Body Language Mistakes | Job Search Radio

badpostureThings can wrong fast if you make any (or all) of these mistakes.

 

[spp-transcript]

Body language is often misunderstood by job hunters who think this is a way to hypnotize people into hiring them for jobs are not qualified for (Follow the pen.  You are getting drowsy and drowsier).  It doesn’t work that way.

Your behavior is either congruent and emphasizes the points that you are trying to make or in-congruent and, as a result, you turn off people. In one example, I might be speaking very calmly  yet flailing my arms.  I want to highlight a few of the behaviors you might engage in so that you become aware of them and don’t shoot yourself in the foot and damaged candidacy.

The 1st one is fidgety. Have you ever spoken to some of his just bouncing around, all over the place, and they are just driving you crazy! Fidgeting is a turnoff. Be conscious of when you might do it and stop!  If you are feeling nervous, It is better to use your hands to emphasize points, but never block your face.

The next one is what’s called in the business pointing or chopping– – Hard, demonstrative gestures that really wind up exaggerating what you are saying versus emphasizing things with your hands. Never go across your face with your hands under any circumstances.  You shouldn’t use your hands to frame your face (There are very few circumstances where someone can get away doing that).  Instead, keep your gestures lower if you’re going to use your hands to emphasize points.  Don’t do the strong aggressive things to emphasize what you are saying and risk turning people off by feeling threatened.

Your posture needs superior confident.  Rather than sitting in a chair hunched over, slumping over in the chair looking bored and disinterested, or the reverse, appearing to cocky, looking as though you don’t have a care in the world sitting with one arm over the back of the chair and treating the person that you speaking with as though they are an idiot, be aware of your posture because both extremes can be costly.

You don’t want to break eye contact and just talk every which way; you always want to appear as though you are maintaining eye contact.  In doing so, you can’t look like you are staring.  People who appear to be staring are received as though they are crazy.  No one wants to hire a crazy person who is staring at them.You know, like the one who never looks like they are going to blink.

If the person is profoundly ugly, talk to just the right or just the left side of their face.  Most people will be able to tell that you’re not looking them in the eye.

The last one I’m going to bring up is keeping your arms folded. The way keeping your arms fall that is interpreted is that you are closed or withdrawn, or, if you are overweight it is hard to sit in the chair, I know, there is a tendency to fold arms in front of you.  Instead, keep your arms in fern of you or to the sides, framing your body.  That will go a long way toward dispelling what could be a misinterpretation of what you are communicating.

Again, being hired will be because you’ve done this, but because you have the skills to do the job and have created trust and rapport with the interviewer that you are the solution to what they are looking for.  However, if your behavior is a turnoff, there is no way you’re going to get the job.

[/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.

Connect with me on LinkedIn

Please give “Job Search Radio” a great review in iTunes. It helps other people discover the show and makes me happy!

Use A Surrogate | Job Search Radio

To me, this has been an awful political season the United States. Between the primaries in the general election, we have witnessed attacks and revelations by all the candidates that are absolutely miserable. In the past, politicians haven’t been a part of this, preferring instead a different way to attack their opponents.

There are often better ways to handle things than badgering a hiring manager.

[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.

Connect with me on LinkedIn

Please give “Job Search Radio” a great review in iTunes. It helps other people discover the show and makes me happy!

Switching to a Full Time Job | Job Search Radio

People who want to switch from being a consultant or contractor to a full-time position experience challenges they need to address. Here, I point out a few of them and how to handle them.

 

[spp-transcript]

If you’re a consultant or a long-term temp or a contractor and trying to switch to full time work on the staff of the firm, rather than going as a nomad from place to place, how do you approach that?  What kind of challenges do you face?

Let me speak with you about a few major ones. You may run into.

  1. Often your assignments are relatively short-term (3 months here, 6 months there) in your 1st contact may not be with the hiring manager.  You may apply to something through an applicant tracking system (by the way, never ever applied to a job through an applicant tracking system.  If you do, your resume will look like a job hopper to it).  The easiest way to address this is by having a category above all them, above all your consulting assignments that says, “Consultant” it has the aggregated dates off to the far right.  The word, “Consultant,” and the aggregated dates, should be in a larger font than the rest of the resume.  Let’s say you are consultant from May 2010 to present, what you are doing is letting them know that what they are seeing our consulting assignments or temp assignments, rather than you bouncing around from one full-time job to another.  The systems will pick up on that; the other dates will not be problematic because the system will pick up on the original dates as the system parses the resume.  So, again, aggregate all your consulting work into one category that says, “Consultant” so that you are not balanced out by systems or a busy HR person or hiring manager who resume resume and says to themselves, “This person has had a lot of jobs!”
  2. Often, you are hired as a consultant to a “doer.”  Rather than manage people who do things.  Let’s say you’re a $70 per hour person, that translates into about $140,000 per year.  By that time at an institution, they expect that you’ve managed people, done budgeting and handle different resources and, generally, that isn’t the kind of work that you doing.  You’re doing the kind of work that staff does.  like your two weeks’ vacation which, at $70 per hour,  You need to learn to be a little flexible about compensation.  After all, they will be paying the lion’s share of your benefits, you’re getting paid vacation, you are more likely to be offered $115,00 to $125,000.Firms are going to try to chop you down to a price range that fits the work you do.  You need to start looking at the value of benefits you will receive–that is $2700 per week in money you are paid for not working times 2 or $5400.Then there is the value for them paying for your benefits or part of your benefits) and sick time . . . suddenly those amounts add up in value at the rate of $2700 per week. They start looking at those numbers and you need to start recognizing the value of those numbers as well. Learn what your baseline is for compensation. If you decide it is $135000, that’ OK just be prepared for a longer job search or look for that company that pays more for talent.
  3. This is one that tends to only be done in person or at the time of the phone interview. I’m reminded of this because I have a friend who is moving from a role where he has been an executive chef for a number of year to something different but still in the food industry. The question invariably is asked, “Why would you want to do this?” That’s the big question that, even if they don’t ask, you have to answer. If they ask you, you need to drop your voice and slow your speech. Interviewing involves a certain amount of acting and this is an example of it. It isn’t just a “spelling bee,” (They ask you a question and you crank out the answer instantly) and show how smart you are. This is the emotional intelligence part of the interview. They want to know whether you are sure you want to be an employee and stop being a consultant or you can’t speak quickly or nervously. temp where you make “all that money” and come on to staff. “The fact is it’s tie for me to settle down. I’ve got family and responsibilities and I’ve decided that joining an organization where I can put down roots and become a contributor to a firm makes a lot more sense for me than being a contractor.” You have to look them in the eye as you say that; you can’t sound insincere. Don’t rush your speech; it doesn’t sound sincere.

Recognize the difference in your cadence, note your normal speaking voice, slow down and answer the question directly. Consultants change to fill time work all the time.

[/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.

Connect with me on LinkedIn

Please give “Job Search Radio” a great review in iTunes. It helps other people discover the show and makes me happy!

The “Not One Single Person Gets Off” Brainteaser | Job Search Radio

Although brainteaser interviews were discredited a few years ago there are still firms that employ them, particularly those that like to think of themselves as being “smart.”

I haven’t done a brainteaser showed a long time so I thought I would bring out one that made me groan.

 

[spp-transcript]

I haven’t done a brainteaser in a long long time so I thought I would do one today and see if you could get the answer.

Here’s the question.

There’s a bus traveling to the Hay River full of people and no one gets off the bus throughout the journey. When the bus gets to the Hay River not a single person is left on the bus. How is this possible?

I’m going to give you a moment to come up with the answer.

The trick in most brainteasers is that there’s a keyword or phrase you have for listen to before it sneaks by you. That word or phrase is the key to answering the problem.

Were you able to spot the keyword in there?

The keyword in this one is, “single” as in not a single person got off the bus.

The answer is not a single person got off the bus because all of them were married.

I would read the question again and let’s see if you can spot how seductive it is.

There is a bus traveling to the Hay River that is full of people and no one gets off the bus throughout the journey. When the bus gets to the Hay River however, not a single person is left on the bus. How is this possible?

Not a single person. That’s the key phrase because they are unmarried.

[/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

Please give “Job Search Radio” a great review in iTunes. It helps other people discover the show and makes me happy!

The 10000 Hour Rule and Job Hunting | Job Search Radio

More than eight years ago, Malcolm Gladwell released the book called, “Outliers: The Story of Success.” Among the many great points he makes, he popularized the notion of the 10,000 hour rule. On this show, I utilize the 10,000 hour rule to make a point about you and being a job hunter.

 

[spp-transcript]

I want to talk to job hunters and say something that will give you what I think is a Homer Simpson moment. You’ve heard of the 10,000 hour rule, right? It takes 10,000 hours of focus concerted effort under the advice and tutelage of the teacher in order to be an expert.

When you start job hunting, you have exactly how much experience? Think about it. You have exactly how much? And you putting how much effort into preparing? Writing your resume. What do you know about writing resumes? You may have read a bunch of them but how much experience you actually have writing one? Judging by what I see from people, somewhere near zero.

How about interviewing? How much interviewing have you ever done? I doubt it’s anywhere near 10,000 hours and then you wonder why you don’t get results.
.
Maybe it’s about networking. You have the LinkedIn profile that doesn’t get results or maybe you don’t even have a LinkedIn profile and wonder and wonder why no one is calling you.

Salary negotiation! That’s the one. But you don’t really have a lot of experience with that either and wonder why you don’t get results.

Let me ask you a question. If you could go to a website and get answers to all the critical interview questions and get advice from a master, without be helpful to you? I’m sure it would be.

I recently launched JobSearchCoachingHQ.com, and inexpensive site, with over 400 pieces of content including all my books and guides the job hunting, lots of videos, a bunch of podcasts, articles that I’ve written, curated so it is really good, available to you on the site for one price.

Plus the ability to ask me questions when you’re stuck with something

. You may think your friends, family, former managers know what they’re talking about when they speak with you but stop and think for a moment. How many jobs have they ever filled?

You may say your boss or former boss interviews a lot of people and certainly they should know. Trust me. When they’re on the other side of the desk, they stink up the joint and if you don’t believe me, point blank you’re wrong. I interview people who are hiring managers and they are awful… But they give you advice.

It’s time to stop giving other people advice about what they should do and take some for yourself.

Figure it out. When you write that resume how much experience that you have? Three hours over the course of 20 years? You don’t know what you’re doing. You think you do but you don’t know what you’re doing.

Again, JobSearchCoachingHQ.com is my site with advice for job hunters good anywhere in the world (you have to speak English to understand me, of course). There is a lot of great material there and you’ll get your questions answered by me and were building the community there were other people will be able to chime in and offer you advice.

Again, JobSearchCoachingHQ.com

[/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

Is It OK to Add a Recruiter on LinkedIn After An Interview?​ | Job Search Radio

I love this question. It shows that the person is thinking and trying to use a new relationship to build your network. But the question is a little unclear. Agency recruiter? Corporate recruiter? I decided to answer both.

 

[spp-transcript]

Today’s question is, “Is It OK to Add a Recruiter on LinkedIn After An Interview? Whether You’ve Gotten the Job or Or Not

Great question. One thing I don’t know is whether this is an agency recruiter corporate recruiter. I’ll take the time to answer both. Let me start with agency recruiter.

Why are you waiting until after an interview???You can do that right at the beginning.You’ll get access to their connections and, of course, they’ll get access to yours. But let me let you in on a secret.They probably have far more connections than you so you benefit far more by the request and they do. They may pick up a small incremental addition. Using myself as an example, I’m someone with over 16,00 1st level connections. I only start adding LIONs (LinkedIn Open Networkers) and recruiters In the past few months. Most of my contacts are with “civilians.” You know, people who are employed in organizations looking for work or who are successful in organizations.

For me, I pick up very little from you you pick up a lot for me. Reach out to agency recruiters all the time in the market area that you work. Do not delay.

Corporate recruiters. Reach out to corporate recruiters. Julie after the interview, whether you get the job or not. Reach out to the hiring managers you talked with after the interview whether you get the job or not. For the hiring manager, you can say something like, “I enjoyed speaking with you. Whether you choose me or not, I would like to stay in touch.

It’s a real simple, human message. Do the same thing with the corporate HR recruiter. Send the same type of message.

“Thanks for taking the time to speak with me today. Whether you advance my candidacy are not, I would like to stay in touch. After all, you never know where we might run into one another again. Perhaps we can help one another.”

It’s a nice approach. So, by all means, reach out to recruiters. You don’t have to wait to connect with agency recruiters. With hiring managers and corporate recruiters, yes, wait until after you meet with them. That’s the perfect time.

[/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

Should You Follow LinkedIn Recommendations for Getting More Profile Views? | Job Search Radio

LinkedIn often tells you to take certain actions to get more profile views. Should you? Are they a waste of your time or something actually worth following?

 

[spp-transcript]

LinkedIn often sends out messages that says things like, “Getting more profile views will help you get found for the right opportunity. Fill in the type of professional that you are… You will get more views by taking some of the steps below.” They include adding a particular skill under your profile, adding a summary or connecting with a particular person or following a particular company. The question is should you for the follow the strategy even though it may seem stupid to you?

The fact of the matter is, you will get more profile views if more people notice you. In their recommendation of following a particular person, often that’s a gateway because this person is being followed by a lot of individuals themselves. Thus, it opens up your network much more broadly.

They are right. Having a summary does improve your rankings. People with summaries, especially if your job hunting, and in your contact information (a phone number and/or email address or minimally an email address while you job hunting that forwards to your real address) goes a long way toward improving your contacts.

Adding a skill or a company to follow or a particular person will also help.

“But I don’t know this person!”

Connecting with people who are not relevant to your business is a good idea because the number of connections you have affects how many people, including those that are relevant to your business will see your full profile and how many you will see when you search from your account.

File the LinkedIn recommendations and do make those connections as well as follow those firms and fields they point to. At the end of the day, what will happen is you will wind up coming up in the rankings hire, be connected with more people. The person they recommend will have tons more connections that you have and that will help you come up higher in first and second level connections.

[/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

Is One-Click Apply a Good Thing For You To Use? | Job Search Radio

apply

More and more sites offer what is called “one click apply” to make it easy for you to apply for a job but does that make it good for you to use?

 

[spp-transcript]

More and more sites use the feature of one-click apply to make it easy for you to apply for a position.… But should you actually use it? Is one click apply actually a useful tool for you as the job hunter? Let me explain what happens with one click apply and the two ways that is offered.

First, when you are on a job board like Indeed, and they say, “you’ve uploaded a resume to us and we will forward it on to the employer.” Here’s what happens behind the scenes. They are sending that same generic resumes to every job. It’s like the broken watch that is right twice a day; that resume may or may not actually demonstrate the fit for the job and you haven’t done anything to customize your resume. That can be a problem for you, costing you an opportunity.

In addition, when they send a resume, they don’t have your address there. They have city, state but no ZIP Code. You may think, “What is the big problem?” The issue is they submit the resume for you and even uploaded to a database or applicant tracking system that is on the recipient’s side. Without the ZIP Code, no one will ever find you again when other positions open up at that firm.

“Huh?”

No one will ever find you. Let me give you a perspective.

Let’s say, you apply to a position of mine and the resume doesn’t have your ZIP Code. How my going to find you in my system?

“You search by skills.”

No. I search by skills and location. Without a ZIP Code, I don’t have your location.

“Why can’t you look me up by city?”

Databases don’t work that way. They are set up to search by a certain radius of a particular location as defined by ZIP Code. The result is you are lost forever and become invisible to me.

“I have submitted to a local recruiter!”

They do the same thing. I will use New York as an example. I have a job in Manhattan and if I search for people within a 50 mile radius of Manhattan, the databases all search by ZIP Code. How will I find you?

“They will search everything.”

But they won’t do that. They search by ZIP Code. So, you are lost to them. They won’t find you.

Another way sites do it is by taking your LinkedIn profile and submitting it for the job. Take a look at your LinkedIn profile. That’s thinner than your resume. It certainly isn’t customized to the job. The result is that you are basically dumping spam on people.

For most job hunters, one click apply is a convenience that isn’t effective. It isn’t something that will get you more interviews; it will allow you to submit more resumes and give you the feeling like you’re doing “stuff,” but it’s not going to give you the results that you want.

So I want to discourage you from using one click apply and, instead, take note of the job, submit a customized resume for it and go from there. It will be far more effective.

[/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.

Connect with me on LinkedIn

Diagnosing Your Job Search Problem – Job Search Radio

woman_with_doctorThings can go wrong in many places in your job search. Here I break down the problem points for you.

[spp-transcript]

You’re involved with a job search. It just isn’t working for you. How do you critique what’s going on in order to figure out what to “course correct?”

It’s very rare that a job search goes well enough that we could chart ut as following a perfectly straight line upward and that you wind up in a job instantly. Often the situation breaks down so let;s dissect it.

If you’re sending out resumes and not getting interviews,

you have a resume problem. The resume isn’t working for you. How you are submitting it isn’t working for you.

If you aren’t getting phone calls about resumes that you posted on job boards, the issue may be one of two things – – the career that you’ve chosen for yourself is a particularly marketable or, more likely, your resume is not keyword rich in the skills that recruiters are looking for; you may need to change the language on your resume

If you’re getting calls for phone interviews and are not being invited in, you have a problem with phone interviewing. You just don’t know how to do it well enough to entice people to want to continue the conversation. You need to improve upon that. There are many ways that you can do that; I have quite a few available through JobSearchCoachingHQ.com.

If you are having phone interviews, getting invited in for in-person interviews in not being asked back, you don’t interview well in person. That can be caused by a variety of things, too numerous to mention here, but that’s where the breakdown is occurring.

If you are getting invited back for final interviews in not getting past “The Boss of Bosses” for the organization, the person who the job ultimately reports, not the immediate manager but “The Overlord,” you are not making connections with people, certainly not at the high levels.

If you are getting job offers by getting lowballed, you haven’t done a good enough job on your interviews to make them believe that you can solve their problems. So, they basically are tossing a bone at you and seeing the field bite. You haven’t made them fall in love yet.

This is how a job search can get deconstructed. There are obvious tasks along the way and often people go through the process by going through the motions. They send out resumes and don’t prepare for phone calls, they haven’t made their resume keyword optimized to make it attractive on job boards, their flipping resumes across the transom like they are burgers at a fast food restaurant, how well is that working? Do you find them tasty? No, of course not and neither does the employer. You’re a spammer.

If you are interviewing and not practiced for it, it’s your fault because you haven’t done the homework necessary to impress people.

All in all, job hunting involves skills that you can learn and develop.

JobSearchCoachingHQ.com provides those answers for people. Sign up on the site, it’s inexpensive, there’s a lot there that you can learn from.

[/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.

Connect with me on LinkedIn

3 Tips About Resumes – Job Search Radio

Whether you are a student or an old hand at job hunting, here are a few reminders you can use when writing your resume.

[spp-transcript]

Jeff Altman, The Big Game Hunter is a coach who worked as a recruiter for what seems like one hundred years. His work involves life coaching, as well as executive job search coaching and business life coaching. He is the host of “Job Search Radio” and “No BS Job Search Advice Radio,” both available through iTunes and Stitcher.

Are you interested in 1:1 coaching from me?  Email me at JeffAltman@TheBigGameHunter.us and put the word, “Coaching” in the subject line.

Do you have a question you would like me to answer? Pay $25 via PayPal to TheBigGameHunter@gmail.com

JobSearchCoachingHQ.com offers 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. Like me on Facebook.

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.”