Category: Job Search

Why your Charisma can Sabotage your Interveiw

As a Resume Writer and Career Strategy Consultant, I find that I am often screening for clients who possess some – “game.” Since a short, successful job search favors a candidate who can master and apply the rules of successful interviewing.

For example, a person’s resume may highlight that they generated a 60% increase in sales in a particular year. But, when asked about the overall sales goal plan or the previous year’s numbers, many candidates fail to give a clear, succinct process-focused answer.

Be wary if asked to discuss achievements and you experience a “high self-esteem, egotistical overconfident” moment- you could sabotage the winnable moment.

Charisma is often just self-absorption in disguise. And while its utility is unmatched as a brilliant one-act play in the short term, it is generally catastrophic when used to build relationships and buy-in longer term. 

If charisma, overly high self-esteem, or egotistical overconfidence can shipwreck your interview as a candidate, the same goes for the interviewer trying to size you up at the interview if they are burdened with the same attribute.

Be mindful as you extol your brilliance in an interview. Is the interviewer trying to determine the value you will bring to the project, or are they seeking to ascertain whether you are a solid pair of shoulders upon which they can climb to achieve success?

Sometimes it is charisma’s dazzling brilliance at the interview where the chat with the interviewer goes so well that the interviewer takes few notes of value. Consequently, the interviewer cannot deliver when it comes to selling you as the candidate of choice. All because your charisma and perceived personal magnetism got in the way.

So, be wary, success in an interview requires some self-effacement, and one needs to accept that interviewing is a shared performance. Candidates excel at interviews when they seek to gather information, exchange ideas, are flexible enough to remain quiet during parts of the discussions, and appear to take good notes.

So, while interviewing is theatre, remember that a masterful performance is not the endgame.

Why the key to a successful career may be our relationships with others.

The feeling that we must make up for time lost by job-related turmoil, or lay-offs, has heightened the need to rethink our careers. This career-changing hustle has pushed every working man, woman, manager, and manipulator to accept that a job change should future-proof your career.

The need to constantly keep an eye on the possibility of a career blip has made it difficult, if not impossible, for many careerists to use the most effective career management and career enhancement strategy, which involves developing career enhancement relationships with other people. 

Given the general feeling that everyone is now a competitor, people find it difficult to reach out to colleagues. But the fact is that people will help you, but it’s up to you to reach out to them.

Improving the quality and frequency of our interactions with others who are also building their careers increases our visibility. It can positively influence their perceptions of us as professionals as we share insights and reinforce our reputation as colleagues to be recommended for a job opening with their firm or as someone who can be recommended to others.

Participating in deliberate advice and feedback sharing can help us and others confirm that they are on the right track in their career moves. It can also educate us on the areas where we need to develop or gain further experience. Although many people are back at the office, far too many continue to maintain their WFH isolationist this is my space approach to interacting with their colleagues. As career strategists, we hear from clients that it is currently more difficult to share or hear of potential opportunities.

If change is the impetus to encourage inertia, a short-term contract role that isn’t your first choice may be worth consideration. Future employers will appreciate that sometimes individuals need to be pragmatic yet adaptable to ensure they can pay their bills. You will still need to show enthusiasm and perform well regardless of the interim role you undertake while continuing to look for your ideal role.

Share your career successes with your former colleagues, others in your professional circle, and decision-makers. Above all, try not to beat yourself up about accepting a lesser role temporarily and whether it will affect your career prospects; this thinking is exhausting and defeating. Try to demonstrate a willingness to learn and adapt; ultimately, you will be more employable and more likely to be retained. 

Happy Thanksgiving

We at Franklin Paterson Company Inc. are thankful for so much this Thanksgiving.
We are incredibly grateful for your support, good counsel, excellent comments on our posts, and continued friendship. We appreciate you. Here’s wishing you and yours a wonderful Thanksgiving day, and all the best for the upcoming holidays.

Are you Desperate to Change Jobs, or is it Simply Something you Want to do?

To fulfill a need is to satisfy a desire that may improve your quality of life. Suppose your need is related to your job satisfaction. One must distinguish a want from a need, even a long-standing want. A want is a choice, a desire a person must accept they may or may not get. A need is often necessary for a person’s survival.

Are you desperate to change jobs, or is it simply something you want to do? Is it the nature and quality of the work itself, or simply the people that make your work situation intolerable? Do these circumstances create a desire, a want, or a desperate need to change your job? You may find survival extremely difficult if a sincere need goes unmet. But the conundrum has to be faced down and scrutinized.

Your career wants can be individual and may arise from an actual situation, your perspective on how things should be, or what kind of change is possible at this time. The stable among us realizes that life will continue, and one is likely to survive intact if one does not get what one wants. While it may be difficult to accept not getting what you want, one thing is sure: you will survive, and the catharsis may even improve you.

So is your need to leave your present position a survival move? Do you believe your career advancement and talents will diminish or even be obliterated if you stay with your current employer? Are you so stressed and bedraggled about the dire situation at work and the creative quality of the work you are producing? Or is the disinterested funk starting to affect your home or social life?

Here are some things to think about:

  1. To be clear, you like the industry you work in, but the job itself needs to address your need for growth. So you feel unsettled? As a result, are you perusing the jobs section daily? Since you think this is an excellent company, at least three times a week.
  2.  Have you grown tired of the similarity in the recent projects you are assigned? Or could it be the types of feedback, your interactions with the person you report to, the team you work with, the level of corporate indecision, or even the goals of the department or company?
  3. Are you being taken advantage of? Have you become “Ms. 2%” since you have been getting the same 2% raise for years? Does the culture or company ethos no longer match your way of thinking or working? Is your work-life balance all wrong?
  4. The dilemma with a capricious need is that once you satisfy that need, miscellaneous “just because” wants may arise, becoming a cycle of short-lived impulsive want-needs. And, take this giant leap with me – a couple of years into it, you find that you are leapfrogging from short-term to even shorter-term assignments.

Temporary but cyclical unhappiness can wreak havoc on your job satisfaction, which may be the thing leading you to think that your NEED to leave your job. So this all comes back to the original question: Do you need to leave this job, or is your sudden flurry of job searching just a caprice? 

Is it dawning on you that your new boss may dislike you, or is beginning to regret hiring you?

So, lucky you, your dream job has materialized. You have just snagged a promotion, transferred to your dream job at your current firm, or started an exciting new job at another firm.

But it is dawning on you that your new boss may dislike you or now has second thoughts about hiring you?

Does your new boss call on other team members but pretend not to notice or hear your contribution? Or worse, your boss dismisses your responses? Do you worry that everyone is catching on that every interaction with you brings out the worst in your new boss? Are you baffled since your boss appears to interrelate well with everyone else on the team but you?

Fixing this problem requires courage and self-evaluation. Here are a few things to consider before setting up a meeting with your boss:

1.      Are you a transfer from another team or a new hire? Then re-read the job description, especially the soft skills required. Were you previously paired with talented teammates? Your new boss may think that you consider the new team a downgrade.

2.      Are your well-thought-out questions at group meetings viewed as an attempt to overshadow the team? Do you interrupt or correct team members at meetings? Does your boss make no eye contact with you at meetings? That is a reliable sign that they do not trust or feel connected to you.

3.      Does your new boss believe your last few projects were lightweight or used dated technology, so they are unwilling to discuss your ideas or input in a group setting?

4.      Set up a one-one meeting with your manager. Ask future-focused questions to show that you are not complaining but attempting to improve your working relationship. When a legitimate misalliance is mentioned, acknowledge it with a sentence starting with, “From now on, I will do X.”

5.      Address competency questions, and engage your manager regarding the areas you can improve and the type of communication they prefer.

6.      Try not to interrupt. Active listening will signal that you believe the conversation is safe and interested in change. Your boss will naturally begin to feel more comfortable with you.

Be calm and matter-of-fact in your explanation of your concern. Consider borrowing credibility by associating with others who already have your boss’s trust at the meetings, and forgo starting arguments.

As you work on your relationship with your boss and invest in your relationships with your teammates, your boss will likely notice your effort. And above all, remember that great working relationships materialize over time, so be prepared to put in some work and give it time.