Career Cube Blog

You see an ad in the paper that sounds perfect for you. It’s exactly what you’re looking for! You know they’ll love you! Your resume is ready to go so you jump up, whip off a cover letter, and mail them both out. Then…..nothing. What do you do?

There’s a company down the road you’ve heard great things about. They have a good reputation and it’s a short commute. You decide to see if they’re hiring anyone, especially in their marketing department. You call the company and ask for Human Resources. On the other end of the line, you hear “Human Resources. This is Patty.” What do you say?

You’ve been in sales for several years and are tired of it. You’re thinking of a career change and finance sounds pretty interesting. You haven’t the faintest idea what would be involved or the best way to plan a career path, or even what to expect once you get into the profession. How do you find out?

And one more…..

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I was talking with a friend of mine the other day and he mentioned that one of his biggest pet peeves about candidates was when he asked the person he was interviewing if they had any questions for him, and they replied that they had already asked their questions of the other interviewers.

I’m not sure why people do this.

Yes, the interviewers will definitely talk about you when you leave and compare notes about what you said and what questions you asked. That’s why they ask different people to interview you. They’re checking to see if their questions covered different parts of your experience, if you gave some drastically conflicting answers, or if they could see you fitting in with the company. They’ll also talk about what questions you asked of them.

Now granted, asking everyone you interview with to explain the job description, typical duties or skills that are required for the job is not the best use of your time because you’ll probably get the same answer from everyone. You want to ask questions that will give you different people’s opinions about the company. For example, a good question to have in your back pocket for any round of interviews is “What do you see as the biggest challenge for this company (or this position) next year?” or “What do you think will be the biggest threat from a competitor in the future?” “Where do you think that this industry is headed?”, or even “What is it like to work here? How would you describe the atmosphere of this company?” You want to ask any question that will give you a different answer when you ask different people. A question that shows that you want to hear the interviewer’s opinion about a topic.

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People who are job hunting tend to be very passive sometimes: posting resumes on the job boards instead of combing them every few days; letting recruiters contact them instead of finding a recruiter that can make things happen; being too optimistic about a job prospect, saying “I might as well check it out - why not?” and then you end up saying “I knew that. Why did I bother?”; wondering why so much time has gone by with so few results.

Everyone could be probably twice as pro-active as they currently are. Instead of waiting for openings to find you, you need to be looking for the openings.

Finding your perfect job is about choice (seems to be a frequent theme of mine, doesn’t it!) It’s about the choice to apply - or not. It’s about the choice to accept an interview - or not. It’s about the choice to return for a second when you’re invited to do so - or not. It’s not as much about whether you want to accept the offer or not, because by the time you get to that stage - if you’ve been doing your homework - you ought to know if you want to be that far along in the game. And if you don’t, then you should have cut out earlier.

Finding your perfect job is not about putting more eggs in your basket as your search goes on, it’s about taking them out of your basket.

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