Month: October 2016

Career Planning for Your Next Big Move

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For most people, the idea of following their passion is an exercise in futility. If you are young, you may not know what you are passionate about because you have been so conditioned to work for grades. If you are older, any notion of passion may have been “beaten out of you” by systems where you have been rewarded to “shut up and do what you’re told, or else.”

As a result, most people I have spoken with, whether in search or in coaching are checked out in one way or the other. They want to have an impact but have little idea of how to foster change in their organizations, let alone their lives.

The other issue I see too frequently as that people accept the commoditized work they are performing and, as a result, have become “ordinary” and “easily replaceable.” Little distinguishes them from the next person with the result being when management is deciding between people to advance or promote, they might as well throw a dart at a group of pictures

What can you do to get ahead? How can you plan to get catapult your career?

Continued

 

© The Big Game Hunter, Inc. Asheville, NC 2016

 

Do you think employers are trying to help you? You already know you can’t trust recruiters—they tell you as much as they think you need to know to take the job they after representing so they collect their payday.

The skills needed to find a job are different yet complement the skills needed to do a job.

Jeff Altman, The Big Game Hunter has been a career coach and recruiter for what seems like one hundred years.

JobSearchCoachingHQ.com changes that with great advice for job hunters—videos, my books and guides to job hunting, podcasts, articles, PLUS a community for you to ask questions of PLUS the ability to ask me questions where I function as your ally with no conflict of interest answering your questions.

Connect with me on LinkedIn

You can order a copy of “Diagnosing Your Job Search Problems” for Kindle for $.99 and receive free Kindle versions of “No BS Resume Advice” and “Interview Preparation.”

Two Second Interview Questions and Answers

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Jeff Altman, The Big Game Hunter explains how to answer two tricky questions that are often asked on second interviews.

[spp-transcript]

Today, I want to talk with you about two questions the rest on second interviews pretty regularly. They aren’t difficult but, because of the stress and tension that is often associated with a second or third interview, people sometimes panic and blow the questions.

The first one is, “What have you learned about us so far?”

This requires a certain amount of good preparation for you because it will help coalesce your thoughts and opinions of this firm before the interview. You may be on a second or third interview. Each interview, you probably have spoken with different people or different groups of people that give you impressions about the job and the organization. You may have visited the website at some point before the interview.

Answer by starting off with an overview of the position as it is been discussed with you. When you get to the end of your description, pause and say, “Have I described it accurately because if I haven’t, I want to get the correct description of the position.”

Then talk about each of the people you’ve spoken with so far, what your sense of the personalities is and how they presented themselves to you ALWAYS IN COMPLIMENTARY TERMS, of course. Speak about the firm, what it’s standing is in its industry, what it does. That will come from the website and any other research that you’ve done.

So, that’s the easy question to handle. Then, there is the follow-up, “how would you proceed if you were hired for the role?”

Some people talk about it beginning from day one. I suggest talking about a firm before day one.

You receive the offer; you accept the offer; you give notice. You speak with your future manager about what their expectations are starting the role. You do that right after you give notice. In this way, you can lay out some plans, perhaps schedule some meetings not long after you come on board. Perhaps they have an idea of what your early schedule will be like, but it is best to talk about this proactively before you start, rather than beginning with your first day.

“On my first day, what will wind up doing is walking in and… ” Whatever

these are very simple questions but because of the stress associated with second or third interviews, you want to demonstrate that you have done your homework well.

And the second question (the one about preparing for when you start), that one is an easy one because what you are doing is showing that you are go-getter, aggressive, you are hardcharging and that you are getting yourself prepared even before you start.

[/spp-transcript]

Do you think employers are trying to help you? You already know you can’t trust recruiters—they tell as they think you need to know to take the job they after representing so they collect their payday.

The skills needed to find a job are different yet complement the skills needed to do a job.

Jeff Altman, The Big Game Hunter has been a career coach and recruiter for what seems like one hundred years.

JobSearchCoachingHQ.com changes that with great advice for job hunters—videos, my books and guides to job hunting, podcasts, articles, PLUS a community for you to ask questions of PLUS the ability to ask me questions where I function as your ally with no conflict of interest answering your questions.

Connect with me on LinkedIn

I’m Seen As a Job Hopper. What Do I Do ?

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[svp]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-RaKnedcKHI[/svp]
Sometimes, job hunters can be seen as job hoppers– changing jobs with too much frequency for the taste of the potential employer. What do you do? How do you explain why you change jobs with such frequency? It depends on your circumstances and here I talk about three possibilities.

[spp-transcript]

Sometimes, people are seen as job hoppers. They’ve changed jobs every year or two; sometimes, it looks like they’ve jumped into completely different fields; sometimes, economic circumstances of cause them to need to change from job to job. Let me address the job hopping question and try to put a lid on the list of your worries and fears.

If you are someone who has changed jobs every year or two and you are at the interview phase, it would have been better had you dealt with it in your cover email. The notion that I have is that you want to take on things head on and proactively because you know it can be seen as an issue, right? In your cover email, you might write something to the effect of, “I have changed jobs with some frequency but part of the reason I have is with an eye toward finding the field or career or the type of work that makes the most sense for me. I haven’t quite found it yet, but no one of these organizations will complain about my work ethic or my effort. I just didn’t find the job satisfying. As I understand this position, it’s far more appealing than anything I have done before. This is something that really excites me.”

In writing this in your cover letter what you’re doing is being proactive. Then, at the interview, you can again take it on because you know firms are going to raise it is an issue. If you are early in your career (like 30 years of age or less) and have had to deal with these  circumstances, you can deal with this in this way and it is creditable.

The next scenario is for someone who has been a consultant and, as a consultant, you are changing assignments with some regularity. What can you do? Sometimes the issue is your resume because you are listing these assignments in a way that suggests to employers that these are individual jobs and not consulting assignments. It’s best if you have an aggregated category on top of your consulting work such as, “CONSULTANT”  October 2013 to present. Even if it appears in your past, do the same thing. By doing it this way, you are demonstrating to firms that these were not full-time jobs, but consulting assignments.

Lastly, he if you are victimized by economic circumstances and forced to job hop like many people were there in the last economic slowdown when people took temp assignments and/or full-time positions from which they were cut back on because of economic circumstances, I don’t believe in lying but I do believe in telling the story in useful ways that an organization can understand.

Whatever the circumstances were in your life, you can say something like,” at that time, I went from organization to organization, not because I wanted to but because economic circumstances kept causing firms to restructure themselves, Lay off thousands of individuals, and, as a relative newcomer who hadn’t had a chance to prove myself with them, I was an easy target for layoffs. After all, I had only been there for eight or nine months; it was easy for them to chop me up.”

“I’ve since found places where I have been able to stay longer,” or, “I’m looking for a place where I can stay longer.”

[/spp-transcript]

Do you really think employers are trying to help you? You already know you can’t trust recruiters—they tell as they think you need to know to take the job they after representing so they collect their payday.

The skills needed to find a job are different yet complement the skills needed to do a job.

Jeff Altman, The Big Game Hunter has been a career coach and recruiter for what seems like one hundred years.

JobSearchCoachingHQ.com is there to change that with great advice for job hunters—videos, my books and guides to job hunting, podcasts, articles, PLUS a community for you to ask questions of PLUS the ability to ask me questions where I function as your ally with no conflict of interest answering your questions.

Connect with me on LinkedIn http://bit.ly/thebiggamehunter

Is It Worth Using Paid Job Boards or Can I Stick with The Free Ones?

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[svp]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4QugE5lzfFE[/svp]
Are PAID job sites worth the investment or should we just stick to the various FREE sites (i.e.Indeed, Careerbuilder, etc.)?

 

[spp-transcript]

Are paid sites worth the money Indeed, Careerbuilder and the like?

As always, it depends.

One paid site I know of used to be a great site but has lost a lot of its luster. It has become an aggregator of jobs from other sites. Should you pay for that? No! You get that from indeed.

Indeed and SimplyHired aggregate jobs from many places. Same as GlassDoor.com. You don’t need to pay for most of the jobs.

So the simple answer was, “No. It isn’t worth paying for job board.”

However, it can be worth paying for LinkedIn.If your network is small or average sized and you want to be reaching out to people (as you should),Here’s what I think you should do.Join as many as 100 groups in your area of specialization (LinkedIn lets you join as many as 100 groups).

If you join 100 groups,  starting with the largest ones in your area of specialization, then,If you discover you not able to connect with enough people, if you network is still not large enough to provide you with entrée to the firms that you want to apply to or join, then become a paid member of LinkedIn.Start with the least expensive one and work your way up from there.

The most extensive service available through LinkedIn, I think, is $99 per month (I could be wrong.  It might be $119) And allows you 30 InMails during that month. If you’re not bumping up against inMail limitations, let me suggest a workaround for you.

You can get a lot of the data you want from Google Chrome extensions.  The chrome extensions include Prophet, Connect6 People Discovery, Connectifier Sociallinks, Discoverly for Gmail, Linkedin and more, EmailHunter, and Lusha.

What they do is when you visit a page where you have a 2nd level connection, 1 of these services will be good about providing you with a work email for them even if you’re not a connection with the person.

Here are a few more:

ContactOut

Intelligence Search

Klenty

LeadFinch

MakeLinx

Mon.ki

PeopleDiscovery

Download and install these connections for Chrome and you will get most of the contacts that you need with these extensions. If you’re still not successful getting email addresses for everyone that you want to connect with, then go to the paid service for LinkedIn.

[/spp-transcript]

 

Do you really think employers are trying to help you? You already know you can’t trust recruiters—they tell you as much as they think you need to know to take the job they after representing so they collect their payday.

The skills needed to find a job are different yet complement the skills needed to do a job.

Jeff Altman, The Big Game Hunter has been a career coach and recruiter for what seems like one hundred years.

JobSearchCoachingHQ.com is there to change that with great advice for job hunters—videos, my books and guides to job hunting, podcasts, articles, PLUS a community for you to ask questions of PLUS the ability to ask me questions where I function as your ally with no conflict of interest answering your questions.

Connect with me on LinkedIn 

You can order a copy of “Diagnosing Your Job Search Problems” for Kindle for $.99 and receive free Kindle versions of “No BS Resume Advice” and “Interview Preparation.”

How to Ask for the Job – No BS Job Search Advice Radio

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Jeff Altman, The Big Game Hunter explains how to ask for the job at the end of your interview.

[spp-transcript]

Today, we’re going to talk about ending the interview and asking for the job.

Asking for the job is one of those classic pieces of advice that recruiters offer and no one really explains how to ask for the job. You never want to go into that situation by saying, Please give me the job! I need a job!” or anything that could be interpreted in that way; instead asking for the job is really a euphemism for expressing interest. So, I don’t think it’s appropriate at the end of the interview to say things like, I would be a perfect for this job. When are you going to hire me?” . . . or words to that effect or anything they could be interpreting that same way. Instead you want to express interest.

So at the very end, when they signal they are wrapping up,” I think the smoothest way to end is to say,”I just want you to know how interested I am in this role. Have I answered all your questions? Is there anything else you need to know in order to feel comfortable with me in this role? Is there anything that’s left unaddressed that you might want to ask me?” In this way, you have you given them one more cut at asking you questions you also expressed interest.

When they say “no. I think I’ve gotten everything I need.”

“Great! What would the next step be there in the hiring process? When might expect to hear back from you in one way or another?”

“Well, I expect we’ll finish first round interviews next week. We’ll be back to you right after that.”

“As things stand now, how do I rank? Again, I’m very interested.”

That’s it of very blunt question that requires that they give you a candidate assessment. To me, it’s best that you know right then and there, but you don’t have to necessarily be that blunt if you’re not comfortable with that. You can again say,”Again, I want to be clear, I am very interested in this role and look forward to hearing from you about next steps in the process. If I heard correctly. I know this isn’t cast in stone, because sometimes cancellations and reschedules occur but I might expect to hear back from you within the next week.

“Yes.”

“Terrific, thank you so much look. I look forward to meeting you again as well as other people on the team.”

The idea is to express interest. I happen to like that question about where you rank in the process because I would rather have you get honest feedback than the current BS where they don’t respond back right away and getting delays and you are holding out hope unecessarily. Sometimes, people make the mistake of freezing other interviews, waiting for that one thing.

You keep going out there interviewing until you have the offer in hand because otherwise, you can get caught short. You can be misled by someone who doesn’t have the courage to be honest with you. And, again, if they say to you, “You did really well. We think very highlyof you,” they still not committing themselves to you. At least you’re getting good feedback by being told you interviewed well.

There may be reasons why they choose someone else that include in differences in the compensation, personality and fit and a variety of other things.

At least for now, you’re getting feedback that you interviewed well. So, to me, the best way to ask for the job is to simply say, “I just want to know how interested I am in this role. What would the next steps be like? When would I expect to hear back? How would I rank amoung the other people you’ve interviewed so far?

[/spp-transcript]

Do you think employers are trying to help you? You already know you can’t trust recruiters—they tell as they think you need to know to take the job they after representing so they collect their payday.

The skills needed to find a job are different yet complement the skills needed to do a job.

Jeff Altman, The Big Game Hunter has been a career coach and recruiter for what seems like one hundred years.

JobSearchCoachingHQ.com changes that with great advice for job hunters—videos, my books and guides to job hunting, podcasts, articles, PLUS a community for you to ask questions of PLUS the ability to ask me questions where I function as your ally with no conflict of interest answering your questions.

Connect with me on LinkedIn

Why Do Some Companies Say the Position Requires US Citizenship or Permanent Residents?

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[svp]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rnHvjJnxYVo[/svp]

[spp-transcript]

Why do some Companies say a position requires US citizenship or permanent residence if the job doesn’t require a security clearance?

Firms use that language or language like it such as, “Position requires that you be able to work for any employer without sponsorship,” to indicate they are not willing to do an H1B transfer. It doesn’t mean that they are not willing to consider someone who has EAD status but they don’t want to incur the time or expense involved with doing a transfer.

Why? There are a number of reasons. I don’t want to give short shrift to anything so let me do my best to outline some of the reasons.

There was an expense that they incur.

This administration (Obama) has been hostile to both visa transfers and to  sponsorship in general. They make it extremely difficult for organizations to transfer one. Even with expedited visa transfer requests, it can take longer than many employers are willing to wait.

In addition, there was a provision in the bank bailout law called TARP that restricted firms that accepted money under the law from hiring individuals who required sponsorship as either an employee or as a consultant.

As a result, although the blame goes to the employer, is actually government policy that is made it exceedingly difficult to hire people who require visa transfers.

Again, this is not about whether or not you can do the job. I’m sure you can. This is about a situation where a firm is incurring an expense, time that their in-house counsel has to incur to do the transfer. In addition, there is a hostile environment toward visa transfers by the US government. Finally, there is legislation the requires firms to hire people who have US citizenship or green card status.

[/spp-transcript]

 

Do you really think employers are trying to help you? You already know you can’t trust recruiters—they tell you as much as they think you need to know to take the job they after representing so they collect their payday.

The skills needed to find a job are different yet complement the skills needed to do a job.

Jeff Altman, The Big Game Hunter has been a career coach and recruiter for what seems like one hundred years.

JobSearchCoachingHQ.com is there to change that with great advice for job hunters—videos, my books and guides to job hunting, podcasts, articles, PLUS a community for you to ask questions of PLUS the ability to ask me questions where I function as your ally with no conflict of interest answering your questions.

Connect with me on LinkedIn http://bit.ly/thebiggamehunter

You can order a copy of “Diagnosing Your Job Search Problems” for Kindle for $.99 and receive free Kindle versions of “No BS Resume Advice” and “Interview Preparation.”

My Contract is Ending and The CEO Doesn’t Know Me – Job Search Radio

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Someone wrote to me and asked about this predicament they were in. They are a consultant who is been successfully working at a client for quite some time. However, their assignment is ending very soon and he is afraid that he will not be extended/renewed because the CEO doesn’t know him.

He asks, “Should I stop by their office, introduce myself and ask how I can help?”

[spp-transcript]

I have a fun question today!

“I work for a blue-chip company and my employment contract is expiring. The CEO has never heard of me. Should I stop by their office and ask if I can help them and how?”

I must in all candor say that as a consultant, you committed the cardinal sin, the most basic mistake a consultant can make. That is, once you’re on assignment, making sure the people in charge know who you are and want you to remain there because they see the value in your work. This applies to people in full-time jobs as well.

You see, at the end of the day, if a tree falls in the woods and no one hears it, why should they care? You’ve done nothing up until this point to make sure that the real decision-maker cares. It also could be that this person isn’t going to be involved in the decision for you to remain but, in the way that you presented, it gives me the idea that they will.

So, if you suddenly appear on the doorstep, like a week before your contract runs out and say, “Hey! I’m the guy who… What can I do to help you? I only have a week because my contract is running out…” Well, they’ve probably already made the decision to keep you are not.

But, remember, they shouldn’t happen at the time of renewal. They should be going on all law. You want to stick your face in front of people who are involved with you being retained. You want to be doing great work for these people. It’s kind of like in executive support, when they interview people for roles where they will be supporting people in the C suite and secondarily some staff, they ask how a person would prioritize.

The correct answer is: if they are in the C suite, they go first. It doesn’t matter what anyone else thinks. They always good for service. Why? If you have to ask the question you are an idiot.

The same thing has to apply to you and your career, whether you are a consultant or on staff. At the end of the day, the real decision-makers (not your immediate boss, but the ones a couple levels up from them) have to know your name, no which are capable of, know what your successes are. You have to market yourself both internally and externally.

You have to develop relationships where you as an individual are thought of highly and you are not thought of as being a pain in the rear.

It’s probably too late to do anything but learn your lesson. This applies to you as a job hunter, you looking at your career… Everything you do has to create an impression that you are someone that they want to keep.

Because there is going to be another recession (like for the questioner, there recession is going to begin when their contract runs out). For you who have full-time jobs and feeling superior, there is another recession is going to come up and do you want to be on,” or do you want to avoid the list .

Your boss may not be all to save you because they are too low down in the food chain to really advocate hard for you. You have to work your way up and make sure that those in positions of authority know your value. Otherwise, you’re just another name on the staff list and they can go, “Jeff is only been here for three months. We’ve done well without him before, we can do well without him again.”

Or

“Who’s this Harry guy? He’s been here for five years? Never heard of him before. Loser!” Do you get my point?

I hope you never put yourself in that position again.

[/spp-transcript]

Do you think employers are trying to help you? You already know you can’t trust recruiters—they tell as they think you need to know to take the job they after representing so they collect their payday.
The skills needed to find a job are different yet complement the skills needed to do a job.

Jeff Altman, The Big Game Hunter has been a career coach and recruiter for what seems like one hundred years.

JobSearchCoachingHQ.com is there to change that with great advice for job hunters—videos, my books and guides to job hunting, podcasts, articles, PLUS a community for you to ask questions of PLUS the ability to ask me questions where I function as your ally with no conflict of interest answering your questions.= http://www.JobSa

Connect with me on LinkedIn

You can order a copy of “Diagnosing Your Job Search Problems” for Kindle for $.99 and receive free Kindle versions of “No BS Resume Advice” and “Interview Preparation.”

How to Respond to a Low Ball Job Offer – No BS Job Search Advice Radio

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Jeff Altman, The Big Game Hunter offers  a simple strategy for responding to a job offer lower than what you are looking for.

[spp-transcript]

 

 

Do you think employers are trying to help you? You already know you can’t trust recruiters—they tell as they think you need to know to take the job they after representing so they collect their payday.

The skills needed to find a job are different yet complement the skills needed to do a job.

Jeff Altman, The Big Game Hunter has been a career coach and recruiter for what seems like one hundred years.

JobSearchCoachingHQ.com changes that with great advice for job hunters—videos, my books and guides to job hunting, podcasts, articles, PLUS a community for you to ask questions of PLUS the ability to ask me questions where I function as your ally with no conflict of interest answering your questions.

Connect with me on LinkedIn

How Do You Attract the Attention of Recruiters From Top Tech Companies? – Job Search Radio

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A person who wrote asking about how they can get someone’s attention to the top tech firm. They went to an average to a mediocre school and they really want to work for such a firm.

On this podcast,I answer this from the perspective of a recent grad as well as the vantage point of an experienced professional.

[spp-transcript]

You attract the attention of recruiters from top tech companies? I’m good answer this for new grads and experienced professionals alike. I’d but I want to read the sub question from the original question I read.

“I’m going to be graduating with a bachelor’s degree next year and I’m looking to get into software engineering. I did not go to a well ranked school for computer science. I’m looking for some ideas of how to attract the attention from recruiters.”

Let me answer this one, then go to the general computer science grad and then come to experienced people. So the first part is, I didn’t go to a great school. How do I attract the attention?

The answer is – – it’s probably too late. What you’ll need to do is invest some time and do some great work that you noticed in order to get into that top organization. Why? Because they are not there to satisfy you. They are trying to find exquisite talent for their organization. They’ve come up with criteria that works for them.

You are a stretch at best and probably a loser from their previous experience. That’s not a criticism of you; they just come up with formulas that dictate who is going to be successful in their organization. It is not the person who went to the “C” school (by that I mean, like A, B, C, D school; I’m giving you the benefit of the doubt; you went to a mediocre school at best).

They are not there to do social work and make you happy. They are there to solve a problem, right? You are going to have to up your game and instead of doing the mediocre work that caused you to be in the “C” school, you are going to have to step up your game. That’s going to be on you.

You can do that in your next job. You can do that by working on projects on the side. However you do it, you’re going to have to step up your game so that they want to talk to you.

That’s for that person. For the new grad, for this person who hasn’t really played big yet, you will have to step up. If you’ve gone to a top school, you have it easier, not easy because you come with that brand with you. So if you attended Stanford you have a certain amount of recognition that comes with that. They have a positive halo but you have got to deliver the goods (positive halo means that the people that they’ve hired from that school in the past have been successful in their organization). Think of it from that perspective.

Find the alum from your school who really going to work there and see if you can develop a relationship where they want to refer you. That’s the easiest way to get in. From there, it is having a profile that causes them to want to reach out to you. Talk to your career services office to see how they can set you up, IF they can set you up (I’m going pass Stanford at this point, obviously).

Again, previous grads who’ve gone to work at these firms. Career services. Creating a profile that’s attractive that calls attention to you in your work. Reaching out to HR and hiring managers (HR I only bring up from the standpoint of new grads because, most of the time, unless you are being referred by a previous grant or someone that you know there, that’s going to be your only way of getting it).

Lastly, for the experienced person, if you’ve done great work if you are marketing yourself beyond, “I’m in my job. I’m in my silo doing this task. If you are out promoting yourself because your career is part what you do and part market (after all, you know of these firms for a variety of reasons including how they’ve granted themselves from a career standpoint, right). You have to follow their model and brand yourself and market yourself and promote yourself outside of the cubicle that you work in for your current firm.

Your LinkedIn profile is a small piece. Your public persona. Where you put yourself out is going to be part of this. Where can you connect with people who work at these firms? Where are the speakers from these organizations appear in? Can you get introduced to them there or introduce yourself to you there?

There are lots of different ways to market and promote yourself but the big thing is making sure that the world knows about you. I want to make sure you hear that again – – making sure that the world knows about you… And doing it consistently..

[/spp-transcript]

Do you think employers are trying to help you? You already know you can’t trust recruiters—they tell as they think you need to know to take the job they after representing so they collect their payday.

The skills needed to find a job are different yet complement the skills needed to do a job.

Jeff Altman, The Big Game Hunter has been a career coach and recruiter for what seems like one hundred years.

JobSearchCoachingHQ.com is there to change that with great advice for job hunters—videos, my books and guides to job hunting, podcasts, articles, PLUS a community for you to ask questions of PLUS the ability to ask me questions where I function as your ally with no conflict of interest answering your questions.= http://www.JobSa

Connect with me on LinkedIn

You can order a copy of “Diagnosing Your Job Search Problems” for Kindle for $.99 and receive free Kindle versions of “No BS Resume Advice” and “Interview Preparation.”

Do I Have a Chance When I Am Competing With Someone Internally? (VIDEO)

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[svp]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UwVVvDPvn6s[/svp]
I’ve applied for a job at a company where there’s someone who has his eyes on the same job. Do I have a chance?

[spp-transcript]

Here’s a fun question the someone asked me: I’ve applied for a job in a company where there is someone who has his eyes on the same job. Do I have a chance?

I hate seeming cynical but here’s a fact I can tell you: this goes on all the time. There is always an internal person who is being evaluated for the same job as you. The reason they’re looking externally is that they are not sure that anyone internally is qualified or suitable to do the role.

That may depend on whether the advancement opportunities with the same manager or a different manager. Remember, they’ve seen this person day in and day out, perhaps four years. They haven’t given them a promotion into this job yet, knowing full well what they are capable of. They decide to open this up to the outside because they’re not sure if this person can really do it.

So, yes, you have a chance and the biggest issue isn’t whether you’re competing with this person because you’re always competing with the person. You’re competing with people internal to a firm and you’re competing with people at external to the firm. In other words, other people are applying for this job, right? Don’t distract yourself with worry or concern about the internal candidate. After all, if they were so good, they would’ve already promoted this person into the job. If the manager liked them so much, he or she would probably be in a bind (the bind would be, “I have to give this person up to another manager? They are really good. I want to hold onto them.” They may work to keep them in the role they are currently in.

Don’t sweat the small stuff. Focus on the things you can control– make them fall in love with you. After all, no love… They are going to make you an offer, right?

[/spp-transcript]

Do you really think employers are trying to help you? You already know you can’t trust recruiters—they tell as they think you need to know to take the job they after representing so they collect their payday.

The skills needed to find a job are different yet complement the skills needed to do a job.

Jeff Altman, The Big Game Hunter has been a career coach and recruiter for what seems like one hundred years.

JobSearchCoachingHQ.com is there to change that with great advice for job hunters—videos, my books and guides to job hunting, podcasts, articles, PLUS a community for you to ask questions of PLUS the ability to ask me questions where I function as your ally with no conflict of interest answering your questions.

Connect with me on LinkedIn http://bit.ly/thebiggamehunter