Career Coach Office Hours: September 6 2022 | JobSearchTV.com
By Jeff Altman, The Big Game Hunter
I answered questions about #jobsearch #hiringstaff #management #leadership #careertransition #workplace issues. Join me at 1 PM Eastern on Tuesday and Friday and I’ll answer your questions live. You can also message me on Linkedin before the show and I will answer it, too.
Stupid Networking Mistakes: Thinking Email Is Good Enough
03:07
If you need a job, and you’re having a difficult time being hired, what are the basic things you can do in order to get a job? When I deconstruct a job search, when I look at what people are doing, the first thing is if you’re not getting interviews, then maybe there’s a problem with your resume. Maybe your resume and LinkedIn profile aren’t congruent. Maybe you’re applying for or seeking things that you’re not qualified for and you really like to do them. Thus, it’s aspirational on your part. And you know, the long the short of it is you’re not qualified to do it. Your resume doesn’t make a case for your candidacy. Those are the four basic problems. You’re not networking. You’re not using your connections in order to get entree into organizations. You’ve made mistakes galore and those are the basic reasons why you’re not even getting in the door to get interviews. And if you’re getting initial screens, and it’s not going any further. You’re not prepared for a phone screen with the screener. If you’re getting past the screener and you’re getting to the hiring manager, and they’re not passing you on, you’re not connecting with them in some way and demonstrating you’re fit for the role. If you’re getting past them to the group, to the team that’s there to evaluate your skills or capabilities, maybe, maybe what it is, is that well, you don’t know as much as you think you do about the subject that they’re trying to hire for, the expertise they’re trying to hire for. Lastly, if you get into the final interview with the person who runs the department, runs the business, whatever it is, and you’re not getting past them, it was probably something that surfaced earlier in the interviews where they perceive the deficiency. As a result, you haven’t satisfied their curiosity and made them trust you. And again, I apologize for repeating this, when firms hire competence is only one thing they look for. They look for self-confidence, character, chemistry, and maybe a little bit of charisma, because charismatic people always do better than noncharismatic people, and you care, that you can connect with them. They want to trust someone. So that’s how I break it down. And that’s how I think you should look at this as well, to know which factors are involved. I have a question from chat.
05:58
Shall I give extra hours to office work and on what basis does one give more hours to the office helps in the long run? If I’m understanding this correctly, should you work overtime? Should you work a little bit more?. And how can this benefit you? And if I don’t understand that not understanding correctly, please correct me in chat. I want to give you the right answer. So the first thing I would say to you is, I don’t want you working crazy hours, I want you to have a life as well. But you know what your manager, what the business owner values. Is it time? Is it quality? Is it ideas? What is it that they value? I don’t know the kind of work that you do. But I think of it from the standpoint of does putting in extra time payoff? The big place it pays off is with you, and your knowledge, your expertise. And your ability to express that in interviews if you decide to look later. Often in people’s current environments, unless you make the time to tell people you’re putting in extra time. I”m gonna put in an extra hour tonight.’ Or, ‘Wow, I really enjoy putting in that extra time this week. 30 minutes a day has worked wonders for me. I’ve gotten so much done.’ You just talk about it, so that people start to notice it. And the benefit for you in the long run is about you rather than the employer. You learn a lot from the experience. You learn from the relationships you cultivate during working the extra time. Yes, you may get more promotions. you may get a higher salary, you may not. I don’t know your organization, but it can help you to put in extra time.
08:16
What happens when a customer tells a manager I want that employee fired or I won’t come back? There’s a famous story about Southwest Airlines in the United States, where there was a person who wrote a complaint email that kept getting kicked up the chain of command where this person complained. They didn’t like the fact that their seats were not assigned. They didn’t like that there wasn’t food on the flights, or movies in the aircraft. And I forget there were like two or three other things and it kept getting escalated for response and eventually wound up on the desk of the President of Southwest Airlines who’s not alive anymore. His name was Herb Kelleher. And Kelleher wrote back to the complaining customer saying, ‘We’ll miss you.’ You can’t satisfy everyone. Now, the first question for a manager to ask is, ‘What was the issue with that employee? You want them fired.I’m not going to gratuitously do that without understanding what the problem was and asking you a series of questions. Just because you’re upset and this person seems to have done something to upset you, I need to understand what that was in order to make a decision.’ Now, most of the time, what they’re doing is stalling for time trying to calm the customer down. And it is rare that someone’s fired. Now if someone did or said something abusive to a customer, yes, you might get or they might get fired. But as a general rule, a good manager is going to try and get clarity about why it is this customer is so upset. ‘And before making a decision, we’ve got more questions.’ We got
10:23
How do recruiters treat resumes shared by a link from candidates (like using Google Drive) to submit a resume? I think what happens is it’s an inconvenience for them. They’ll do it. But they don’t necessarily like it. Now on your LinkedIn profile, if you have a link to your, to your Google Drive where your resume resides, that’s okay. Not ideal. You can have actually, I’m not absolutely sure, but it’s not ideal to do it that way. But you can, and the issue is getting it into their database. you’re now actually asking for them to manually parse the resume into their software, and then put it that way, rather than using, in my case, a Chrome extension, to input resumes easily for me. So the long the short of it is, they’re not thrilled, it’s better than nothing. It’s not going to guarantee or negate your experience getting an interview. You have to be qualified. You have to be interested in the position. You have to be available. And unless your background fits, you’re not gonna go anywhere anyway.
Stupid Networking Mistakes: Acting Like One of THOSE People
11:50
As A Software Engineering Manager, when you see a junior engineer being more productive than a good senior engineer in your team, do you promote them immediately? Immediately is a term I wouldn’t use because I don’t know what immediately means to you–the next 10 minutes? The next day? The next week? How immediate is immediate? The next part of this is, I’d rather talk to the senior engineer and talk to them about their performance and basically say words to the effect of ‘I get the idea that you’re coasting because the junior on the team is really knocking it out of the park and then there’s you who’s giving me less than performance. So do you promote the other person? No. What you do is you create a fire underneath that more senior person’s derriere to motivate them to do something about their performance. That’s really how you handle it.
13:13
Should you be honest when asked about your weaknesses in an interview? Only with certain types of a weakness. So, for example, someone asks you so what are your weaknesses? ‘I’m too honest.’ Don’t go down that road. You can speak generically and one of the things I coach people to say is, ‘you know, what are my weaknesses? I’m not going to give you one of those nonsensical answers. I’ll just simply say that when I work,there are certain things that are a little harder for me than others. And I tend to focus more on my strengths because those are world-class, rather than my weaknesses. If anything, I try and get other people who are better than me to do the things that I am less capable of doing.’ So the long the short of it is what I want you to think of is deflecting and put it off to something else. So the goal here is, no, don’t be honest. Don’t talk about being incompetent at certain things. Focus in on your strengths, because that makes the most sense for them.
14:37
Now, in comments here ‘love the advice you give to people. It really helps people out learning more every day. Thanks for the heads up. We need more of you.’ Thanks. Looking forward to seeing more of you. Thank you Marco. Here I am more of me more and being playful here. Thank you for the kind comment. I really do appreciate it. So let me go to another question unless someone else wants to say something nice about me. I always love hearing the nice stuff. And Marco, if we’re not connected on LinkedIn, maybe you can send me a connection request at linkedin.com/in/TheBigGameHunter, and mention that you were the person who had the compliment in chat during the live stream.
Don’t Restrict Who You Try to Connect With
15:28
Does anyone want to hire a web designer? So if you’re thinking about this as a job, fewer and fewer firms are hiring web designers. This tends to be a commoditized role within organizations. They’re not looking to build websites from scratch. They have them already existing. And the result winds up being that rather than building them from scratch and being stuck with the employee afterward, what they’re doing is taking on people on a contract basis to do work, and then move on. So are they hiring web designers? Sometimes, but not often. At least as employees as contractors as temps as permalancers. Yes, they’ll do that from time to time, but not the norm.
17:31
What does it mean when the interviewer asks you if you’re able to put in two weeks if hired. What does it mean if the interviewer asks you if you’re taking any vacation days? Are these good signs I may get the job? The answer is yes. It does seem like a good sign because they’re trying to get an idea of when you might start. And it really depends on what’s preceded it as to whether or not they’re interested in hiring you. So, for example, this is one of their first three questions. No, they’re not interested in hiring you. They tried to make sure whoever they interview and choose is someone who can start in a reasonable amount of time. If they’re asking you this after 30,40, 60, 90 minutes of interviewing you, that’s a great sign. Because what it’s telling me is that there’s someone who’s gotten past their screening process, get past the staff and the hiring manager. And what they want to do is see when you can start. I hope you get the offer and hope it’s a great experience.
18:56
Do you need an ID card when applying for a job? No. But why are you interviewing for a position if you’re not qualified? Seriously, why would you interview for a job that you’re not qualified for? And thus, do you need an ID card? Sometimes to get past security in an office building in the United States, you need an ID card. Certainly, if you’re trying to get into the White House, you do. So do you need an ID card when applying for a job? To get into the building to get past security at large office buildings you do. Sometimes they’re trying to have to verify identity so that you’re not trying to scam them on an interview. But when applying for a job when you’re first submitting a resume? Nah, not at all. Not at all.
What Recruiters Know That You Don’t: The Importance of Connection
20:08
Is it better to schedule interviews in the morning or afternoons or does it depend on the interviewer being a morning person or an afternoon person? Well, I think it has to do with whether you’re a morning person, whether you’re an afternoon person, as to when you schedule, because I want you putting on a great performance. One of the things I tend to think about is, when you’re at your best when you can put on a good show, because if you can do that you’ll draw them in. You’ll be able to attract their attention and mesmerize them and impress them, and make them delight in you so that in this way they want to hire you. If you’re boring, it doesn’t matter whether it’s the morning or afternoon, does it? If you’re not prepared for an interview, if you can’t answer their questions, it doesn’t matter. You’re not getting hired, right? So what’s most important to me is when you’re at your peak, and then from there, I tend not to think of early in the morning for most people; they could be distracted. I tend not to think of late in the day, because often they’re trying to finish up and they’re already working late. So I tend to think of things after 10am, lunch hours– fine. I tend to think of things through about four o’clock as been viable. But not after five unless that’s really, there’s something about your job security. But most of the time they focus on you as the job hunter and your ability to put on a great show.
[svp]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DpY_KZ7chuc[/svp]
When You’ve Been Made Redundant, Fired, Laid Off, RIF’d
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.
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