First, I hate to say it David Perry, but I do not believe that a single one of the job seekers had read your Guerrilla Marketing for Job Hunters book.  I collected quite a number of resumes, but there was only one that stood out as being different.  This candidate had included a QR code on her resume.  As soon as she left I pulled out my BlackBerry Torch and fired up the app to see where it led (which was great for her because it did pique my interest).  Unfortunately it was just a connection to her LinkedIn profile.  While better than nothing, it would have been great if she had found something more interesting to link to.  Aside from that one difference, every resume looked the same… some were shorter than other and there was one that was a mini-book (something like more than 30 pages).   And I can honestly say that there is not a single person that I spent more than a few moments looking over their resume and none that I can recall two days later.

Second, when you drop off a resume, you should STAPLE it together. Any time we received a resume that was not stapled as soon as the candidate left someone made a comment about it.  Whether or not this will lessen their chances of getting an interview or not I am not sure, but it is something that should always be done just in case.

Third, I was amazed at how many people had no idea who we were or what we did.  Our company has a number of open positions right now that we are actively trying to hire for.  They are all available on our website.  And a link to our website was available from the ITO career fair page.  But few people had taken the time to look up what we do, or at least have an idea that they could ask questions about.  I won’t fault the job seekers completely because our company is not well known, but it was disheartening.  The only questions I was asked were “What do you guys do?”, “What jobs do you have available?” and the generic “Do you like working there?”.  No one asked about security or digital protection, so either they did not do any research or our website does not clearly convey what the organization does.

Finally, while some people were nicely dressed (not necessarily in a suit and tie although there were some dressed that way) others were wearing jeans and T-shirts.  I believe that this is a chance to make an impression on someone who could potentially be hiring you, so you should take the time to at least dress the part.

As a closing comment, I would suggest that if you are going to attend a career fair, you should do your research on the companies you plan to drop off a resume at, show up dress appropriately, and have a stapled (preferably Guerrilla) resume on hand.  Anything less is a disservice to your job search, and as a former job hunter myself, something that the potential hiring manager could find insulting.

Having said that, I have found that I am getting my confidence back.  And talking with people that I had previously interviewed with, I am finding that that confidence is making me come across more positively towards them.  When looking for a job I was always very quick to respond to e-mails and extremely accommodating when trying to set up meetings.  I was taking an almost passive role in the search by being meek and agreeable.  If the interviewer wanted to meet me in 15 minutes I would be there even if I had other plans.  Of course I wanted a job and was willing to do whatever was necessary to give myself the opportunity.

Now that I have a position that I am very happy with I am still talking to some of these companies to keep up the relationship that I had built, and because I am truly interested in some of their products – there is some really great stuff being developed in Ottawa!  But instead of responding immediately to their e-mails (because I am at work and not getting them until I get home) or setting up meetings for as soon as possible, I am a little bit delayed in my communications.  As counter intuitive as it sounds, this has actually seemed to be helping me.  In my mind this is because it shows them that my time is valuable, which puts it at a premium and other people are more likely to work with me to find a convenient time to meet.

So as weird as it sounds, try to hold off on responding to e-mail and do not necessarily jump to get a meeting set up as soon as you possibly can.  It could help to make you more valuable because the company knows they can not have you at the drop of a hat (and that could also play in your favour when it comes to the negotiation part of the discussion).

However, just because you found something new does not mean that you do not carry any of the baggage from the previous experience.  Depending on the situation it can leave you feeling a mix of emotions, and even though you are happy to have found a position, you can still feel anxious about where things are going and where you stand.  This is natural, but you have to try to rein these feelings in and recognize that they are the way that you are feeling and not the way that the organization feels towards you.

By worrying about aspect of your performance you may put yourself into a worse position and highlight your feelings to the people around you, which starts to plant the seed of doubt in their mind. It can also cause you to under perform because you are checking everything over to ensure that it is perfect, but by doing so you are missing deadlines.  It is a tough situation to face (and here everyone thought that as soon as you found a new position all of your troubles would be over).

When I start to go a bit crazy like that I remind myself that they hired me based on what I have accomplished in the past, and the only way I can keep them happy is to show them that I can produce similar results for them.  And by producing these results it feeds back on me, giving me the confidence to do a better job because of the satisfaction I find when making others happy.  And the hope is that, eventually, that feeling of worry will go away and you can start being yourself again.

Essentially what it talks about is how people have a hard time identifying their achievements and writing them in a way that portrays them positively to others.  This is something that I had difficulties doing when I put my resume together.  However, I was fortunate enough to be able to get some great guidance when writing them down.  I think there are two reasons why a person would have trouble with this concept.  I my case, my accomplishments did not seem like they were that extraordinary.  They were something that I did, and I was proud of them, but they were done as part of my job.  If you ask a police office about their accomplishments I am guessing they would not say that, in a given month they saved a certain amount of people.  They would likely say that they served and protected.  To them it is just part of the job.  But to someone like me, it would be a huge accomplishment.

The second reason is that people do not like to brag.  This may be specific in certain regions over others, and being Canadian I typically find that people are reserved in their accomplishments.  For example, one of my accomplishments on my original resume was “Expert in developing technical and social media sales collateral. Proven ability to drive high marketing lead generation response rates utilizing traditional and new technology”.  There is nothing very tangible about this statement to catch a hiring manager’s attention.  However, a revised version of the accomplishment read “Unique YouTube content created for Nintendo Wii viewed 920,000+ times”.  Both are true statements, but the second one is much more tangible and demonstrates a capability instead of a vanilla statement.

I think that identifying and properly writing accomplishments is the hardest part of a resume.  Everything else is very factual – name, role at a company, how long you were there, etc.  However, I feel that accomplishments are one of the most important parts of a resume as it sets you apart from everyone else.  If all the candidates for a position just listed where they had worked previously then there is little differentiation.  It is a person’s accomplishments that makes them unique and really demonstrates what you are capable of.

One of the things that I like to do is have presentations ready about topics I think will be discussed or that I can use to show my understanding of an issue.  I have three presentations prepared and loaded on my iPad – Expanding Your Social Network, Lead Generation Tips, and About Greg Quirk.  I have only used the last one twice when I was asked point blank about myself.  I try to not use it because it really only talks about me and what I can do as opposed to how I can help the company solve their problems.  Instead I like to talk about the points in this presentation without actually jumping into a presentation talking about myself.

I typically have one or two more presentations ready depending on the company that I am interviewing with.  Additional presentations are based on what I can discover from contacting the recently departed, my own research, or coming up with a 30/60/90 day plan for the company.

The way that this works well is because I can steer the conversation towards the presentations I have available.  You do not want to come right out and say, “Hey, I’ve got a presentation on that… wanna see?”.  This makes it sound like you are focused only on yourself.  Instead, you want to start talking leading the conversation towards what you have presentations on.  For example, I like to ask questions about the company’s social media strategy.  This will get the person talking about their thoughts on the topic and you can gauge their level of interest.  Some companies have no desire to use social media, others want to do it but are not sure how, and others are taking full advantage of the technology.  By getting their views on the subject, you can then determine whether or not to use the presentation at all.  And if you decide to use it, you can make a few comments like “I’m a big believer in using LinkedIn for businesses.  It’s interesting that you think that too.  In fact, I pulled together a presentation on some thoughts about social media and how it can be used.  Would you like to see?”.  This is much different than just blurting out that you have a presentation on the subject without putting context around it first, and evaluating the hiring manager’s interest in the topic.

While having presentations available on my iPad, if you are talking to more than one person you need to have a way to show them your presentation because it is not very comfortable to have more people huddled around an iPad screen.  You want to have the presentations saved on a USB stick so that you can load them onto a computer with a projector, but that is a back up in my opinion.  What I think you should do, and what I did, was get the most relevant presentation printed and insert it into a professional looking folder to distribute.

For my interview, I prepared a presentation as requested, and printed it, along with a copy of my Guerrilla Resume, the press release I wrote, and the draft article that I authored on the topic.  I put these materials in a navy blue folder that could hold my business card (which I had created and printed at Staples) and handed them to each of the interviewers as they entered the room.

Picture of an Interview Presentation Folder

You may ask, “All you are doing is printing a presentation… Why is this a Guerrilla tactic?”.  First off, the fact that I pulled together all this content (press release and article) was above and beyond what was expected.   Second, the way that I provided the material was not what was expected.  Most people in this situation would have created a presentation and e-mailed it to the hiring manager and HR (who helped to set up the interview).  I took it a step further and did something different that caught their attention. And finally, it helped me to guide the discussion to where I wanted it to go so that I could demonstrate my capabilities and show my professionalism.  The role I received an offer for has a component of talking to people and using this method shows how seriously I take presenting and alleviates any concern that they might have about putting me in front of a client or partner.

The point I am trying to get across is that, if you have used Guerrilla tactics to set up an interview, keep using them during the interview.  Do something that will get their attention and make them take notice.  Do something that a typical candidate would not do, because then you are putting yourself on a different level and making the hiring decision easier for the interviewers.

But why stop doing that work when you land a job?  Chances are you have a few weeks transition before you start your new role – whether that is because you have to leave your old job or because they need time to get things set up for you before you start.  So why sit back and wait to do work before you start?  Within the first few weeks or months you are still on probation at your new job.  You want to  put your best foot forward to make sure they realize that the interview was not a fluke and you really can make an impact on the company.  Some people interview extremely well.  They are personable and say the right things, but when they actually start the job the smoke and mirrors start to fade away as they can not live up to the expectation that they set.

When preparing for the interview you should have done some research on the company and their industry.  But with everything else that is going on, chances are you did not commit everything to memory or learn as much information as you could have.  You made sure that you understood enough to sound intelligible during the interview, but how much of it do you still remember, and how much more is there to learn?  Of course, you are not going to get specific information about the company’s inner workings.  That will come when you actually start the job.  But there is a lot of information you can learn before you start to make sure that you have a solid foundation to build from when you get into the specific details of the company’s products.

Remember that getting the job is a huge accomplishment, but keeping it, succeeding at it, will take effort.  And if you have a few weeks before you start, why would you not take the time to build your knowledge so that you can impress your new boss.

1) Cold calls.  Near the end of my search I started trying cold calls to CEOs at 5 in the morning.  It was very painful because I had to be awake that early (which for anyone with young children knows is especially difficult).  The idea was to bypass the gatekeepers and leave a message directly in the hopes that the person would call me back.  I did this three times and for about 20 different companies.  And unfortunately, not one called me back.  They say it can take as many as 10 tries to get someone to talk to you and I did not hit that point, but I was hoping to have at least some of the people return my call.

2) Trojan Thank You Notes.  I do not want to be too hard on this tactic because I did not have the opportunity to follow through with it as far as I could have.  I sent my Guerrilla Resume in a thank you note.  I hand wrote a cover letter in the card.  I should have followed up on the thank you notes that I sent, but was distracted with my interview and did not call people the week that I should have.  I was also comparing the tactic to the Coffee Cup Caper where companies called me when they received the package.  Since no one called me I am thinking that, while more economical than a coffee cup sent via FedEx, it did not have the same impact.

3) Job boards. When I started my search I spent a lot of time on job boards.  At the end I spent maybe a few minutes each day looking for something interesting, and even when I did apply I also used other techniques to send my resume, like uncovering who the hiring manager was and contacting that person directly.

4) Asking my network for help. I did have some success in getting responses from my network, but interestingly the majority of the responses were from people that I would consider to be acquaintances instead of close contacts.  I am not sure why this was the case, but it was interesting.

If I was to do it all again, and I pray that I will not need to for quite a long time, I would spend less time on these activities and more on the ones from yesterday’s post.

Again, these were things that did not work as well as I expected for me.  It may be completely different in your circumstances.

What worked for my job search

There are a number of things that I found valuable during my job search.  While some of them did not result in a job offer, or in some cases even for actually applying for positions, they kept me motivated throughout the process.

1) Have a plan in place. This was not the first time that I have had to look for a job, but this time I approached it in a different manner – I had a plan.  Previously I had jumped onto the Internet, gone to job board sites, and sent my resume in for positions that were listed.  And that was my day.  It quickly became frustrating because I entered the “black hole” of applying and not finding anything new to apply for.  This time around I had a plan in place of activities to perform beyond going to job boards and it made me feel like I was accomplishing something instead of doing the same thing over and over every day. If you do not know how to go about making a job search plan read through my blog posts from when I started the Guerrilla Executive Home Study Course, pick up a copy of the program yourself, or buy the Guerrilla Marketing for Job Hunters.  Not only were the books beneficial to me with formulating a plan, but also guided me through many of the tactics I employed.

2) Do multiple things.  Along the same lines as having a plan, I found that it was useful to have multiple things on the go.  I created a blog that I was updating almost every day.  I was trying to network (mostly though LinkedIn).  I was doing research on companies that I wanted to work for.  I was making calls and sending out follow ups.  Each day I a list of different things to that were moving me towards my goal instead of doing the same thing each day.  By having multiple things going on I also found that my days were busier, more productive, and I had a sense of accomplishment.

3) Find companies.  One challenge that I constantly faced was finding companies to research and apply to.  If you get a book on job searching they will often gloss over this aspect and focus on resumes, cover letters, and other steps to take when applying for a position.  But all of that advice is pointless unless you actually have somewhere to apply to.  One thing that I uncovered was to look for companies that won awards, and then follow the awards to find other companies to investigate.  Typically there are multiple winners for an award, or at least multiple nominees, so that helps to identify a number of companies.  And often if a company won an award they have won others as well, expanding on the number of awards that you can follow to find many companies.

4) Guerrilla Resume.  This is one that I can not overstate.  I have received many compliments on my Guerrilla Resume.  Granted, I believe that the content is good, but it is the formatting that caught the hiring manager’s attention and made them take the time to look at it.  It is different than most of the resumes that are submitted and in a pile of applications it is great to stand out to get noticed.

5) Follow up.  Just sending your resume to a company and hoping they will get in touch with you is not a good strategy in my mind.  This is putting your career in someone else’s hands and leads to a sense of hopelessness and waiting.  There is nothing worse than sitting around waiting for the phone to ring.  If you follow up with a company and get a “no” answer that is good.  Wait, getting a no is good?  By getting a no answer you can move on to your next opportunity and are not waiting for feedback.  This happen to me.  I had multiple meetings with a company and I was sure that they were going to make me an offer.  I waited patiently for them to contact me and was not focusing on filling my pipeline as much as I should have.  When they did call me, it was with the unfortunate news that they were not in a position to offer me a job.  I had let time go by without doing as much searching as I could have because I did not receive feedback.  You can also use a no answer to ask a valuable question – Do they know of someone else who is looking?  You never know, they might be able to point you somewhere that you had not been looking.

6) Put yourself out there. This one might be my own personal style, but I throw myself wholeheartedly into everything that I do.  This can, and has, resulted in me being completely crushed when things do not work out, but by engaging completely I can sleep at night knowing that I tried my hardest, even if it did not work out.

7) Do the work. When you do get a meeting with a company be prepared.  Walk into the meeting with knowledge about the company and their problems, and have thoughts about how to solve those issues.  You can find out about a company’s problems by talking to former employees.  This means a lot of work, and if you do not get the job you may feel that it was all for nothing.  But if you have not done the preparation you are not going to be putting your best foot forward and showing them why they need to hire you.

Try something different.  I have talked about the coffee cup caper, and I believe that it is a great way to get meetings.  This is especially true if you are applying to a company that does not have a position posted because if you just send in your resume I do not think that it will get noticed until they have a need to fill.  By sending a coffee cup, you are able to get their attention, and since you have done the work, you have identified their pain points and can talk about them in your cover letter.  This tactic had a solid hit rate for me and even if I did not secure a meeting, often I would at least receive a call or e-mail letting me know.  This way I could cross companies off my list and was not waiting to hear back from them.

Another thing that I did was to create a video on how to maximize your YouTube video views.  I created a presentation, recorded it, and posted it on YouTube.  There are still activities that I am going to pursue to get more views on this video (as I got distracted preparing for my interview before I really had a chance to follow all of the steps in the video), but it worked as a great talking point during my interviews and I used it as follow up content after meeting with hiring managers.

9) Don’t give up.  It can be an easy thing to do when things do not go your way, and I felt depressed myself a number of times.  But you are not going to find a job unless you take action.  Even when things look bleak, there are other opportunities around the corner.  Find something that works for you and continue to do it until you get an offer.

Today I am focusing on what I found to be useful.  Tomorrow I will talk about some of the things that I attempted that did not net me any results.

I had a second round interview this morning with a company.  I talked last week about a phone interview I had, and today was a panel interview.  As with my comparison between in person and phone interviews, there are pros and cons for a panel interview as well.  On the con side, it can be quite intimidating.  I had four interviewers around a table and a fifth joining on a video conference, and you are never sure which one you should be looking at during the discussions.

On the pro side of a panel interview, it is a good way to get through many of the typical questions at one time.  When going through multiple rounds of interviews, which is becoming a standard process, many of the same questions are asked.  A panel interview gets through all of that at one time.  As well, it can speed up the decision making process because all of the relevant people are already in a room together and can discuss the candidate instead of trying to set up separate meetings.  This is what happened to me.

I had been asked to prepare a presentation for the interview, which I personally found quite valuable.  Not only was it a great way to focus the discussion, but it also enabled me to show my enthusiasm for the market space and demonstrate my thinking process, as opposed to being interviewed about facts and details that I could memorize or talking about myself.

After the presentation and answering any questions, they had me wait in the lunch room while the discussed.  This was a rather worrisome time… sitting with my iPad trying to play a round of Angry Birds to keep myself calm while waiting to be brought back into the meeting room.  What felt like hours, although I think it was closer to 20 minutes, later they brought me back to the room.

I must have impressed the panel because I was told that, assuming a few details work out, such as a reference check and another brief phone interview with my (soon to be) boss’s boss, I should be expecting an offer!

For those of you that have been following my blog and using tactics from the Guerrilla Marketing for Job Hunters (or Guerrilla Executive Home Study Course) here are some things that I was told:

- My Guerrilla Resume really caught their attention and they wanted to learn more about me from seeing it
- Do not over under (correction – thanks Dan) estimate the value of an internal reference (my resume was passed along to HR by a former colleague and that carries a lot of weight)
- Outside the box tactics are of interest, even if you did not use them on this company.  I talked about the Coffee Cup Caper during the interview, as well as my blog and calling recently departed employees.  These were all things that showed unique ways of accomplishing a task, and that is what companies are looking for – someone who finds a solution, not someone who goes by the book (I guess in this case it was going by the book, but it was a book of different ideas ).
- Enthusiasm counts for a lot.  Be passionate about what you are talking about.  Hopefully you are interviewing with a company that you are passionate about (which worked out for me) so you do not have to fake it .

PS: As I was writing this one of my references e-mailed me to let me know that he had already been contacted.

A phone interview is easier, especially if you have done your preparation work ahead of time (which you should always do for any interview that you have).  However, instead of trying to memorize facts and details about the company that you are interviewing with, such as the names of the management team or specific names of their products, you can have all of the information open on a Word document or have the company’s website on your browser.  Many phone interviewers know this and they bypass these types of questions.  As well, you can go through the job description and have answers prepared to talk about your experience related to each area.  Instead of having to try to remember all of the points that you want to make you can have notes in front of you to make sure that you are recalling everything you want in order to make a solid impression.

There are some difficulties with phone interviews, and that is largely based on not being able to see the person.  When you are talking about your achievements you can not tell if the person is giving cues that they are interested in what you are saying, or on the flip side, if they are not interested and you should move to the next subject.  There can also be communication problems where both parties are talking over each other and neither hears what the other says.

Overall I believe that my phone interview went well, and they did schedule an in-person interview for next week.  Interestingly, they asked me to create a presentation for the interview, which I personally think is a great thing to do.  It is always difficult to know exactly what to prepare when going into an interview, and trying to learn and memorize everything that “could” be asked is a challenge.  But having a specific focus for the interview and knowing ahead of time what the focus is going to be will help me prepare, and better yet, it will enable me to demonstrate my capabilities in terms of reasoning, strategy, and presenting.