Frustrated in Your Current Job? 5 Steps to Finding a New One

What can you do to change your luck? My guest James Aiken and I discuss 5 steps to focus on with your search.

You may also find, “The Hidden Job Market. Hidden Jobs.” helpful

Jeff

So my guest today is James Akin who runs candidate marketing tips calm, and who’s created a system that professionals can use to build their network and find their next step in their career. James?

James

What’s going on?

Jeff

Fabulous, how are you doing?

James

I am doing pretty well. I’m getting by. I mean, it’s the end of the week, have you not enjoy your Fridays?

Jeff

I can think of a lot of reasons, my days in search and Friday afternoon getting a turndown.

James

Yeah, that’s true, luckily, not today, not today. We can’t fix it at this point, so…

Jeff

Amen, brother. So James lets dive in. How can someone that’s frustrated in their current position, find better jobs? It that a nice slow pitch for you to hit out?

James

I think that’s a T ball. I think that’s a T ball, that’s a setup, right?

Jeff

I am reading and right on the chat.

James

What I would say that if you boil everything down is really five big steps. So the first is just getting a solid concept or goal of what you want where you want to be. Sometimes I talk with people and they’re like, well, if it’s a salesperson, they say I want I could sell for anyone salesperson can go anywhere. And while that may be true, we want to think first about where do you add the most value? You want to fight battles that you can win, right? And so you want to have the best advantage that you possibly can whenever you’re starting off and in your job search. So you can always change direction, later on, are kind of stack your efforts, but if you don’t define things, it’s very hard to gauge your progress in a real way, so that’s kind of the first step of just getting a good understanding

Jeff

And getting a good understanding of the kind of job you want to do, the kind of career you want to have, like what do they have to get a good understanding of?

James

Yeah, so exactly that, so in the case of somebody that is maybe a recent graduate, and they haven’t really stepped into their full career yet, it’s just defining, okay, well, if you have an engineering degree, chances are, you’re going to be an engineer, right? You’re going to want to go down that route, chances are, maybe not everybody, right? But I would say that it’s just defining your ultimate goal there. If it’s somebody that is, you already enjoy your industry, I work in the building materials industry, if it’s a window salesperson, and they want to stay in when in the window industry, then naturally, they just define that as their goal there. They want to be, sometimes salespeople run into situations where operationally the team can’t keep up with what they’re selling, and maybe they start to get hit on Commission’s not because of what they have achieved on their own, but because the team can’t hold up their end of the deal. And so if you want, if that’s what you want to achieve is to get to a place that has a lot of operational capacity, then you would put that as your definition of what you want your goal to be. That’s kind of, it’s all situation-specific. Right?

Jeff

It’s so interesting that she talked about for the salesperson have an operational backup for what you’re selling. It reminded me of something many years ago when I lived with a woman who is going to use an old name for the financial services industry, the old Merrill Lynch, she was the first woman commodities broker for Merrill, and their back-office was awful. And brokers were being charged for mistakes that the back office made, you write a ticket, place an order, and suddenly you’re getting charged to account because of their mistake. And it’s interesting that you bring up this example of having the capacity to back up and play as being something that if you’re going to be a salesperson, you’d have to make sure that there’s some capacity behind you.

James

Oh, exactly; because if you’re a salesperson, you don’t want to deal with the things going wrong after it’s really supposed to be at your hands. Because you can focus your time on your business development, you could focus your time on building accounts, but instead, you have to focus on trying to put out fires. And it’s really hard to be the most successful when you’re having to give a huge chunk of your time to just basically apologizing to people because their fulfilment when they’re.

Jeff

It’s funny, there’s a client that I work with as a coach, and he heads up sales for a firm; and his salespeople, right business, and then they have a group of people who do the installation on-going support of the equipment. I tried to encourage him to get management to think of what the apple experience is like when you get an iPhone; because there are people who do nothing like that. Everyone talks have this complete understanding, when I thought about the apple experience when you get a phone; the box is perfect, it’s beautiful.

James

Yeah.

Jeff

Everything and their experiences at 30 bucks shows up. Maybe they dusted off, they plug it in, they get it to run, they don’t make sure it’s running perfectly. A day later, there’s a support call because no one’s showing them how to use stuff; and thus, it’s interesting how this all ties.

James

Yeah; and it’s funny that you bring up the box and the customer experience there, people will do, I actually think just either undervalue or underrated to such a degree, because it’s like, well, that is a huge part of the customer experience is opening it for the first time and taking in, like you’re saying, with the apples stuff, you take one piece at a time. First, you’re taking the phone, and you’re looking at the phone, then you hold the thing up, and then you have the wire, and you have the charger, and you have it’s all very well put together. And you know that nobody is going to buy, chances are, and nobody’s going to buy an item solely for the package. But it’s all about improving the customer experience as a whole, and grounding your brand, as luxurious or high end. If you’re paying attention to the small details, then that’s what really defines a brand, it’s not the stuff the major stuff, It’s not what you do functionally, it’s everything you do.

A Marketing Approach to Job Search

Jeff

Right. And we’ve been talking about; the first thing is about getting clear about what you want. And we’ve been extending the areas using the salesperson example for, do they have the capacity? Now, what are the experiences are, or what’s the reputation of the organization? A lot of different things in terms of the work environment for things you should be looking for; and there’s a lot more that we’re not going to go into today on that one topic. Folks, you have to sit down and start thinking about it. And I’ll just simply say, it’s a lot easier to sell the product that everyone wants, versus the one where you have to beat down doors; because no one’s heard of it before or it has a bad rep.

James

And that all comes down to kind of one of the next steps, but if that all comes down to the audience, I think one of my favorite examples is, Frank Kern, who’s an internet marketer, just marketer in general. He talks about how writing a sales letter, because I give you, you know, trying to sell ice to an Eskimo is one thing, but he’s like, if your audience is, if your product is a date with Miss America, and you have a list of recently, guys that have recently gotten out of jail and you’re mailing them 08:07 [cross talking].

Jeff

Or women who recently got out of jail too. Let’s be aware, men or women who’ve recently got out of jail, they may both get excited by Miss America.

James

What I was saying, it doesn’t really matter what you say, at that point. It doesn’t really matter what delivery you have, because you can basically say, “Hey, a bunch of morons, do you want to have a date with Miss America”? And they’re going to respond. And so it’s just about the audience that you’re in front of, you want to get in front of the audience that you’re most valuable to, and that is kind of a part of creating that image. Once you create that image, you then have to kind of reverse engineer it, and define the audience of who you need to be reaching out to, to reach the goal that you’ve set for yourself.

Jeff

So I want to be clear about this; because

as you said, we start to step into a different option here. So the first thing is getting clear about what you want.

James

Yep.

Jeff

Is the second one, about figuring out how to get there easily? What’s the second one?

James

The second one is, it could be interchanged with the third one, but I think the second one’s it’s more proper in this position is, getting your candidate materials together, treating your search process as a marketer, really. And when I talk about candidate materials, I usually list four things; because I one of the people that are particular about resumes, and how that all gets set up. I suggest having four things if you’re sitting down to a face to face interview. Number one,

Jeff

Number one!

James

Number one, at very top, cover letter; there should never ever be a cover letter that you send out that is not one of a kind, and I don’t mean templates, don’t use templates. You need to be running specifically to the exact role, the exact company, everything like that. If you’re not, I say, if you’re applying online, then okay, you don’t necessarily, if this is a volume situation, if you’re applying online, you don’t necessarily need to do that, unless it’s a role that you really, really want. For time sake, you can’t write 100 different cover letters, or if you go in for a first interview somewhere, if you’re going in for a face to face, this is where you would definitely want to have that.

So the second is the resume; and I always say, the resume again, think about it, like a marketer, your call to action, you know what marketers really all go for it is to get the reader to call you or email you. Okay, that’s really all the resume is, it’s an ad for you. And so what we want to do is, we want to make it as easy as possible for them to recognize your contact information, recognize who you are. But the key thing that I say is to focus your real estate, essentially of your resume; we’re keeping it to one page. And you want to focus most of the real estate on your most recent role; and instead of just listing your responsibilities; you want to turn those sentences into achievements. So instead of saying, I managed five salespeople in the Atlanta Metro, you would say, I grew a team from three sales representatives to five in the Atlanta Metro, meanwhile, increasing their closing rate by 20%. So we want to be exact, we want to basically, think about talking to your prospective next boss. What are they going to find interesting? What are they going to find as a statistic that shows that you’re the real deal that if this is true, then they’re the real deal basically?

Jeff

Just think about, what do they really care about?

James

Yeah, yeah,

Jeff

What’s going to get them interested about you that’s going to make you stand out from the pack?

James

Yeah, exactly; because they’re interviewing other salespeople, all of them have those responsibilities of I cold call people, I managed accounts, I blah, blah, blah, every resume saying that. Show them how it’s different, Chester. And so the third thing is because I like to keep it to a resume just one page, I say, if you have to have extra info, there’s a concept I have called just an achievement page. And so what we do here is, it’s really more of a kind of a case study of achievements you’ve had. So you’ll point out one thing, one statistic, one thing you did, one outcome that you made, and then basically just write a paragraph about it, or a last couple sentences, and let’s just 12:52 [Inaudible]. It’s kind of like an index, it’s just a longer-form version of the resume. If they want to learn more, they can’t, they don’t have to always check it; because you want them to call you after just reviewing the resume, but if they want more information, it’s right there.

And then very last, you should always have a pre-written managerial reference, something that your previous manager did. If you don’t have the ability to get a reference from a previous manager, salespeople can use customers. I would say that using a pure reference isn’t always the best, but it’s better than nothing. But you want to have some type of reference; the best situation is a managerial reference. So you’ve got those four, you know, sheets, those four pieces of material, that’s your candidate packet. And that’s really going to help with how you present yourself; because then you’re coming with, you’re kind of like showing up to the interview as a lawyer. I mean, you’ve got the boom, you got all the supporting evidence, you’ve got other people that have said good things about you, you have the proof behind certain metrics that you were hitting.

On the cover letter, you’re talking directly to this company, and this opportunity, showing, you know, convincing them why you’re the real deal, and that you can make a big impact at this company. I mean, people don’t see this very often, and whenever you take those actions, you stand out in an incredible way. It’s kind of a lame quote, but I remember the movie waiting. And on the training video, one of the quotes was, ‘the only difference between ordinary and extraordinary is that little bit extra’, that’s so true in so many different ways. And it’s just like, if you just take these tiny little these, it’s not going to take you any time, any extra time, but if you just take these little steps, you can stand out in such a big way.

Jeff

We got a cover letter, one-page resume, achievements. That’s the third page, it’s like a one-page summary, and where you talk about able to leave tall buildings in a single bound and did so for the entire city of whatever.

James

Exactly!

Jeff

Leaped over every building in the entire downtown; and number four is the reference list.

James

Yeah, yeah. So not a reference list, a pre-written reference, like a direct reference from somebody, not just your references.

Jeff

Could somebody use the references on their LinkedIn profile?

James

Do what now?

Starting a New Job: Ideas for Launching in Your New Role

Jeff

Could someone, in effect copy some of the recommendations from their LinkedIn profile, notify other people in advance to do that?

James

Yeah, I think if you, you can do that, and I think that that would be good if the design looked good. I mean, if it was aesthetically pleasing, then I would definitely do it, but I wouldn’t just slap them on there.

Jeff

And folks, notice, it’s also about appearance.

James

Yeah.

Jeff

A lot of folks just think in terms of this is the data, these are the facts, this is what I’ve done, and you got to be puree, you got to make it look nice, it has to be handsome; and if you don’t do that, you’ll look like a bum.

James

Yeah, it’s about, number one is conceivability, number two is design, and number three is the message. I mean, that’s really kind of how you have to think, that’s why I say you should have a resume as one page, and have it very short and how you explain things; because you want them to easily be able to consume that information. You don’t want them to look at me, hoo you got paragraphs, this is a giant wall of text. You don’t want to make things intimidating for your reader. It’s kind of like when people reach out directly to your hiring managers, and they say like this huge, I’m doing this, and I’m doing that, and they write this huge paragraph like, you can’t expect your reader to read that. This is a busy person, you’re just breaking into their conscience and their whole life, and you expect them to read this giant long letter that’s going to. Send them one sentence, maybe two sentences; don’t put such an onus on the reader or the viewer.

Jeff

It’s funny when I coach people; I do it a little bit differently. And folks, everything works. I just want to be clear with that. Everything works in job search, if you have never works as often as we’d like, but everything really works.

I’m a believer in cover letters as well as the sales tool. It confirms a lot of the things that they’re going to say next. If all this has been emailed in advance to get the interview, then it becomes the body of the email. If you’re uploading it to an applicant tracking system, and by the way, folks, never, ever apply for jobs through an applicant tracking system, it’s called the black hole for a reason. Network your way to a decision-maker or to someone get to a decision. If you are going to do it because you’re lazy, or you don’t want to take the time, make the cover letter page one of the resume, but have a keyword-stuffed, because the applicant tracking system is going to be looking for the keywords of the job on page one, so you might as well use page one to stuff all those keywords in. At least everything that you’ve done that’s relevant, flush left is the skill of the experience, flush right is how long, how recently, so this way the system goes home. There are a lot of things but looking for that’s on page one, I like this.

James

Like if you’re going to play the game, then play the game, right. If you’re going to do job boards, if you’re going to go through all that stuff, then do what’s advantageous there, don’t do the just standard thing.

Jeff

Right, so we’ve got two of them down at this point.

James

Yeah.

Jeff

What’s number three?

James

So number three, is what I was talking about earlier, which could be interchangeable, but that’s identifying your audience, exactly. So that’s the point where you are getting company names, you are getting names of specific people. If you’re a, I hate to use the sales example over and over, but if you’re a sales guy, naturally, you want to talk with a sales manager, maybe you want to talk with the functional head of sales, or you want to talk with an organizational leader, like the president or somebody on C suite, or you can also talk with HR, that’s another option to go through.

Jeff

It’s a lazy way, folks.

James

Yeah.

Jeff

Find out who runs the function.

James

Yeah, that’s the best way to do it. But you know, there’s always something to be said for mushrooming an account. Everybody, you want to have multiple points of contact, you never want to, and I say this, you know, in a little bit in defense you don’t want people to not be on your team. If they find out that you’ve contacted the head of sales, the President and the sales manager, and HR hasn’t heard about you at all, they’re probably not going to be on your side throughout the process. And they do have influence, you want to make sure that you don’t look, if you’re mushrooming like that, then you need to think about whom you are, think about the ripple effect of what you’re doing.

Jeff

James, when you were a rookie recruiter back when dinosaurs roamed the earth or when people started using metal, 20:20[Inaudible] you told you never to contact HR, if you get avoided, they told you to go to the hiring manager, these people are no different than you, come on.

James

Well, I have a knot on my head for beating it against the wall in certain situations. But you know, you still don’t want to turn away from an opportunity. Yes, there are situations where they don’t necessarily want to work with you. Maybe they’re harder nosed and you know, there’s, but it’s, you don’t, you can’t I hate to say, this might be the best thing I’ll say all day, but that you can’t stereotype, you got to work through it. You have got to make sure that you work through everybody; you got to make sure that you’re checking all the doors that are possible; because ultimately, it’s your own outcome. I mean, it’s your life, and it’s your career that you’re worried about, so there’s no advantage to not contact them, I would say.

Jeff

And I’ll also say a lot of hiring managers will tell HR who they want to talk to, and HR may go, and they’ll still talk to you.

James

They’ll still talk to them; they’ll still talk to them.

Jeff

Because the managers told them to talk to you; and if you can’t get to the hiring manager, contact HR.

James

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, there’s always a way, there’s always a way to get straight to the hiring manager, depends how bad you want to get to them, I think

Jeff

Maybe we do another interview around that one. 101 ways to get to the hiring manager, that’s a fun topic.

James

Yeah, yeah, let’s be careful with that one.

Job Search Advice for Students

Jeff

I know you train all your competition all over the country. Number four.

James

Number four: so that’s, and you touched on a little bit before, and this is kind of the standard thing, going direct, okay. The job boards are great, but going direct is really what you need to be doing. You need to, whether you’re looking for a job now, and you need an urgent change, or you just want to be prepared in the future, or you’re just, you want to be well networked in order to have opportunities to improve your career in the future. Because, just because you’re happy today, doesn’t mean you’re going to be in the right spot in a year, two years, or five year, and you’re better off whenever you have a strong professional network. It’s industry-specific, it’s function specific. And you can always end up basically uncovering these opportunities that recruiters talk about all the time, that the invisible job openings, and so it’s like, you know, those are there.

And not only they’re invisible job openings, but there also job openings, that if they, if you’re so valuable in your career, you’re so successful in what you’re doing, people will make a spot for you, like, especially in sales. People will make a spot for you, it’s just, you have to be in front of the right people, and you have to have the right presentation, and you to have the proof that you are the real deal. And so if you actually are well networked, and you have multiple people in the industry, they’re, you know, bouncing well for you, I mean, that just basically solidifies it in a manager’s mind. So it’s kind of like, just focus more on the networking, going direct.

What I always say on the job boards is apply far and wide, aim for volume. I probably don’t get a lot of cheers for saying that, but I say just basically look at the company and look at the job title, and that should be good enough. That should be good enough for you to figure out whether or not you want to apply for it. I don’t see any advantage and sitting there and filtering, reading all the stuff and filtering and thinking, “Hmm, do I meet the two-year requirement or the five-year requirement”? I think you’re wasting so much time. And really, if like I was saying before on the job boards, if you want to play on the job boards then play the game, right? They’re going for volume; they have hot like he said the black hole, right? They have hundreds of people applying, okay, so don’t be surprised whenever that’s the environment that you’re set up. And that’s why you want to go for high volume, and then you can screen out the people that want to interview you. If you’re not interested in interviewing with somebody, then decline the interview. Don’t rule yourself out of the job before you’ve even gotten; if someone’s going to show interest in you, then you should consider. Like basically, just don’t worry about the note filtering the jobs on the job boards, filter and once they get back to you and want to interview you.

Jeff

It’s so funny because when I worked in search and I did for certainly dinosaurs roaming the earth back when I started, I used to get hate getting spammed resumes; because it was a time-waster.

James

Yeah.

Jeff

But in terms of from the job hunter perspective, the only thing I would encourage people to do is take a quick skim of the job description. Make sure you get the basic talking points, both in the resume and your LinkedIn profile; because all the firms are going to LinkedIn to confirm that what’s in the resume the LinkedIn profile, or someone can grow it. Because it’s so often they aren’t, it’s hideous when that happens, like there’s an extra job somewhere, one of the two.

James

Yeah.

Jeff

Because if someone took it off in one place and forgot to take it off in another. And by the way, folks, you don’t remember all the places you’ve applied to, in your career, do you? And if you’re going to play the game of taking a job off, just remember, there’s an applicant tracking system, where you didn’t take the data out of it, about what your background was in that particular job. Because I know when I was in search, and I get that resume was missing two jobs, and I go, it’s interesting. The system has you working at two other places.

James

Right.

Jeff

And I shut up, and watch them squirm.

James

Right.

Jeff

And understand not everyone is as courteous as me to at least ask why that happened. Most people will just hit the void key. So recognize it’s harder to scam these days than it was back in the day, so you got to be a little bit more forthright. You need to use your network.

James

Yeah. Well, to touch on that a little bit, I’m not saying that, I saw this post on Twitter the other day that it was a guy, and he said, “I need to chill out on all the job applications. I just got an interview to 27:05 [Inaudible]. And so it was like, it was, so yeah, to a certain degree, you do want to reel it back. And you want to make sure that it’s industry and function-specific that you actually somewhat are going to meet you the qualifications of this. And I wouldn’t say that you should just go crazy with it, and like automate it, and apply to every job that comes up on indeed. You could, theoretically you could, if you want to. But yeah, I mean in normal way, you should just filter it down, fair enough by the words that you’re using in your search.

Jeff

I’ll just simply say, folks when you heard James laugh, if you listen to this in podcast form, I made a face that was reflecting nausea, and he was responding to that. So I’ll just simply say, folks, he’s absolutely right, dial it back. Especially if you’re a rookie, I know you want to get a job, and getting a job is important. Yeah, your parent, parents, Guardian, whomever it is, is pressuring you, “What about the interviews”? “Because there was a pandemic”, “That’s no excuse”.

James

Yeah

Jeff

I know, you’re getting a lot of pressure, and you can’t be stupid about this.

Seven Steps To Branding Yourself As An Expert

James

Yeah, if you’re going to do it right, do it clean.

Jeff

So we are up to number five.

James

Yeah, this is starting to beautiful, wrap-up, the absolute easiest step in the process is just to crush the interview, and then follow up. So if you are actually performing all the stuff at the beginning of this, and you’re getting a lot of interviews, and you’re having a lot of conversations, the more activity that you have, the better off you’re going to be, but mainly in your psyche. So what I see a lot of time is people will apply for jobs on job boards, you know, they’ll hear back on maybe like 5% of the things that they applied for, and then the negative talk starts happening, and they’re like, “Why didn’t they get back to me”? They get mad because they, “I haven’t heard from them”.

Jeff

Fake crying in the background 🙂

James

Yeah, “Something’s wrong with me, on this on that”, and it’s like… I looked it up the other day, I can’t quote you the source, but I read the only 5% of people that apply for jobs actually get an interview, or like get a screen get a screen interview, like on live on the phone. So one in 20 is, if you’re hearing back on more than one out of 20 applications, you’re actually batting better than average you’re doing pretty well. To solve that or like bust that myth real quick, but mainly like on the other side. If you’re getting interviews, if you’re getting traction, and especially if you’re networking while you’re having valuable conversations with people that recognize your talents, they understand how valuable you are, that’s going to do a lot better on your self-esteem and how you approach everything versus this mind-set of being defeated along the way.

You’re kind of like slaying the dragon; you’re kind of like you’re running up the mountain and taking out all this stuff along the way. You’re in a situation where you’re getting to turn down interviews. You’re getting to turn down job offers that you’re not liking because your volumes are at such a level that you have that luxury. And so when you’re sitting in the driver’s seat like that, like 30:39[Inaudible] you interview. It’s pretty hard to interview poorly, if you don’t, you know, maybe if you don’t do some of the major things, you don’t dress correctly and do some of the major things. But, you’re in a much better position there because you have high activity than, as I said, that kind of defeats this, like, “Oh, I’m lucky that I got this interview, I hope that they give me an offer, you know, and that’s the only interview I’ve had for the last month”. Yeah, you’re not doing well for your mind-set and that’s going to have a lot effect on the ground.

Jeff

Absolutely true, and part of the mistakes that Job Hunters make, and a part of the reason you get turned down consistently, is you act like an amateur. And by an amateur, you learn through trial and error. Professionals, practice, they know what to practice. They have coaches who help them by watching what they do to ensure they don’t make mistakes, right? Every great athlete in the world has a coach, every entertainer in the world, they will rehearse right? And most of them, especially if they sing, have coaches as well, but job hunters just go on interviews; and the first time the words come out of their mouth with the interview, and they wonder why they didn’t perform well, because you’re an amateur.

James

Exactly

Jeff

The skills needed to find a job are different than those you need to do a job. And we’ve been talking about some of the things that you need to be doing, including networking, not just simply during your search, but between searches to stay in touch with people, so that when you need them, when they need you, you don’t feel like one of those people who’s trying to take advantage of someone else. You want to have a relationship with people because they want to help you.

James

Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

Jeff

So I’m going to put you on the spot for something that we didn’t talk about in advance, but it’s something you can do in your sleep. And it’s the idea of, what makes you interview someone, what causes you to want to choose to have a phone screen with someone?

James

I mean, it really just, it completely depends on their will. It’s two things, so their background. Obviously you read the resume; you see what they’ve done. You see the 10 years they’ve had the companies, they work for the functions they’ve performed, and you kind of get an initial, I mean, it’s a sense of feel, but I mean, you look at it. You have seen so many resumes, and you’ve reviewed so many of these that you just kind of know. And then on the other side, what I do value a lot is the persistence on their end. And that’s why I say it is so important to basically do this five-point plan; because on my end, when somebody submits their stuff, and they follow up with me, I always talk to him. I always talk to him. If somebody is talking, if somebody is calling me up directly about our role, I always talk to him.

We do go through, we have a lot of job listings, where things are coming through like that, we have a lot of people that will reach out for certain things or just send something. We’re super busy, but if somebody follows up, and I know that you really want it. So I’m like, “Okay, well”. And it’s kind of the same with me on the business development end, it’s more of just saying, “I’m going to be here either way. I want this, this is what I want to be done, this is what I’m going for, this is what I want to achieve”. I’m going to be here either way, so why don’t we go ahead and knock this out, basically. I’m here, I need you, you probably need me like, let’s go ahead and move this forward because I’m not going away. Basically, that’s kind of the attitude you should have.

Jeff

And noticed folks, he talked about being super busy. He doesn’t have a lot of spare time, make the fit obvious.

James

Yeah, that’s the main thing; because people don’t realize and you get it, for every person to ask to get on a 30-minute call. I mean, almost a dozen like a day. A day where people are just; because our networks so big is and everybody wants, everybody expects that they’re going to get that time like no matter what. They’re acting like they own my time, and it’s just like, Whoa. I always wonder if people realize how many people are contacting us in any given in any given day.

Jeff

Not a clue.

James

And not just random people, these are just the people that will randomly hit you up on LinkedIn, and then I’ve got to worry about my searches. And so I’m going to worry about all the people that I need to talk to, on my searches, and you have all these other people that are hitting you up and wanting to talk. We have just as much time as you guys do, except we have to divide it a lot, that’s the whole thing. We all have, you know, eight to 10 hours in a workday, but then it becomes four hours in a day, and then it’s very easy to fill up three or four hours in interviews, you know. I mean, it does not take long to get that amount of time blocked off. And so you got to understand what we’re dealing with on our end, on the number of people that reach out for a certain amount of time.

Two Final Interview Mistakes That Will Blow the Offer

Jeff

Thank you, that was perfect. Because part of the change has been telling you is he’s super busy. His clients are paying him defined people. He’s not there to allow you to bask in your own magnificence about how what a wonderful person you are, he wants to know how you can help one of his clients, so you can fill a job, earn a fee, pay for the house payment, and all the other stuff that people do as human beings. And I also want to point this one out, because people have this terrible attitude about recruiters. They’re human beings; treat them like a human being instead of like an animal.

James

Yeah, I’ve had the emotion completely beaten out of me, but other than that, I mean, being on the phone. I always tell people this, and it kind of blew my mind because I was working with somebody that they were new, and they had never done recruiting before. And we’re not used to some of the negative feedbacks sometimes you get; some of the negative stuff that you get whenever you’re developing business or work or recruiting. And, it was funny because I was like, “Man, I don’t I was like, I forgot what that was like”. Because you never, I mean, you eventually get it out. Like you’re like any negativity is like, alright. If you get a negative reaction, it’s just like, well, it doesn’t matter if this individual person’s negative, because I have all these other people to worry about. So this is just one person in this crowd and this conglomeration of that’s a word of people. So it’s like, you don’t really have time to feel bad, it’s like, you got to get on the next thing. You don’t have time to have emotions, because we’re trying to find this person.

Jeff

Find this person, get them higher, put points on the board, and earn a fee.

James

Yeah.

Jeff

James, this has been fabulous. How can people find that more about you and the work that you do?

James

Yeah, well, I mean, if you’d like to get a free copy of our candidate guide that will kind of walk through what we talked about today, just go to candidate marketing tips dot com. Outside of that, I own legacy search recruiting firm for the building materials industry, but it is the best way to get a hold of me.

Jeff

And what’s the web address for legacy search?

James

Legacy search is just: legacy search dot net. And so yeah, we represent the building materials industry there.

Jeff

Super! James, thank you, and folks, we’ll be back soon with more. I’m Jeff Altman, the big game hunter. Visit my website, the big game hunter.us. I’ve got thousands of posts that will help you with your search. Also, if you’re interested in one on one coaching, you can schedule a time for a free discovery call, or schedule time for coaching. I’d love to help you.

If you just have a question or two for me, two ways that you can get them answered: go to the big game hunter.us forward slash video answer. Ask your question to get a three to five-minute video back or the big game hunter.us forward slash live and you can schedule 15 minutes with me. Obviously, I’ll charge for both services but it’s fairly inexpensive.

Lastly, connect with me on linkedin@linkedin.com forward slash In forward slash the big game hunter. Oh, I forgot to mention Subscribe on YouTube. Click the little icon in the lower right of the picture of me in the upper left to get notified when I release something new. Hope you have a great day and most importantly, be great. Take care

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