Today the blog features a guest post by Career Coach George Dutch who is the Founder of Job Joy, a career transition firm. This is George’s 2nd guest post here. He wrote a post back in May on career transition strategies. George is an approved career expert here at Tim’s Strategy.
To increase your chances of getting hired, it is important to understand the hiring process from a hiring manager’s pov. They want pain relief!
1. Hiring managers are human beings too
When you go looking for a job, you are preoccupied, naturally and rightfully, with your own needs and priorities. In the same way, a hiring manager is interested, first and foremost, in protecting and promoting their own career. And, s/he is not going to make a decision or take an action that might jeopardize their career.
They don’t know you, so they fear you. Your goal is to help them feel “safe” about hiring you. Sure, managers want employees who are competent in terms of knowledge and skills but those employees aren’t much good to them unless they can manage them easily. Above all, a hiring decision for a manager is about feeling “safe” with them, safe in terms of protecting and promoting their own career as a manager.
2. Hiring is a risk assessment exercise
There is a lot of truth to the old cliche that ‘people hire who they know.’ Managers know that nobody is perfect; everyone has shortcomings, weaknesses, faults, biases, and prejudices–-things that pose a potential threat to the safety of his or her career. Everyone has a downside. It is easier to hire somebody you know because it is easier to assess their downside : “I know Bob, Janet and Ricardo, each has strengths and weaknesses, but when I look at their shortcomings, can I still manage them? Are they a threat to my career?”
Think about formal interviews, and how many questions are designed to uncover weaknesses and shortcomings: What is your greatest weakness? Describe a situation in which you were unsuccessful achieving a goal, and how did you respond? How would you rate your ability to resolve conflict on a scale of 1 to 10, from low to high, then give me an example?
3. Hiring is about pain relief
Let’s step back for a moment and consider the priorities of a hiring manager again. Managers are responsible for achieving the goals and objectives of their organization. However, it is not easy to attain those goals. If it was easy, they could do all the work themselves and wouldn’t need employees!
But the nature of reality is adversity : things get in the way of corporate goals and objectives, such as problems, challenges, issues and pressures. To a sales professional, these “things” are known as “pain points.”
In sales, it is important to understand the goals of your prospects and their pain points in order to determine how your product or service can make their pain go away and reach their goals. The only difference between sales and job search is that you are the product or service for pain relief!
This is the agenda behind every hiring decision, i.e. the manager is looking for help around specific pain points. Your job in a formal or informal interview is to uncover that agenda. Once you are in the door, it is important to get a hiring manager talking. Listen for clues to their pain points. Respond not with the features of your value proposition (i.e. your education, experience, personal traits) but with benefits (i.e. how you can help them with their pain points).
Obviously, we cannot cover here every possible scenario. I am outlining a strategic approach. The implementation of this strategy is up to you. That is why I strongly suggest that job searchers get professional help. There is a lot at stake in terms of your career. You want to optimize your time and energy.
Summary
Establish rapport with a manager by focusing on their needs and priorities. Flush out concerns. What challenges, issues, problems, pressure points are driving this hiring decision? Reduce risk. Find out what red flags the manager may have about hiring somebody they don’t know. Make it easy for them to hire you!
George Dutch is President & Founder of JobJoy, a career transition coaching firm. He is the author of JobJoy: Finding Your Right Work Through the Power of Your Personal Story, and several other career books.
Thanks Peter Hellberg for the great photo via Flickr