Tag: jobseeker

The Logic Bully

I heard from a former colleague recently who wanted to refer a friend. She said her friend was frustrated since he had attended twelve first interviews. But his interviews were not going well since quite a few ended early and abruptly. He felt no one allowed him to sell himself and sell his ideas. You don’t say!

On my exploratory call with the potential client, he explained his ongoing interviewing struggles and apparent failure to connect with interviewers and asked how I could help. After I explained our program. He volunteered that he had an excellent interview process and pronounced, “Here is how I would like you to approach my interview preparation training.”

He then told me how he would like his interview preparation sessions arranged and what topics should be covered. I listened to the entire schooling on how to coach job seekers of his level of experience. Then he ended with, “when are you available to help me practice?”

I reasoned that I should try to escape gracefully, as he was a referral. So I ventured that I did not think we would work well together since our approaches to coaching and communication styles differed quite a bit. Plus, since he was already using his process without success, I would hesitate to utilize his process and add more casualties.

Starting again, at some speed, he explained that he was a strong communicator with excellent people skills, areas of expertise, and achievements, etc. All the while sounding like the out-of-tune brass section of a marching band for whom noise is the thing.

We ended the call with the potential client offering me time to consider his proposal to coach him using HIS methods and a second meeting.

Sadly, in his effort to sell himself and his interviewing strategy, the client morphed into a “logic bully.” And in his self-centric drive to sell himself, he became a noisy communicator who deluges others with his processes, best practices, expertise, and riotous failure to stay on topic.

The colleague who referred him called a few days later, “Do you have any advice?” she asked. Then I remembered one of my mother’s pearls and offered: “Tell him to use the door handle. He doesn’t need to kick down every door.”  

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? 

Dealing with Irascible Managers or Co-Workers

I have worked with and for quite a few problematic characters throughout my long career. Some are still friends and confidants, and a few continue to be valued as mentors.

Many of these irascible managers or co-workers lack social grace and a sense of control, so they cannot communicate well under stress. They also appear to forget that a timely apology can be a fallback position.

You see them coming from a mile, so the choice becomes whether you rise to and meet the verbal challenge or obfuscate. But, since nobody wins in these confrontations, you seldom try to deal with it.

They are unaware of how their behavior impacts others because they need to elevate themselves above others in a group situation. They do not hesitate to exploit their leadership role by insulting others because they are often insecure and quick to attack to assert their leadership.  

So they seek to maintain their position in the hierarchy through criticism, humiliation, and camouflaged insults, in a kind of unconscious narcissistic way.

The second group of tough characters are those with narrow interests and vapid sympathies. These folks say and do the same cruel things regularly as if on cue. I worked for one manager who lobbed the same petty insults at every group meeting but never in one-to-one meetings.

The worse part is that you feel bad for the manager. And deliberately avoid connecting with the “Oh No, Not Again” apologetic looks directed your way by the other team members. You think, “well, somebody has got to pull up the weeds.” Feeling all the while like the embarrassed parent of a preschooler misbehaving in public!

There is a stunning lack of creativity when someone overuses the same petty insult. If you must be regularly petty, try to be creative and offer variety. Unable to rise to the occasion, then stop it, the exercise of watching a manager or colleague try to diminish a coworker publicly is tiresome and embarrassing for everybody!

Is it time for a Career Self-Assessment?

The reality has set in. You are getting career restless. You are not bored, but Mondays are tough! By Wednesday, you are back in the groove; But for some reason, “thank God it’s Friday” is now the week’s longest, most challenging day. How do you restart your job love-engine?

Don’t start by simply updating your resume. If you do, you will end up with an autobiography masquerading as a resume. Try doing a career self-assessment to help you identify your critical talents, career interests, goals, and needs.

A self-assessment will help you gather valuable content for your new resume and is an excellent prepping tool for interviews. The process will help you uncover expertise and work patterns that illustrate your capabilities.

It will enable you to gauge your employability at this time relative to what is available. Self-assessments highlight and lay bare gaps in your expertise and suggest repair resolutions. It will also prepare you to run an effective job search campaign. How do you go about conducting a career self-assessment?

1.      Review your skills
Do the fun stuff first. What aspects of your current job do you do well, which ones do you like doing, which fall into the “not so much ” category, and which ones do you do poorly. Think about the skills required to do your job effectively. Now think of two or three examples where you excelled in each skill. You may also identify several related skills you utilized to enhance the skills you already accepted are your strengths.

2.      Are you an expert? What do you know?
If you have worked at a company for an extended period, you may underestimate your product knowledge, technical know-how, service sector, or customer type. Did you come up with a deficit during this exercise? Then make this an immediate correction item.

3. Did you add real value?
Did you help your organization generate quantifiable income, reduce costs, solve unique customer problems or improve the quality of its service? Your contribution may have been as an individual or as part of a team. Include it all.   

4.      What do you truly want?
Your wants may include an improved salary, but what else is important to you? How do you want your next job to differ from your current role? Are there things you would like to keep the same? These items will be your decision criteria for future opportunities.

Finally, benchmark your skills and value by reviewing job postings that interest you to see what employers define as needed skills and attributes.

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Why You May Not Be Invited To Interviews

Look, there are many possible reasons why you are not getting interviews. And, you are beginning to sense that your career search journey, while not entirely derailed, is turning out to be very bumpy and indeterminate. Plus, you are not enjoying the ride, one bit!

As you try for a correction, it turns out there is one area you may have overlooked – your social media footprint. Question – do you know what your social footprint looks like to an employer who looked you up on social media or googled your name? Was your response to the search results: Yikes?

What you publish about yourself or the personal info you allow unfettered access to by everyone on social media; has the power to enhance, neuter, or severely hinder your chances of obtaining the job interviews. Consequently, you must plan out and curate your existing social media collateral to improve your chances of success in your career improvement project.

So, beyond publishing your skills and experience to the public domain and networking online with professionals from various employment sectors, here are some things you should do immediately.

1. Resolve to keep your personal intrigues, fallouts and updates, and professional updates on separate social media accounts.

2. Ensure that your LinkedIn URL and the name you generally know in the business are in simpatico.

3. Widen your reach; build your network, and engage in professional dialogue with a broader audience across multiple social channels.

4. Interact with recruiters, former colleagues, and prospective employer representatives by liking and commenting on their posts across all channels in real-time.

5. Resist the urge to be disagreeable and pedantic in your comments and responses to the posts of others. Alternative views are encouraged, but razing someone on a social media post, does nothing to further your career improvement project.

Are you ready to take the lead in your job search? Then it is time for a social redo or upgrade of your social footprint?