Career Coach Office Hours: July 26 2022 | JobSearchTV.com
By Jeff Altman, The Big Game Hunter
I answered questions about #jobsearch #hiringstaff #management #leadership #workplace issues. Join me at 1 PM Eastern on Friday July 29 2022.You can also message me on Linkedin before the show and I will answer it, too #careercoachofficehours #careercoaching #careercoach #jobsearchtips #jobsearchadvice #interviews #hiring #managingpeople #leadershipskills #linkedinlive #linkedinlivestreams
Using LinkedIn The Right Way Even When You Are Not Job Hunting
What do people frequently get wrong when they write cover letters. The first thing they get wrong is if they’re submitting a cover letter as part of an email, they send it as an attachment. No one’s going to open the attachment. Put it in the body of the email rather than as a separate file because no one will open the second file. They’ll look for the one that suggests resume or avoid the one that suggests it’s a cover letter. Put it in the body of the of the resume of the email, I should say. In addition, the cover letter is too generic. It does nothing to function like an appetizer that makes people excited to open the resume. So if all you do is send a generic cover letter that goes, “I’m forwarding my resume to you because I saw the position advertised for such and such. I believe I’d be a great fit for this role, and it’d be a terrific opportunity for me. I look forward to hearing from …” No one cares. It’s useless. However, if you connect the dots between what you’ve done and what they’re looking for, that’s a useful cover letter. So the question was, what do they get wrong? They do nothing to make people feel like it was time worth spending and making them excited to open the actual resume. That’s what they get wrong.
Do interviewers using a structured interview approach feel more prepared when interviewing candidates? Well, I suspect so. I know I used a structured approach when I interviewed people when I still did search. And what I wanted to ensure is that at a minimum, I asked everyone the same basic questions in order to ensure that I took the time to determine if someone was qualified for a role with a client of mine. And thus, in asking structured questions, I was able to start off by obtaining a benchmark of knowledge from people that would allow me to confirm that. And then from there, I’d dig in deeper and in digging in deeper what I was trying to find out was could they be conversational? Can we connect with one another? What are they really know? Is this a surface level knowledge? Or can they go into depth about this? No depth, no interest. Because my clients wanted deep knowledge of things. So we start off with knowledge of the basics, can they do the basics of the role? Going into more depth, and again, the question is, do they feel more prepared? I don’t think preparation is the question. I think, should be the question. I believe what the question is, do you get more solid results from doing this? And the answer without doubt is yes, you do. You can eliminate people who are not qualified, and find people confirm that they are.
How long would jobseekers wait for an offer after the second interview before following up? James, I know you don’t know my theory about asking this question. So let me just cover it and say, ideally, at the time of your interview, one of your final questions would be, ‘could you give me an idea of when I might hear about next steps in the process?’ This is probably the next to the last question that you might ask. So you would ask that question. And let’s say today is Tuesday and they said early part of next week. ‘So is it okay, if I follow up with you Thursday, or Friday, if I haven’t heard from you?’ And that’s the method that I look at. Knowing that people on their side have lots of things on their plate, I want to get a sense from them, telling me when I should follow up. Now, let’s go to the assumption now that you haven’t done that and you did the interview Monday yesterday, I would not let it go over the weekend. I would follow up on Thursday. And simply say, ‘you know, I forgot to ask you about when I should follow up? Do you have any feedback? That should give you a sense of next steps in the process if there are going to be next steps in the process. And if you’re not sure when I might hear about next steps, I would not let it go over the weekend. I would start on Thursday, with a call in the late morning. And then one in the late afternoon. If I haven’t heard back from them. It could be a text, it could be a phone call, whatever it is. But some reach out to them on Thursday, Friday, following a Monday interview. That gives them a couple of days to collect feedback. They may respond to you by saying we have a few more people to talk to. And if they end it there, you have to ask the question, ‘So when would it make sense for me to follow up with you if I haven’t heard from you?’ They’ll tell you. And again, you follow up by referring to a couple of days after that. say so. You said Monday so I’ve ever heard from you, let’s say Wednesday, Thursday is it okay if I follow up with you. They’ll say ‘Sure.’ Or they may say “Wait. ‘Wait is a sign that says you’re being too pushy. Back off. Wait also means they’re not all that excited. If they were excited, they’d tell you more, rather than telling you to be quiet. Wait. They’d be selling to you. ‘We just got one more person to talk to. We really think highly of you.’ They’d say stuff like that instead. And thus, for someone like yourself, like I said, a couple of days after the second interview, I would follow up. I certainly would not wait a week. And if you have today’s a good day to contact them. So I hope that’s helpful to you, James. If you got more put into chat.
Should people hire based on passion over experience. No, no. And why are they it’s a one or another. It should be both. Like when you listen to me talk about careers in job search. you hear a guy who both knows his material and is passionate about being of service to people. Why should anyone have an either or choice? You want to get both from people because these are people who, because of their passion display that they care? Care is one of the qualities you should be looking for in someone. I apologize if you’ve heard me say this before, because it feels like I say it in almost every show I do. When companies hire competence is only one thing they look for. They look for self confidence, character, chemistry, maybe a little bit of charisma. Charismatic, people always do better than non charismatics, right? That you care, that you can connect with people. Because they want to trust you. Without trust, you’re not going to get hired. So the long the short of it is, it’s not one or the other, it should be both. And a person who’s passionate but knows nothing is useless to you. And a person who goes through the motions and has a lot of experience, you may find it very difficult to work with them. And your team may have difficulty in working with them. So try and get both. Work at doing that. Don’t just focus on one versus the other.
Can a potential employer find out why you were fired? Often, no, in practice, yes. And first of all, they can find out you were fired by simply asking, ‘Is this person eligible for rehire? No? Okay.’ Or ‘is this person eligible to be rehired? We’re not permitted to answer that kind of question. Why not? It’s against company policy,’ I can assure you that if you were eligible for rehire, there’ll be no company policy prohibiting. The prohibitions are against people saying something negative about someone that could be detrimental to a person’s future. But the absence of the positive is viewed as a negative. So often, companies will have policies that don’t permit it. And I saw a great little story about reference checks, I want to say Kevin Kelly from Wired Magazine was being interviewed on a podcast. And he said, the way he checks references, is he sends an email, or he leaves a voicemail to the effect of, ‘yeah, I want to check a reference with you about so and so. If you were not completely enthusiastic about this person, don’t call me back.’ In other words, no response, no interest, because it’s a signal that if they’re not willing to pick up the phone and say, ‘of course, I love this guy,’ or words to that effect. It’s a neutral to bad reference. So recognize that there’s little tricks that firms can play to get information out of your current employer. So I’ll simply say, I don’t care about the grooming question there. What I care about is the reference check question. There’s always a way to find out and they may not go directly to HR and get an answer. They may backchannel it to someone within the organization who you may not have listed as a reference who they happen to know. Or they know someone who knows someone and get a reference. I know they’re not supposed to do that, but that is what they do.
What is the purpose of second round interviews? And what are some examples of questions that might be as thorough in this type of interview? Is it okay to tell an interviewer you need a quick response, because you’re holding another offer. You know, I’ve gotten a lot of them on my website, TheBigGameHunter.us. On YouTube, at jobsearchtv.com. You can go to YouTube, you can go to my website. on YouTube, there’s a playlist of interview questions. There are many marked as second interview questions, third round questions, or final interview questions. Go through those. This will be a show in and of itself, to provide those questions that will be asked. I also have mistakes that people make on interviews that can show up on second or final round interviews. Again, go through that material. Now, is it okay to tell an interviewer, you need a quick response because you have another offer? The answer is yes. But I wouldn’t say it that way. At the end of the interview, after they’ve had a chance to evaluate you, I would say to them, ‘I just want you to be aware I have another offer. I really like this position. I just want to encourage you if you decide I’m the right person for you, and certainly I think this is a great opportunity for me, I just want you to make your strongest offer.’ ‘Well, what’s your offer for?’ ‘I don’t want this to be you beat them by $500. I want you to evaluate me and make a decision based upon your perceived value. But I do have another offer. It’s a good one. It’s great firm, a good position, but I like this one better. So I want to encourage you to respond as quickly as possible to this interview. If you’re not interested, I’m okay with that. I just want to make you aware that I had another offer’. And leave it at that.
What professions allow you to make the most mistakes, but still have a job the next morning? Ready? Here’s my answer– Elected politicians. These people make so many mistakes. They are so wrong about so many different things. And they ,wake up the next day and they have a job. Now after a year or two or four or six. they may not have a job, but they make a mistake one day and they’ve still got a job another day. Okay? I hope you found the humor in that valid, okay?
Recession-Proof Your Career: Don’t Neglect the Mental
So what happens if two candidates have the same answers for interview questions? After a job interview, do you send a thank you note or email for the person who will be your direct supervisor or to everyone you interviewed along the way? Okay, I’m gonna take these as two separate questions from two different people. So if two candidates have the same answers for interview questions doesn’t mean anything. You each met a baseline. And if you think back to what I said earlier, competence is only one thing they look for. They’re looking for other attributes as well. Those other attributes become the deciding factor as to whether they choose you or someone else. And the statistical probability that everyone has the same answer to the same questions is very small. Don’t focus on that. Focus on impressing people. Yeah, part two is, after a job interview, do you send a note or email to the person who will be a direct supervisor or to everyone you interviewed with along the way? The answer is to everyone you interviewed with along the way, including the supervisor. So they each get a personalized email. I say email rather than note, because you want to influence them quickly so that if they’re not sure, between you and someone else, the email can influence them to choose you. If you’re relying upon the mail to deliver something, good luck! I just had two bills never get to me. And having to plead with credit card companies that they remove the late charges, because I never received the bill. So just send that as an email, make it very simple. And one of the things in making it simple, is you affirm some of the things in your background that’re important to them for this role. In doing that, you’re reminding them about you, and the benefits of hiring you. And that’s huge, because, trust me, they forget. They forget. You want to be the person who’s always top of mind with every person that you meet with. And if you just sit back and wait for the phone to ring, like a date, who’s waiting for a call for a date for the weekend … Not good. So again, you want to put yourself in the position of being memorable. I’m not saying you go to the parking lot, or on your walk to the subway or the bus, that you type it immediately. An hour later is fine. And ‘I just want you to know, I’m interested in the role. I just want to state to you that I think my background would fit a lot of things that you’re looking for. And let me walk you through a couple of the points that made sense. I think what makes sense for why I’m qualified to do this role, and you reiterate some of the points of the interview, and then go from there.
I noticed that the director of HR where did my second interview viewing my LinkedIn profile yesterday? Is it ideal or a way to disqualify my candidacy? It could be either way.After all, if there’s something incongruent between what you told them, and what your profile says, that can be a disqualifier. They also may have wanted to remember something about you because someone forgot, or they weren’t sure, or they’ve spoken to four people, and they were confusing you with one of the others, so they look for clarification. Someone may have also said, ‘Where does he work? Oh, yeah, I remember him.’ There’s no way of really knowing. Certainly, if they’re not interested, they don’t have a need to go to your profile. So it tends to be either confusion, looking for a reason to say no, because they discover something incongruent because they forgot something or they’re confusing you with someone or there’s nothing really negative about it. Again, unless your profile is incongruent with what their expectations are.
What do hiring managers look for your LinkedIn profile? Do endorsements matter? Endorsements advantage people who are more experienced than less experienced. They do matter in so far, not as much as recommendations, by the way. But recommendations are always preferred because of the text. It’s someone who knows you, likes you, trusts you, and respects you, writing about you and your work and providing some detail that’s always positive. Because if it’s not positive, you could reject the recommendation. But endorsement endorsements, like if you’ve got 750 endorsements or something like I think I’ve gotten more than 1000 number of categories. it looks good, right? 1000 people think he’s good about such and such as good. So numbers matter. That’s true and recommendations. That’s true and endorsements. And what do they look for on your profile? As I was saying to James a moment ago, they’re looking for something congruent. They’re looking at something in your background to see if it catches their eye. They could be recruiting for a position. And they want to see … they’re looking for people who have certain types of experiences. There’s lots of things that they look for, as part of the evaluation process in order to figure out if someone should be contacted by them for an interview.
Can a prospective employer generally find out if a candidate was fired for cause. Normally not directly, because fired for cause. ..It’s one of these things that firms tend to avoid answering directly. They answer it by saying, you know, was this person eligible for rehire? NO! It’s not just the tone of voice. Not eligible for rehire signals to another firm, that you didn’t do a good job. That’s good enough for them to want to reject you. So can they find out if you were fired for cause? Sometimes, certainly, if they backchannel to get to people, and not just going through the front door through HR, they can. But when all is said and done, you don’t want to ever be in that position. Do good work. Don’t be a jerk. Do good work.
If an employer told me I should hear from a recruiter on or about 10 business days, does that mean I’m hired? No. It just means you’re going to hear back in 10 days, about next steps, or a decision of some sort. The decision would be to hire. It could also be to say ‘we’re not interested. Good luck. Have a great day and a great life. Bye.’ So all it means is you should hear from them no later than 10 days from now. I would also say put a reminder in your phone to contact them on day 11. And the message can be ‘When I interviewed I was told I’d hear back in about 10 days. I haven’t heard anything yet. Is the position still open? Are you still interviewing? Something along those lines. Not, ARE YOU HIRING ME? Oh, no. I have more interviews. Nothing like that.
So what do software engineering managers generally do when they see a very slow engineer making very few contributions? Usually what they’ll do is they’ll bring them into their office. They’ll start off with ‘Hi, how’s it going? How’s the job treating you? ? Hey, look, I gotta ask you a question. Do you remember when I interviewed you? I told you what my expectations are. Do you remember what I told you? Good. Good. Because right now it seems like you’re working a lot slower. And I’m not getting what I need from you. So I’m not making any threats here. But I want you to step up your game because there can be consequences that are outside of my control if your performance stays at this abysmal level. So, step it up, please. I don’t want to be threatening, I just want you to step up your work, because I think you can do a great job.
What do interviewers normally look for when they ask for more years of experience, and limit the age in job applications? So I would say this is someone from outside the US because in the US, you cannot say we only want to hire people less than 35 years old or 40 years old. Ostensibly, someone can be qualified at all ages, and you don’t want to be accused of age discrimination, as your question would invite someone to see. Now, when they look for someone more years of experience, what they’re saying is we want to see a person, we don’t want a junior. And we think someone with 10 to 15 years or 15 to 25 years of experience, will have enough experience for us. Yes, there are people who are exceptional, who do things ahead of the curve at a very young age, but they are rare. And we think it serves us better if we find someone with let’s say, 15 to 25 years of experience, has the knowledge we need a great attitude, who’s willing to do the work and can do a great job. So I’ll just simply say what they’re looking for, is your competence vis a vie the role involved. And as for limiting the age, I don’t have an answer for you because my experience as a US centric professional is that they don’t limit the age legally. And thus, you’re not in a situation where that part of the question should be of concern.
Recession-Proof Your Career – 7 Ways to Make Sure You Land Your Next Job Stress-Free
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 2400 episodes.
Are you interested in 1:1 coaching, interview coaching, advice about networking more effectively, how to negotiate your offer or leadership coaching? People hire me to provide No BS career advice whether that is about a job search, hiring better, leadership, management or support with a workplace issue. Schedule a discovery call at my website, www.TheBigGameHunter.us
My courses are available on my website, www.TheBigGameHunter.us/courses The courses include ones about Informational Interviews, Interviewing, final interview preparation, salary negotiation mistakes to avoid, the top 10 questions to prepare for on any job interview, and starting a new job.
I do a livestream on LinkedIn, YouTube (on the JobSearchTV.com account) and on Facebook (on the Jeff Altman, The Big Game Hunter page) Tuesdays and Fridays at 1 PM Eastern. You can send your questions about job search, hiring better, management, leadership or to get advice about a workplace issue to me via messaging on LinkedIn or in chat during the approximately 30 minute show.
Classes On Skillshare https://thebiggamehunter.us/Skillshare
Freelancing or hiring a freelancer: fiverr.com https://thebiggamehunter.us/fiverr. or Freelancer: https://thebiggamehunter.us/freelance
To set up your freelance business correctly: incorporate https://thebiggamehunter.us/incorporate
Connect with me on LinkedIn www.linkedin.com/in/thebiggamehunter
Watch my videos on YouTube at JobSearchTV.com, the Job Search TV app for fireTV or a firestick or Bingenetworks.tv for Apple TV, and 90+ smart tv’s.
Thinking of making a career change and need some ideas that fit you. CareerFitter offers a free test and if you want more you can upgrade for the paid version.https://thebiggamehunter.us/Career
We grant permission for this post and others to be used on your website as long as a backlink is included and notice is provided that it is provided by Jeff Altman, The Big Game Hunter as an author or creator.
