StrengthsFinder: Building Credibility

As promised, I’m piggybacking on the post I wrote yesterday in order to shed a little more light on one key aspect of applying your results from the StrengthsFinder instrument — or any other personality profile you might have taken.  I want to provide a little more depth, and specificity, around how to actually build credibility with employers and convince them you truly have the success traits in question.

Why is this important?  Because in many, many years of conducting mock interviews with job seekers, I’ve almost never had somebody successfully “sell me” on the power and importance of an innate talent or personality trait.  Sure, I’ve had hundreds of people tell me that they are extremely detail-oriented, or outgoing, or results-focused, or whatever.  But do I necessary believe them?  Or see how such a quality might trump more tangible work-related qualifications such as skills or experience?  Not usually.  And I daresay most employers and recruiters would say the same.  After you’ve heard these same words used thousands of times, by thousands of candidates, they lose a lot of their mojo.  What’s more, one almost can’t help but acquire a cynical bias around these kinds of personal abilities after coming across so many “detail-oriented” people who have typos on their resumes — or so many quote-unquote “strategic” managers who don’t know what a SWOT analysis is, aren’t able to define the difference between strategy and tactics, and who don’t seem to have anything all that interesting to say about the strategic challenges or opportunities in my (aka the employer’s) market space.

So my point is this.  Unless you’re 100% committed to learning how to sell your natural strengths/gifts/talents in a meaningful and powerful way, and one that has a fighting chance of busting through the crusted-over cliches in the interviewer’s mind, it’s almost best to avoid discussing them altogether.  Stick to safer, more measurable subjects like skills and educational credentials.  If you end up in a situation, however, where you want or need one of your personal strengths to shine, here are some thoughts on how to accomplish this:

1)  First, convince yourself. This first suggestion sounds like a cop-out, I know, but it’s absolutely essential.  To have any hope at all of convincing another human being that you’re truly “one out of a hundred” in terms of some fundamental talent you possess, you first have to believe it, yourself.  Just taking a test and casually musing over the results isn’t enough.  You need to corroborate the assessment results with real-life examples of how you’ve put this strength into action, as well as feedback from people who know you well and some supporting data gleaned from other personality profiles.  You can’t have a smidgen of doubt about the talents that make up the “authentic you” or you’ll get easily picked apart when it comes time for employer cross-examination.

2)  Hand the employer a printed copy of your StrengthsFinder results. The fundamental secret behind most personality tests is that they essentially tell us things that we already know or suspect about ourselves, but for some reason known only to psychologists and neurobiologists, there’s something magically “validating” about seeing this same data presented on paper.  Information is always more credible when it’s printed out.  So if you really want to engage an employer in a discussion of how your personal strengths might add value to your future job performance, try using handouts.  If nothing else, you’ll stand out from the crowd.  And once the hiring manager sees that an “actual scientific test” confirms you have the traits you claim, the psychological effect described above might exert its irresistible influence on them, as well!

3)  Arm yourself with relevant accomplishment stories. This one isn’t all that original, since every interviewing book on the planet instructs job hunters to have some of their best “success stories” on hand, practiced, and ready to share with employers.  What you may not have done in the past, however, is examine how your fundamental personality traits (as opposed to skills or knowledge) have played a role in your past successes.  So apply this strengths-based layer of thinking to each of your past accomplishments, using whatever storytelling model you’re comfortable with (e.g. CAR, PAR, OAR, STAR; every career firm has some model they recommend that people use to break their stories down into an initial Challenge/Problem/Opportunity, followed by corresponding Actions and Results.)

4)  Offer references, endorsements, or work samples to back up your claims. If you tell me that you’re highly Empathic and extremely good at understanding the needs of the people around you, that’s nice.  I’ll take you at your word and assume you might be slightly more developed in this area than the average person who interacts with the world from a more self-absorbed perspective.  If you kick things up a notch, however, and supply me with some letters of recommendation and LinkedIn testimonials saying things like “Joe was the best listener of any manager I’ve every worked for” or “Betty had an incredible knack for understanding our customers’ needs, sometimes even better than they did, themselves!” I’ll be MUCH more inclined to give you credit for this talent.  Such evidence might be dismissed as hearsay in a court of law, but as a hiring manager, I’m going to be impressed by somebody who can back up their claims with consistent feedback from those around them.  A work sample or portfolio piece that illustrates your strengths in action can be a real show-stopper, as well!

5)  Contrast your style to that of the “typical” style for a given job role. This one takes a little more finesse, but if you’re somewhat of an underdog for a given position, you might point out how you’d bring a unique and refreshingly different perspective to a job assignment compared to what the employer in question might typically encounter in other candidates.  For example, I suspect that the majority of career counselors out there would rank higher than me on StrengthsFinder attributes like Empathy, Woo, and Relator.  I’m just not a touchy-feely guy, at heart.  Never have been.  And as a result, I fully admit that I’m far from the best available consultant for those job hunters whose primary need is for heavy ongoing infusions of emotional support and non-directive listening.  So instead of pretending to be something I’m not, when explaining my services to people, I emphasize how my core strengths in areas like Intellection, Input, and Ideation allow me to approach the job hunting process from a more objective, marketing-focused angle.   They allow me to help people write compelling job search documents.  And find interesting new outlets for their skills.  And brainstorm creative ways to engage their networking contacts and uncover new target companies.  This approach seems to have worked pretty well for me over the years, and if I come across somebody who needs deeper work than I can offer in assertiveness or confidence-building, I refer them without hesitation to some other coaches in town who I know have greater natural strengths in these areas.

6)  Ask the interviewer to describe their best employees. This technique is something of a “sneak attack” designed to get employers to think a bit outside the box and realize (hopefully!) just how important one’s fundamental strengths, talents, and tendencies are to bottom-line job success.  If you can get them to openly discuss the personality of the top performers in the role you’re targeting, they might disclose some nuggets (“Harriet is our rock star — she’s able to juggle a million different deadlines at once and stay calm as a cucumber the whole time!”) that you can then emphasize, yourself, if you share some of the same strengths, habits, and tendencies that are identified.  You might need to prompt the employer a bit, however, to get good data.  Try asking follow-up questions like “Do you find that your top performers are always the ones who have been in the industry the longest?” and “All other things being equal, what truly separates your superstars from your bottom-of-the-barrel performers?”  And if you want to shoot the moon and risk being even more aggressive, you can ask “Obviously you, yourself, haven’t been in this industry your entire career.  What factors would you say have allowed you to adapt so successfully to this field and your current role?”  It’s a courageous question, for sure, but if you really want to emphasize the importance of natural talent, this line of conversation might be enough to switch the employer’s light bulb on!

7)  Demonstrate your Strengths in the interview itself or via a follow-up exercise. If you’re going to try building the case that you possess some incredibly useful success traits, make sure the employer sees evidence of these in the hiring conversation itself.  If one of your StrengthsFinder themes is Individualization, for example, share some observations regarding the individual people you’ve met during the hiring process, including the receptionist who greeted you in the lobby.  If Responsibility is your claim to fame, arrive at the interview 15 minutes early, fully prepared, and follow-through like clockwork on every subsequent step of the courtship ritual.  If you’re a Positivity person, let your positive energy wash over the stressed-out hiring manager during the interview so that the rest of their day is a little brighter.  All of these behaviors will greatly reinforce the words that you’re mouthing regarding your true nature.  And if the opportunity doesn’t arise to show yourself “at your best” during the interview, ask them for an assignment that will let you prove these things.  If you’re Strategic, in other words, ask whether they’d be interested in having you put together a PowerPoint that provides an objective overview of where you feel their company fits into the market — and where some untapped (and profitable) possibilities might lie.

8)  Pick your battles; don’t try to sell more than one or two strengths at a time. One last mistake I’d point out relates to those interview candidates who claim to be really strong in a particular area, such as team-building, but then can’t resist saying that they’re also the cat’s meow in terms of creativity, accountability, leadership, empathy, and analytical thinking.  Nobody is going to buy this.  While people can be equally strong in multiple areas, without question, the more different areas you try to claim “greatness” around during an interview, the more you’ll water down and weaken your message.  So if you’ve got one or two strengths that are substantially more well-developed than others, stick to them.  Own them.  Focus on getting credit for them and making them uber-relevant to the conversation at hand.  And if you’re one of those fortunate few who happens to have a whole closetful of natural gifts, be smart about it, and isolate/emphasize just those select few that appear most relevant to the opportunity you’re pursuing!

Crummy Economy: Silver Linings?

Looking out the window today, I probably couldn’t have picked a worse day to talk about silver linings.  Right now, at least in the Seattle/Bellevue area, the cloud cover is so dense and dreary (ya gotta love October!) that there are no linings of any kind to be found — silver or otherwise.  Still, since I was really just planning to speak metaphorically, I suppose I can forge ahead and make my point, regardless…

What’s that point, exactly?  It’s that one can find bright spots and positive things to celebrate in almost any situation, no matter how painful or challenging — and I believe that this principle applies equally well to today’s recessed economy, as well.  Now to be clear, I’m not saying things are good out there.  And I assure you I’m not simply donning my Polyanna mask in honor of the upcoming Halloween holiday.  Like everybody else, nothing would make me happier than for us to roll back the clock to a more normal job market where the “average” person could expect to find work and earn an “average” living within an “average” period of time.  After all, as beautiful as it is to look up and see a true silver lining, peeking out from behind a cloud,  most of us would still prefer a sunny day to a cloudy one!

So despite the tight constraints of the current job market, and the challenges the recessed economy is creating for so many people, I’d still like to share three encouraging developments I’ve witnessed lately during my comings-and-goings:

1)  People are gaining clarity around their priorities

While nobody wished this experience upon themselves, necessarily, today’s job market is proving to be a superlative “teaching moment” for many people in terms of focusing them to reassess and reevaluate the things in life that are important to them.  Many people, for example, are being forced to come to grips with their relationship to money for the first time in many years.  How has money (or more accurately, their desire to acquire lots of it) affected their lives to date?  How has it contributed or detracted from their happiness?  Where does it truly rank compared to other work satisfaction elements they might value such as work/life balance, fun, personal growth, freedom, and other factors?  Without question, the financial discipline and creative cost-cutting measures many families have put in place these days are going to serve them well for many years to come, assuming they maintain some of these habits once they land a new opportunity.

Additionally, I’ve seen numerous people use their “time off” to rebuild fractured relationships, improve their health, attend to issues in the family, conquer significant personal goals, and make other incredibly positive strides forward.  How many metric tons of wisdom are we going to gain, as a society, from people thinking deeply and profoundly about these issues as a result of this tough economic slog?

2)  Young people are learning valuable lessons

At a networking event our firm facilitated the other day, aimed at helping job hunters stay confident during protracted unemployment, numerous job hunters piped up and said that one surprisingly positive side-effect of their unemployment status was that their kids were paying attention — and that most of them were showing remarkable maturity, grace, and flexibility in terms of helping the family adapt to these tough times.  This experience certainly isn’t a universal one, I’m sure, but at least a half-dozen of the attendees expressed great pride at the resiliency of their children and felt convinced that this period of privation would provide them with some lasting, valuable life lessons.

Over the years, I’ve heard similar stories from parents that have literally brought me to tears (the good kind), such as the client of mine whose 9-year-old daughter offered up her piggy bank to help pay the overdue rent — or tales of teenagers who have willingly gone out and gotten a job, for the first time in their lives, in order to help the family make ends meet.  So I can’t help but wonder whether this recession will leave a positive impact on the next generation — just as the Great Depression of the 1930s played an instrumental role in forging the values of the “Greatest Generation” we all revere.  Along the same lines, Malcolm Gladwell argues in his latest book Outliers that there is clear evidence linking the success of many of the most prominent business leaders in the last half-century to the lessons, values, and work habits they picked up watching their immigrant parents overcome the odds and adapt, heroically, to a totally new culture and the American way of life.

3)  The best aspects of human nature are on display

The last “silver lining” item I’d point out is the one that I’m most excited about, of all, and is also the phenomenon I encounter the most in my day-to-day experience working with job hunters.  Barring a few annoying exceptions, I’m simply blown away by how generous, thoughtful, and helpful many people (including hundreds of Career Horizons alumni) have been in terms of lending a hand to their fellow seekers and going the extra mile to be a networking resource.  Rather than steal my own thunder, in fact, I’m instead going to direct you to a brand-new article I wrote here (click on the “Troubled Times” link at the top of the list) that spells out my recent observations in this area.  This article was also just published today as one of my regular Puget Sound Business Journal installments.

As I’ve said in that piece, and will say again here, if you’ve been one of the generous souls who has taken the time to assist a job hunter in need, grant an informational interview, pass a LinkedIn request along, or volunteer in some other capacity to help people get back on their feet, thank you — on behalf of everybody.  Your amazing, thoughtful actions are an invaluable part of helping people keep the faith and remain confident that we’ll get through these tough times!

Kudos to Multicare & Better Hiring Practices!

Here’s another cool “small world” story that just happened within the Career Horizons orbit — and one that reveals an interesting new twist on the modern hiring process!  Yesterday, one of my clients mentioned that she’d been applying for a job down at Multicare, the health care company based in Tacoma, but ultimately decided to bow out of the process without fully completing the on-line application.  Nonetheless, she was pleasantly surprised to receive an automated e-mail from Multicare, within the next few minutes, asking her to fill out a brief anonymous survey sharing her perceptions of the company’s application process.

Here was the text she received:

“MultiCare would appreciate your participation in a short survey about your experience and current perception of their jobs, work environment, culture, hiring process, and employees.   The survey is fully interactive (so it focuses quickly on what is most important to you), and just takes a few minutes to complete. Because MultiCare can only see the aggregated responses of all survey participants, you remain anonymous while they work to improve the experience for job seekers and new employees.   To take the survey, follow this link…”

To me, the very notion that a company would CARE about the perception job seekers have of its hiring process is a pretty worthwhile thing to celebrate, in its own right, but I’m even more impressed by an employer that would solicit the opinions of those candidates who don’t even complete the application process.  If a company were to only limit its survey data (as some probably do) to just the subset of applicants who end up completing the process, and/or getting hired, they’d obviously end up with a pretty skewed set of results — and one that would paint an artificially-positive view of the process in question!  It would leave out all of those job seekers who might have been intimidated by a company’s application system.  Or found it cumbersome.  Or were confused by it.  Or felt it was biased in some way based on age, gender, sexual orientation, or ethnicity.  So the fact that Multicare seeks out the opinions of ALL potential candidates is a pretty nifty thing, at least from my standpoint.

The small world part?  It turns out that the company that produces these surveys, Improved Experience, was actually co-founded by a friend of our firm down in Texas named Alise Cortez.  And while we’ve known about Alise’s product for a few years now, this is the first time one of our clients (to the best of our knowledge) has actually bumped into it in the real world, here in the Puget Sound area.  So it was great to be able to circle back around to Alise, let her know her product had been encountered by somebody we knew, and to let her know that this person’s reactions to the system were extremely positive!

It will be interesting to watch, going forward, whether other employers besides Multicare raise their consciousness in terms of the hiring process  and employ tools such as Improved Experience to make their application systems more approachable, efficient, and effective.  With all the horror stories one hears about how poorly companies are treating job applicants these days, it’s a pretty safe bet that certain employers are scaring off (or accidentally weeding out) a large contingent of top-notch talent, right from the outset, simply due to a poorly-designed application process!

PSBJ “Business of Philanthropy” Special Report

As usual, the Puget Sound Business Journal continues to crank out the MOST USEFUL information money can buy (in my humble and biased opinion) in terms of the local business scene and events affecting the marketplace here in the Seattle/Bellevue/Tacoma region — as well as the State of Washington, as a whole.

For those who don’t track the paper on a regular basis, however, I wanted to call special attention to the latest installment of their “Business of Philanthropy” report, which is perhaps the single most useful published resource for folks interested in the local non-profit industry.  This special 35-page supplement, if you’ve never seen it, contains an abundance of articles on topics like non-profit executive pay, the use of mobile technology for non-profit causes, the impact of the recession on non-profit funding, and the like.  It also contains an invaluable list of the Top 25 Foundations in Puget Sound and the Top 50 Non-Profit Organizations in Puget Sound.  Heck, even the advertisements in this publication are valuable, since they give you clues as to which local companies believe in the concept of “corporate citizenship” and might be a great fit for somebody to whom such values are important!

This report was published in the PSBJ’s 9/25 issue, so you have a few days left to grab it off the newsstand before the next issue comes out.  If you miss it, however, you can either track down a back issue at the library or contact the Business Journal here to obtain one.  And if this kind of news content seems like it would be useful to your search efforts, going forward, we’d highly recommend you consider subscribing to the PSBJ on an ongoing basis.  If you’re interested in doing this, contact our buddy Elizabeth Case in the circulation department here — she’ll hook you up!

Changing Times, Changing Terminology

I can’t help myself.  The closet linguist in me just had to pen a short post pointing out that whenever a major paradigm shift takes place, whether in the business world or as part of society, in general, a brand new set of terminology always seems to creep into the lexicon to describe the new concepts that have suddenly been born.

With the advent of the Internet era, for example, phrases like “surfing the web” and “cyberspace” and “ping me” suddenly became routine phrases in the vocabulary of many professionals.  And as mobile phones have grown in popularity, it’s no longer the slightest bit strange to hear somebody say they’ve just “texted” someone or to use the word “411″ as a verb, meaning to look something up.  I’ve even noticed that the word “phone” itself is in the process of being phased out by most wireless companies in favor of the more versatile word “device” — since making phone calls is now just one small piece of the puzzle when it comes to the booming arena of mobile communications.  What does the future hold, I wonder?  Could the day actually be coming when we say to our kids or grandkids “hand me the phone” and they look at us with bewilderment?

At any rate, the two most intriguing terms that have popped onto my radar screen recently (prompting me to write this post) are staycation and funemployment.  These are both nouns, from what I’ve observed, and if I’ve deciphered their meaning correctly the word “funemployment” is used to express the idea that unemployment can be a positive opportunity to engage in a series of exciting projects, activities, and adventures that one can’t really indulge in when tied to the demands of a full-time job — whereas the term “staycation” simply means to use one’s allotted vacation time to stay home, relax, and catch up on things around the house.

Am I the first verbal astronomer to spot this emerging jargon?  Far from it.  To satisfy my curiosity, in fact, I Googled each term (also a word that wasn’t around 20 years ago!) and found plenty of relevant links.  The Urban Dictionary, for example, already contains full working definitions of the words funemployment and staycation, whereas Wikipedia also has a detailed entry on the latter term, available here.  And if you continue browsing through the Google results, you’ll find that these terms have even been used in major news stories from CNN, CBS News, and the New York Times.

So if you haven’t yet come across these freshly-minted phrases, hey, you heard it here first — and if you’ve got a few minutes to spare I’d urge you to contemplate what it means that our society suddenly felt the need (or at least inclination) to invent these new words.  To me, it says a lot about the “new normal” we’ve found ourselves in and what career paths are likely going to be like for the foreseeable future.  People are going to have to become more comfortable during periods of job transition, and learn to take advantage of them, while at the same time resigning themselves to burn some paid time off while employed simply to catch up on the many demands of today’s busy, go-go-go professional lifestyle.

Thoughts?  Observations?  Other words I might have missed that relate to “new realities” in today’s world of work?

Grab Bag of Interesting Career Stuff

Over the past week or so, I’ve come across (or been forwarded) a number of links, articles, and resources that I feel are relevant to folks in career transition and eminently worthy of passing along via my blog.  So rather than carve out a separate posting for each item, I’m just going to bundle all of them together and turn you loose on them.  Enjoy!

1)  Video: Sir Ken Robinson on “Are Schools Killing Creativity?”

I almost didn’t open this link at first, but boy, am I glad I did!  This has to be one of the most important and well-delivered speeches I’ve heard in many years, addressing some of the built-in problems with the educational system, and consequently, the problems many folks are having in terms of their career challenges and finding positions that take advantage of their natural strengths.  Job hunters (not to mention all parents) need to watch this video in its entirety.  It’s not only packed with original and important thinking, but is downright funny, to boot, especially the little riff about Shakespeare that takes place about eight minutes into the presentation.

2) School of Visual Concepts: Discounted Classes for Unemployed Folks

If you’re interested in launching a career in the graphic design field, or brushing up your skills in areas such as web design, broadcast production, or copywriting, the School of Visual Concepts has announced a new program where they’ll be offering unemployed individuals a 50% discount on tuition for certain classes.  More details on this offer are available by clicking the link above, and we salute the school for going the extra mile to help transitioning professionals develop some marketable new skills at an affordable price point!

3) Diane Renihan: Financial Boot Camp for Executives

Does your career future require a better understanding of the corporate bottom line?  Are you mystified by modern accounting terminology and the way companies measure their financial performance?  Would demonstrating a strong knowledge of finance enhance your current marketability?  If so, I’d strongly encourage you to click on the link above and check out the “Financial Boot Camp” seminar that will be offered by Diane Renihan, of Ballantrae Consulting, starting in mid-September.  Diane has given us a preview of the material that she’ll be covering in this four-session series and we can assure you, it’s excellent!

4)  Article from TheLadders.com About the “Overqualified” Issue

Given that many Career Horizons clients are in the 40+ age range, and concerned about both age discrimination and the perception that they’re overqualified for certain opportunities, here’s a well-researched article that explores some of the realities of this issue — and offers some good advice on how to combat this obstacle in the job search process.

5) Wharton Business School Article: Unemployment Among Older Managers

On a related note to item #4, above, here’s another sobering (but highly informative) article about the impact of today’s recession on the ranks of older managers and executives.  We’re glad to see an institution as prestigious as Wharton raising awareness of this important and highly under-reported issue — and near the end of the article, you’ll see some encouraging predictions about future trends and some suggestions on how older workers can repackage themselves to compete more effectively for available opportunities.

WSJ “Expose” on the Outplacement Industry

As a veteran of the outplacement field for over 15 years now, I’ve had a ringside seat in observing both the best and worst practices of the industry — and seeing how the services of various outplacement firms have kept pace with the times and provided real value (or not) in terms of helping individuals impacted by corporate layoffs.

From my own self-interested standpoint, admittedly, I’ve trumpeted the notion that “not all outplacement firms are created equal” and that many companies, and HR professionals, should exercise far more caution in the purchasing process to ensure they get real value for their dollar.  Far too many firms, in my opinion, have been gotten away with murder over the years by providing lackluster service for outrageous sums of money.  I’m contacted frequently by executives, in fact, who have recently received a $10-15,000 outplacement package from their past employer — but are now seeking to pay out of their own pocket for resume help and job hunting assistance!  This is shameful.  For that amount of money, these firms should be writing these peoples’ resumes on gold leaf and personally chauffeuring them to every single interview they line up…

So given that I’ve been something of a lone voice in the wilderness on this issue for years, I can’t tell you how happy I was to discover that a source no less reputable than the Wall Street Journal was validating my perspective in an article they published this very morning!  Even if you have no particular interest in the nitty-gritty details of the outplacement world, I think you’ll find the article below fascinating, entertaining, and provocative.  Take a few moments and give it a read:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB125069793645343423.html

Seriously, 60-person caseloads?  Boilerplate resume templates?  Providing only 4 hours of coaching in a one-month program, valued in the $2,500 to $5,000 price range?  Advising people not to order cranberry juice in a lunch interview, lest the interviewer suspect they have a bladder infection?  This is the stuff that drives me nuts.  Such delivery methods may not technically be criminal, but boy, are they unethical.

Provided properly, I believe outplacement can be a tremendous win/win both for the company and its departing employees, helping both sides move on and make a smooth transition into the future.  And I’m happy to report that there are plenty of quality outplacement firms around, both in the Pacific Northwest and throughout the globe.  But more and more providers, I’m afraid to say, are cutting corners and exhibiting some of the laughably bad behaviors chronicled in this article.

Thanks for shining the light on this particular topic, WSJ!

Open Letter to HR Departments: What’s the Deal?

Greetings, all you HR and Recruiting types out there!  I’m writing because I need your help.  For years, my clients (professionals looking for work) have reported an increasing lack of communication, professionalism, and courtesy in how they’re being treated during the hiring process — and I’m worried that things are starting to reach the boiling point.  While I’ve done by best to defend some of the behavior I’ve heard about, I’m becoming more and more at a loss to explain why certain things are happening, such as why it appears to be so difficult (even if your department is overworked/understaffed) to keep your TOP CANDIDATES updated, even briefly, on the status of the decision-making process.

Now don’t get me wrong here, I’m not stuck in the past or under any illusion that HR practitioners can engage in deep, meaningful dialogue with each and every candidate who approaches them for employment.  Heck, I even understand if you can’t take the time to send out “thanks but no thanks” postcards or e-mail responses to people, based on the hundreds of resumes that often flood in from a posted advertisement.  But why is it seemingly so hard to communicate honestly and directly with the short list of folks who have made the cut, after hours of interviewing with you, and with whom I’d hope you’d want to walk away with a positive image of your organization?  Even if they’re not selected for hire?

I’m usually a pretty good Devil’s advocate in these situations, but I’ll admit, this one’s got me baffled.  I just can’t see behind the curtain and understand why so many companies go completely dark — and exhibit such flaky behavior — when it comes to treating job candidates with a modicum of respect.

As a case in point, here’s a note I received from a client of mine just the other day.  This individual has gone through multiple rounds of interviews with a local company, was wooed at every step along the way, was asked to submit references, and was then assured that the company would be making a decision within 48 hours.  Over a week later, she has received zero further communication from them, despite several attempts to follow up and get a status update.  And just to clarify, we’re talking about a normal, mature, well-adjusted person here — I know this person well and she’s not somebody prone to griping or getting angry at things.

At any rate, here’s what she sent me:

E-MAIL “RANT” FROM CAREER HORIZONS CLIENT

“Hi Matt.  Still no word from [company name] and I’m getting nothing but voicemail for the company recruiter, the VP who was supposed to contacting me with their decision, and the front desk of the local office.  I am so disgusted with this process by now I couldn’t even bring myself to leave a message and probably for the best b/c it would not have been a polite and courteous one.  This is BEYOND ridiculous and worse than the on-line application process or an automated rejection because with both of those situations, you never even communicate with a live person so there’s no attachment and no one is misleading you or lying to you.

In your experience, is this seriously how companies operate these days?  Is this “the norm” and do employers think it is acceptable to leave people hanging like this because, in their minds, they have the upper hand since, after all, this is an *employer’s* market?  So that makes it OK to simply ignore those who have spent CONSIDERABLE time and effort pursuing them?  I just can’t fathom how the people I’ve been working with on this opportunity aren’t the least bit mindful of those who are waiting to know the decision.  Apparently they just think that I should just assume they’ve selected another candidate because I haven’t heard from them? What kind of way to handle this process is THAT?  I am SOO sick of this job searching and of the time I spend going down dead ends. No, I’m beyond sick. I’m disgusted.”

This note parallels a recent Yahoo! Finance article entitled 5 Ways Companies Mistreat Job Seekers that has been making the rounds on the Internet lately and discusses some similar experiences that are causing many candidates to get fed up.  So again, if there are any HR or Recruiting professionals out there who are brave enough to comment, and help the rest of us understand why such a profound communication breakdown seems to be taking place, epidemically, across all sectors of the hiring world, we’d love to hear your thoughts!  (and speaking at least for myself, I promise to stay open-minded…)

5 Tips for Ensuring Great Coaching Results

Yesterday, I was enjoying a wonderful “wrap-up” phone call with a client of mine who recently landed a CEO job here in the area.  This individual had some very flattering things to say about my firm’s support of his job search process and the breakthroughs he was able to achieve along the way, which is always nice to hear.  It was near the end of the conversation, however, that he made the statement that I found most interesting.  Essentially, his comment was “My only regret, Matt, is that you didn’t kick my butt even harder along the way and force me to do the things I needed to be doing!”

This observation got me thinking, and after mulling the topic over all day, I thought it might be helpful if I were to share a couple of ideas about how people can optimize their success working with any type of “coach” in a professional capacity — be it a career coach, life coach, executive coach, or professional adviser of any similar variety.

For starters, it’s important to realize that good coaches are able to wear a TON of different hats in terms of how they approach the relationship with a client and the type of assistance they’re able to provide.  Depending on the situation, they can function as your own personal cheerleader.  Or mentor.  Or taskmaster.  Or thought partner.  Or confidant.  Or campaign strategist.  Or sounding board.  Or copy editor.  Or devil’s advocate. Or  conscience.  Or even possibly your priest, as one of my clients once characterized our relationship!  (let me assure you, though, that this last designation is one that I don’t feel even remotely qualified to fulfill…)

So whether you’re seeking out a great new coach to work with, or simply looking to maximize the productivity level with your current adviser, the key is to THINK REALLY HARD UP FRONT about the ideal role or roles (pick from the above menu or create your own!) that you need a coach to play in working with you.  You’ll find that some coaches are deep specialists in one particular area, while others have a more generalized bag of tricks and can truly “meet you where you’re at” no matter what role you need them to play.  And while most good coaches will ask lots of clarifying questions up front, or can instinctively figure out how best to work with you, it never hurts for you to initiate some dialogue around this issue right from the outset — informing the coach about your specific needs and guiding them on how to work with you most effectively, based on the lifetime of knowledge, insight, and awareness you’ve amassed about yourself.

The above element, in my opinion, is the single most important factor in ensuring a great “match” with a prospective coach.  Here are a few other suggestions that come to mind, however, that might help you prosper even more from the coach/coachee relationship:

1. Prior to each coaching session, e-mail the coach your desired agenda; it’s very important to arrive at each meeting with a clear focus and some specific outcomes to achieve, so that the coach can prepare some thoughts/resources in advance and make sure the time is invested as wisely as possible.  And if you’re not sure what the agenda should be, that’s a perfectly valid question to ask your coach for help with, too!

2.  Take detailed notes or consider tape-recording the session; if you’ve got the right coach, they’re going to be rattling off a lot of great advice for you to follow in a fairly short period of time, so don’t rely on your memory alone to sponge it all up!  Coaches will take it as a sign of respect, and commitment, if you routinely write down some of the advice they provide or you bring a recording device to each session (they’re getting smaller and less expensive every day) so that you can replay the session, later, in the comfort of your own home.

3.  Reschedule a session if you’re not prepared; rather than waste everybody’s time, most coaches will appreciate it (and won’t penalize you) if you inform them when you’re not feeling prepared for a particular session and would prefer to push it back to a later date.  As long as this doesn’t become a chronic habit, or reveal a deep-seated motivational issue that needs to be addressed, rescheduling the occasional meeting will be the best move for all concerned.

4.  Do your part and don’t expect miracles; while coaches should obviously be providing you with sound advice and demonstrable value at every step along the way, don’t forget that they’re merely the coach, not the player, and that the responsibility for implementing the successful game plan (in whatever context applies) ultimately falls in your court.  Phil Jackson, for example, has played an indispensable role in helping the Bulls and Lakers win a combined nine NBA championships in recent years, but don’t forget, he wasn’t the one out there on the court playing defense or scoring the basketball!

5.  Communicate, communicate, communicate; last but certainly not least, it’s imperative that you provide regular feedback (including both positive and negative developments) to your coach as the process unfolds if you want to get the most out of the exchange.  Effective coaches need to hear about your setbacks, as well as your successes, in order to be able to counsel you effectively.  So don’t hold back or be shy about sharing your progress, even if this just means the occasional phone call or e-mail update.  Every top-notch coach I know will always go the extra mile to help those clients who keep them in the loop and demonstrate that they’re taking the process seriously.  They wouldn’t be coaching in the first place, after all, if their #1 driver wasn’t to see people land on their feet — and ultimately reach their goals!

Hopefully this list will prove useful to some of you out there, and if any of the coaches in my network want to chime in with even more suggestions on how their clients can help engineer a terrific outcome, I’d certainly love to share your thoughts!  My apologies, too, to the client I mentioned earlier who felt I went a little too easy on him.  I’ll have to work on my “drill sergeant” persona a little more in the future, since admittedly, it’s not my strong suit…

Book Review: How to Work With Headhunters (Nick Corcodilos)

I love Nick Corcodilos.  I love his column in the newspaper, I love his ongoing blog, and I loved his “Ask the Headhunter” book and the incredibly pragmatic and frank insights he shared in it about how the headhunting world really works — and how candidates can play the game effectively in terms of this important, but often misunderstood aspect of job hunting.

Do I therefore love this latest offering of his, a 130-page downloadable electronic guide (offered in PDF format here for $29.95) promising to demystify the process of working with headhunters/recruiters and to provide 62 myth-busting answers for fearless job hunters? Not in so many words.  I’d say that “really, really like” is a better characterization of my feelings about this latest offering that Nick has pulled together.  While, as always, the writing is brilliant and the content provided is far deeper than any other resource out there in terms of discussing the headhunting process, the value of the piece suffers slightly from one factor that, ironically, I think even the author himself would agree with.

What is this mysterious factor, exactly?  Well, right off the bat, Nick points out the surprising (to some) fact that headhunters account for less than 3% of all hiring in the marketplace.  He then goes to great lengths to provide a “taxonomy” of the staffing sector and to point out how true headhunters, in his opinion, are a totally different breed from other sorts of placement professionals you’ll come across such as recruiters, contract firms (aka “job shops”), temporary agencies, career management firms, and the like.  And lastly, he emphasizes that headhunters source talent for their clients almost exclusively via proactive methods, as opposed to finding candidates via job boards or making contact with people who may have sent in their resume in unsolicited fashion.  Practically speaking, this means that they almost always go after “passive” candidates (as opposed to active job hunters) who are already employed and already recognized as rising stars in their respective industries.

In response to the above realities, I can’t help observing that the true target audience for this guide is astronomically small when one considers that the vast majority of professionals out there in transition DON’T meet the stated criteria for being “headhuntable” material!  Why would one invest $30-40 in a guide about working with headhunters, therefore, if only one candidate in a thousand can hope to attract the attention of this elite audience?  And among the handful of movers, shakers, and “A Players” who qualify to be recruited by this audience, do we really think that most of these people need remedial coaching about how to present themselves successfully or exert control/confidence in the interview process?  This subdivides the target audience even further, when you think about it…

At any rate, my intent here isn’t to be negative or critical of Nick’s most recent publication, but to simply point out some interesting consequences of the author’s own logic — in the context of my own professional role, which is to advise people on what might be most useful for them to read relative to the job hunting process.  This issue aside, I assure you that “How to Work With Headhunters” is a fascinating resource and stands to definitely open your eyes about how the hiring process really works at this level, if you’re interested in such things.  The guide also provides some much-needed words of warning around the scams, deceptions, and bad practices that certain recruiters engage in — as well as those organizations in the “career management” sector who pretend to be headhunters, but instead bilk unwary job hunters out of $5,000 or more for some lackluster resume development and distribution services.  Just this weekend, in fact, I ran into the friend of a friend who was approached by one of these outfits that operates in the Seattle area, and his description of the sales process — and the hard-sell techniques they used to try to swindle him out or $4,700 — made me downright nauseous.

There’s also value to be gained in this book/guide for those ASPIRING superstars who want to know how to position themselves most effectively for future contact by headhunters — or to study, ahead of time, what they should do in these situations.  And lastly, even if there’s no direct application to your own career situation, the publication is an interesting, worthwhile read in its own right.

At the end of the day, however, I musn’t lose sight of the fundamental purpose behind these reviews I write, which is to educate the average job hunter on what career-related books he or she should consider investing his or her time, money, and energy in.  And while this latest offering by Nick Corcodilos is exceptional, as always, make no mistake about it — it’s geared toward the sophisticated needs that a handful of elite executives will face when fielding headhunter-driven opportunities, not the day-to-day job search challenges and realities that are encountered by most mainstream candidates in career transition.