Black In Business

I am in the executive recruitment industry. I have been for the past 20 months. As you know our economy is challenged these days.Some people are in the job market that never thought they would be. My specialty is the Laboratory Medical Business, representing companies that market medical products to the diagnostics, life science or medical device industry.
Many of the candidates I speak with are highly accomplished and armed with great educations.Often times they have experience from some of the best corporations in the world. In today’s world there are people for whom their career advancement strategy is to move around to different companies. Some companies consider job hoppers more valuable because they have shown flexibility and may have experienced more growth by seeing how different companies work.These candidates are usually very good at a job search and interviewing.
Another category of candidate are people like myself that may have spent several years with the same company and is or were highly regarded there. For this candidate everything is new about the job search; from the resume to the offer.
I will refer to 3 different case studies and speak to what went wrong and the lesson learned that will help me be a better coach for candidates.
Case 1, involved a mid career woman that works for a great health care company that is reflected by a long history of financial success. She was interviewing with a fairly new company with sales in the millions instead of the billions. The smaller company is a dynamic organization and lead by some terrific people. They are doing well and being smaller they pay better than the big corporation.
My candidate did a great representation of herself and was the top candidate and could have double her income and cut down on her over night travel.
The day she was supposed to go to her final interview she got cold feet and gave a lame excuse to postpone the interview.The company decided to extend the search and came up with 2 other candidates of which one won the job.
Lesson learned, my candidate , shared her opportunity with some of her peers and they scared her about the potential risk, thus the cold feet. I make sure now to advise my candidate to not share their plans with co workers until the deal is done. My candidate felt her credentials would sell them selves and we were outsold by a lessor candidate , one that made clear they wanted the job.My candidate did not properly sell their virtues until it was too late. My advice is to close the deal first, sell yourself and then have them sell you on their company.
Case 2,my candidate has a 30 year career of success and has remarkable diversity of experience. The issue is he is laid back and in many ways quiet. His burning desire is hidden. we have not lost this one yet but we slipped from top candidate to top 3 in a competition.My candidate misstep was a result of his demeanor not being reflective of his drive. this is more difficult, because it is a personality trait.We have now outlined his skill dimensions that will make him a winner in the position. We further illustrated examples in his long career with quantitative interpretation of his impact. We showed money growth or cost saved . My candidate will go back to the home office for another round of interviews and we will role play prior to his visit.
case3, my candidate had a opportunity to meet with the decision maker for a company, needing a regional sales manager but also anticipating a national sales manager opening as well.My candidate had recently loss his position from a company where he had excelled for over 20 years.He opted to wait for the bigger job to open. The decision maker decided not to consider this candidate for either. My advice for job searchers is to take the opportunity to network and show your value.
Those are the 3 cases, I was successful in one with another candidate and have another chance in case 2.The take away, is to be prepared to sell yourself in an interview and do not assume that your greatness is obvious to all. Does anyone have any similar stories they have witness as a hiring manager or as the person being interviewed. Keep Hope Alive!