What do hiring managers want?

As a recruiter, I was just talking to a client, a Director at a mid-size company, about a couple of positions he’s trying to fill and specifics of what he wants to see in a good candidate.

I wish many of the people in my job search classes could have listened in on the conversation because he clearly answered what many job seekers want to know… “What do hiring managers really want?”

Certainly, in both of the open positions he has, he needs specific skills for those roles. However, more important to him than having all the technical/functional skills were characteristics that were critical for him to find.

Those characteristics could be summarized by…

Positive Attitude, Communication Skills, and Professionalism!

He related to me how he believed those traits were the most important, and somehow the most difficult to find. He recently had to let someone on his team go because although the person had strong technical skills for the job, they did a poor job of communicating with others in their job, and their professionalism (i.e. appropriateness, and attitude) was lacking. They did a good job of executing the technical aspects of their job, but did more harm than good when it came to working with others and helping them understand the requirements and process.

He told me about multiple candidates they’ve talked to that also had the technical skills, however, fell short when it came to projecting those other qualities. He expressed concern that he couldn’t afford, in this economy, to hire average employees. He needs people that can not only do the job, but represent his department effectively and positively to the rest of the company.

People come in to interview often express sour grapes rather than optimism. They dress inappropriately or sloppily making a poor first impression. They ramble on or give one word answers to questions, or generally don’t articulate ideas well. They are unprepared and don’t know basic information about the company or position. They can’t ‘think on their feet’ well. They act intimidated when talking to superiors. They are not very self-aware about their own strengths, weaknesses, or abilities. They try too hard to impress instead of showing sincere interest in others. They come across as overly concerned with what’s in it for them.

So often I hear from job seekers something like:

“I don’t understand why I didn’t get that job! I was a perfect fit. My skills and experience matched up exactly with what they said they were looking for. They don’t know what they want!”

Actually they do know exactly what they want, and usually within a couple of minutes of talking to the job seeker it becomes clear to me why they didn’t get hired.

This market is very competitive. Hiring managers often have a number of people to choose from that have the technical or functional skills required for the position. The differentiators are the soft skills that sway them from one person to another. Don’t take those factors too lightly!

Examine yourself critically. What kind of attitude do you exude? What kind of first impression do you make? Are you well prepared? Do you articulate your answers well? Do you show sincere interest in them and the company? Do you exude professionalism?

THAT’s what managers want!

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One big lesson from the Olympics for your job search!

There have been a few articles I’ve seen using the Olympics to make a point related to a job search. However, I believe there’s one point that’s been fascinating to me but lost in many of the other discussions.

One of the most amazing things to me as I watch these elite athletes compete for a hunk of precious metal, is how some perform at their peak when it matters most, and how others fail!

Think about that… in any sport you choose to examine, the top 3 to 5 contenders are pretty close to equal ability. You know that in their practices and training sessions they’ve achieved their ‘perfect’ performance many times over. They wouldn’t attempt a particular feat in competition if they didn’t believe they’ve mastered it in practice. Yet, when the moment comes, some nail it, and others crumble.

Certainly sometimes there are unfortunate circumstances beyond their control that cause them to fail. Perhaps a competitor crashes into them, a piece of equipment breaks, or some other fluke occurs and they can’t do a thing about it. However, most of the time when one of them fails it’s because of mistakes they made themselves. Pressure, lack of confidence, insufficient preparation, or carelessness caused them to perform far below their ability.

Often, job seekers do the same thing.

They have a marketable background in their career, they get an interview for the job of their dreams, and they perform poorly at the interview and don’t get the job. What happened?

Although, from time to time, there may be other reasons… I believe the biggest reason athletes falter and job seekers bomb an interview is a lack of enough preparation!

The amount of preparation needed will vary from one person to another, however, it’s virtually impossible to be ‘over prepared’. Evan Lysecek’s coach said that in all the years he had been coaching skaters, he never had anyone that worked as hard as Evan. He had to tell him to quit practicing on some days. When it came time to execute his routine for the medal he gave the performance of his life and won the gold.

Larry Bird, the hall-of-fame basketball great used to say he never had much natural ability for the game. However he could determine to work harder than anyone else. He figured that if the best players in the league were practicing 100 free throws a week, he would practice 1,000.

In an interview, a candidate that is well prepared stands out dramatically from all the others that give answers off the cuff.

Success = Opportunity + Preparation

Practice, practice, and more practice sets up a successful performance. Sufficient practice creates confidence. It helps you learn how to compensate for a slight misstep. It makes the performance become second nature and doesn’t require as much thought when it counts. It reduces pressure, tension, and stress because you know you’ve done it dozens of times before.

Preparation is so key. It’s something everyone can do, yet most people don’t prepare nearly enough. Even athletes at the Olympic level often only do enough to perform well. However, those that win the gold prepare enough to excel and to be the best.

In this market companies are interviewing more candidates than ever for an open position because they have so much more to choose from. If they interview 5, or 10 candidates, someone will have prepared, and practiced extensively prior to the meeting. Will you be one of them? Will you have prepared more thoroughly than the others did? Did you practice answers to tough questions enough times so that they come naturally to you, or only enough so that you know approximately how you will answer?

Most people prepare by simply thinking “If I’m asked this question, I’ll talk about ____.” A well prepared person writes out their answer, hones the answer to make it as concise and substantive as they can, practices it, hones it further, then practices it further. They practice it into a recorder and listen back to themselves. They practice it to a friend, or relative, or spouse and get feedback. They practice questions from their kids over dinner. They practice in front of a mirror.

Sounds like a lot of work! It is… but you may be competing for the job against someone else that has gone to those lengths. Will you?

I’ve heard it said that “An amateur will practice until they get it right. A professional will practice until they can’t get it wrong.”

Success = Opportunity + Preparation

How prepared will you be for your next interview?

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Help them help you!

Most people understand the importance of networking when looking for a job, however, few do it effectively.

People tell me their networking conversations or meetings are awkward and rarely produce anything meaningful. When I dig a little deeper, I often find that they expect their networking contacts to somehow just know what to do. Most people would love to help you, but have no idea how they can. It’s up to you to help them help you!

Often, a job seeker will jump to a question like “Do you know of any job openings that would fit my  background?” Chances are the networking contact doesn’t know of a specific opening at the moment, and the conversation stalls there, becoming awkward for both. So… Rule #1 – Don’t ask for a job!

That may sound counterintuitive. After all, the conversation is about looking for job leads, isn’t it? Well, yes, and no. As soon as they realize you’re looking for a job, they understand that you’re interested in leads. In the course of the conversation you should certainly tell them that if they know of, or come across an opportunity, you would appreciate the referral. However, don’t put them on the spot at the moment by asking them if they know of leads directly.

So what is the objective and what should you ask? Although you hope they may offer up a potential job lead, your objective in each conversation is to get 2 or 3 additional people to talk to. In your conversation with them, you can give them an analogy like:

“My job during my search is to follow a trail of breadcrumbs from one person to another to another until I get to someone with the right opportunity for me, so I’m only hoping you might be able to point me to the next few links in the chain for me.”

Then have various questions prepared that would help them think of who they might refer. Questions like:

“Who would be the first couple of people you would connect with if you were in my situation?”

“Some of the best contacts for me are people that just seem to know EVERYONE. Who do you know that’s like that?”

“Is there anyone you know at ‘XYZ Company’, ‘ABC Corporation’, or ‘Alpha, Inc.’?”

“It’s often worthwhile for me to network with other people in my field whether they know of open jobs or not, who else do you know that’s also an ‘engineer’?”

“Often the best contacts don’t come from work situations, but rather from someone’s church, health club, other parents of kids sports teams, or some other outside activity. Is there anyone you might think of from some other situations like that?”

“Who else do you know that would be worthwhile for me to connect to?”

The likelihood of getting a response to any of your questions will depend on some key criteria in the mind of your contact:

• Are you professional, humble, and credible? If they don’t think these things of you, they are not going to be willing to stick their neck out to others they know by referring you on.
  
  
  
• Do they understand what you do and what you are looking for? If they don’t have a good idea of what you do or what it is you really want, they will feel uncomfortable about referring you to others.
  
  
  
• Do you communicate well? Can you articulate your experience and your questions well? Are you brief, and concise, or do you ramble on with too much information? They won’t want to refer you to their friends if they don’t feel comfortable with you themselves.
  
  
  
• Do you exude a positive attitude? Are you upbeat, or discouraged? Do you show passion, or are you a grump? They don’t expect a life of the party, however, don’t want to refer you to someone if you’re a downer.

In order to achieve all this it takes preparation! Write out, hone, and practice your Elevator Speech. Be prepared with plenty of possible questions to ask them so that you can have appropriate ones in mind regardless of the direction the conversation goes.

Always ask them if there’s some way you might be able to be of help to them. Make it clear that you would like to build a mutually beneficial relationship and you’re not only there to see what you can get out of it. People will always care more about helping you if they know you care about them.

Then finally, find some way to connect with all of your contacts once a month or so. See if you can be of use to them in some way, and let them know that you’d still be grateful for leads or referrals if anything new comes to mind.

That connection can best be accomplished by sending out a monthly email newsletter to all your contacts. Give a synopsis of what activity you’ve had the last month, what new companies you may be pursuing, a brief reminder of what you do and what you’re looking for, and perhaps some personal updates to make it warmer as well. Be sure to Blind Copy (BCC) all the addresses from your distribution list into the address field and attach another copy of your resume for them to have handy. People that have done that regularly tell me they get the greatest number of new leads from that newsletter each month. Many times, a contact that may not have had any ideas for you when you met may think of something weeks later, however, figure you may not need it anymore by then or they don’t know how to reach you. The newsletter continues to build the relationship, let’s them know you’re still actively looking, and gives them your current information to be able to reach you easily.

In order to make your networking as effective as possible… help them help you!

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Too Long or Too Short?

I’ve often said: “Show your resume to 10 people and you will get 10 different, and often conflicting opinions!”

A ‘good’ resume is very subjective to the reader. Everyone has preferences as to what’s appropriate and what’s not. There is no such thing as a ‘perfect’ resume and it should always be a work in progress… tweaking, tuning, and tailoring it to each position you apply to and for each circumstance. It’s a good idea to have multiple ‘generic’ versions so that you have appropriate ones for different situations.

Everyone has opinions about resumes and I’m no exception. I believe there are some good best practices in today’s job market that benefit anyone. However, I’m certainly willing to concede that other conflicting ideas may at times be valid as well.

One discussion that arises often is regarding an appropriate length of a resume… always one page? Two pages? Are 3, 5, or more pages ever appropriate? I believe there’s a definitive answer to that question: “It depends!”

Different situations can call for different resumes. In my opinion, the length of the resume can vary depending on where and how you use it:

One page: For someone with less than 5 years of professional work experience, I believe a 1 page resume is always appropriate. With only a few years of background to document, it’s likely to appear you’re adding fluff to stretch it out beyond 1 page. For someone with a relatively short work history, a 1 page resume can be used in any situation.

Regardless of the amount of experience you have, if you are meeting a networking contact, or sharing a resume with an acquaintance, a 1 page resume is easiest for them to get a sense of your background without having to dig too deep into a multi-page document. It can be thought of more as a marketing document. Pick the important information to share and choose your words carefully.

For someone with 15 or more years of experience, often a 1 page resume can appear too light. Although brevity can be a virtue, you don’t to want give your experience too little exposure either.

Two pages: When presenting a resume to apply for any direct-hire (as opposed to consulting or contract) position, it is virtually never a good idea to present more than 2 pages. In the vast majority of cases, someone will only scan your resume for less than a minute to make a determination about you. In that period of time they will not read past 2 pages. No matter how carefully you’ve chosen your words on the 3rd, 4th, or 5th pages, they will have no impact if they don’t get read. Even if they are willing to spend time to read more detail, your resume will have greater impact by expressing your experience effectively in fewer words.  if you can’t express your experience effectively in 2 pages, it’s not likely you will be able to do it well in 5 pages either.

Three pages or more: Although I find great benefits to brevity, there are situations where 3 or more pages are appropriate.

For someone pursuing consulting or contract opportunities, more detailed descriptions of previous projects and assignments is often called for. Typically, the consideration process for consultants involves fewer interviews, so more has to be learned from the resume. However, occasionally I’ve seen resumes that are 10 or more pages long and that is never called for.

Additionally, it can be a great advantage to take a longer and more detailed resume with you to an interview. Although you may have sent a 2 page resume to get the interview, it can be beneficial to bring a 3 to 5 page document to help guide the discussion. Often, an interview revolves around questions about what they read on your resume. Providing more detail can help steer the direction of the conversation to highlight areas you may want them to grasp about you. It’s a subtle way to gain more control in the process. As you meet your interviewer, you can hand them the longer resume and say something like: “I brought a more detailed resume to help with our discussion about my fit for the role.”

People often get passionate about their opinions regarding resumes. As a job seeker, you have to decide for yourself what advice to apply and what to ignore. You alone are responsible for what you present to a potential employer. Although there will certainly be many that disagree with the advice offered here, decide what makes the most sense for you.

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The job application process… and how to break through!

In this job market, it seems many job seekers have moved to Egypt… to the State of De-Nile!

They believe they can simply apply to job after job online, and through that process they will get a job. Although most of them instinctively know what the reality of that process is in today’s market, few change how they pursue that new position. Hopefully, by making today’s reality clear in this article, in black & white, some job seekers will wake up and realize they may need to try a different approach.

So… you see a job posting online that you like… and you decide to apply. What’s going on behind the scenes?

If the position is at a large company, chances are great that no one will see your resume or online application at all. Your submission doesn’t go to someone’s email or land on anyone’s desk, but rather goes into a database. Chances are you are one of anywhere from 500 to 1,000 people that applied in the same way (one large company I know receives 750 to 1200 applicants for every online posting).

Periodically an internal recruiter searches the database by keywords related to that role, or if the online application included a questionnaire, they look to see which submissions scored highest.

If your resume didn’t include the specific keywords they entered in their search, your entry doesn’t pop up. For example, if they key in the word ‘Supervisor’ as a search term, and your resume only says ‘Manager’, they will never see your resume. If you didn’t score 100% on their questionnaire, they will also not see your file. Out of hundreds of applicants, invariably at least a few will score perfectly.

A friend of mine who is an Executive VP at a large company tells of an experience where he was trying to help someone get an interview for an open position. He had her apply online, and then also took her resume to the internal recruiter working on that position. Even though the recruiter respected the VP, he wasn’t interested in talking to the candidate. He said that she scored 85% on the questionnaire, however, he had 16 candidates out of the nearly 750 that applied that scored a perfect 100%! Should he present someone less qualified to the hiring manager? (The referral did ultimately get the job… more on that later).

If you applied to a small or mid-size company, chances are they haven’t invested in a sophisticated applicant tracking system, so they do look through emails or printed resumes. However, it’s typical, even in a small company, that they will get 300-600 applicants for a posting. The Recruiter or Hiring Manager looks at the volume and their goal is to eliminate as many of those applicants as quickly as possible to reduce that pile down to 3 to 6 people they might call. In that scenario, they might scan a resume visually for 10 to 15 seconds looking for any reason to put them into the ‘NO’ pile. (And there isn’t enough time in the day to reply to the hundreds of people rejected to let them know they are no longer being considered.)

Although you might like to believe that when you apply, someone is reading every word trying to see how they can best use you in their organization. The reality is, their goal is to eliminate you from consideration as quickly as possible in the hopes that a small handful of candidates remain to pursue further.

In this market, they are not looking for the proverbial ‘Needle in the Haystack’, but rather they are trying to figure out the best needle in a stack of needles scattered within that haystack!

When hundreds of people apply for a position, certainly they are not all qualified. MOST of them scan job postings and think “I can do that!” They go ahead and apply whether they are really qualified or not hoping they may get lucky, and they feel they’ve had a productive day because they applied to 10, or 20, or 50 new jobs. When they are competing with maybe dozens of people that not only can do the job, but probably have actually done it, they will certainly not get a call. However they definitely make the selection process much more difficult. Among the applicants are the ones that have ‘been there and done that’ struggling to get noticed out of the tsunami of unqualified resumes.

I lead an 8-week job search class a few times each year. I often hear participants tell me they felt productive that week because they applied to ‘X’ number jobs. Part of my task is to gently make it clear that applying to countless jobs in this market is a colossal waste of time!

So how do you break out of that reality and start a more effective strategy in your job search? How did the woman in my example above get the job at the large company even though she wasn’t a perfect fit?

Networking and Direct Contact!

My friend at that large company bypassed the recruiter and went directly to the hiring manager. He told him, that although he knew several qualified people had applied, he recommended the hiring manager talk to this one as well. The candidate got the hiring managers name from my friend, and made an additional phone call on her own behalf. She was professional, polished, and practiced. She made a positive impression, got the interview, and later got the job. She would have never received a call from the recruiter, but took matters in her own hands and found success.

Especially in this market… if you don’t go the extra mile to find someone in the organization to talk to... anyone… the likelihood of getting a call is minute. Even talking to someone unrelated to the role will likely get you further than simply applying and waiting. How do you make those calls? You can find some help here: “I’ve got a contact name! Now what?”

Applying online makes you no more than a piece of data, just like the hundreds of others that did the same. A voice on the phone, hearing a true professional, will make a connection that is much more difficult to discard than an email or piece of paper.

I know that stepping away from the computer and actually calling someone you don’t know may be intimidating. However, it will likely make the difference between getting an interview or not. Decide if it’s more important to conduct your search only within your comfort zone… or to get a job!

Get out there! Stop denying the reality of this market, and do the things necessary to break through the crowd and get noticed. Out of 700 applicants… someone is taking the extra steps… make sure it’s you!

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