Be Prepared... Be Confident in the Interview

Check out this Blog from "The Wise Job Search" Blog.

Not being assertive in an interview or being a "milk-toast" in a meeting that could turn into a job lead is all too easy if you're not prepared and lack confidence in yourself. Face it you're selling a product, YOU! If you're not confident then, why should someone buy the product. 


People want to believe that they are getting the best deal and there is a lot of competition out there today. Be yourself and be prepared. That doesn't mean you need to get in someone's face during the interview, in fact, that would be even worse than having no confidence. Sell your product by sharing the benefits that you will bring with you after they hire you. Help them to see you doing the job by telling success stories that show your value. 


Harry Urschel's Blog is called, Being "Assertive" in Job Interviews. The word "Assertive" can be misleading however. Don't make the mistake of being aggressive in the interview or the mistake of attempting to take control from the interviewer. Both of these behaviors are 99% effective at killing your chances in the interview. Mr. Urschel offers a list of other things to avoid in an interview... I totally agree with his list.

Remember you are there and it's your time to connect and win the job offer. Like Goldilocks and the Three Bears... you cannot be too hot, too cold, but you need to be just right!


Review and practice telling your success stories every day. Then, review them right before the interview and you'll smile, endorphins will release in your body; calming and relaxing you, helping you to appear more confident. 

The Other List: Personal Contacts

I was reading the other day and saw that online resume posting yields an 8% chance of success in uncovering the next opportunity. This was a bit of a shock to me, even though I’ve been telling clients forever that only about 20% of jobs are advertised. Therefore, if a job seeker’s efforts are solely focused on answering online ad, then in all probability they will receive a low return from their efforts.

What’s the alternative? Start looking elsewhere... in the 80% of the job market where jobs are not advertised. Finding those non publicized opportunities greatly improves the job seeker’s chances of landing the next job. But how do you find these opportunities?

First, assemble a contact list of all the people you know. This includes but isn’t limited to: Family members, friends, past and recent co-workers, acquaintances, and people you know through your kids’ activities. Also include professionals like doctors, lawyers, and trades people like plumbers, carpenters and even the kid who cuts your lawn. Also list people you know through church groups, civil organizations and of course people from groups via social media like LinkedIn, Facebook and Meetup. I caution folks not to judge or qualify the contact, that will come later; the goal here is to get a list of names as big as you can. Shoot for 150 to start.

Once you have your list of names, qualify them. There are a few ways that work. One is the ABC method and the other is the Near-Far method. The ABC method requires you to evaluate whether or not you think the person can help you toward getting an interview. A, if the person is really connected and knows your work. B, if they may be able to help and C, if there is little chance of receiving truly helpful assistance.

Frankly, I have difficulty with this method, simply because I don’t believe that people really can guess who will connect them to the people with an opportunity. Great Aunt Tilda may very well be connected to an employer that you have no idea about. Great Aunt Tilda tells you to call little Billy, the “boy” who use to cut her grass. Only today, William is the big boss at a local manufacturer and he sends her a Christmas card every year telling her that he is willing to do anything for her, she only need ask.  You just don’t know who someone knows.

I like the Near-Far method. Near contacts I meet with face to face. Far contacts I talk to over the phone. Easy Peasy!  

Regardless of which method you use, call the person on the phone and ask to meet with them. (Of course if the contact is in the next state, don’t make a special trip, but if you’re going to be in the area this will work.) Let them know you’d like to use them as a reference and you’d like to talk face to face in order to let them know what you’ve been working on and what direction you are going. Then meet with them and ask them the three networking questions.

Then persist in following the steps of calling your contact, asking to meet, and then asking for other contacts who will get you closer to your goal -- Landing the Job!  Good Hunting!

Making a Target Company List

Lets begin with some interesting stats*:

• According to the Wall Street Journal, 90% of jobs are filled through networking on one sort or another.
• Historically, men have become more likely to learn about opportunities through networking than women.
• 26.7% of external hires made by organizations came from referrals, making it the number one external source of hiring
• 90% of recruiting firms do a Google search on candidates.
• 85% of hiring managers use social networking sites like LinkedIn to look for potential candidates who’ve been referred by other professionals.

I help job seekers find jobs through networking; by employing two different lists. A contact list and a target company list are both necessary in conducting a job search focused on the 80% of the jobs that are not advertised.

First, assemble a contact list of all the people you know. We’ll discuss this list in another blog posting. The second list that you’ll use is a list of target companies. This list involves a little imagination and research. If one of the people on your contact list is a librarian you’re a winner; if not, you’re about to add a new name to your contact list, because the library is a great place to get company names for your target company list.

Let’s say you are interested in a career in “high performance, high efficiency, home energy.” Ask your librarian how you find the companies in that market segment that are 25, 50 and 100 miles from your zip code. Maybe you are a truck driver want to know who are the 5 best trucking companies in your area to work for. Maybe you’re interested in a bigger paycheck, what are the best paying companies in your industry? Your librarian has that information right there, ready for you to use.

Of course you can use the Internet if you were traumatized when you were a child when you paid an overdue fee to a librarian. But, then you’ll have one less name on your contact list. Most librarians are nice, even if they insist on your speaking in a whisper.

Another way to find companies to put on your target company list is to do a keyword search with any of the job boards, like Monster or CareerBuilder. See what company names come up and then add any onto your list. Whenever anyone tells you about a job, put the company name on your list, even if you already have a contact at that company. You never know who can help and as someone wise once said, “Many hands make for light work.” What companies are in the news? If you like the company or are interested, put their name on the list.

You could have 25 to 50 names on your list of target companies, and that’s okay. Your list should have more than ten companies though. When you print out your list to show people, keep the printout to between 10 to 15 company names so that the reader isn’t overwhelmed. Then ask them if they have any contacts at any of these companies. If they don’t have any contacts at companies on your list, ask them if there are any companies that they could suggest for you to include on your list. This way your list is never stagnant but always growing and changing.

Good Hunting!

* According to career change challenge website

Technology & Job Search

It was 1995 and I was living in San Diego, California and I got a phone call from a recruiter. Remember those days... the phone would ring and the person on the other side of the call would ask if your were open to other opportunities. This call was for a job at a start-up Internet company in Champaign, Illinois. The company was Spyglass and they were commercializing a product named Mosaic for a thing called the World Wide Web.  The company was planning an IPO and they were looking for someone with my skills and abilities.

Most people who accessed the Internet then used dial-up and AOL was the big boy on the block. Of course there weren’t jobs posted in the Web and  résumés’ were sent to prospective employers via the US Mail. There was no LinkedIn, Facebook or Twitter and The Cloud was a white puffy thing in the sky.

There is only one thing that has remained the same in Job Search over the decade and a half since 1995. Back then only 20% of jobs were advertised and today... only 20% of jobs are advertised. I realize that the laws of “supply and demand” were completely reversed back in 1995 as opposed to today. Still, back then, people found jobs as a result of networking. I guess that the percentage was smaller then. In 2002, one study posted that 60.7% of jobs were found through networking. Today, I’ve heard of numbers upward of 85% and some believe that is conservative.

So has technology helped or hurt the job seeker? I would suggest that it is a lot easier to sit at your computer and search for jobs via the Internet. However, tools like LinkedIn, Twitter and a host of other social networking sites have presented a variety of ways to feel productive.

I had one client tell me that he went back and counted 1500 applications he posted over the year he was out. After attending one of my classes and changing his focus, he started networking and he has had eight interviews in the last three week. What was his hit rate responding to on-line postings? Zero! (0:1500... no wonder he hugged me when he told me this news!) Yet, like Zamir situation, using LinkedIn and similar tools can help the job seeker or anyone be more effective at networking... and getting interviews.

I discovered another tool a few months back called Xtranormal that has helped me help job seekers better prepare for networking and job search. I’ve been told that knowing what to say to people is the hardest thing about networking. So here are three examples to help... and if these avatars can do it so can you.

• How to answer the question, “Tell me about yourself?”
• How to ask for a network meeting over the phone?
• How to get new contacts by asking three questions?

Here is another way that technology has improved our lives. Cute, funny, clever maybe, but I’ll tell you one thing... back in 1995 if anyone would have told you that you could learn how to find a job from an avatar, you would have thought them goofy.

Happy Networking.