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Agents and Recruiters Improve Your Likeability–and Bankability According to Stanford Business School Research

Modesty is still a virtue, even in the competitive world of business. Try talking about your own accomplishments in any setting, even in a job interview, and you’re more likely to be less liked. Speaking for yourself can hurt you, both personally and financially. So how do you assert your competence when you’re trying to capture that job, audience, or book contract? How do you overcome what social psychologists call the “self-promotion dilemma?”

“Get an agent or a recruiter,” says a Stanford Graduate School of Business faculty member. In recent research, Jeffrey Pfeffer confirms what speakers, authors, and performers have intuited for decades–having someone else sing your praises can take the edge off in interpersonal negotiations where money, position, and status are at stake. Not only are you seen as more pleasant when flattering words on your behalf come out of a third party’s mouth, but you’re more likely to get a better salary or contract and get the people you’re negotiating with to be more helpful to you in the long term. The phenomenon holds even though people know you’ve paid your personal “cheerleader.”

“Most literature on the use of intermediaries focuses on the negative effects agents can have if they don’t represent your interests adequately because of conflicts with their own agendas, or by creating communication distortions,” says Pfeffer, the Thomas D. Dee II Professor of Organizational Behavior. “What hasn’t been looked at much is the positive interpersonal effect an agent can have.”

Pfeffer designed three studies with several colleagues, including faculty members Christina Fong of University of Washington business school and Robert Cialdini of Arizona State University, and University of Washington doctoral student Rebecca Portnoy, to determine just how an intermediary can help lessen the negative consequences of self-promotion. In the first study, university students were told they were helping to select a new director of student affairs and were asked to read over a transcript of an interview and evaluate the candidate. One group read a transcript in which a professional recruiter hired by the job applicant answered all the questions. The other group read the identical transcript, but with the applicant speaking for himself.
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Job search method combines best of old and new

Career experts say most job seekers do not know how to effectively seek employment.

Understanding the major ways can help you develop a search strategy.

Each way uses traditional methods and today’s technology. Each has advantages and disadvantages.

The traditional methods are newspaper employment classifieds, personal contacts, networking and direct mail.

Fortunately, technology provides an additional powerful tool: the computer and its many dimensions.

Newspaper employment ads and weekly employment publications are one of the most widely used tools. They show positions available by regional and local employers.

The publications are readily accessible and organized by job category. Most positions advertised are in the lower and midlevel range. They help show in one publication employers who are hiring and the type of positions that are in demand. However, they often do not show the higher-skilled positions, higher management positions or national companies looking for employees.

Many newspapers make the ads more accessible by placing advertised jobs online in coordination with print ads.
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At your job interview, be nice to the receptionist

When you check in with the receptionist before an interview, remember to smile because the person behind the front desk holds more power than you think.

“Some companies feel a lot can be learned from how candidates treat receptionists, particularly if they’re rude, condescending or arrogant,” said Greg Gostanian, a managing partner at ClearRock, an executive coaching and outplacement firm. “Employers feel this is an accurate reflection of how candidates would treat their co-workers and direct reports.”

Gostanian offers the following tips in reception manners.

Be friendly, but formal: Take the time to learn the receptionist’s name, which always leaves a positive impression.

R-E-S-P-E-C-T: Don’t treat the receptionist as an underling. If offered a drink, keep it simple and don’t expect the receptionist to go out of the way to serve you.

Watch your mouth: Expect everything you say to the receptionist to get back to the interviewer, so speak carefully. Avoid talking on your cell phone. Those conversations could come back to haunt you.

Bid adieu: Make sure to thank and say goodbye to the receptionist after the interview. Last impressions are unforgettable.

Some firms value seniors’ wisdom

When Ben Loughry wanted to expand his firm, he decided to recruit some of the best college graduates he could find.

But Mr. Loughry, who’s in charge of a national real estate consulting company’s Fort Worth office, quickly realized that his younger staffers needed a better grasp of the business.

“In our industry, it takes someone coming out of college about two years to absorb everything,” says Mr. Loughry, managing partner for Integra Realty Resources.

To achieve his desired staff productivity results, Mr. Loughry hired two veteran workers whose primary duty is to mentor young employees.

As an estimated 78 million baby boomers approach retirement, companies across the nation are realizing they need to bridge the Gen Y/Gen X experience gap.

And they’re beginning to stem the brain drain by hiring (or rehiring) older workers to share their institutional knowledge with the under-40 generations.

“You have lots of people walking out the door and fewer people walking in,” says Eric Lesser, an associate partner in Boston with IBM Global Business Services, a consulting firm that helps businesses cope with the expected loss of knowledge as boomers retire. “The easier you can reduce the time to get these younger workers up to speed, the better.”

Mr. Loughry hired Tommy Pigg, 57, and Doug Kincaid, 58, two men who have more than 60 years of combined real estate consulting experience.

More importantly, both men weren’t ready to retire.

“I was with a company in Dallas until January 2003, then on my own, and had just reconnected with Ben,” Mr. Pigg recalls. “I thought his idea was great, and I decided to come on board.”

So far, so good, although the two veterans have been on the payroll for only two months.

“It’s a little bit of an experiment,” he says.

Employers stand to gain from tapping into the experience of someone with 30 years in a specific field, says Patrick Rafter, spokesman for RetirementJobs .com, an online job site with “older worker-friendly” companies.

“That’s 30 years of service, of contacts, of work ethic, of networking,” he says.

And they do more than merely mentor. For example, they are called upon to meet with the firm’s more senior clients. Mr. Kincaid and Mr. Pigg bring expertise, experience and immediate credibility to Integra Realty Resources, Mr. Loughry says – despite their admitted lack of technical know-how.

“Tommy and I are both of the generation that they still used the punch cards,” Mr. Kincaid notes. “The systems have changed.”

On an average day, Jeff Denman, a 25-year-old analyst at Integra, pops into Mr. Kincaid’s and/or Mr. Pigg’s offices about a dozen times.
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Job-hunting tips, just in case you need them

For some reason, job-hunting is on our mind this morning. Here are some tips from The Morning File’s outplacement, outsourcing and downsizing division.

Don’t make misteaks

Your resume is key, but there’s always the danger that prospective employers will actually read your cover letter, as happened to these language-challenged applicants:

“As indicted, I have over five years of analyzing investments.”

“I demand a salary commiserate with my extensive experience.”

“Received a plague for Salesperson of the Year.”

“Experience: Dealing with customers’ conflicts that arouse.”

“I’m a rabid typist.”

“Instrumental in ruining an entire Midwest chain operation.”

“I am very detail-oreinted.”

“I worked as a Corporate Lesion.”

“Enclosed is a ruff draft of my resume.”

“Strengths: Ability to meet deadlines while maintaining composer.”

“I am sicking and entry-level position.”

“Thank you for your consideration. Hope to hear from you shorty!”

(From Rinkworks.com)

The downside of overconfidence

Some examples of admirably strong but unsuccessful come-ons:

“You hold in your hands the resume of a truly outstanding candidate!”

“Note: Keep this resume on top of the stack. Use all others to heat your house.”

“I don’t usually blow my own horn, but in this case, I will go ahead and do so.”

“Here are the top 10 reasons to hire me.”

“I am the king of accounts payable reconciliation.”

“I saw your ad on the information highway, and I came to a screeching halt.”

“My fortune cookie said, ‘Your next interview will result in a job’ — and I like your company in particular.”

“Excellent memory; strong math aptitude; excellent memory; effective management skills; and very good at math.”
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Conducting an Authentic Job Search

Scientists and engineers sometimes reveal how scary the job search feels to them when they talk to recruiters. Often this comes couched in complaints about “how the job market works.” It’s true that the job search does take us out of our comfort zones.

But not all of that fear is justified. A lot of people believe the successful job seeker has to put on a new face and act in some preprogrammed manner–the “interview persona.” They believe that to be successful in the job search, they need to be artificial. This might mean pumping themselves full of books with titles like 100 Snappy Answers to Tough Interview Questions, knowing, like a used-car salesman, their response before the question is even asked.

If you are uncomfortable with this aspect of the job-seeking process–that is, if you don’t like acting phony–you can relax. It is entirely possible, and in many ways preferable, to develop a job-seeking style that reflects your core values and allows you to be authentic. Although you may need to change the way you look at some things, it isn’t necessary for you to change like a bad actor to suit the circumstances. There’s no need for subterfuge and misdirection, as it isn’t a used car you’re selling. “Suiting up” for the job search doesn’t mean stepping into someone else’s skin!

The right start to the job search

You make your first important decision about conducting an authentic job search when you sit down to prepare your industry CV or résumé, and your cover letter. Will you, as so many others do, lean towards exaggeration–or even stretch the truth more than a little? I hope not. I look at thousands of résumés and modified CVs a year–all of which are meant for jobs in industry–and I’ve come to realize that 10% to 15% of them have at least one area of purposeful inaccuracy. Some of them, of course, are worse than others.

It’s hard for scientists to make up credentials, because they’re too easy to check out. The most important listings on a CV–degrees, publications, awards–are easily verified, especially in the age of the Internet. You can’t fake a paper in Science or Cell. What you can do–and what scientists do too often–is attempt to gain an advantage by exaggerating your role in a project.

It’s not all that easy to detect this subtle subterfuge on a résumé. But if a hiring manager detects it or picks it up in a later reference call, she’ll throw the packet in the trash immediately. Guaranteed. It’s a bad idea.

The crux of the “authenticity” problem is that the job search is all about fit. You are what you are, and the company’s needs are what they are. Your success depends on bringing the two together. So it’s about uniqueness–what makes you special?–and also conformity–what makes you fit an employer’s needs better than the other candidates? So what is the best way to connect what you are with what they need? I think it’s this: Represent yourself accurately, but remember that you are presenting your credentials to someone who has a problem they need solved or an issue they need to have addressed. Show how you’ve handled similar problems in the past. Connect what you’ve already done with what they need done, and you’ll be much further ahead than someone who simply uses a boilerplate CV or cover letter in response to an open job. And you’ll be light-years ahead of someone who exaggerates and gets caught.

The authentic job seeker knows herself inside and out because she realizes that her job is to market herself and not some fictional alter ego. She regularly conducts self-reviews, taking conscious note of strengths and weaknesses. One great way to do this is with a SWOT analysis. (See the earlier article “How to Present Your Weakness During the Interview”)

Networking: long-term value vs. short-term gains

Just about all of the Tooling Up articles–mine as well as those written by Peter Fiske–refer to networking. Networking is the number-one tool for building momentum in the job search. But having been on the receiving end of networking calls for many years, I can tell you that it is very easy to spot an authentic networker–who, regrettably, is in the minority among the networking masses.

The authentic networker knows that networking is a two-way street. His approach accounts for the long-term nature of networking. I know I am speaking to an authentic networker when he or she invokes the law of reciprocity: “I’ll scratch your back, if you scratch mine.” It usually isn’t explicit, but it has to be present in every contact. Networking calls shouldn’t sound desperate and one-sided. I’ve taken too many calls from people who obviously look at networking strictly as a tool to land a job. And there’s nothing worse than being someone else’s tool!
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10 Tough Questions & How to Answer Them

Before Stephen Baird interviewed for the position of VP of corporate security for United Rentals in 2004, he did his homework. Sure, he checked out its financial filings and the stability of the executive suite, and he networked with a few peers. But Baird also went a step further. He visited a branch office to see what customers experience. “I learned how to rent a piece of equipment, and I basically hung around watching and listening,” he says. During the interview, when the CFO asked how Baird saw security playing into revenue generation, he had a ready answer. “I told him, ‘I will never make security a revenue generator, but it can contribute to cost savings and increased efficiencies,’” he says. Baird then explained how he had watched customers renting equipment and noticed that although they were offered the option to buy insurance on the equipment, there were no security products available on-site. He talked about products United could offer, like security locks for Bobcats that cut down on damage and theft of rented equipment. “The CFO [who would also be his new boss] just sat back and smiled,” Baird recalls.

With the increased visibility and co­dependence of the CSO role with other business functions, applicants for executive security positions can expect a lot tougher job interview questions. Preparation is paramount. We asked several security executives who went through the interview process in recent years what were some of the most challenging questions they had to answer. They shared their advice on crafting the right kinds of answers and the lessons they learned from the interview and selection process.

By the time a CSO has made it to the interview stage, the contents of his resume should be largely moot. Usually both the candidate and company have at least a rough idea of what the other is about. What they are looking for at this stage - and what many of the harder questions are getting at - is a sense of the unique skills and sensibilities the candidate will bring to the job. They may not always state their questions explicitly, but these are the areas that corporate executives will attempt to mine in an interview.

1. What is your vision for our security organization?

“The vision thing”, as the first President Bush once termed it, is hugely important in selecting a CSO. The company’s executives will have their own vision of what a CSO should be and what he should be able to do for the company, and they’ll expect you to have one too. They want to know that you have experience with their particular security issues, that you can craft a plan for where security should be in their enterprise - and how you are going to get it there. “In my case, I had a very complete job description written for them and had brainstormed what I thought a CSO should be able to provide them,” says Robert Champion, CSO of WGL Holdings, which owns Washington Gas. CSO candidates should try to learn as much as possible about the company and position, and be prepared to discuss ideas and strategies that match an employer’s goals.

2. How will you fit in with our corporate culture?

The CSO’s role at IBM or GE and that same position at Google or Yahoo are worlds apart. Every company that you interview with wants to know whether you can work comfortably with its corporate personality. Before your interview, talk to employees and, if possible, walk the halls. Is this a strait-laced crew, or will you need reserves of flexibility in order to fit in?

When Champion took a walk through the facility after his interview, he compared what he saw with what he had heard during his conversations with executives. “I was able to get a sense of the level of energy, the diversity picture and the material condition of the facilities,” he says. “A little attention to detail will also tell you about the security culture. Do people wear their IDs? Are doors propped open? Do strangers get challenged? Can unattended PCs be accessed?” The answers will help you make a career judgment.

3. Do you work well with others?

Hopefully the answer is “Yes!” During the interview process, it’s likely that you’ll meet with a variety of line-of-business executives from HR, legal, finance, IT and so on. Each will want to assess whether you are going to be a partner or a stumbling block to his goals. They’re not looking for a pushover (hopefully), but if the company is a collaborative environment, they want to know that you can play in that sandbox. Have examples ready of projects where you have successfully partnered in the past. And talk to these folks about their responsibilities and security concerns in their own language rather than using technical jargon. “They don’t have experience in information security, and these executives are tired of talking to security people that can’t talk in business terms,” says Sharon O’Bryan, former CISO at ABN Amro and now president of O’Bryan Advisory Services.

O’Bryan also suggests that candidates underscore their business fluency by asking non-IT executives questions about business operations during the interview, such as: What business transactions and processes are key profit generators? How has the company used technology risk management capabilities to reduce operational risk management costs?

4. What do you think about security convergence and its effect on our company?

Executives may not use the word convergence, but you can bet they have heard about or have thought about the movement that security is making toward being part of a larger risk management strategy. It is likely that they will try to suss out your perspective and experience in this area at some point during the interview. “You need to be prepared to discuss convergence, what the pros and cons are, and what your vision is for how to get there,” says Champion.

5. How do you sell security to other executives?

Good sales and leadership skills are critically important. After all, what good is all that vision and experience if you can’t persuade others to your way of thinking? Veteran security executive Pamela Fusco, an adviser to the Information Systems Security Association, has often been asked to make a sales pitch for a particular business case during an interview. “Executive management needs to know that you can talk at multiple levels and build a business case,” says Fusco.
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11 Reasons to Find a New Job That the Interviewer Shouldn’t Know

The American worker will change jobs for several reasons. The most popular reasons to start over include being underpaid to personality conflicts with the boss. However, when you’re interviewing for your new job you don’t want to tell the interviewer that you didn’t get along with your boss.

If you’re unsure of what to mention in the interview, here are Carl Mueller’s - author of “Reasons to Look for a New Job: Which Ones Should You Avoid Mentioning”- 11 reasons that you should leave out when you interview for a new job:

Reason No. 1: You lost your last job. When you get your next interview be factual and brief about why you are no longer with your last job.

Reason No. 2: You’re underemployed. It’s natural to find a job that matches your skills, experience and career aspirations. If your interviewer asks you why you left say that you needed a challenge.

Reason No. 3: You’re looking for a better opportunity. Looking for a job that shows-off your skills is a great reason to look for a new job. However, if you mention this in the interview it can give the appearance that you are always looking for another opportunity.

Reason No. 4: You want a job closer to home. Wanting to work closer to home is not a crime. But the interview might not go your way if you say, “I want to work here because it’s close to home.”

Reason No. 5: You travel too much. Perhaps you travel way too much in your current job. Just make sure your next job doesn’t have the same travel component.

Reason No. 6: You want better long-term prospects. Maybe your current employer is in a dying industry, maybe it’s poorly managed, and perhaps the long-term visibility of the company/industry is in question. Whatever the reason, be sure not to bad mouth your previous employer to the interviewer.
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Despite Favorable Job Market, IT Pros Stay Put

Ever since the early 2000’s economic downturn, IT pros have endured the slings and arrows of an employer’s marketplace. Employers slashed benefits, eliminated perks, froze—or increased only modestly—salary and compensation levels, and through it all placed more responsibilities on the already brimming plates of their employees. Don’t look now, but it might just be payback time.

That’s the upshot of new research from IT workforce watchers Robert Half Technology and Careerbuilders.com. For one thing, the two companies say, more than half (51 percent) of the hiring managers they surveyed for their 2005 Employment Dynamics and Growth Expectations (EDGE) Report indicated that it was difficult to find qualified candidates 12 months ago, while more than 81 percent said the same today. There’s good news for IT pros with experience and certifications, too: more than half of hiring managers who said they had experienced trouble recruiting cited a shortage of qualified professionals as the biggest problem. The result, Robert Half and Careerbuilder.com say, is that almost 40 percent of hiring managers expect to boost starting salaries to help attract new talent.

It hasn’t always been this encouraging, assuming the Robert Half and Careerbuilder.com survey isn’t just an anomalous blip on the radar screen. But a range of other indicators—including a recent report from market watcher Gartner Inc.—point to the emergence of a job-seeker’s market. For example, a Gartner poll of 188 U.S. IT organizations found that approximately 61 percent of respondents project some level of IT staff increase between now and early 2007.

More telling still, respondents reported a 1 percent increase in worker-initiated turnover compared to last year’s survey results. The upshot, Gartner says, is that CIOs expect to spend money—in the form of salary increases or other perks—to hire or retain top IT talent. The average 2006 salary increase for IT employees is likely to be in the neighborhood of 3.5 percent, according to the company.

A Long Time Coming

IT pros have long expressed dissatisfaction with their compensation, benefits, and work responsibilities. It wasn’t until recently, however, that many have determined to do anything about it. Consider the case of a former production support engineer with telco giant Sprint Nextel, who says he leapt at the chance to take a voluntary severance package in April after eight years with that company.

“My pay was, for the most part, stagnant after 2001, really until very recently. Just looking at my tax records, [pay was stagnant],” this IT pro—who asked that his name not be used since he’s still seeking employment—said.

This professional was among several hundred Sprint employees who were outsourced to IBM Corp. one year ago as part of an ambitious global services win for that company. He didn’t get a raise or see much in the way of compensation perks when he came onboard with IBM, he says, but he was given a raise when Sprint “backsourced” most of its former employees in March. That was part of the telco giant’s prominent about-face on the outsourcing front.

“I got a raise when I came back, but really, the amount of work [I was expected to do] increased even more. Part of that problem was not that there was more work but that the members of the team had left or had chosen to take earlier opportunities to leave the company and move on. Either way, I had more work and they were paying me the same. That’s why I opted to leave when I had the chance.”

This IT pro hasn’t yet found work, but—with a healthy savings account and the added padding of a three-month severance package, courtesy of Sprint Nextel—he says he’s taking his time and that he’s determined to find a job that he likes. Not everyone will follow his lead, of course. Representatives from Robert Half Technology argue that rank-and-file IT employees are still somewhat cautious about their job prospects and are consequently less willing to try to negotiate higher salaries. Fully 40 percent of survey respondents categorized the job market as difficult 12 months ago, while 85 percent say it is equally or more challenging today. What’s more, nearly 20 percent of workers say they are less likely to ask for more money from a potential employer in the next 12 months, while the number of those who were more likely to try to negotiate for better compensation packages dropped significantly compared to last year’s results, Robert Half representatives confirm.
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Dare to be honest in your job hunt
I
Should you or shouldn’t you? Say you’re sitting in a job interview, controlling your nerves and selling yourself hard. Do you tell them that you train for triathlons, have two toddlers, or will die if you can’t leave early on summer Fridays to beat the beach traffic? Deciding whether to be open about your work-life needs is the last frontier of job candidate angst.

Leah Graves votes for full disclosure. Although recruiters repeatedly have urged her to bury a mention of her sideline photography business on her resume, she puts it high on the first page, just under a line about her night-school MBA studies. After once slaving away for a big company that forced her to ditch her private life, she’s now determined to be upfront about her other interests — and her strategy has worked.

Downsized in early June, Graves landed a job eight weeks later as a corporate account manager for a Web-based employee benefits firm. She found the opening on Craig’s List, sent them her “tell-all” resume and got a prompt callback from her new employer, Working Advantage in Maynard.

“They appreciated the fact that I was upfront and honest,” says Graves, whose husband, an engineer, runs a business refurbishing soda machines out of their Framingham home. “This is my priority, but they do have to understand that I have a side business and I am going back to school.”

Overworked, with an eye on the door — that’s how many feel about their current jobs and why more job candidates are raising work-life issues, such as a flexible schedule or even a desire to eat dinner with the kids, during a job search.

Nearly 70 percent of 1,000 workers surveyed in July say their workload had increased since spring, and half find it more difficult to juggle work/life matters than in the past, according to an online Harris Interactive poll sponsored by Kronos, Inc., a workforce software company based in Chelmsford. Nearly 75 percent of those polled said they are actively or passively looking for a new job.

Still, full disclosure job-hunting isn’t easy. There are ways to raise the issue that will help your cause, and ways that won’t. A first rule of thumb: Do your homework. Along with the requisite research into a prospective employer’s business operations, try to learn about its culture. Do people work routinely until 8 p.m., give up vacations, rush back after childbirth? If so, they might growl at a candidate who mentions “balance,” or worse, sweet-talk you and then make you sweat.

Before interviewing at Lexington-based VistaPrint, recent hire Austin Cooke asked numerous industry and employee contacts about the company’s culture. He was looking for a new job with less travel, in part so he could spend time with his 9-month-old daughter Alexis and 11-year-old stepson, Zach.
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