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Failure and Your Job Search

Failure is a part of learning and growth. It is important to fail and learn from the experience. Despite this, few people are comfortable talking about their failures – especially in a job interview.

If you have failed in your career, you may have the tendency to avoid talking about the situation. This gets tough in interviews with a lot of questions about times you have failed or your weaknesses. The truth is a failure is not as bad for your career as you may think. If you accept responsibility for the failure, can clearly explain why the failure occurred, can describe what you learned from the experience and know what you would do differently in the same situation, you can make a very positive impression.

An example of a failure comes from Jeffrey Immelt, Chairman and CEO of GE. Below is Immelt’s discussion of a major failure:

In 1992, I was running all the commercial operations for the plastics business at GE. We had a product called Nuvel, which was a sheet product that would go over wood to try to create the poor man’s Corian countertops. Turns out the thing just didn’t work. Any time you dropped a coin on it, it would leave a mark that you couldn’t get out unless you buffed it with sandpaper. It was a classic case of just not asking the right questions up front.

This one was my mistake. I let the need for speed overwhelm doing enough upfront market research and testing. It was a $20 million mistake. We caught it after about three months. Customers would complain. At first, you go through this denial phase: “You don’t understand” the product, and stuff like that.

It made me learn about listening better. I’m more disciplined on the upfront stuff now than I was then. I wanted to do something big and exciting, and I wanted to do it now rather than wait a year. I ‘fessed up: stepped up, made up for the financial hit we had to take on it by exceeding sales targets on other products, and made good to the customers. I think that I got better at understanding the need for research and more thought up front, so you don’t have to redo things.

You’re never allowed in GE to make the same mistake twice. You’re allowed to make the mistake once. If you try something and it fails, but you went about it the right way and you learned from it, that’s not a bad thing. (From Businessweek: http://images.businessweek.com/ss/06/06/six_tales/index_01.htm)

Most people have never lost a company $20 million. Even worse, Immelt explains the failure occurred because he tried to move a project forward too fast and didn’t respond to customer complaints. The failure was not caused by outside influences – Immelt made a mistake. Despite this, the failure did not end his career. He continued to progress through GE and replaced Jack Welch as Chairman and CEO.

Immelt dealt with the failure very well. He was honest about the cause and took responsibility. He did not blame others for the mistake. He showed the impact of his mistake – $20 million. Although this emphasizes the magnitude of the mistake, it also shows how Immelt was aware of how his actions affected the company.

Immelt explained clearly what he learned from the experience. The lessons learned did not include a way to make this project successful. There are projects that cannot succeed and the product being developed in this case could not be fixed. The lesson learned was Immelt’s new ability to assess a project and address issues much earlier (before they cost $20 million).

In your career, consider the failures you have had. Prepare to discuss them in an interview. You should try to talk about your accomplishments, but don’t shy away from a significant story about failure.

How Do Hiring Managers Decide Who to Hire?

You applied for a job, landed an interview and got invited back for a final interview. At every step, you felt great about the job, company and people. The interviewers were extremely complimentary of you throughout the process. Everything looked great. Then, you get the call that the company selected another candidate. The only feedback they provide is that the other candidate is “a better fit.”

Then, you get the call that the company selected another candidate. The only feedback they provide is that the other candidate is “a better fit.”

I’ve been a recruiter a long time and have watched this happen more times than I can count. It is extremely frustrating for the candidate. Without any specific feedback, the candidate doesn’t know why they weren’t hired.

There are a few reasons why a candidate might not get hired. Understanding how hiring managers make a decision can help you maximize your chances. No matter what you do, you will not get an offer every time. At the end of the hiring process, it is likely there will be two or three candidates being considered. This means half to two thirds of the candidates that complete a final interview will be turned down.

The candidate that gets hired will have several attributes. They will have experience and skills that will allow them to either do the job or learn the job quickly. They will have an attitude and work ethic that meets the hiring manager’s expectations. They will be able to communicate their skills, abilities and background in a positive way.

Of these attributes, you can improve all of them. Your skills and experience take time to improve, but over your career, you should continue to develop. Your attitude and work ethic are determined by your choices. If you continually choose to do more and maintain a positive attitude, these will become habits. You can also influence your communications skills and your interview skills in particular (check out our interview prep book).

You’ve done everything you can to improve your marketability and still get turned down for the job you want. Why does this happen?

When a hiring manager decides to fill a position, they will develop criteria for selecting the candidate. Some of the criteria will be objective but most will be subjective. There are few objective measures for most skills. How do you quantify a person’s leadership skills or their multi-tasking ability? You can’t.

Hiring managers will often use a successful employee as a model for the person they want to hire. For example, many manufacturing and distribution firms like to hire former military officers for supervisory positions. A military background teaches great leadership skills. It doesn’t guarantee a person is a great leader, but it does show a common set of training and experiences.

Using a common set of experiences to assess candidates is used frequently. If you don’t have the common background, it will not eliminate you from the process. It can be the cause of a rejection at the end of the process. Picture two candidates – we’ll use the supervisor position in a manufacturing plant. One candidate is a former military officer and has four years of experience in supervisory positions in manufacturing. The other candidate started out as an engineer in manufacturing and has four years of supervisory experience.

Both candidates have the same experience in the role – four years supervising manufacturing teams. In this case, both candidates have similar educational backgrounds and present a good track record of accomplishment. There is little to differentiate them except for the experience prior to their supervisory experience.

One hiring manager may favor the technical skills brought gained from an engineering background, while another may favor the leadership background of a former military officer. Both candidates could be successful in the role. Rejecting an unqualified candidate is easy. Rejecting a qualified candidate is more difficult. This is the source of the feedback “the other candidate was a better fit” comes in.

What do you do? If you’re up against a candidate that has the preferred background, you can still give yourself a chance.

Prepare for your interviews thoroughly by developing good examples of your accomplishments, and how they benefited your employers.
Ask questions to learn as much as you can about the goals of the hiring manager.
Show specific situations from your background where you met similar goals to the goals of the hiring manager.

The key is showing your ability to succeed. You need to demonstrate clearly how you will perform better than your competition. It isn’t enough to show you can succeed. Your competition can succeed too. If you’re competing against someone with a background exactly matching the profile the hiring manager wants, you have to show how you are better. The way you do this is by showing what you have done. If you do not do this, then you leave the question of who has the strongest potential up to the hiring manager.

Getting Experience

If you are just entering the job market or are trying to change careers, getting experience is essential. I ran into an article with a great list of resources to help job seekers get experience

If you are just entering the job market or are trying to change careers, getting experience is essential. I ran into an article with a great list of resources to help job seekers get experience.

It can be a challenge to find a company to give a chance to get started. There are a lot of experienced job seekers on the market. Most companies will choose to hire someone with experience over someone without. This doesn't mean your job search is hopeless.

If you are working and want to change careers, getting experience in the new career can be difficult. There are options. Find a volunteer position where you can work on the skills required in the new field. You can also try doing some freelance work. In either case, you would offer free work in exchange for the chance to get experience.

If you are out of work or are just entering the workforce, you have more options. You can volunteer to work for a company without pay to get experience. If you do this, make sure you approach the unpaid work as if you were getting paid. In addition to experience, you want the company to give a good reference.

There are wide range of ways you can get experience. The article 10 Ways for New College Graduates to Gain Job Experience lists a wide range of website you can use to find opportunities for gaining experience.

Why Would You Change Jobs Now?

I read an article on the Ladders today about interviewers asking why a job seekers would make a job change during a recession. As the article points out, this is a tough interview question – one of the toughest you might encounter. It’s also a question you can expect to hear a lot.

I've been getting a lot of resumes lately from people who have been in their current position for only a year or two. They show significant accomplishments on their resume in their current job. Despite the short tenure, they're actively looking for a change. It's impossible to avoid wondering why.

There are a number of reasons a job seeker might want a change soon after taking a job:

The job seeker is failing and worried about being fired
The company is in trouble and they expect to be laid off
The job seeker misjudged the opportunity and is looking for something that better suits their goals
The job seeker has personal issues that require a move
The job seeker has a professional goals that are being satisfied in their current position

There are numerous other reason why a job seeker would want to make a change. The article on the Ladders discusses how to answer questions about why you want to make a change in an interview. This is important, but you need to address it before the interview.

What do you think the hiring manager will assume when they read a resume? If you don't explain why you are looking for a job, the hiring manager will usually assume the worst. This makes it important to answer why you are looking, either in your cover letter or resume. Provide a short statement as to why you are on the market despite the short tenure in your position. If you are out of work, addressing this is even more important.

You can check out the article on the Ladders at Tough Interview Questions: Why Are You Making a Move in a Recession?

Email Isn’t as Easy as it Looks

Email is an essential communication tool and this is especially true in a job search. The first communication between a candidate and company is often by email. Many hiring managers use email to schedule times for calls with candidates to avoid playing phone tag. This makes it essential to have a reliable email service.

John Snyder, Vice President of CareersPro, Inc wrote a good article about the frustrations of recruiters trying to get in touch with candidates. In “Are Spam Filters Keeping Your From Getting a Job,” John talks about the emails that don’t get to candidates due to spam filters.

As annoying as spam is, there is no perfect solution. Either you let a lot of spam in and get all your important messages, or you discard most of your spam but throw out important emails. In a job search, few can afford to throw away an invitation to interview.

One caution… if you have had a spam filter with very restrictive settings and turn it off, you will get lots of emails from people asking if they can give you money if you provide them with all of your financial account information. They usually request a small handling fee. These are scams. You have not won the multi-million dollar “World Lottery” (I can’t count how many times I’ve supposedly won) and no one is going to give you a few million dollars if you help them open a checking account.

Is Online Networking a Waste of Time?

There is a lot written about how networking online can propel your job search. Claims are made that social media can deliver a better job much faster than other job search techniques. Despite this, many job seekers are not using social media and online networking sites.

In a survey of job seekers conducted in Australia, less of than 20% of the job seekers thought social networking sites help a job search. Although this study was conducted in Australia, I expect the results would be very similar around the world.

There are a number of reasons job seekers don’t see value in social networking. The two biggest are related to not understanding how to use this tool. First, even though the growth of social media sites has been tremendous, everyone isn’t on Facebook or Twitter. If you haven’t used a tool, it would be difficult to see the value. Second, many job seekers adopt the wrong approach to social media, leading to poor results.

The solution is simple, give social media a try and adopt a strategy that will work. Ok, that’s easy to say, but how do you do it?

Imagine social media sites as being a huge sidewalk in the business district of your city. There are an overwhelming number of people walking by. Some can help you with your job search, most can’t. There are two approaches people new to social media try. They either hold a sign and hope people will read it, even though there are millions of other people standing there with signs too, or they randomly walk up to people and ask for a job. How effective would your job search be if you went to busy street corner and tried this?

The key to social media is building relationships. The 80% of job seekers who think social media will not help are right if you expect to be able to go to a networking site, ask people you don't know for a job online and get results. Use social media to identify people you know that can help you. Connect with friends, family, former coworkers and others you know online. As you identify opportunities that interest you, ask your network what they know about the company. It is likely someone you know will know someone that works for the company. That individual can give valuable insight into the hiring process and priorities of the company.

Gathering this research is the biggest benefit of social media. You can tailor your approach to the company to their goals and values, and improve your odds of getting hired.

Searching for Opportunities

There was a time when advertising jobs was expensive and extremely difficult to do. This led to the rule of thumb that 80% of jobs are unpublished and make up the “hidden job market.” The job market was never hidden. The logistics of advertising jobs was difficult and job seekers did not have a simple way to search efficiently.

Today, all a company needs is a webpage and they can start promoting their jobs around the world. Companies want to hire the best people and actively try to attract these individuals. Few jobs today are kept secret and typically these are only senior level positions. The reason the company doesn’t disclose the search is usually because there is only one person in the position in the company and that person is going to be replaced.

The vast majority of jobs are actively advertised by companies. This doesn’t make it easy to find all the opportunities. There are so many advertised jobs and places to look it can be overwhelming just sorting through the listings.

When companies advertise jobs, they will usually use a number of tools. The company website is the first place jobs appear. After that, the jobs may be posted on community sites, niche job boards and the big job boards. Many of these sites charge significant fees to post jobs, so it is rare for a company to post on all the big job sites. This makes it essential for a job seeker to use a variety of sites to find a position.

Two of the tools to make the process easier for job seekers are Indeed and SimplyHired. Both sites are job aggregators. They search the web for jobs listed on other sites and repost them. The search functions have some limitations because the jobs come from such varied sources, but this is more than made up for by the ease of searching so many sources at once.

Active job seekers should use one of these tools. Both have email alerts and RSS feeds to update the job seeker about new jobs that fit saved searches. This can help ensure the job seeker does not miss a good opportunity.

Using these tools should not replace all other job search tools. As broad as the selection of jobs is, no tool is completely comprehensive. Using a job aggregator along with a variety of job sites that suit the specific goals of the job seeker can provide a comprehensive approach to finding opportunities.

Relocation Resources

If you are considering a move, you should check out these resources.

For job seekers in high unemployment areas, relocation may be the only option. If you are considering a move, you should check out the following resources:

Best Places: Provides detailed reports by zip code, including housing, crime, climate, cost of living and education.

Great Schools: Provides detailed information on schools. Compare elementary, middle and high schools within a school district based on test scores, teacher to student ratio and ratings from parents.

Salary.com: Provides cost of living comparisons between metro areas and salary estimates for different careers.

BankRate: An interesting cost of living comparison tool showing the specific cost differences of a selection of common expenses.

Don’t Highlight Your Age

I worked with a job seeker interested in returning to the workforce after several years of retirement. Like many people today, the combination of falling housing values and a large drop in the stock market have reduced the retirement savings well below what was expected. To maintain the standard of living, this individual decided a part time job would help. The job seeker is also excited to return to working after several years off.

I reviewed the cover letter written by the job seeker. In it, he calls attention to his extensive sales experience. This individual worked in sales for just over forty years. This makes it easy to figure of the age of the job seeker.

Many people report encountering age discrimination. How common it is and how likely this job seeker is to encounter it are tough to estimate. There are companies who will not discriminate, and there probably are some who will. Knowing how big a factor age discrimination might be for this individual is impossible to tell.

A job seeker can raise or lower the odds of encountering age discrimination. You are not required to tell an employer your age. You also don't need to tell an employer key information that allows the calculation of your age – for example, a high school graduation date should not be listed on your resume.

The individual's cover letter included a sentence highlighting the 40+ years of sales experience the job seeker possesses. Highlighting the sales experience is good, but there is little need for emphasizing 40+ years.

The job seeker had held several positions over his career, and we decided to omit from his resume several at the start of his career. The resume showed more than twenty years of work experience. Omitting the first few positions does nothing to obscure the candidate's experience or potential. An entry level position forty years ago will not make a difference in a person's marketability today.

In the cover letter, we changed the 40+ years of experience to 30+ years of experience. It is still accurate – the candidate has more than 30 years of experience. It is just less precise. The difference in the presentation expands the potential age range of the job seeker. With more than forty years of experience and several years of retirement, the job seeker should be in his mid to late sixties. Changing the cover letter to thirty plus years changes this potential range to mid fifties and older.

This is a small change but it makes the age of the job seeker less of a factor and this may reduce the chance of age discrimination.

Networking to Find a Job

Networking is the most effective job search technique. All other techniques will take more time and have a lower success rate. Unfortunately, many job seekers fail to use their network.

There are three reasons job seekers don’t network. First, many job seekers that are unemployed withdraw from friends and associates. Whether it is motivated by a lack of confidence, depression or embarrassment, many people hide their job search from the people they know. Second, job seekers often fail to recognize the relationships they can use to help their search. Third, many job seekers don’t know what help they can get from people they know.

To maximize your job search success, you need to overcome these three obstacles.

A lack of confidence can be very difficult to get over. Getting fired or laid off does nothing to change the accomplishments you had. Focus on your successes. This is good advice for anyone. Your resume should emphasize accomplishments, and you should talk about your past successes in interviews. Preparing to do these two things can help you restore your confidence.

Most job seekers consider very few people in their network as resources for their job search. The truth is you have hundreds or thousands of potential allies that can help you. Let’s look at the math. A person with just 10 friends and associates has access to a team of more than 100 that can help. The reason this works is that each of your ten friends has 10 other friends. If you asked everyone you know if they know anyone at a particular company, you will probably cast a net in the hundreds or thousands.

One pitfall job seekers often fall into is only asking for help from people that are in a position to hire them. Any employee of a company can help you get noticed by their employer. Asking for help and getting help are easy if you are willing to ask and know what to ask.

The key benefit to using your network is learning as much about the company as you can. The more you understand the priorities, values and hiring process of a company, the better you can tailor your approach. Once you identify someone you can talk with about an employer, ask the following three questions:

Can you tell me how the hiring process at your company works?
Can you describe what makes someone successful at your company?
How did you get your job at…

Your goal in asking these questions is twofold. First, you want to gather intelligence on the company that you can use to best sell your background and potential. Second, the person helping you may offer to recommend you to a hiring manager. Many companies offer referral bonuses to employees that recommend people that are hired. This can turn your contact into a significant advocate for you.

You can take this process to another level by reaching out to people in your online social network. Contacts on Twitter or LinkedIn and be very helpful – even if you have never actually talked with these individuals. The key is asking for help that the individual can provide. Asking if they can give you a job will rarely lead to anything. Asking what makes a person successful in their company is likely to yield and answer that you can use to tailor your resume and interview answers.