3. Job Hunting Skills
The Employment System preaches that there are special job
hunting skills you must develop before you can seek a job. Skills like writing a great
resume, answering the Top Ten Interview Questions, and how to shake hands in the right
color suit.
Meanwhile your competitor, the headhunter, is busy
learning exactly what work the client needs to have done, and what work skills the perfect
job candidate needs to demonstrate in the interview.
Interview skills have no statistical utility.
Any good headhunter will tell you that employers don't
pay for job hunting skills. On the other hand, every personnel jockey will emphasize the
importance of "learning to play the game". You might be surprised to learn that
there is little correlation between how well a candidate interviews, and how well he or
she performs on the job. What we know about the traditional interview is even more
stupefying than that. Annette Flippen, a Columbia University organizational psychologist,
says, "The traditional interview has been shown to have little or no statistical
utility as a selection technique." That is, traditional interviews stink as a method
for hiring the right worker.
Work skills win the job.
So, how do you hunt for a job? With the only skills that
matter -- your work skills. Identify employers that need your work skills. Find
out who exactly: the specific industry, then the exact companies, and finally
the specific manager. If you're good at your work, talking to the relevant people will be
easy. You have everything in common with them. Find out what exactly are the
problems, challenges and opportunities these employers are facing. Follow these steps, and
you'll be talking with the right people about the right job.
If you're good at your work, you can be good at
interviewing. The kinds of interviews where people get hired are ones that are about the
thing you are already very good at: your work. What you need to bone up on is the problems
and challenges the employer is facing. Then you can appropriately apply your work skills
to demonstrate how you're going to handle them. That's what I call The New Interview™.
Review your work skills, and answer the only question
that really matters: What can you do to help this employer succeed?
Think that takes more research? Absolutely right. Do what
the headhunter does: talk with other employees at the company, talk with the company's
vendors and even its customers. Figure out what the work is all about before you
interview.
Employers pay headhunters for solutions, not for clever repartee. So,
headhunters make sure their candidates are prepared to "go live" in the
interview and do the job. That's the skill that wins job offers.
Next: Mistakes That Kill
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