A message from a frustrated listener to No BS Job Search Advice Radio is the catalyst for today’s LinkedIn video
I'm Jeff Altman, The Big Game Hunter. I'm a career and leadership coach, the head coach for JobSearchCoachingHQ.com.
Someone wrote to me with a question. "I've been listening to your podcast, No BS Job Search Advice for a while. I wanted to reach out to you to see if you had any advice for me. I just moved back home. It's to a city in Michigan from Chicago a few months ago. I've been job hunting with little luck. Working in Chicago, I was at an ad agency and had been so for about eight years in the business. I have what I feel is a good portfolio. Since moving back home four months ago, I've been offered three jobs that ended up losing funding, and am now in the running for three marketing jobs. Ultimately, I'm just becoming very frustrated with the job hunting process. I'm starting to feel like I'm never going to get anything. Do you have any tips or advice?"
Yeah, I do. I've a few of them. Number one is focus on these interviews. Focus on making them fall in love with you because if they're not interested, they're not going to hire you, right? That's going to create the self-fulfilling prophecy. So number one is your attitude and what you focus on. You can focus on your frustration, the fact that you've come so close on so many things, and yet are still in this situation where you don't have a job. You're not in as large a market as Chicago. Firms are smaller; money isn't quite as plentiful as they are in a city like Chicago. That's the way it is. We can focus on,, "Oh, woe is me," or we can focus on effective delivery here.
My encouragement to you is to remember, you just need one. You don't need five. You just need one.
If you focus on what it's going to take to get these jobs, practice for these interviews, you're not just "winging it" in the interview, and you do things that make them believe in you. That is, give them a feeling that they can trust you. That's what firms look for because remember, competence is only one variable, especially in fields like marketing and advertising. It's a soft skill. I know there are hard skill components to it.
When firms hire, they look for competence, self-confidence, character, chemistry, maybe a little bit of charisma, all of which translates into they trust you. You give them the feeling that they don't have to worry about you.
If you come in a little bit anxious because you're nervous about whether or not you're going to blow this thing or whether this is going to blow up on you, they're going to smell it, and they're going to wonder what that smell is and it's going to give them reason to hesitate and doubt,
Never, ever give them that reason. Always Be prepared with great questions to ask at the end. Always understand what they really need, be practiced for it, so that, in this way, they trust you.