Is Your Job Search Updated For This Decade?

Robyn Greenspan published a recent article on Huffington Post about what has changed over the last 6 plus years for executive job search.

A lot has changed. Brad and I find that most executives are STILL conducting their job search like it was the mid-90s. That doesn’t work any longer for conducting an effective job search. How are you using new techniques, best practices, social media, and other tools to work your job search that you didn’t use 6 or more years ago?

Here’s an excerpt from her article:

What has changed in the 6-and-a-half years since their last job search? Here are the problems job seekers recently told ExecuNet they were encountering, and our solutions to mitigate them:

Not enough opportunities found at their level – This complaint is not surprising since the large majority of $200K positions are not openly posted, for fear that the recruiter will be inundated with unqualified résumés. Use job boards to research companies, but use your network to find and create roles.

Taking longer to land – You can easily shorten your transition time if you are in a perpetual state of career management. C-level executives always have an eye out for the next business partnership opportunity and so should the professional who is effectively managing his or her career.

Available positions are put on hold – “On hold” does not necessarily mean “eliminated” so stay connected to the recruiter/hiring manager and ensure they continue to see you as the solution to their problems. That doesn’t mean regularly checking in to see if the position has been re-opened; instead keep them apprised with market trends and relevant information.

Recruiters are not returning calls – Friends and acquaintances generally return calls; people you call out of the blue for jobs, might not. Establish relationships with recruiters well before you need something.

No multiple offers to consider – Just over half of the ExecuNet-surveyed executive recruiters reported that candidates had more than one offer to consider, up from 35 percent in 2010. Adjust your job search activities to reflect contemporary conditions and you might have more options, too.

What are you doing different in this job search vs. the last one you did over 6 years ago?

Barry Deutsch

If you would like to read the full article, please click the link below:

Robyn Greenspan: How to Update Your Job Search Strategy to Land Faster.

Resume Tweaking May Be Better Than An Overhaul

I was meeting with a candidate today, we will call him Andy, who recently landed. He had been on the market for about 5 months. He did all the right things, went to the networking meetings, drank more coffee than he should have, reworked his resume over and over, all for nothing. He would get interviews but never make the cut. He had sent out lots of resumes with moderate success.

About 2 months ago I met with Andy and a group of financial professionals, mainly CFOs,  to do a resume review exercise. You might try this exercise.  Everyone brings their current resume and passes them face down to the person next to them. Then at the same time everyone turns the resume over and for 10 seconds reviews them. After 10 seconds all resumes go  face down again. The next step gets to the real purpose for the exercise. The person that read the resume for 10 seconds gives feedback on exactly what they learned about the person’s background, companies, position, location and any other information they took away in that short period of time. Why you ask? That is about how long most people first look at a resume, so the purpose is to find out if the person reading the resume for 10 seconds captures from the resume what the owner of the resume wanted them to. If not, then they need to change the resume.

After the meeting I started working with Andy as part of our Job Search Coaching program. The first thing I noticed was Andy’s resume had him as a CFO. The reality was that compared to other CFOs in the group Andy could not compete. He was really a controller. Andy was trying to play at a level that he wasn’t competitive.  He lost out every time, either when the resume was submitted, or during the interview.

We made a small tweak to his resume by taking off  all references to CFO and changed them to controller. Everything else remained the same. Within two weeks Andy started getting interviews and within 6 weeks he was working. He credits all of the activity and the job to this one tweak of his resume.

Sometimes one small change can make all the difference. Make sure you are playing in the right league. Andy wasn’t, and his resume clearly communicated that. Like most candidates I coach, candidates think only about themselves and not the competition. Andy had clearly done this. He would have been working months earlier had he thought about this.

To download the free chapter on Conducting an Effective Phone Interview from our book “This Is NOT The Position I Accepted” CLICK HERE and then click on the Free Search Resources link.

If you would like to know if your job search is fully utilized and you are doing the right things, download our free 8 Matrix Job Search Self-Assessment Scorecard. CLICK HERE and then click on the Free Search Resource link.

I welcome your thoughts and comments.

Brad Remillard

Looking For A Better Job While Working

Q. I’m currently one of those who is underemployed. I’m considering looking for a better job and would like to know what is the best way to go about it while working?

I would start with your current employer. Situations like yours often happen when a candidate is in need of a job. That is generally why they accepted a lower position in the first place. So I believe some level of loyalty should be given to a company that helped you when you needed it. You might check to see if a position will open up as the economy continues to improve, are they open to expanding your role in the company, or if you are working part-time will they convert you to full-time? If you haven’t already, you might consider giving them this opportunity before throwing in the towel.

If you still decide it is best to move, then you will have to conduct a search. Many candidates search while working. Start by building or updating your LinkedIn profile, post your resume on the job boards, let people you trust know you are open to something different, attend networking meetings before or after work hours, check the Web sites of potential employers in your industry to see if they post open positions, and when appropriate engage a recruiter and respond to ads. Most companies are willing to conduct interviews during off hours for those people working.  You basically have to get out and let people know you are open to referrals or find a position via job postings.

Join our LinkedIn Job Search Networking Group. It is one of the biggest and most active groups dealing with job search issues on LinkedIn. CLICK HERE to join.

Download our FREE Job Search Self-Assessment Scorecard. Take the evaluation and discover if your search is all it can be. CLICK HERE to download.

Visit our audio library. No library card required – all audio files can be downloaded for free. There is an extensive amount of files on all of the different topics surrounding a job search. CLICK HERE to review the library.

If this was helpful, then please help others by forwarding it on to your network, posting on your Facebook page, Tweeting with the link, posting 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

7 Reasons Recruiters Screen You Out

I know from all of the comments I receive, the tweets on Twitter, and the comments on blogs and articles about recruiters, that one of the biggest frustrations with candidates is about recruiters. On a daily basis I read, how mean recruiters are, how people claim to be qualified for a job don’t get past the recruiter, how people with years of experience  get weeded out by recruiters, and of course, the black hole resumes go in when candidates send them to recruiters.

First, let me clarify that I’m not trying to justify bad behavior by some and maybe even many recruiters. Every profession has them, some more than others. There are even bad doctors, engineers, pastors and so on. The purpose of this article is to clarify for candidates what recruiters do and why, to help reduce the frustration. I hope by understanding, although maybe not accepting, it will make it easier on candidates.

Recruiters don’t really care if you are qualified, have years of experience, or have all the right skills, knowledge, and certifications. Obviously these are required. You must recognize that many candidates have these for every job. Recruiters don’t get paid  for finding candidates with these traits. I can tell you as a recruiter for 30 years, and one that still makes a living as a recruiter, how much I wish this was the case. If  it were the case, I would be writing this article sitting on my yacht, instead of my patio.  We get paid only for finding hireable candidates.

I learned this in my first year as a recruiter. I would ask the client if they liked the candidate and many times they would say they did. I would ask if they thought the candidate was qualified and they would reply, “Yes.” I would even ask if they thought the candidate could do the job and they would reply, “YES.”  These were all good questions that lead me to believe the candidate was going to get hired, only to find out someone else got the job other than my candidate. Why? How could this be? I was just as mad, frustrated, and upset as the candidate.

The answer was simple. One day I was venting my frustration to a much more experienced recruiter who informed me that I wasn’t asking the right question. He said those are all nice things to know, but those aren’t what I care about. The question I should have asked was, “Is the candidate hireable?” Now that question has a completely different meaning. It is what I and the candidate really wanted to know.

So what is hireable? Well, as one justice on the Supreme Court once said, “I can’t define it, but I know it when I see it.”  So much of what is “hireable” is subjective by both the recruiter and the hiring team and is hard to define. The following is my best shot at trying to define it. This is by no means an all-inclusive list. Again, it is designed to simply help candidates better understand, with the idea that understanding helps reduce frustration.

1. The candidate has all of the requirements to do the job. This is a given.
2. The candidate is neither under qualified or over qualified. My experience is that candidates accept the under qualified, but rarely accept the concept of over qualified. Either one makes a candidate not hireable.
3. Presentation. I have written extensively about this. Recruiters care a great deal about how you present yourself. I don’t just mean physical presentation. I mean the complete package of presentation skills. Your presentation skills start the minute you answer the phone for the first time.
4. Communication skills must be appropriate for the position. This just happened to me recently. I was doing a search for a communications person in a PR firm. One candidate had all of the right qualifications on paper, a good background, good schools, but constantly used the word “like” in just about every sentence. One would expect a person in PR communications to know better. Sorry, but not hireable from my point of view. My client would question my judgment if I recommended them for a communications position and they couldn’t communicate properly.
5. Style is important. Granted this is very subjective, but this is why companies are willing to pay recruiters thousands of dollars. They trust our judgment on this issue. If the style of the candidate doesn’t match that of the hiring manager then the candidate may not be hireable. It doesn’t mean that  the person isn’t a good person, it just means that they aren’t the right person.
6. Fit is another highly subjective characteristic that determines hireability. If your personality isn’t going to meld with that of the hiring manager or the company’s culture, then you aren’t hireable for this position. Not everyone is the right fit. I interview candidates all the time that tell me they left the company because it just wasn’t a good fit. I know recruiters do their best to make sure this is aligned. Nobody benefits if the candidate doesn’t work out because they can’t adjust to the company.
7. Listening and answering the questions. This is part of communication, but needs special attention. Every recruiter is assessing how you listen and answer their questions. Recruiters know this is an indication of how you will perform in front of the client. This is the point at which most candidates eliminate themselves. They don’t answer the question asked, their answers are so vague it is impossible to know what THEY did, or they ramble on in hopes of covering everything. As a result, I would not only be embarrassed to present you to my client, but worse, my client would be upset with me for doing so.

From my position as an executive recruiter, these are just the top seven things a candidate must excel at to be hireable.

Is your resume not getting noticed by recruiters? Try using this sample cover letter. Candidates tell us this cover letter has tripled their response rate from recruiters. CLICK HERE to download this sample cover letter.

For a lot more on this topic, and other job search related topics, join our LinkedIn Job Search Networking Group. It is a great resource for career experts and discussion. It is free. CLICK HERE to join.

Is your job search going as well as  you thought it would? Is it moving slower  than you expected? If it is, then download our FREE 8-Point Job Search Assessment Scorecard. It will help you identify the strengths and weaknesses of your job search. CLICK HERE to download.

If you liked this article, please share it with others on your Facebook page, other LinkedIn groups, or with your contacts.

I welcome your thoughts and comments.

Brad

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.

Is Your Job Search Stalled?

In a recent survey, over 50% of executive and managerial candidates currently conducting a job search have been out of work for over a year. Why is your job search taking so long? In this radio program, Brad and Barry talk about the most important elements of an effective job search. Are you ready to assess what is working and what is NOT working in your job search? Your success in finding a new job is NOT about 1 or 2 big wins, it’s all the little details of effective execution.

To download this radio show CLICK HERE.

New Poll Shows Over 50% Unemployed For Over A Year

I recently conducted a  non-scientific poll using LinkedIn. 912 people responded to the poll and the results follow with some commentary on the results.

The only question asked was, “How long have you been unemployed and looking for a job?” Since most of the people on LinkedIn tend to be professionals, one can draw the conclusion that the majority of the people responding have a college degree, include all functional departments within a company, and that the respondents range from entry level professionals to the CEO suite.

Overall results are:

9% under 60 days

18%  3-6 months

12%  7-9 months

9%  9-12 months

51%  over one year

Many of the comments from the respondents would indicate that some have been unemployed for more than 2 years.

Breaking these numbers down further, 39% of the respondents were female and 61% were male according to LinkedIn. There was almost no difference between females and males out of work for more than a year with 52% for females and 51% for males. The other lengths of time were also very similar between females and males.

The most controversial part of the poll was how LinkedIn broke the number down by age. Of all of the comments received, this was the topic that received the most discussion. For the most part, people commenting clearly thought age discrimination was alive and well. As a recruiter for the last 30 years I’m not sure this is accurate.

Of those 18-24 years old, 50% have been unemployed for more than a year, 22% for 3-6 months, 17% for less than 60 days and the balance of 11%  between 7-12 months.

Of those 25-34 years old,  41% were more than one year, 19% for 3 -6 months, 18% for less than 60 days, and the remainder of 22% between 7 – 12 months.

Of those 35-54 years old,  49% were more than one year, 19% for 3-6 months, 11% for less than 60 days and 21% between 7 -12 months.

Of those 55 and older, 55% were more than one year, 16% 3 -6 months, 6% less than 60 days and 23% between 7-12 months.

It doesn’t surprise me that the largest number of people unemployed for more than a year are in the over 55 age group. I would expect this to be the case. Granted, there may be some age discrimination going on, but for the most part this age group is the highest paid group and the most senior on the corporate ladder. It is for these reasons I believe this is the largest group. Our recruiting business is primarily mid-sized company executives. Generally these executives take the longest amount of time to come back from a recession. I started recruiting in 1980, so this is my 4th or 5th recession as a recruiter, and in all previous recessions this is the last group companies hire. Not the oldest, but the most experienced and most highly compensated. In today’s world, a new phenomenon is taking over with companies bringing on interim or temporary executives instead of out right hiring them.

I don’t see age discrimination when the age group of 18-24 has only 5% less looking for more than one year than the 55+ group and a 1% difference for 34-54 group. In most cases this would be within the margin of error.  I think it has more to do with experience. The 18-24 age group typically has the least amount of experience and those 55+ typically have the most. Companies tend first to hire in the middle of the bell curve before moving to the outer extremes.

Regardless of how one wants to view the results, the fact is that the largest group in every age group is more than one year. To me this is the most important information coming from this poll. I wonder how much longer than a year have possibly many been looking and how many have just given up?

Unemployment is alive and thriving at all age levels. Unemployment doesn’t appear to care about your age all that much.

If you would like to see the results of this poll for yourself CLICK HERE.

If you would like some free tools to help you get out of  your job search regardless of how long you have been looking CLICK HERE to download our LinkedIn Profile Assessment and CLICK HERE to download our Job Search Self- Assessment Scorecard. Both of these tools will help you to identify key areas to improve your job search.

I welcome your comments and thoughts.

Brad Remillard

So Many Candidates Are Only 70% Effective In Their Job Search

There aren’t too many things one can do only 70% effectively and be successful. Can you imagine doing your job 70% effectively? Would you hire someone that told you in an interview,” I work great 70% of the time?” Would you keep a person working for you the was only 70% effective?

I certainly hope you answered NO to all these.

So why then do so many candidates think they can find a job or conduct a job search at a 70% effective rate? I think in many cases I’m being generous in the 70%. I have worked with many that struggle to get to 50%. Stunning, but true.

Too many candidates just don’t know how to conduct a truly effective job search. That isn’t to say that they don’t try, as I’m sure they do, but trying in a job search isn’t what you are striving to achieve. You shouldn’t be ashamed of this. It is not your area of expertise. It would be like me doing your job. How effective would I be? Probably less than 50%.

In an economy like this in which companies will receive hundreds of resumes, receive numerous referrals, and will interview until the perfect candidate shows up,  one can’t afford to be ineffective or inefficient. This is the time to be at your best, 110% not 70% or less.

Here are some simple examples that might help you to identify how effective  your job search is (you can download our 8-Point Job Search Self Assessment for free to assess your search CLICK HERE):

1. How good is  your LinkedIn profile? I have reviewed thousands of profiles and most are incomplete, lacking important data, not optimized for a search, and provide limited information. Yet like it or not, LinkedIn is more powerful than most resume databases.
2. Many candidates have no idea how to properly network. Most think it is a numbers game. Meet a lot of people, shake a lot of hands, go to a lot of meetings and so on. WRONG. This is just a bunch of activity. Meaningless activity most of the time. How effective has your networking been for providing the right job leads?
3. Candidates focus on only one type of key word search. The electronic type. They optimize the resume for the automated/electronic resume system that scans the resume to identify certain key words.  There are two types of key word searches that must be optimized. In my opinion the second one is more important. I have written an article explaining this. CLICK HERE if you want more information on the second type. I don’t have the space here to include it.
4. What prompted this article is  that I had lunch today with a VP of HR and we were discussing just how poorly so many candidates are at phone interviewing. She brought it up, not me. She asked me if I had the same bad experiences conducting phone interviews as she. Yes, I replied.  Way too many candidates treat the phone interview the same way they treat the face-to-face interview. They are completely different and you have to adjust. This is so important that we actually offer this chapter from our job search workbook for free. Not because we have to offer it for free, but the phone interview is the most important interview. So many candidates just take it for granted. CLICK HERE if you want to download it.
5. “I already know this stuff” syndrome. I get this all the time. You might even say this after reading the phone interviewing chapter. My answer to the comment, “I already know this stuff'” is “So what.” That isn’t important. We all know a lot of things, but we don’t do them and do them well. I know to keep my head still when I hit a golf ball. So what.  I know it but doing it isn’t the same. I’m only 50% effective at doing it. I firmly believe this is one of the biggest reasons candidates aren’t as effective as they should be. They think they know it, but don’t do it and do it right.
6. Working hard and putting  in long hours isn’t the answer in a job search. A job search is an endurance race. It is very much like running a marathon so candidates must be efficient or like a marathon you will burn out. I find many candidates are just running in place and get burned out quickly.

The sad part is that there are so many tools and resources available to candidates. Never before in my 30 years have I seen so much excellent information readily available. Experts blogging, articles in newspapers, YouTube videos, and social media groups are all out there for candidates to tap into. Yet so few do, and even fewer actually implement the suggestions effectively.

I encourage all the candidates I represent to actively research. There are great tips and ideas out there and 90% are free. Spending an hour each night will dramatically impact your job search.  Reading blogs on resumes, branding, social media, or watching some of the outstanding videos on YouTube can change the direction of your search very quickly.

Our contribution to you are our many free tools and resources. For example our audio library (CLICK HERE) has over 50 great audio recordings from our weekly radio show, the free chapter on phone interviewing (CLICK HERE) and our free LinkedIn Profile assessment (CLICK HERE) are just a few of the tools we offer.

Don’t forget to join our LinkedIn Job Search Networking Group for many more free resources. CLICK HERE to join.

I welcome your comments and thoughts.

Brad Remillard

In This Market You Need An Edge. This Might Be That Edge.

Some candidates will enter the job market with the desire to learn everything they can about the best way to conduct a job search. Many will use outplacement firms, attend a webinar or two, read articles on interviewing or resumes, and begin networking.  All good stuff.

However, I believe they leave out one of the most valuable learning tools for a job search. All of the above is important, but what about the other side of the hiring process which is understanding a job search from the recruiter’s or company’s perspective?

Why not read about the hiring processes companies use? Seems to me this would  add a lot of value to one’s search. I ask candidates to start reading and researching articles and books written for hiring managers. There is an enormous amount of information on the Internet that will help you understand exactly what the company is thinking and how they want to  hire.

Many, if not most companies today use some form of behavioral interviewing. There is a wealth of articles, videos, and blogs dedicated to this topic. Just Google “behavioral interviewing”  and over 309,000 results come up. You can discover nearly the exact questions you will be asked in an interview. It is as close to an open book test as you can get, yet few candidates take the time to do this. It is like trading stocks with insider information.

Our book for hiring managers, “You’re NOT The Person I Hired,” goes into great detail how companies should implement an effective  hiring process. It details what questions to ask, how to probe deeply, what other sources to use to  help with candidate selection, how to write a job description that aligns with the real job, and much more. So far over 10,000 CEOs and key executives have this book on their book shelf.  Just reading this book alone will help prepare you for the best way to prepare for an interview, how to align your resume with what the company needs, how to prepare your references, and much more. All you need to know is what the company is going to do and then plan accordingly.

The best defense is a good offense. Understanding exactly how companies do their hiring is one of the best ways to prepare yourself for a job search.

Reading everything you can about how to conduct a search is important. Focusing on how companies hire and learning their methodology is also important. Take the time to prepare yourself for their hiring methodology. You will see a big difference in your results.

You can obtain a copy of our book, “You’re NOT The Person I Hired” from our website if you’d like. There are many good books, blogs, articles, videos, and resources in the market for you to take advantage of. In this market you need an edge  over your competition. Every little bit helps. I encourage you to consider coming from the recruiter’s or company’s perspective.

For more on conducting an effective job search, take a look at our audio library. All of the recordings are free to either download or stream. CLICK HERE to review the titles.

I welcome your comments and thoughts.

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?

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