Tag Archives: Persistence

Hope and 4 other attributes necessary for a successful job search

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Job-search advice is available to job seekers from pundits, friends, family, and other well-wishers; but the most important factor to success in the job search is the internal fortitude that keeps job seekers going.

hope

Without this inner strength, advice about résumés, interviews, networking, LinkedIn, etc., doesn’t amount to a hill of beans.

To achieve success, one must understand the importance of never giving up, to not admit to defeat.

Hope

I’ve often preached the need for hope in the job search. When clients tell me of the multiple interviews they’ve attended and how they’re making it to the last round but lose out to another candidate, I don’t see that as failures. Rather I look upon those setbacks as opportunities that will eventually come to fruition.

You’re almost there I will tell them. Don’t give up hope. Now it’s time to practice your interview skills, I add.

Hope is one of four attributes job seekers must maintain throughout the job search; the other three are optimism, persistence, and enthusiasm. In combination, one will prevail in whatever challenges present themselves.

optimismOptimism

Those who are optimistic encourage optimism in others around them. It shows on their countenance and is noticeable to everyone involved in their job search. This includes people with whom they network.

One of my favorite clients was out of work for almost a year, until a week came when she had three job possibilities leading to one offer. She remained optimistic in her job search, sometimes lapsing into self-doubt, but saw the potential of success.

Persistence

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This personality trait is something great athletes have. Like a baseball player who is in a slump batting .200 in May, a job seeker goes six months, nine months, or a year without landing a job, but never gives up. He bounces back from rounds of interviews with no job offers, finally landing a job before his unemployment ends. Similarly, the baseball player gets out of his slump to bat .300 in October.

This was the case for one of my customers who was out of work for more than a year. Although he had interviews almost every week, he came up short. His persistence coupled with a positive attitude was apparent in the e-mails he sent to update me on his progress. He is now gainfully employed as a director of human resources and offers help to my customers.

To learn more about persistence, read: 6 reasons why you must be persistent in your job search. 

Enthusiasm

enthusiasm

Job seekers who are enthusiastic walk into a room and light it up. I can tell a job seeker will shortly find work by the way she embraces the job search, rather than surrender to defeat. It’s like a self-fulfilling prophesy. I will conquer this challenge, they say, and so they do.

One of my clients who has a physical disability is enthusiastic and confident in her ability to return to management in her prior industry. I recently met with her to critique her résumé. Prior to the critique she had attended an interview. After the critique she was scheduled for a phone interview. The last I heard, she was granted a second interview for both positions.

Emotional Intelligence

happy-jobseekerBetter known as EQ, this is the ability to understand one’s feelings, as well as the feelings of others; and to act accordingly. For example, if a fellow job seeker is bringing down the group during a Buddy Group meeting, a person with EQ will bring that person aside after the meeting and tactfully explain that negativity is not helping the groups mission.

Some of the traits job seekers with strong EQ demonstrate are:

  1. They understand the job search is stressful. 
  2. They let go of their anger. 
  3. They’re empathetic and are willing to help others. 
  4. They also ask for help.
  5. They know their strengths and weaknesses. 
  6. They don’t blame others.

To read more about EQ, read 12 ways to show emotional intelligence in your job search.

Having hope is one of the four aforementioned traits, optimism, persistence, and enthusiasm. Together, these positive traits contribute to psychological capital, which guides us through the challenges in life. Psychological capital isn’t something that can be purchased, but it is something that can be developed through a positive attitude. Many times we’ve been told to be positive. Never has a greater truth been told.

Related articles

6 reasons why you must be persistent in your job search

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I recently received an email from a former job seeker who said she landed a job after three years. I’ve also heard from other job seekers who landed jobs after more than a year into their job search. What was the secret to their success? In one word, persistence.

Biking

One definition of persistence is a “firm or obstinate continuance in a course of action in spite of difficulty or opposition.” A simple definition would be, “not giving up.”

What we know about the job search is that there are new obstacles that make it difficult. I say this based on my experience in the job search when certain requirements were not expected of me.

Having witnessed many job seekers struggle with their job search, I can say it is harder now than when I was unemployed. Here are six reasons why:

1. The applicant tracking system (ATS) is more prevalent. One source says 127 people apply for entry-level positions and 89 apply for professional level positions. What this means is employers would have to read many résumés without the aid of an ATS. Instead, they rely on a “robot” that reads resumes and chooses the ones that are, theoretically, the best ones.

The ATS relieves employers from reading more than 75% of résumés for a position. That’s the good news. The bad news is that job candidates must write keyword-rich résumés that get them past the ATS. And many qualified job seekers are unaware of this requirement.

Writing tailored résumés for each job requires persistence. It’s easy to put together a generic résumé and send it to every position for which you apply. To modify your Summary, or re-write it entirely, and prioritize relevant accomplishments is entirely different. Only by doing this will you get past the ATS.

Read 10 tips for writing a professional resume.

2. Employers rely heavily on social media. Two years after I had to look for work LinkedIn came on the scene, and a year later Facebook arrived. I didn’t have to contend with either. LinkedIn, originally developed for business but largely used by job seekers for their search, takes diligence, knowledge of the platform, and realizing its significance.

Jobvite.com recently revealed that 87 percent of hiring authorities use LinkedIn to cull talent, so it makes common sense to be on LinkedIn. Job seekers are using LI to find people at companies they’re targeting, networking with people who might provide opportunities, and using the Jobs feature. To be effective, job seekers must use LinkedIn daily. This takes persistence.

Read If you join LinkedIn be prepared to work hard.

Although not used as much as LinkedIn, Facebook has a job-search purpose. Recruiters are on Facebook, and they’re reaching out to job seekers. Jobvite.com also revealed that more job seekers are using Facebook (67 percent) for their search than LinkedIn.

A serious consideration is keeping your Facebook account professional, because hiring authorities are looking on Facebook to see if you’re behaving. I was asked by one of my managers to look at job candidates on Facebook. One particular candidate didn’t come across as a girl scout. Enough said.

3. Employers are pickier. The average time to find employment is approximately 26 weeks, based on a position paying $60,000. In addition, many employers have extended the number of interviews from two to four, or even five. And given that they’re busy, the time between interviews can be as long as two weeks.

Why are employers pickier than they were when I was looking for work? The simple answer is to reduce mistakes. Besides getting egg on their face, hiring the wrong person can be extremely expensive. (A Forbes.com article states a “bad” hire can cost more than 30 percent of a person’s first year salary.)

You must be persistent when the job search is taking so long. Don’t give up on employers who are taking their time. Understand that they want to avoid mistakes. Stay in contact with your recruiters to see how the process is going (believe me, they’re just as anxious).

Read 7 thoughts on the mind of a recruiter.

4. Ageism is a reality. Unfortunately, employers discriminate against age. I tell my workshop attendees that a few employers, not all, will practice ageism. Nonetheless, it’s wrong and can’t be defeated easily.

Older workers must be especially persistent and think about ways to get to the interview, one of which is writing résumés that don’t reveal their age. Then during the interview sell themselves as a benefit to the employer, not a disadvantage.

Smart employers will see that older workers want to work as much, or more, than people younger than them. Employers will realize that older workers are more mature and dependable, have extensive job experience, as well as life experience.

Your job is to dispel the stereotypes that exist for older workers, such as they expect too much money, are not as quick to learn, are set in their ways, will be sick more often, and will leave sooner than younger workers. These are all untrue.

Read 5 strength of the older worker.

5. Networking is necessary more than ever. Regardless of age, networking will be the key to your success. The old saying, “It’s not what you know or who you know, it’s who knows you” is truer than ever.

One of my favorite job seekers wrote to me about another job seeker’s Happy Landing. She wrote: “[Landing her job] was completely through networking; she has not even met her hiring manager yet. One person’s word and recommendation was enough!“

Of course networking involves more than relying on your reputation to land a job. You need to be more persistent than I was during my unemployment. To say networking is the name of the game is an understatement.

It’s believed that your chances of landing a job are 60%-80% by employing networking. Of course other methods of job seeking must be used to supplement your networking. And networking doesn’t have to be confined to networking events; you must persistently network on a daily basis, throughout the community.

Read 5 steps to uncovering career opportunities.

6. Don’t forget to following up. Perhaps the biggest failure in the job search is not following up with potential valuable contacts. I hear it all the time; someone meets a potential contact at a networking event, or in the community, and doesn’t follow-up; thereby loosing out on a huge opportunity.

You must be persistent in following up. I say to my workshop attendees, “Why waste all the hard work you do while networking, submitting your written communications, and networking by not following up?” It doesn’t make sense.

Remember that your job isn’t done after the first or even second contact. It’s done when you get a number of yeses. Yes, the person you met at a networking event will meet you for coffee. Yes, after coffee they will agree to deliver your résumé to the hiring manager. Yes, it leads to an interview. And yes, you’ve been accepted for the position after five interviews. These yeses only come by following up.

If this isn’t persistence, what is?

The saying that anything worth having takes hard work is about being persistent. It’s about not giving up. It’s about getting to yes. I can think of other words which begin with “P” that are important to the job search, but persistence always comes to mind.

It goes without saying that in 2020 the economy has taken a huge whack with more than 16 million workers losing their jobs, according to the Department of Labor. This has become the number one reason for persistence in the job search. This article was written three years ago when there were 7.2 million US people out of work, so the economy wasn’t a huge consideration. Now it is.

Perseverance and 7 other P’s in the job search

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PerserveranceA customer of mine recently got a job at a company where she’ll be making 15% more than she made at her previous company, not 15% less. Who says all employers are paying jobseekers less than they were previously making?

Her story begins when she made contact with one of her alumnus via LinkedIn. As I was told, this alumnus alerted her to an opening at the company for which she works.

So my customer jumped on the opportunity and went through the arduous process of landing her job.

She was finally awarded the positions after 12 face-to-face interviews. That’s right, 12 interviews. Now don’t ask me why the company couldn’t make a decision within the first three or four or even five interviews. Also don’t ask me why the company had her fly to the west coast twice in one week. Couldn’t they have knocked off some interviews during one visit?

The company’s prolonged search flies in the face of the typical hiring process, where three-five interviews are more the norm than 12.

To land this job my customer demonstrated one of the 12 P’s of the job search for sure, Perseverance. There are seven other P’s, I can think of, that are required for a successful job search.

  1. Positivism: How can this not be included as required for the job search? When all seems to be hopeless, positivism is what will keep you alive. The opposite is negativism which is a killer that can paralyze you and cause you to give up, if not severely weaken your efforts. If you don’t feel positive, fake it till you make it, as they say.
  2. Professionalism: Had my customer not maintained a professional attitude, she may have not succeeded as each interview approached. She may have caused her new company to doubt their decisions to continue the process.
  3. Preparedness: In the job search you must prepare a résumé that will land you the interview. You must also be prepared for the interview by researching the position and company. Without being prepared, you will lack the confidence required to do well at the interview.
  4. Persistence: I marvel at my customer’s endurance throughout the whole process, not to mention not giving into the temptation to throw in the towel. Was this a test on the employer’s part? Were they seeing who would give up first?
  5. Promotion: Many a jobseeker have told me they can’t promote themselves. Guess what: you have no choice because no one will do it for you. Self-promotion becomes more difficult as the job search extends past three, six, nine months.
  6. Progress: Take every little victory as progress toward the goal of landing a job. My customer’s steps toward success were numerous, beginning with connecting with her alumnus, submitting a résumé that landed her the first of many interviews, sending various follow-up notes….The list goes on.
  7. Productivity: The result of all these P words. You must be productive in your job search, or, for lack of better words, it ain’t worth it. This means different things to people. Being productive might be getting outside your comfort zone to attend networking events, following up on connections you’ve established, creating a kick-ass LinkedIn profile, and so on.

Certainly no one would want to go through 12 interviews, wondering if there is even a chance they will land the job. My customers was driven to succeed, and succeed she did. 

Photo courtesy of Kenny Zeo, Flickr.