1. Mistake: Believing the Newspapers
Newspaper headlines, while usually correct, are often misleading. The tendency is to
believe that the job situation is as bad as the headlines indicate. Yes, changes in our
economy resulted in over 1,000,000 jobs being eliminated in 2005. And yes, there will
be another 1,000,000 + jobs eliminated this year and every year into the future.
Instead: Understand that jobs are being created at an even greater rate.
Jobs are being created, not in the bulk quantities that create headlines, but usually one at a
time, and not by “news-making” corporations, but usually by small businesses in
response to growing opportunities. But, major corporations, even those who are
downsizing, are constantly on the lookout for new opportunities and the people who can
bring them. This is the MAJOR job opportunity for those who understand how to do it.
Learning how and why jobs ARE being created enables you to position yourself to
partake in the new job bonanza.
2. Mistake: Believing the Want Ads
Less than 15% of all jobs that are being created are advertised. It is more common for
someone to approach a decision-maker, within a company; with an opportunity to impact
the company’s bottom line through increased sales, reduced expenses, improved
productivity, etc. A job is often created for them more often than a job vacancy is first
created, and then a person is “plugged” into that vacancy.
Instead: Create Your Own Job Reality
Through accurate research and an understanding of your strengths, your value to an
organization, your ideal work environment, coupled with your ability to adapt your
behavior to the needs of the business, you can be the one who makes the job proposal and
has the job “created” for you. You need to learn how.
3. Mistake: You Must Write a Winning Résumé to Qualify for an Interview
Résumés are NOT job qualification tools. Over 99% of all résumés are used by HR
departments to DISQUALIFY potential job candidates. The “better” your résumé is, the
more standardized its content and structured its form, the easier it is to be disqualified
before an interview. A winning résumé is a myth, unless you are the best qualified
and willing to work for the least amount of money.
Instead: Approach Employers Using Alternative Marketing Methods
Employers are just like you. They are always shopping for the “best deal.” This means
the candidate with the greatest qualifications and willing to work for the least amount of
money is the one the employer will “buy.” (Why do you think the trend toward offshore
is growing so rapidly?) What you have to do is avoid the résumé situation until after the
interview. 1
4. Mistake: Answering Blind Help Wanted Ads
You might think that a blind ad would be a great opportunity. But it may be a trap.
Often companies that are planning on downsizing will post blind ads in order to gain
resumes and discover the temperature of the water in the field. Are there people in
competitors’ businesses that are ready to jump ship? And, at other times, they are trying
to catch unsuspecting employees of their own company who may be out searching for
greener pastures.
Instead: Don’t Answer Blind Ads
No matter how tempting, you can only lose. Blind ads are not there to create
employment opportunities for you but to provide research for companies that are
planning on making a move.
5. Mistake: Inadequate Understanding of the Employer’s Needs
Whether responding to an ad, on a referral from a friend, through networking, or through
a paid placement service, approaching a company for a job without thoroughly
researching the company, its field, its competitors, its products, its people, and its’
culture, places you at a great disadvantage. Unless you know what the prospective
employer/company needs to succeed (and it may be a lot more than just hiring you) you
will not succeed.
Instead: Doing Research
In the communication era, it’s easy to find out information about ANYONE and ANY
field. The Internet, trade publications, press releases, and dozens of more ways are
available to check out a potential employer. While you’re at it, why not check out a
company that you’d really love to work for and make them a proposal. There is a
systematic method for doing just this. You must learn it.
6. Mistake: A Cover Letter and Résumé is the Right Thing to Send
Cover letters have become the Résumé before the Résumé. HR people expect them, tear
them off, and put them in the circular file. As Sgt. Joe Friday (of the TV show Dragnet)
used to say, “Just give me the facts.”
The reason why cover letters and résumés don’t work is that NO ONE IS READING
THEM!
Instead: A Targeted Sales Letter Gets Interviews.
Learning how to target and write an effective sales letter that gets interviews is one of the
most important job-hunting skills. (It’s also a great skill for advancing your career,
increasing sales, and improving your prospects.) You must learn this modern personal
marketing skill.1
7. Mistake: Lack of Dollarization2
Employers are interested in only one thing û profit, i.e. earning more profits through
controlling expenses, increasing sales, or improved productivity. Few job applicants
have learned the skills of dollarization, leaving everything up to the résumé.
Instead: Dollarize
Bring with you to the interview a list of at least three ways in which you have enabled
previous employers to improve their bottom line, along with the annualized savings or
increased profits that resulted from your work.
Lacking this, bring an understanding of how you can increase your prospective
employer’s profitability. If your targeted employer is a non-profit organization, then
bring dollarized ideas on how to reduce expenses, expand reach, increase membership,
etc.
8. Mistake: Not “Connecting” with the Interviewer
Some candidates prepare well for an interview. They refine and customize their résumés,
research the prospective company, and hone their answers to the questions that they
might be asked during the process. Most candidates focus their preparation on how to
present themselves, almost in a vacuum, without much thought of how each unique
interviewer might perceive them.
Instead: Understanding Behavioral Styles3 û Your and Your Interviewer’s
What is sometimes missing is the feeling of “connecting” with the interviewer(s). During
the preparation stages in the search for a new career or position, behavioral styles are
often overlooked. By understanding behavioral styles, candidates can better prepare for
the in-person meeting.
Depending on the intensity of each of the four behavioral factors, Dominance,
Influencing, Steadiness, and Compliance2, individuals process information differently,
handle problems and challenges differently, communicate differently, adapt to changes at
varying paces, influence others differently, and even comply to rules differently.
1 Personal Marketing Strategies Workshops teach these skills. Contact us for more information.
2 ibid
3 ibid
The challenge for candidates then becomes how to recognize quickly the behavioral style
of the interviewer. Once we know the interviewer’s behavioral style (and our own), how
do we best adapt our communication style and our behavioral style to fit the interviewer’s
comfort zone, thereby facilitating communication and improving the chances for being
the candidate of choice2?
Additionally, by knowing the types of questions asked and the type of responses sought
by each of the four behavioral styles, candidates can customize the way in which they
respond. Candidates can tailor their responses, providing the same type of information,
but formatted to satisfy the needs of each different type of interviewer’s behavioral style.
By providing answers that mirror the way the interviewer communicates, candidates can
assure themselves of a better chance of “connecting” with the interviewer.
9. Mistake: Lack of Differentiation
If you are applying for a position where most other candidates applying for the position
have had similar types of work experience and backgrounds, résumés start to blend. The
top candidates will all have had strong educational backgrounds. They will also have had
strong work experiences that will provide quantifiable achievements. Sometimes,
candidates fail to differentiate themselves and don’t “package” their unique talents and
strengths.
Instead: Putting Your Best Foot Forward
If candidates understand their behavioral style, their unique strengths, their ideal work
environment and communication style, and their specific value to an organization, they
can better package those strengths, differentiating themselves from other top candidates.
During the interview, there are times and ways in which candidates can interweave into
the conversation, the strengths and value that they can bring to an organization. By using
the information from an in-depth output report generated by a validated behavioral profile
instrument, candidates can effectively differentiate themselves from other candidates3
10. Mistake: Lack of Follow Up
Less than 10% of all job seekers follow up an interview with a thank you note or
telephone call. (The thank you note is best.) They assume that the interviewer would be
calling if the candidate had been selected. This is seldom the case. HR people get
hundreds of applications/ résumés for each advertised position.
Instead: Follow Up, Professionally
If you are able to get an interview, whether it turns into a job offer or not, you must send
a thank you. Better still, send a customized résumé that summarizes your interview and
clearly addresses how you can solve their problems. Even if the interviewer doesn’t call
back, she will remember you. Possibly, a position will be created for you.
1 These are just ten of the dozens of outstanding mistakes and best solutions available
from Chris Hansen and Ed Hauser. Chris and Ed have been assisting job seekers learn
the personal marketing skills that result in jobs.
2 As early as 400 BC, Hippocrates studied human behavior and identified four
temperaments, Sanguine, Melancholic, Choleric, and Phlegmatic. In 1921, C. J. Jung
wrote Psychological Types. The four types are primarily oriented by the four
psychological functions, thinking, feeling, sensation, and intuition. In 1928, William
Moulton Marston published a book, The Emotions of Normal People. In his book, he
described the theories that we use today. His behavioral patterns included Dominance,
Inducement, Steadiness, and Compliance. Beginning in the 1980’s, Bill Bonnstetter and
Target Training International (TTI) compiled many firsts in bringing DISC behavior to its
present form including validation studies, correlation studies, and on-line profile
instruments. The four dimensions of the behavioral profile used by TTI are Dominance,
Influencing, Steadiness, and Compliance.
3 On-line behavioral profile tools, utilizing TTI’s validated instruments, are available
though Ed Hauser’s organization, Insights 4 Success. Ed can be reached at 847-730-
4555, or ed@insigthts4success.com.
Chris can be reached at (732) 776-6496 or chris@clhassociates.com
Ed can be reached at (847) 730-4555 or ed@insights4success.com
Shirley Said:
on September 28, 2009 at 11:32 pm
I have been reading job interview material for months and yours is the first to have NEW information for me! Thank you so much! I’ll add your suggestions to my tool box.