this, but there is a lot of truth to this.  There actually is something much more important in an interview than your skills and experience. The sad part is that most candidates rarely focus on this aspect of the interview.

Do you know the three most important words in any job search?

I have asked this question to probably thousands of candidates. Less than 1% can get even one right.

If you thought: qualifications, experience, skills, or industry knowledge, you are completely wrong. Those may be important, but they are not the most important.

The three words that will more often than not get you the job over someone else are, presentation, presentation, presentation. Yes, getting an offer is mostly about making a good, make that a great, presentation. A good presentation was adequate when unemployment was at 4%, but not now with unemployment at almost 10%. Now it needs to be great.

In our book on how to conduct an effective  job search, “This Is NOT The Position I Accepted” we have a whole section dedicated to this topic alone. That is how important a great  presentation is. Many qualified people don’t get the job. Usually the one that does get the offer is the one that made the best presentation.

Since the recruiter or the hiring manager has already reviewed your resume before asking you in for an interview, and in many cases they have also conducted a phone screening interview, they already know you are qualified. Therefore, when a candidate is invited in for an interview, the recruiter or hiring manager has already determined that the candidate has the qualifications for the position or they wouldn’t invite them in for an interview. This means that just about all of the candidates are equal when the face-to-face interview begins. It is the presentation at this point that carries them the rest of the way.

Think about it on a scale of one to ten. Let’s presume that in order to get invited back for the next round, a candidate has to get to a score of at least 8. Since all of the candidates are starting at zero while standing in the lobby waiting for that first face-to-face interview, the candidate that makes the best first impression can jump up 4 points on the scale and the interview hasn’t even started. Now during the interview they only need 4 more points to get asked back. Contrast that with those that don’t make a strong presentation and they have to do double the work of  the first candidate in order to get asked back. If one makes a negative first impression and drops to -2,  then the mountain they have to climb is just too great and they will never be asked back.

There are a lot of moving parts to making a great presentation. Most are obvious, but some will take time to master and others will require getting expert help. The importance can’t be overstated.  Here is a test to determine whether or not you are making a great presentation, if you are getting interviews and not getting the job, my experience of 30 years tells me  that your presentation is lacking. Since you are getting interviews your qualifications and resume are working. That means that something is going wrong in the interviewing process. 90% of the time it is your presentation.

Here are some suggestions to help out:

1. Be open to the fact that this might be your issue. Don’t just assume that it isn’t. If things aren’t working, then change something. If  you are closed minded on this then you will continue to struggle and be frustrated.
2. Get some very candid help. Identify someone that you trust to be open and honest with you, maybe a recruiter, and ask them about  your presentation. I met a great candidate lately with outstanding experience. He has been getting numerous interviews, but kept coming in second. I can assure you it is his presentation. In our interview he never asked for any feedback. He never asked how the interview went or  if there was anything he can improve.  If asked I’m glad to assist.
3. Invest in an image coach. This is a small investment compared to not getting a job. Take the candidate I referred to above, an investment of probably less than $500 would have meant tens of thousands of dollars to this person by landing a job. An image coach will really polish your presentation. They work on just about every aspect of a great presentation. This sounds so silly, but it even includes how you walk, sit in a chair, shake hands, make eye contact, how to use body language, facial expressions, hand movements, and so much more. All of this sounds so trivial, but collectively it plays a major role.
4. Script out your answers. Script is just a fancy word for write out your answers to the basic questions you know you are going to be asked. This is one of the most important things that I require when I’m doing job search coaching with an executive. Writing these out helps you to prepare so you aren’t winging it in the interview. It also allows you to practice, so now you demonstrate confidence. Finally, it prepares you so that you are succinct and focused when answering questions.
5. Practice in front of a mirror or video yourself. If you have never done this, it is an eye opener. You will see how you sit in the chair, hand motions, how your voice projects, mannerisms you don’t even know you are making, many of which may be down right annoying. This is a powerful exercise that very few candidates ever do.

Presentation, presentation, presentation are the most important words in any job search.

Take full advantage of the many free resources we offer on our website. For example, we have an extensive audio library for you to download free files, our chapter on winning the phone interview has been downloaded by over 3,000 people, and our sample cover letter that makes you stand out has been downloaded by over 2,500 people. These are just a few of the numerous free resources we offer to help you reduce your time in search.

Also don’t forget to join our Job Search Networking group on LinkedIn. This is a very active group with lots of excellent discussions and resources. CLICK HERE to join.

Please take full advantage of all the free resources we have to offer. It is our hope to help you reduce your time searching for a new job.

I welcome your thoughts and comments.

Brad Remillard

Why Do Most Recruiter Interviews Set You Up for Failure?

Most 3rd-party recruiter interviews set you up for failure with hiring managers.

Before the entire recruiting profession jumps down my throat over that statement – let’s examine this statement in a little more depth.

Most (there are a few exceptions) recruiters conduct “box-checking” interviews. These sound like “Tell me about yourself.” “Have you done this?” “Do you have this skill?” Do you have this knowledge?” “What’s your biggest weakness?” and all the other 20 standard, stupid, inane canned interview questions that have been asked since the beginning of time.

We also published a couple of articles on some of the “other” reasons for shooting yourself in the foot when interviewing. Two of these articles you might be interested in are:

Candidate Interviewing Mistakes

You Can’t Interview Yourself Out of Wet Paper Bag

Most executives and managers tell me that the vast majority of the interviews they’ve gone through with 3rd-party recruiters are a joke. The believe that these sessions are nothing more than “meet-n-greets” where the recruiter is trying to determine if the candidate will embarrass them on the interview.

None of the traditional interview questions get at real success and the ability to translate prior accomplishments to predicting future performance. Very few recruiters have ever been trained, coached, or learned how to measure true performance – or predict future performance based on past success.

So, let’s follow this process logically. The recruiter conducts an interview for their client by box-checking the job description. The candidate is now lulled into the belief that this will be a similar interview with the client.

Wrong.

Most sophisticated hiring executives/managers are going to talk about outcomes and results – the candidate is stunned to be talking about outcomes, results, deliverables, accomplishments, and achievements. The candidate is at a loss to provide 2-3 substantive examples with quantifiable details for each claim.

The candidate was expecting the traditional 20 stupid, inane, canned interview questions.

The recruiter did NOTHING to prepare the candidate for a more rigorous interview.

The best recruiters conduct more in-depth interviews of candidates than their clients will ever conduct. The best recruiters probe deeply and will continue digging until they get the details. The best recruiters triangulate your responses to validate, verify, and vet your claims.

These interviews act as preparation for the real thing.

Box-checking,  traditional, stupid, inane, and canned interview questions do you a disservice by lulling you into a false sense of security about the interview questions that will be asked by strong hiring managers and executives.

So, let’s take this to the logical conclusion:

• Assume most recruiters will not ask tough and insightful questions.
• Assume most recruiters cannot prepare you for an interview with a strong hiring manager or executive.
• Assume most recruiters don’t really understand how to probe accomplishments, achievements, outcomes, and results.
• Assume most recruiters don’t understand how to predict future performance.

What can you do to get ready for a “real” interview?

Here are a few proactive ideas:

• • Read the free popular chapter in our book, “This is NOT the Position I Accepted” titled “Winning the Phone Interview”
  • Practice your responses over and over – imagine this is the most important presentation of your life. Practice your responses in front of the mirror, with family, the dog, your cat, friends, neighbors, associates
  • Practice some more
  • Read item number 1 – master our technique of D.R.E.S.S.U.P. for the phone interview
  • Practice some more
  • Frame all your responses with as much quantifiable detail as possible, names, starting amounts, ending amounts, budget, savings, number of people on the project, length of time, etc
  • Read everything you can on how to interview more effectively
  • Practice some more

Don’t blow the interview just because a recruiter didn’t ask you the correct questions. Be proactive in preparing yourself for a more rigorous interview.

Download our FREE popular Phone Interviewing Chapter “Win the Phone Interview”

What’s your experience in working with recruiters?

What percentage of all the recruiters you’ve met – made you work really hard during the interview? How many of those sessions were “meet-n-greets?”

Barry

P.S. Don’t forget to join our LinkedIn Discussion Group where phone interviewing, recruiters, and everything else job search related is thoroughly discussed.

Ever Wonder Why No One Calls You Back After the Phone Interview?

The Myth of Phone Interviewing

Yesterday I phone interviewed a candidate for a search I was conducting for a National Accounts Manager position. The phone interview was with my client – the CEO.

I had already interviewed the candidate by myself for the job. The candidate passed with flying colors. He was specific, precise, gave good examples, was articulate, and provided good validation and verification of his accomplishments.

Here’s what happened: My client started the interview with more open-ended questions than I typically ask.

As a recruiter, my questions are laser-focused, drawing out every detail of an accomplishment and achievement like having blood withdrawn.

I don’t care if candidates are not prepared for my interviews – I’ll extract it out of them like they were sitting in the interrogation room at a local police station. Some of my candidates have indicated these interviews feel like a “soft deposition” (not sure if I could have come up with a better oxymoron).

Unfortunately, most hiring executives and managers don’t dig and probe as deep to validate, verify, and vet candidate accomplishments. Instead, they ask broad high level questions and wait for the candidate to prove how good they are at interviewing.

Yes – I know it’s a travesty for hiring managers to base their assessments on how well candidates interview rather than on the substance of what they have done and what they can do. It’s a fact of life.

We’re trying to change it one interview at a time – getting hiring managers to focus more on measuring whether the candidate can do the job vs. whether the candidate can interview well. Not sure this will happen in my lifetime.

How to Blow the Phone Interview

The candidate choked up. He blew it. He stuttered through the interview. He was disjointed. His thoughts were jumbled. He would get sidetracked and lose the focus on his point. Here was a candidate who made hundreds, if not thousands of presentations to clients. Here was someone with a great track record of success. But he still blew the phone interview.

Why? How could this happen?

It happened because he did not prepare adequately for the phone interview. He never got a chance to get to the first stage of a physical interview. He can ill afford to miss an opportunity like this job after having been out of work for more than a year.

I’m convinced that one of the major reasons a lot of candidates are still looking for a job after 12 months is that they are not prepared for phone interviewing.

He didn’t review his accomplishments. He didn’t rehearse his answers. He didn’t organize his thoughts related to the potential company’s needs.

The interviewer didn’t guide him through the interview – question by question probing for success. Instead, the interviewer conducted a typical interview at 40,000 ft. and the candidate wasn’t prepared for a typical interview of standard, inane, common, and canned interviewed questions. These were the same 20 questions, hundreds of other managers had asked him prior to this interview.

Shame on him.

Death by Phone Interviewing

He tried to “wing it”.

I’ve seen this “death by phone interviewing” over and over again.

Many candidates think that their accomplishments listed in their resume should “stand on their own”. This myth of phone interviewing couldn’t be further from the truth. Keep in mind that you’re primarily being interviewed for how well you make it through the phone interview – not necessarily how good you are as a potential candidate.

If you can’t navigate the dangerous waters of a phone interview, forget about ever getting a job offer – since you’ll not even make it to the face-to-face stage.

Raise Your Chance of Winning the Phone Interview

If you’d like to learn more about how to win in a phone interview, download for FREE the most popular chapter, “Winning the Phone Interview”,  of our Job Search Workbook, “This Is NOT the Position I Accepted”.

Barry

Job Search Success: Can Targeting Make a Difference?

Don’t even think about trying this technique unless you’re prepared for an employer to offer you a job.

I was speaking with a client a few days ago and he told me a story about a candidate he had just hired for a sales position. She had lost her job at a company who was not a direct competitor, but was providing services at a different distribution level in a tangential industry. (I amaze myself sometimes with my ambiguity).

She had sent her resume to the CEO requesting an interview. He blew her off – wrong skill set – wrong industry – wrong level in the distribution/supply chain. And to top it off – he didn’t have a current opening.

She was persistent. She began an aggressive campaign of sending him letters detailing why he needed to hire her in his sales department.

She had conducted extensive research on the company, talked with their suppliers, talked with their customers, and found people within the company (using LinkedIn of course).

She described in “precise” detail the problems she perceived, the steps that needed to be taken, and where she could help to resolve those problems.

Over the course of a few interviews, she became more and more specific about how she could make a difference – through fact-finding in the interviewing, she collected great information.

The company was still undecided (hard to believe). Finally, she sealed the deal by preparing a plan of action of what she would do in her first 90 days. She convinced the company to allow her to present her plan at a meeting. Upon hearing exactly how she would translate her prior experience into actionable steps in this new company, they hired her.

That’s how targeted job search works.

What’s the alternative? The alternative is the shotgun scatter method to job search used by many job seekers. Under the shotgun scatter model, you send out hundreds of standard cover letters and resumes to every company that remotely includes a keyword of interest in their ads. 99.99% of these end up in the trash can. You just wasted 20 hours of your week responding to job ads for which you had no chance of ever making it to the stage of an interview.

Wouldn’t your time be spent more productively targeting jobs, opportunities, and companies – rather than wasting time on the shotgun scatter model of job search?

Discover if you’re job search is effective by downloading our FREE Job Search Plan Self-Assessment. Discover if you’ve got all the elements in place to target the perfect job.

Barry

Why is Flawless Execution Important to Prove?

One of the 3 core success traits we insist our clients focus on in the interview process to measure top talent is:

Flawless Execution

Flawless Execution is not about doing your job perfectly – it’s about the ability to overcome problems, hurdles, roadblocks, setbacks, and other issues which are standing in your way of delivering results on time, on budget, and on target.

In most companies there is a multitude of “crap” that gets in the way of meeting the expectations of your boss. This is where you go to your boss on Thursday at 4 pm and say “Boss, I know you needed this project completed before the end of the day for your meeting tomorrow – unfortunately Dept. A didn’t give me the report I needed in time, and the vendor that had promised to get us the critical sub-component is running late and will not be able to get it us until next week.

What do we call these things?

I can call it “E&E” – excuses and explanations.

Top talent doesn’t give “E&E”. They know little disasters, set backs, are problems are going to happen. They know Murphy’s Law will rear it’s ugly head at the worst possible moment.

Top Talent makes contingency plans, builds in slack time, goes under the speed bumps, around the roadblocks, and climbs over every wall thrown in their path.

Top Talent is the group of people hiring managers can count on.

On many teams, executives and managers have 1 or 2 people they consider to be their “go-to” people. Every time they have a tough, critical project with lots of obstacles, hurdles, problems, and roadblocks – they keep turning to the same few people.

Would you consider yourself a “go-to” person?

Do you possess this critical trait of top talent?

Hiring executives and managers know these individuals will get it done every time in spite of the obstacles, hurdles, problems, and roadblocks.

As many of you know, I coach high school girls basketball. I tell my team, it’s not enough to run 90 some feet down the court and fling the little orange ball in the air hoping for the best outcome. You’ve got to put the little orange ball in the little orange hoop. One of the primary reasons basketball teams lose games is that they cannot make lay-ups within 2 feet of the basket.

The business environment is exactly the same. You’ve got to be task-oriented. You’ve got to finish. You must put the ball in the basket.

Many candidates cannot consistently demonstrate or prove they have a “go-to” person mentality. They give “E&E”, they blame others for their short-comings or failures. They don’t take personal responsibility or accountability for their actions and assignments. They continually try to transfer the “monkey” onto the backs of their peers or bosses.

Can you prove you possess the trait of flawless execution in an interview? Can you demonstrate how you’ve handled numerous projects and assignments which had lots of obstacles, hurdles, problems, and roadblocks?

Here’s a “homework” assignment to improve interviewing: Write a comment to this blog post on your most significant accomplishment in your current/last job where you demonstrated the success attribute of flawless execution – overcoming whatever it took to complete the project. I’d love to hear your examples. I’ll offer some ideas on how you might want to “format” or describe the accomplishment in an interview.

Now, here’s the hard part: I teach my clients – hiring executives and managers – to never except just one example. It could be a lie, exaggeration, or luck. However, when you get 2-3 examples, now you’re starting to substantiate a pattern of behavior that someone is likely to continue once you’ve hired them.

Could you offer a prospective employer at least 3 great detailed examples of flawless execution?

Barry Deutsch

Is This Age Discrimination Or Not, You Tell Me?

I was recently co-interviewing candidates with my client for one of his open positions. Together we interviewed 3 candidates all in the same day.

Obviously, two of the candidates didn’t get the job. One of the candidates that didn’t get the position was the catalyst for writing this article.

We began in the morning with the first person. The first impression of this candidate was weak. Although professionally dressed in a suit, it didn’t fit him well, it was clear it had been worn a few times without being pressed, he was overweight, hair was combed, but groomed would not be used to describe him. His overall presence was OK, it  just didn’t overwhelm us when we first met him.

As the interview progressed, he didn’t come across with great energy or enthusiasm. His body language was low in the chair and even when he was asking questions he never seemed to change how he sat in the chair.  His voice was monotone. Eye contact during the interview was good and he did his best to engage us.  Not that he did poorly, but the spark of a person who really enjoys what he does day to day wasn’t there. He came across as bored and would work because he needed a job until he retired.

He asked a few insightful questions during the interview, but nothing all that impressive. He closed the interview politely.

Again, no real knock out blow, and with the weak appearance and the interview we just weren’t all that impressed.

The next candidate was different. Candidate #2 was well dressed and groomed. Polished comes to mind. He came across in the first impression as confident, with drive and energy, and as someone very comfortable meeting people. He was all business but didn’t over do it.

As the interview progressed he wasn’t overly friendly, he stayed focused on the business at hand without a lot of small talk or joking. We could see from his answers that he listened well to our questions.  His body language was clearly designed to engage us. We assumed that he had been trained this way. He leaned forward when stressing a point, he mirrored a lot of our movements, which is a technique used to make us feel comfortable, and he used voice inflection very well to stress points and add emphasis.

He asked a number of very good questions during the interview that demonstrated he really understood the position and many of the issues that he would encounter if he was to come on board.  He left the interview on a positive note.

We were impressed with him, his professionalism, his approach, and his ability to engage us.

Candidate #3 was completely different, as this time the candidate was a she not a he. She was very professional. She was dressed in a very professional business suit and groomed perfectly. It was apparent that she had dealt with senior level executives and knew how to present herself. She was outgoing, friendly, and engaging from the moment we met her. She was just one of those people that has that extra spark. She knew how to conduct small talk, demonstrated the appropriate level of humor for the circumstances, and was just comfortable in a business environment. This was all from the first impression.

As the interview progressed, so did she as a candidate. Her body language was much like the second candidate. She sat up straight when needed, her eye contact was continual and even when she wasn’t speaking directly to me I felt like she was, she was well prepared to not only answer our questions but asked some excellent questions as well. Unlike candidate #2, even though we did spend the vast majority of time discussing the position, it just didn’t seem that way. She was very business focused just as the second candidate was, but somehow it didn’t come across that way.

She left the interview on a positive note, but made a little extra effort to make sure that we were satisfied with her and her answers.

We decided to proceed with the last two candidates. I had to call the first one and let him know the bad news. This is positively the worst part of being a recruiter. The comment that he made to me is what sparked this article. He said, “I’m not surprised,  I could tell you were looking for someone younger than me.” How he surmised this is beyond me. He was clearly implying age discrimination.

We never once discussed age or anything even close to it. He just assumed that because he didn’t get the job it was due to his age. I think many candidates do this. I agree age discrimination exists. I just don’t think it is as widespread as most candidates do. I have written other articles on this topic. Too often, just like candidate #1, when candidates don’t get the job the first thought that surfaces is age discrimination when in fact, it is all of the other things they are doing wrong that are really the cause.

The big problem with thinking that age discrimination was the reason is that the candidate will never step back and consider that maybe it is something else. Why would they consider anything else when they have already decided that age discrimination is the reason they didn’t get the job and there is nothing they can do about that?  Then they don’t do anything to improve themselves.

As the late Paul Harvey would say, “Now the rest of the story.” It goes without saying that we never discussed age during the hiring process. However, as the hiring process continued, so did the need to perform our due diligence.  This meant that I needed to verify each of the candidate’s degrees. In order to do that, I needed the year they graduated from college. This isn’t always an indicator of age, but in many cases it is a benchmark.

Candidate #1 indicated on his resume that he received his degree in 1979. He is probably near 50. Just a guess.

Candidate #2, one of the candidates we continued to be very interested in, graduated in 1975.  Probably the oldest of the three.

Candidate #3, the person ultimately hired by the company, received her degree in 1978.  Most likely, but no guarantee, she was close to the same age as candidate #1.

When I called candidate #2 to tell him the news that he wasn’t going to get the position, he never even mentioned age as a reason for not receiving the offer.  He knew better. In his case, it really just came down to fit within the organization.

So is this age discrimination or not?  I would really like your opinion.

I do believe, as I said before, that age discrimination exists. However, here is the important take away from this article, don’t take the easy way out and go first to age discrimination as the reason. Use age discrimination only as the final reason. Explore other options first. Then, only after all of the other options have been addressed, consider age discrimination.

To help you evaluate other reasons your search may be stalled, download our free 8-Point Job Search Plan Assessment Scorecard. This is a good start for highlighting other areas in your job search that might be causing problems. CLICK HERE to download yours.

Also consider joining our LinkedIn Job Search Networking Group. This is one of the best resources to provide you with the job search tools you need. There are over 4,800 members in this group to assist you. It will really help you with your job search. CLICK HERE to join. LinkedIn is free for everyone.

I welcome your thoughts and comments on this topic.

Brad Remillard

Why Your Skills & Experience Don’t Matter To Recruiters

The title is true. It just isn’t true all of the time.

I can’t count the number of times I have heard from candidates, “I have done all of the things for your position.” or how many times I get a cover letter that goes into a lengthy explanation about “how perfect” they believe they are  for my search.

One question, “If you are so perfect for the position, then why didn’t you get it?”

Skills  and experience will only get you so far in the hiring process. At some point, usually much earlier than most candidates realize, these begin to diminish in importance.

What begins to increase in importance is your qualifications. This encompasses a lot more than skills and experience. Otherwise, why go through the interviewing process? If skills and experience were all that mattered, you would be hired just from your resume.

For example, let’s say that I received your resume and started reviewing it. At this point, skills and experience are 100% of my screening process.  Once, I have read your resume and like what I read,  I will then pick up the phone and conduct a phone screen. I don’t like to call it an interview, because quite frankly I’m in a screening mode more than an interviewing mode.

At this point, your skills and experience may now only be about 75% relevant. During this phone interview, it is true that I’m interviewing you on your skills and experience, but that isn’t all. There is so much more to a phone screen that it took a whole chapter in our candidate job search workbook to cover it all. This chapter is so important that we offer it for free for everyone to download. CLICK HERE if you want to download it.

If that goes well, the next step is going to be a face-to-face interview. Now your skills and experience are at best 50% relevant. Since I have read your resume and conducted a phone screen, I have a really good feel for whether you meet the minimum criteria or not. The interviewing priorities shift. There are so many issues I’m screening on to decide if I will send you out to my client that I can’t list them all.  This took too many chapters in our job search workbook to properly cover and with the depth needed, I can’t possibly go into all of them, but here are a few.  I’m interested in much more than just your skills and experience. I’m also interviewing for how professional your presentation is, how well you can communicate, whether or not you can withstand probing questions on your background, do you have the facts on your accomplishments, do you answer questions in vague generalities or can you get specific, and even how strong or weak your first impression was.  I’m paid to make value judgments regarding  how well you will fit with the company, if you are prepared for how my client will interview you (are you prepared or just winging it) and whether or not you will embarrass me once you are in front of my client. It only takes once in a recruiter’s career to have a client call back and complain that the candidate wasted their time, before the recruiter improves their screening process.  These are really the basic things I’m screening on in our in-person interview. Only about 50% pass this interview.

That means half will never meet the hiring authority. Even though they have the  experience and skills required, they may not be qualified.  Now of this 50%, some will turn out to not be a good match, and often the candidate will agree. Usually, that is less than 10% of the total people I have interviewed in-person.

I can assure you it works about the same when you are interviewing with companies. The only major difference is that as the interviewing process progresses the percentage of reliance on skills and experience decreases even more.

For some senior level positions that require more than 4 or 5 meetings, this percentage may dwindle down to as little as 10% or less.

As the interviewing process moves forward, the hiring authority has already come to the conclusion that the candidates have at least the minimum skills and experience to do the job. Otherwise, they would have been eliminated.

What I’m trying to stress in this article is that candidates rely too much on their skills and experience to the detriment of what is important at different points in time during the hiring process. It isn’t always about your experience. At some point the question is, “Are you qualified?”  It is more about your personality, behavioral issues, managerial style, communications, professionalism, professional presence, assertiveness, etc. that really matters.

These are the things most candidates take for granted during the  hiring process. I have encountered so few that grasp these at the actionable level. Many reading this article will be thinking to themselves, “I know all of this.” That is the point of the article and the frustration. You may know all of this, but what are you doing about it to ensure that you pass?

How are you preparing?

How are you improving your ability to succinctly communicate your accomplishments?

What tangible things have you done to become a salesperson? After all, in a job search you are in sales.

Have you ever video recorded yourself in a mock interview?

What unique and probing questions do you ask in an interview that demonstrate that you are an insightful person?

How do your questions differentiate you from all of the others that ask the same questions?

How do you use your voice to communicate effectively?

I could go on and on. I’m not implying that every person needs all of these. I am implying that every person needs some of these.  The question is, what do you need in your search so that as the percentage shifts from skills and experience to your personal qualifications that you continue to excel?

Test your job search effectiveness by downloading our free Job Search Plan Assessment Scorecard. CLICK HERE to download.

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