1. You can’t expect to be the preferred resource when applying for a job at a particular company if you don’t know what product to offer. You must listen/do research to learn VOC (voice of customer) and then address the relevance and value of your product and services. Client will be looking to solve a specific problem like fix products now flat or in decline. Grow profit. Even if your resume has a track record of success, it has little value if it has questionable relevance.
2. Providing facts and features about you does not move the relationship forward by itself. Trust and relationship are crucial to the selling process. The client will prefer someone with lesser credentials on a superficial level if that person comes highly recommended by someone the client trusts. Resumes offer too little depth or proof of connection of you to the results claimed to offset that. Single interviews don’t often solve the problem because clients are not usually trained interviewers.
3. Network with several people at a company first, send resume later. Listen 2/3, talk 1/3.
4. “Consulting” with a client you would like to work for permanently without a designated selling process may distract and pre-empt closing a deal. Similarly, offering too much information during consulting, networking, and interviewing without closing the deal encourages the client to ask for more free advice/details without committing. A gift of gab does not equal selling.
5. A direct mail piece gets a .5-2% return at best. A superficial resume sent to a portal generates similar results.
6. You are highly unlikely to get what you want from a sales meeting or interview if you don’t ask for it and specify exactly what you want and provide specific rationale for deserving it. “I want $200K salary base and $200K is justified for these reasons…” “I want the open Business Development Manager role, and I am the best candidate over other Biz Dev Mgrs with the same amount of industry experience and sales success because of these reasons…” The sales trainer John Baker says 3 reasons establishes a pattern and builds just enough intrigue to consumate the deal.

If you want more in depth training on closing deals in person whether or not you are a professional sales person, read The Asking Formula, by John Baker. He is a fun trainer for any audience.

Joe then told the corporate HR person in a phone screen a few days later he was making $72K salary and wouldn’t move for less than $80K.

The engineering firm knew his present salary was $62K because they had hired a number of other people from the same firm.

Joe then tells the HR person that, while he is willing to work in re-commissioning for while, what he really wants is GHG (greenhouse gas) and sustainability. The job title he applied for is Re-commissioning Specialist.

Comments:

1. If you are going to exaggerate your credentials, at least keep your story straight!
2. Recruiters usually tell a hiring manager the salary history and expectations of a candidate. Otherwise the recruiter would be chastened for wasting the hiring manager’s time.
3. National studies have shown 70% of resumes include an exaggeration. Hiring Managers assume they will hear exaggerations at every step of the screening process and listen for them.
4. This job seeker wasted everyone’s time. If you are serious about a company or job, do enough homework before applying to find out the company’s expectations and norms. If interested in the company but not this job, be honest.
5. Applying to a company for more than 3 different job titles is not viewed positively by most companies. The applicant is considered not focused or too hungry or too much of a commodity player.

Neither the recruiter not the engineering firm will ever work with Joe again, he has been “red-flagged.”

Have a favorite interview story? Share it with us!

Someone who has been out of a relationship or work many months may take a questionable spouse or job out of financial desperation or the need to be “wanted.”

In both marriage and work, you should do more homework about long-range goals and the cultural fit before committing. Beauty is only skin deep. One-night-stand and one interview decisions carry a lot of risk. Consider Contract-2-Hire.

The more you invest up front in preparation and strategy, the more financially secure you will be long term.

If you argue with your spouse or employer about money, your marriage or job is more likely to end in divorce.

If you are happily single, and financially independent, you pick differently. You don’t see the need to get married at all. Or you partner from choice, not need. Maybe working for yourself or staying single is the better answer, so you are connecting to several partners at the same time and spreading the risk.

The best marriages and jobs offer both partners a little flexibility or at least forgive the other a few transgressions. In the best marriages and job relationships, both parties work on keeping “engagement” or satisfaction levels high.

Regardless of present marital or work status, age, or financial need you would benefit from having long-term strategies in place. Consider where you want to be 5-10 years from now. Have a progressive strategy that selects a spouse or job for the next 1-2 years and simultaneously you start activities like networking and becoming more visible in the market to start building momentum now for the time after the divorce.

Have your own analogy to add? Please do, through a comment. The more outrageous or funny, the better.

^(a) www.census.gov

I am in my 50s. Yes, age bias exists and, yes, it is illegal. You won’t always be able to avoid it. But age bias is sometimes not really about your actual age, it is about certain soft skills and attitudes that employers desire but older employees are less likely to value. And if you learn to address those issues, you can make concerns about age go away.

Attitude

First of all, if you think the world is against you, I will bet it shows in your interviews. You need to peel back the layers on your emotions. Do you think society has fouled up again? That young managers don’t know what they are doing? Or is it that you don’t know how/where to sell yourself at this stage of your career and are afraid?

Your focus should be to find the companies for which you are a highly desirable applicant just as you are and to present yourself to those companies in a manner that makes you one of the first applicants to be selected for an interview. While this may require a stronger sell than was necessary a few years ago, it is not at all impossible. It just requires some additional strategic layers and may indicate a different kind of company than the one you left. For instance, a smaller company or start-up may prefer a more experienced candidate to obtain a greater depth of industry knowledge with a smaller staff count. Or target your skills in business development (well-documented with case histories) to a company who has been struggling with the issue for some time.

If you are significantly overqualified for a job description as written, don’t spend a lot of time applying for it. The company will be concerned that you will leave as soon as you find a job for which you are better suited. You could offer to sign a contract promising that you will stay at least 2 years, but they will still be concerned that you will become crabby in the role because you are being under-utilized and that you will be disruptive to the balance of the team structure.

Trends in age of employees

• 2000-2003
  • The number of workers under the age of 45 was constant.
  • The number of workers over 45 increased 86%.
• 2005
  • 45% of workers are over the age of 45.
• 2010 projected
  • Labor shortage due as baby boomers retire
  • Most boomers plan to work full-time or part-time after retiring.

How older workers are perceived

• More expensive than younger employees doing the same work (usually true).
• Difficult to supervise, they think they know more than team mates. Poor or selective follow-up.
• Inflexible, grumpy, frumpy, more likely to argue. Poor communication skills. Less political.
• Hard to train, don’t know new technology.
• Disconnected from company vision and younger team-mates. Prefer to be sole contributors.
• Get sick more often (false).
• Low and declining energy. Resist overtime.

Market demand for new hires

• As the pace of corporate innovation increases, the duration of the average permanent job decreases because company priorities change more rapidly, and your seniority or longevity may be irrelevant. The career track you were on for the last ___ years doesn’t matter. The employer wants to know if you can hit the ground running for today’s needs.
• 2 out of 100 resumes result in a job offer.
• A resume needs to be better written to be effective because employers have access to more resumes through websites and job databases. Is your resume well-written enough that you will be one of the interviewees chosen from 20 resumes? 100?

Strategies to try

So what am I saying? Learn and emphasize what a company values in today’s market. Make sure you know how to sell yourself. Focus on the benefits of your depth of knowledge, but make sure you also counter the expected negative attitudes associated with older workers. Note the ways attitude as well as knowledge is being addressed in the bullets below:

• “I really enjoy being on teams which solve problems and grow business.” Don’t just say “I have lots of experience” which would emphasize the gap in age but not the quality of experience and your willingness to be a team member.
• “I have the contacts to drive growth.”
• “I thrive in fast-paced environments.”
• To an insurance or medical company with older customers: “I may understand your customer better than a younger applicant.”
• “Yes, I supervised many people. Learned how to work with lots of different kinds of people. Can we take a tour of the company? I would like to see how you do it.“
• “I can start as a part-time consultant to let you evaluate what I offer at a small cost.”
• “I just attended a conference on that new technology and was a panelist.”

The simple answer? Don’t do it.

• I have seen national studies that claimed about 70% of resumes have “mistruths” in them.
• Other studies state 25-50% of resumes have “embellishments” (an exaggeration but not lie.)

The most common lies:

• Length of employment gaps
• Titles
• Degrees completed
• Salary
• Reason for leaving
• Not mentioning a job from which you were fired
• Taking credit for an idea developed by the team
• When career started (age)
• Size of business or projects managed
• Rank as a sales person or total revenue you represented
• Claiming to be “Consulting” when you were billing zero hours

I could quote more studies, but the point is: Recruiters and Hiring Managers EXPECT there to be many lies in resumes and in the interviews we have with applicants so we look and listen for them.

Easiest to detect

The one I hear most frequently is about salary/bonus. I ask people their current salary and bonus in a very deliberate way and listen to how they handle it. I can hear the long, pregnant pauses while the speaker is trying to figure out how much they can increase the answer since I gave them a chance to. The process varies if I called them versus when they called me. Rarely does the speaker need the same length of time to answer other questions. It is one of the lies that are easiest for the listener to detect. And it is a very good indicator of whether I should trust the other answers I hear will hear from the same source.

Legal penalties

I called a lawyer I know who specializes in employment law for his knowledge of possible consequences. There are apparently no formal legal penalties in Minnesota for lying in the job application process, but lying on a job application certainly is a ground for immediate termination (not that the employer necessarily needs grounds under the employment-at-will doctrine). Call me (anonymously if you wish) for a referral to him.

Situational stress

We also know that lying increases:

• In a recession as the stress of finding a job increases
• As age of the applicant increases because the stress of finding a job increases
• If an applicant was a poor fit for a job and it ended very badly
• If the applicant is not good at articulating their value to their past employers

So what do you do if you are tempted to lie? Don’t. Instead, take a few steps back in your process and analyze which hiring manager SHOULD want to hire you and why. Have you done enough homework about the companies you are targeting? Do you know for which roles you are most marketable? Have you done enough selling to show the hiring manager why you are a must-meet-applicant? Instead of applying to 200 companies, figure out the 15-20 companies for which you will be one of the most desirable applicants and tailor your pitch to discuss why you are indeed worth knowing for that role.

Illness

A woman who just finished with a long illness called me today and asked for advice on how to handle the gap in her resume. Illnesses and disabilities are complicated and deserve their own very long article but don’t hide the gap or offer a lie. On the other hand, don’t volunteer more information than is necessary, especially if disabled. Talk to a certified disability job counselor for advice if that applies to you.

In the case of the woman who had been ill but was not now disabled, I told her to simply say she had been on sabbatical for an undefined personal issue but was now ready and able to work 40 hours a week without distraction. She needs to carefully research the clients who would be thrilled to have her for what she does know and have a very polished selling statement ready to offset fears related to the unexplained gap. She should have strong testimonials ready. If necessary, she could offer to work for them on a contract-to-hire basis or discounted pay scale until she establishes her value in the present time-frame. She still may have trouble “getting back in” but she shouldn’t compound doubt about her reputation/ability with a lie. If there is no fear the illness may return, you could offer a doctor’s note to show you are fully recovered.