Monday, May 2, 2011

The secret to landing a job when not the most qualified: Love, yes love

Unless your resume is likely to be top-of-the stack, the secret to getting hired is to get the employer to love you.

Love you?! What?! It's not as crazy or as difficult as it may first seem.

Most employers' first thought is to do a broad search to find the very best candidate. To abandon that rationality requires a strong positive feeling for a job candidate. In other words, the employer loves that person.

How do you get an employer to love you? Basically, it's a matter of being more human, more honest than most candidates. When it works, doing that opens the door to an honest, intimate relationship in which the employer too reveals weaknesses and insecurities and, on the positive side, is open to laughing and being their true self with the person. Such interactions, sometimes sooner than later, lead to affection and, in turn, openness to the possibility of hiring the person for a current or future job opening, or even creating a job or at least project position for the person.

Of course, most of the time, that will not help the person land a job. An employer may well always opt to go for the strongest candidate he can find. Or she may decide that the weaknesses you describe would make you too weak an employee. Or he may view your very candor as weakness and/or that you'll be high maintenance. Or it may take so long that before anyone offers you a decent job, you're homeless.

But on average, if job seekers, indeed all of us, take the time to create true deep connections and friendships with potential employers and others, it will not only enrich your and their lives, it may be the most potent way to improve your career.

1 comment:

Andrew B said...

Marty,
this might work in some (mostly Western) cultures.
If a hiring manager belongs to a different (let's say Oriental) culture he might consider demonstration of emotions as a weakness, or typical Western barbarism.

 

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