Career Coach Office Hours February 15 2022 | JobSearchTV.com
I answer questions #jobsearch today. Normally, I also answer questions about #hiringstaff #management #leadership #workplace issues or anything work for that matter.
00:00 Intro and Coffee Toast
03:12 How ‘creative’ should a cover letter be?
05:51 If a new hire knows within 2–3 months that the job is a bad fit for him, should he quit then or wait a full year to not look like he’s job-hopping?
08:03 What might be the reason for the job being reposted after the interview went well?
09:50 Job searching typically entails several rounds of interviews followed by waiting periods. Simply put, it can be a long process. Do you think job seekers should be paid for interviews?
12:25 What does this mean? “No, unfortunately I cannot disclose how many applicants we have for our positions, but I can tell you that you are a finalist and that is why we started the background check.” Am I hired? Do I have the job?
14:09 Why do recruiters reach out to candidates who are unqualified for the position
16:24 Why do Some minority job candidates say it’s a “sham” minority interview if they don’t get a job, but if a minority candidate gets the job, the same person complains that others think they got the job just because they are a minority?
21:56 I applied for a job and the recruiter asked me if I still work as a freelancer. If the answer is yes or no, what difference does that make?
23:58 What’s your view on reapplying for a job if they turned you down before?
25:25 How would you let recruiters in any company know that you would be available for new job opportunities?
27:34 Outro and how to reach me
This is an automated transcript:
hi it’s jeff aaltman the big game hunter and welcome to career coach office hours for february , 15th, 2022.
I spend some time twice weekly currently
it’s
tuesdays and fridays at 9 15 a.m eastern
but beginning with the first show in
march i’m gonna be switching to a one
o’clock time so
i’m just finding that i don’t get oh i’m
getting messages from people on the west
coast that’s too early for them to be
live so i’m trying to be considerate of
those there
and i understand it’s 6 15 a.m for them
so
i’ll just simply say i do i do this show
to do live q a with people about job
search hiring more effectively
management leadership and resolving
workplace issues
so
i’ll just say
oh i cut the wrong one let’s close that
and go to this one so if you’ve got a
question about job search
hiring management leadership or want
some advice about
a particular workplace issue put that
into chat and i’ll cover it during this
show
and also my website
the big game hunter dot u s is a place
where you can schedule time for a free
discovery call
a coaching session
my blog which has over 12 000 searchable
posts
find out about my books and guides the
job search and i’m also going to remind
you that jobsearchtv.com
on youtube is a phenomenal resource with
more than 7 000 videos there
no bs job search advice radio
is available
and it’s the number one podcast in apple
podcast for job search
2300 plus episodes over 11 plus years
it’s available as a video podcast on
spotify if you prefer it in that format
it’s also on amazon music google play
wherever you’d listen to shows
so
i start off today with a coffee toast as
i always do and it’s to salute those of
you
who made time from a busy day for
valentine’s day with someone important
to you now i know you’ll love your work
hopefully there’s someone you love even
more than your work so my toast to you
for actually having them a little bit of
balance in your life and taking some
time
for the one that you love
and if you have kids i hope they didn’t
mind too much that you spent a little
time with them so
the questions i received in advance of
the show
were all about job search
so
again i want to remind you if that’s not
for you if you have something else you
want to address
by all means
put it into chat i’d be happy to cover
it okay
so the first question for today is
how creative
should a cover letter be
so creative has two possible definitions
and i’m not sure which one
you’re talking about
creative could be style
the appearance of the cover letter
and
the other definition could be fictional
how much lying should i do in my cover
letter
the answer is on the first one you know
the appearance of the cover letter
you don’t want to have so much
artistic
item
so much artistry displayed in the cover
letter that distracts from the message
of the cover letter which is to
demonstrate your fit for the role as you
understand it being defined by the
institution
so
keep the focus on that
yes it can have a wonderful appearance
and there are many ways to do that
if you’re applying
and you’re submitting it as an email
again remember put it into the body of
the email and not as a separate
attachment if you’re uploading it make
it page one of the resume and ensure
that it’s stuffed with keywords that
demonstrate your fit for the role
so
remember applicant tracking systems like
to see
relevant information high up on page one
so what you can do is flush left put the
requirements of the position and the
functionality flush right
you put how long and how recently you
perform that if you haven’t done it you
just omit it and just put the other
things there and that’s what you’ve done
is stuff keywords onto page one of your
resume that’ll make the system believe
that you’re qualified to do the job so
how creative should you be let me go to
the second answer
lying
so you get the interview and you’ll lie
your way in the door
how are you gonna back up that play
can you put back it up
can you
talk the talk
and then once on board walk the walk
it’s one thing to study and to
prepare for a test it’s another thing to
do the work day in and day out and for a
lot of folks that’s a lot harder so
again i’m just going to remind you yes
you can get the interview but can you
deliver if you can’t deliver don’t waste
your time don’t waste their time either
okay
that’s my first question for today
if a new hire knows within two to three
months that the job is a bad fit for
them
should they quit then or wait a full
year to not look like they’re job
hopping
it depends and it depends is what’s the
history
that you have in your background up
until that point firms are very willing
to be tolerant
of people who made a mistake if they
don’t make lots of mistakes
if you’re a contractor
having done temp work
for five years
aggregate the dates of your temp
assignments in the into a category that
says you know consultant and the five
year dates
excuse me
and thus you can show that you’re not a
job hopper you were consultant and then
the new firm
can appear above it for the two-month
period i wouldn’t put that into the
resume while you’re looking i would just
continue with the
previous resume
and i’ll just also say that i always
encourage people to keep looking keep
interviewing during the first month or
two after they join a firm for the
simple reason that
if the hiring manager misrepresented the
opportunity you’re not stuck
it seems like you’re in this situation
where the job isn’t right for you for
whatever the reason is but you believe
there was going to be one way it isn’t
get out of there
seriously get out of there and do it
sooner rather than later because you
can’t cover up six months
you can’t cover up nine months
but you know you can move on after a
month or two
so don’t hesitate head out the door okay
so i’m just going to remind you to put
your questions about job search hiring
better
management leadership or if you’re
looking for advice about a particular
workplace issue put those into chat i’d
be happy to answer your questions
next question
why was a job reposted after my
interview went well
well
there are a lot of reasons
yeah and
you know i’ll just say
among the reasons
is there
the employer ran an ad
and the job board offered them the
ability to auto post for an additional
30 days without any effort on their part
it’s an automatic
reposting
there are sites to do that
and that could be why that’s happened
another reason is that until someone
starts a job
they view the position still open and
just because you got past the first
interviewer doesn’t mean that you’ll get
past interviewers two through seven
who are also involved in the process
from their vantage point the job is
still open until you walk through the
door and you’ve worked there for a few
weeks now this is like the mirror
of
the previous ansel where i talked about
if they’ve misrepresented you should
head out the door well if you disappoint
them
or you walk out the door they just keep
talking to people
and i’ll just also say
maybe you didn’t do as well as you
thought you did
that’s also a possibility so those are a
couple of reasons that the job listing
is still there
and
which one of those apply or others i
don’t know
but
those are a couple of possible reasons
why that might have happened
so
next question is
job searching typically takes
several rounds of interviews followed by
waiting periods
it can be a long process do i think job
hunters should be paid for interviews
no except under one circumstance
and there i do believe a person should
be paid
and that circumstances
when someone’s
being given a homework assignment that’s
going to take time
and they have to bring this in to
demonstrate the quality of the work
so you pay for that and yes i do believe
a person should be paid under those
circumstances
if you’re just going to an interview
answering questions
and heading out and waiting for a reply
no
no
but if you’re being given additional
work to do i’ve had clients of mine give
homework assignments to people they paid
them for it it wasn’t a significant
amount of money but it does
demonstrate integrity on their part to
do that
if you’re given homework to do
and they’re not talking about being paid
to do but you’re being paid to do it
i would discourage you from doing it and
simply say you know this is going to
take five hours of my time
as a result i’d like to be paid for that
and i’ve seen situations over the years
where firms are receiving free
consulting it’s crazy i don’t want you
being abused in that way and i’ve seen
situations i actually read about a
couple of situations where a firm
did ask someone to do app development
for them and then wound up taking their
work and marketing as a product
so
i i don’t want you being taken advantage
of or abused
so if you’re given work to do off hours
has to be paid if they say no
no i don’t think so this is not going to
be for me
i’m happy to answer all your questions
but once you give me work to do off
hours or in situations like that
i’m going to politely decline
ravindra
hi how are you
welcome to career coach office hours and
if you have a question please feel free
to put it in the chat be happy to answer
it for you okay
let’s go to the next question in the
meantime because i’ve got a bunch and
today it’s about job search but most of
the time it covers some other things
you know related to hiring better
management leadership or dealing with
people’s workplace issues
so someone wanted me to to answer what
does this mean
unfortunately i cannot disclose how many
applicants we have for our positions but
i can tell you that you’re a finalist
and that’s why we wanted why we started
doing a background check
they want to know if they’re hired and
have the job the answer is not yet
because you’re a finalist doesn’t mean
you’re the only finalist
you could be one of 12 finalists that
they’ve brought back having reviewed 25
people they don’t want to tell you how
many people
have applied
how many people they’ve interviewed or
many how many finalists they have
they have their reasons personally i
don’t think it’s necessary to be quite
that obtuse but i do think
they they’ve made this decision
you are still competing
as i tell people all the time
even if you’re the only one being
brought back
you’re competing with the notion that
there are other people out there who are
better than you
so you’re still selling you’re still
trying to promote yourself
and demonstrate you being qualified to
do this role you’re still evaluating and
assessing them right because you could
still say no
but no you haven’t been hired yet they
haven’t decided to bring you on board
yet
they’re still evaluating
and you’re competing
uh
why do recruiters reach out to
candidates who are unqualified for
position
that’s pretty easy
there’s a couple of reasons for that
number one is they made a mistake
number two is they’ve used technology to
do the reach out they did a search of
their system did a search on linkedin
and
you know they did a
mass search
using like they may be a user for
linkedin recruiter
and it turned up
let’s say 150 people so they’re not
going to look at 150 profiles
that’s too labor intensive so what they
do instead
is
do a bulk in mail and
they can do i believe 100 at a time
and remember
with linkedin recruiter they get 100
mails per month they may get some
carryover from previous months but each
month they’ll receive a hundred emails
that they can message people
if you respond in any way including no
not for me thank you very much for sure
i’d be really interested or tell me more
that inmail is credited back to them
so
they’re reaching out to people based
upon keywords in your profile
and that’s caused them
to
be told by the system that you might be
qualified
also if they did this through their own
database
they’re not looking at 150 or a thousand
profiles that may be out of date
they’re just doing a bulk email
and trying to get you to respond to the
requirement
and forwarding your resume so that’s a
couple of reasons why
you’ve been approached by recruiters or
know people who’ve been approached by
recruiters who are unqualified for a
position
uh let’s see now
next question oh this
let me just read the question now
comment
why do some minority job candidates say
it’s a sham interview if they don’t get
the job but if a minority candidate gets
the job
the person complains that
others think they got it because they’re
a minority
i love this question because it’s
obviously someone who’s never been in
that seat before
and doesn’t know what it’s like janice
hi welcome
and thank you for joining i appreciate
it and
if you have a question put it in the
chat i’d be happy to answer it for you
and
let me just answer this one first
before i answer any of yours okay
so
if you’ve ever been in the situation
where you had a
an interview
that you knew was a sham you know it’s
bs
and i don’t care if you’re a person of
color uh i don’t care if you’re a white
person and you’re in a situation where
you think that they’re just doing this
interview to
present an h1b candidate and say no
they’re not qualified this other person
this non-h1b candidate you know isn’t
qualified we want this one who happens
to have an h-1b and they they’re trying
to demonstrate to the immigration
nationalization service that they did an
exhaustive search and they couldn’t find
anyone
they’re going through a sham interview
and you know it at the time
so
understand people can smell bs
and
you know you put on a great performance
you give great answers you’re laughing
and joking with the interviewer you’ve
made a solid connection
and then it’s not you with someone else
people smell the fact that they stood no
chance
or i could by the way it could also be
it’s one of those incoherent interviews
where the person’s
uh disengaged entirely
and
they wind up in situations where you
just know it’s a waste of your time so
that’s the first part of this scenario
people can smell bs like there’s a
former nfl football coach who recently
sued the national football league you
know saying he was only interviewed for
these jobs because of their regulation
that says before you hire someone you
have to guarantee that you’ve
interviewed two minority candidates
so he thought he had sham interviews he
she sued the league
and uh
i wasn’t in the room i don’t know what’s
true or what isn’t
but
that was his sense of it and he sued
now the other part of this is the
frustration if you’re a minority
candidate that you’re hired and the
other individuals say ah
they were an affirmative action hire
they were a token hire to demonstrate
fill in the blank
whoever wants to be downplayed
and dismissed as being someone who was
only hired because they were a minority
candidate
who would ever want to be in that
situation
so remember
you know again i’m not in the room
i don’t know what’s going on there
you are diver
and when you ask a question like this
you have no idea what it’s like
to be in someone else’s shoes
dealing with these situations and how
frustrating it can be
i remember even for me as a recruiter
going into meetings
and
my favorite one was
at a time where this was extremely high
rate
i met
as part of a group of six recruiters who
were brought in by hr to an organization
who want to understand why it was we
weren’t able to deliver people for this
one manager that they were supporting
and
my wife at that time were not married
anymore any longer
and she’s not alive any longer that’s a
different story i’ll just simply say she
told me that the consultant who was on
billing there
that hiring manager hired someone with
ordinary skills brought them from the uk
and was paying fifteen hundred dollars
an hour for skills in the us for maybe
fifty sixty dollars
so
i sat there during the meeting and i
understood
you know clearly why no one was getting
hired for full-time work and that is
there was some arrangement that this
this hiring manager was profiting from
so
kickback i don’t want to make an
accusation but clearly he was profiting
by this arrangement where they’re
bringing in someone from the uk and
paying the expenses of that person plus
1500 an hour
for someone that they could get
stateside for 50 or 60. so
you know there are many reasons why this
kind of stuff occurs and you know it
you know when you’re in situations where
you stand no chance
um
i applied to a job and a recruiter asked
me if you’re still working as a
freelancer
if the answer is yes or no what
difference does it make
well if it’s a yes
their concern is you really want to do
freelance work you’re off assignment
and uh
when you find another assignment
you you’re going to go back and f uh go
back to
work
if
you are not working freelance and can be
personally convincing that
what you’re doing is interviewing for a
full-time job because you want full-time
work that’s a different scenario
so they’re just trying to get the pulse
of what your real intentions are
and in doing so
they’re just trying to figure out are
you still contracting
what do you do to finish up
are you sure you won full time because
that’s what we’re hiring for we’re not
trying to hire a temp or a contractor we
want someone full time
and the result wants to be
they’re trying to
sort things out about you
and
figure out whether you’re serious in
joining full-time
two more
what are your views on reapplying for a
job if they turned you down before
you know
when i did recruiting
i remember these are the days where
you’d have to fax resumes
that’ll give you an idea how long ago
this was
there was one client i had
and
i had a candidate with a great resume
for a particular job they had and i
submitted it one one time
no response i would ask the response
a second time no response
third occasion
you know they interviewed them and they
hired him
so
can you reapply yes but
let me give you some data to work with
number one is how recently did you apply
and actually were turned down i’m not
talking about being having your resume
ignored but you were actually turned
down based upon an interview
if it was fairly recent
you know they’re probably not going to
be interested unless it’s a similar
position in a different group and in the
first interviews you did well but they
chose someone else
so those are the predicates here for
making that determination if it’s a year
ago you’ve changed the position has
probably changed no issue with applying
go ahead and do it
especially if again you did well it’s
probably in their notes about you in
their system
so
again recent
no
recent
different group and you’ve done well on
your interviews yes
a year ago
and you’re looking for someone something
else at the same firm
no issue go ahead and apply
so
that’s their thinking about it that’s my
thinking about it and uh
i hope that’s helpful to you
last question for now unless someone
puts one in the chat
how would you let recruiters in any
company know that you’d be available for
new job opportunities
well
if you’ve had relationships with them
before like actually spoken with them
you can message them
you can im them through uh linkedin
you could
put a quick call into them
leave voicemail to say um i’ve come back
available
you’ve helped me
six months ago six years ago whatever
when i was doing such and such this is
what i’m doing now
i’m available
would you like to speak they’ll ask for
a copy of the resume just to save a
little bit of time
you comply and send it
that’s one way of doing it another way
is
if they know you through linkedin
you can change your
status on linkedin to open to work
and you can do that
i believe
you’d have to click on your photo
on the top ribbon
of linkedin
to get access to some of your privacy
settings
and from there what you do is make the
change to indicate that you’re open to
work
that will notify people that you’re
connected with that you’re open to work
it mean if you’re not connected with
this recruiter they won’t know it but
other recruiters will see it when
they’re searching through linkedin
using linkedin recruiter or other means
they’ll discover that because
linkedin prioritizes those responses or
to searches over others and thus
people will know that you’re actively
looking
so those are a couple of things to do
to generate that i hope you found
today’s show helpful i’m going to sign
off and if
while i’m doing that if you have a
question put it into chat if not i’ll
just say i’m jeff alton the big game
hunter i’ll be back friday with more uh
at 9 15 a.m eastern i hope you enjoyed
your valentine’s day yesterday and
oh sorry so
there’s a lot more at my website the big
game hunter.us
you can schedule time for a free
discovery call
a coaching session
visit my blog with more than 12 000
searchable posts
you know it’s a great resource you can
find out about my courses my books my
guides a whole bunch of things at the
website and also i would encourage you
jobsearchtv.com on youtube
more than 7 000 videos there no bs job
search device radio and apple podcast
spotify amazon music google play or
wherever you listen to podcasts
is another wonderful resource i make
available
more than 2300 episodes over 11 plus
years
we’re still going strong i haven’t made
a decision when to stop doing it but
i’ll just simply say there’s a lot there
that will help you
also connect with me on linkedin if
we’re not already connected at
linkedin.com forward slash high end
forward slash the big game hunter lastly
i introduced something yesterday that’s
new
and i hope i remember this name
correctly
it’s
no bs
career advice
uh it’s a newsletter i’m doing every
other week
that will cover some of the same issues
i do here job search hiring management
leadership
and
i do a quote of the day as well
hope you have a terrific day and most
importantly
be great
take care
[svp]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fmFRNzrbqPI[/svp]
You can also email questions to TheBigGameHunter(at) gmail.com and put the phrase “Office Hours” into the subject line and I will answer it on my next show. #careercoachofficehours #careercoaching #careercoach #jobsearchtips #jobsearchadvice #interviews #hiring #managingpeople #leadershipskills #linkedinlive #linkedinlivestreams
ABOUT JEFF ALTMAN, THE BIG GAME HUNTER
Jeff Altman, The Big Game Hunter is a coach who worked as a recruiter for what seems like one hundred years. His work involves career coaching, as well as executive job search coaching, job coaching, and interview coaching. He is the host of “No BS Job Search Advice Radio,” the #1 podcast in iTunes for job search with over 2300 episodes.
Are you interested in 1:1 coaching, interview coaching, advice about networking more effectively, how to negotiate your offer or leadership coaching? Schedule a discovery call at my website, www.TheBigGameHunter.us
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