A thought I’ve considered recently: If job search is like sales, why is it that job seekers have so few prospects? One of the most elementary and well known facts about a sales person is that you can’t afford to have too few prospective buyers. And let’s face it…in a job search, you are the product you’re selling. Why would you sell yourself short (pun intended) by not presenting yourself seriously to as many buyers as possible?

How many times have you said to yourself, “I’m perfect for this job”? I’ve recently spoken to far too many job seekers that have recounted their most recent prospective job opportunities only to tell me they fell in love with one or two opportunities and focused all their efforts to pursue them only to be let down in the end. Not only is this damaging to your corporate ego, but you’re hurting yourself by not incorporating a funnel or pipeline (more comparison to sales) of possible job opportunities that you can seriously pursue all at one time.

(more…)

Working on a number of searches at the moment, I’m juggling about 12 candidates that have been submitted to my clients, and are still “in the process”. The reality is, when we submit candidates to a client, our objective is that everyone can do the job, but 1 or 2 might be better fits than others. Generally, our client will tell us early on who is not a fit and we can let them go so they no longer consider the opportunity open to them. However, for the short list of viable candidates, the waiting game begins.

Some candidates handle this part well, while others get too antsy or don’t follow up at all, and end up hurting their brands with us and our client. So, what’s the right formula?

(more…)