Dont Be the Last Candidate Standing A job search can test your patience. There are moments of frenzied activity as you re-work a resume or try to catch up with reference-givers to make sure theyre reachable and prepped for their reference-giving duties. There are anxious nights spent hoping that your salary range is a fit for the position and that the reorganization your interviewers keep hinting about doesnt delay the new-hire process or scuttle it altogether. Its no picnic. When your brain is screaming Get the job - get the job! its hard to listen to the quiet voice deeper inside, the one that says Take it slowly. You have needs, too. Its hard to listen to that voice when the rent is past due and your car is need of new tires. Its vital to listen, though, because taking the wrong job is worse than another month of unemployment. If you havent been there, working at a job that makes you hate yourself and the people around you, you might not know how mojo-crushing that experience can be. If youve lived it, you know how the wrong job can destroy your self-esteem for years into the future. It is natural that a job-seeker would try as hard as possible not to notice, much less complain about, the delays and inconveniences the typical job-search process brings with it. There are tests and questionnaires and forms to fill out. Interviews get scheduled and then cancelled. People call for phone-screens and then dont call back. Calls dont get returned. Youre a patient person - thats one of your best qualities. Surely the opportunity is still a good one. Surely if you simply stay the course, do what youre asked to do and behave like a docile little job-seeker, everything will work out perfectly, right? In my experience its just the opposite. The worse youre treated on a job search -- using the Human Scale, not the Godzilla scale that scarcely registers any slight or impoliteness - the more likely it is that the job youre pursuing isnt worth your time and talents in the first place. At least half the value of any selection process is the opportunity for the people on both sides of the table to size up the people on the other side. If they dont love you while theyre considering you for a position, when will they love you? If they dont treat you like a valued collaborator then, how could things possibly get better once youve got the job? The traditional job-search advice tells a job-hunter to beg for a job. At Human Workplace we call this traditional advice the Grovel, Knave school of thinking. The logic is You are nothing. The employer holds all the cards, and that means any employer at all, even a crappy organization with a stupid job that you could perform in your sleep with both hands tied behind you. Do whatever they ask you to do. Climb over whatever piles of broken glass they put in front of you. Dont like it? Dont complain. Other people may drop out of the Selection Pipeline if the lack of communication, burdensome requirements and general air of apathy toward your needs become too annoying. Dont drop out. You might get the job by being the Last Candidate Standing! We would never give this advice to a friend of ours whos dating. We would never say to a woman we care about, Get a guy -- any guy! You have nothing. Guys have everything. If hes willing to go out with you, you become the woman he wants you to be. Wed be horrified to think that anyone could undervalue him- or herself so badly. But we hear this kind of job advice all the time. We believe that because an organization has a job available, that makes them mighty and makes it appropriate for us to squash our personalities into a little box the employer might find appealing. The truth is that when you say no to the wrong opportunities, the right ones will find you. As long as you believe that you have no power in the equation - not even the right or ability to walk away from a situation that has become abusive, even before youve got the job -- the universe will oblige you. When you find your voice and say Im not tolerating this kind of treatment anymore, watch the energy shift. Working in the careers arena, I have seen this shift hundreds of times. The moment you realize that you are powerful and awesome without this job - without any job, for that matter - you regain control. Your mojo returns. Good things can happen then that couldnt happen while you stayed stuck in the belief that a job search puts you in competition with hundreds of people, most of whom, in your most secret fearful heart, might be smarter and better than you. Think about a typical day. You talk to lots of people. Are all of them switched-on, inquisitive and responsible? Sadly, they are not. Employers are clamoring for good people. You are one of those -- so why would you grovel for a job? You dont want to be the last candidate standing, the one whos filled out all the forms and taken all the tests and waited through weeks of radio silence for the call that says You got the job! When our clients fall victim to fear and wait for those calls, they almost never come. Ellen was a client of ours two years ago. She was pursuing a Marketing Director position with a large not-for-profit agency. Ellen waded into the hiring process with clear vision. I know it will be gnarly, she said, because agencies like this one take ages to make decisions, and the Board has to approve everything, and the Board members are volunteers and hard to pin down. She said If it gets really bad, Ill bail. Yet Ellen fell into the same trap many job-seekers do. As the not-for-profit search heated up, she slacked off on pursuing other opportunities. She turned all of her attention to getting the agency job. We made gentle hints. I know, I know, she said. I need to put more irons in the fire. The agencys process ground on at a glacial pace. Ellen met sixteen different people in five trips to the organizations headquarters. She talked to executives at the national office in New York. Weeks turned into months. At one point, she told us Im done. Someone Ive never heard of just asked me for a sample proposal. Really! Now Im doing free consulting? Ellen didnt send the proposal, but she stayed in the pipeline. There were seven candidates in the mix, then four, then two. by Liz Ryan, CEO and Founder, Human Workplace
Posted on: Fri, 31 Jan 2014 15:08:31 +0000
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