Category Archives: careers

What To Do When Your Interviewer Checks Out

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Over the fifteen plus years that I’ve been in the professional workforce, I’ve worked for five different companies.  The journey for those jobs included many more interviews along the way.

As much as I’d like to think I’m awesome enough to have nailed every interview I’ve ever been on, the truth is that I haven’t.  Some interviews I have known pretty much right off the bat that they liked me and that I would get an offer (or at least proceed to the next round).  Twice, I had that feeling and never did get a call back, so my radar is sometimes off.

But, there are also times when you go into a job interview, and at a certain point in the scheduled time, you can see the interviewer make up his or her mind, and not in a positive way.  Whether it’s a flash of an eye, a shift in their position, or other language, there are times when you can see the interviewer close their book on you and check out of the interview.

Now, unless this happens at the end of the interview, they’re not going to just end it.  You’ll still have to complete the process.

But, what do you do if you visibly see the interviewer check out of the interview.  Here are a things that I think are critical and will only lead to success….in a future interview.

  • Don’t check out.  If you see the interviewer check out, that doesn’t mean you should do the same.  Finish the interview, answer the questions, and remain as professional as possible.  You should put forth your best effort in every second of every interview.  No exceptions exist for that rule, ever.
  • Don’t try to change his or her mind.  One thing that you can do when you see your interviewer check out is take it as a challenge and look at it as an opportunity to change their mind.  This is a bad idea.  As someone that’s interviewed many people, the truth is that once they’ve decided you’re a ‘no’, then that’s that.  Trying to change their mind after that happened is likely going to do nothing more than annoy them and extend the interview when the outcome is going to be the same.
  • Follow through as normal.  Thank the interviewer with the same sincerity that you would if you felt the job was yours, and same goes for sending a thank you note.  The fact is that you never know when you might run across the person interviewing you again or get another opportunity at the same company with someone else doing the interview.  There’s  a big difference between not being the right person for the job and not being the right person for any job.
  • Realize you might have misread the situation.  As I’ve gotten more experienced, I’ve gotten better at reading people that are interviewing me.  If you misread a signal, you might think the interview is over, only to find out that you were wrong.  That’s another reason why you make sure to give it your all.  You never know.
  • Evaluate what happened.  After the interview ends and you’re back home, take some time to evaluate what happened.  Put yourselves in the shoes of the person doing the interview and see what might have led to their decision.  Was it experience that they were looking for?  Was it something you said or didn’t say?  You may be able to learn something that you can use to improve yourself for your next interview wherever that may end up being.
  • Don’t beat yourself up.  Sometimes, no matter what you come up with in the evaluation, it may come out that there simply was nothing you could have done.  Maybe the person that interviewed before you had knocked it out of the park and the person interviewing had already made up their mind.  Stuff happens.  Let it roll off.

The same principles can be applied in reverse.  I’ve interviewed for jobs where, once the interview started and I learned a little bit more about the company or position, I knew right away that I was not interested in the position.   One time, I had an interview through a contract company working in the IT department at the City of Detroit.  I was cautiously optimistic, but as soon as I went in and saw the environment, I knew it wasn’t for me.  There was just a sense of bureaucracy and red tape that I knew I would not be able to handle effectively.  Still, at no point in the interview did I give anything less than my best.

That’s the key.  Give your best and realize that your best is not going to be what everybody else is looking for.  Most times, there’s nothing personal about that.  It’s just business.

Have you ever had your interviewer check out during the process?  What were the circumstances?  How did you react?

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The Story Of My Worst Job Ever: Part Three

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This is the third part of the story about my worst job ever.  It started off as one post, but writing it got to be so long (and so therapeutic, even though these events happened seven years ago) that I decided to break it up.  In the first part we talked about the process of finding and getting the job.  Yesterday in part two we talked about how things only went down from there after some ‘changes in plans’ from when I was hired.  When we last left, my frustration was to the point that I was kicking a computer bag in the middle of Staples.

Back To The Story

After the junior audit confusion, I was put back on to lead duty.  One of the things auditors will do is re-audit something that had been audited in the past where improvement was needed.  I was given this assignment, and found that the original audit from several years prior had been done by none other than Bridgette herself.

I felt that this was great news.    I looked at the areas that were identified in the previous audit which needed attention and pulled them into my plan.  In addition, I did a great deal of research and pulled in other best practices.  In short, the scope of my proposed audit was probably double what she had done in the past.  When I met with her to outline my plan, I was confident that she would be impressed.

Which was a mistake, because of course she wasn’t.  She said that I didn’t go deep enough in scope. When I pointed out that it went further than the previous audit (not mentioning that it was hers) had gone, as well as that it brought in points tied to industry standards, she merely brushed it off.

At that point…

I Gave Up

That’s right.  I knew that no matter what I did, I was not going to please this woman.  She made it clear that her impression of me was already set and there was nothing in the world I could do to change her thoughts about me.

It was around that time where I did actually start looking around for a new job.  I also started opening up a little bit to my fiancé and she started getting a glimpse of how bad it really was and the depths of my unhappiness.

I proceeded with the audit but my heart wasn’t in it.  I knew there was no future there for me and when I came to work and had an appointment later that day for a ‘Review’ meeting, I pretty much knew what it was all about.  I went around and said my goodbyes to a few colleagues and even packed the things that would go with me into a pile from my cubicle.  Sure enough, they outlined my separation package and came in with my box of stuff.    I had worked there for nine months.

The Aftermath

When I told my parents and told others that I had been let go, they were shocked.  Looking back, the reason is that I hid so much of what I was really going through.

And I did this because I didn’t want to admit that I was failing at this job.  Whether it was my fault or the fault of the company (I take responsibility for some of my shortcomings, so I put  the blame on both elements), I had never failed at a job before.  I’d always been thought of as a hard worker, someone who learned, and someone who was a top-tier team member.  Suddenly, I was none of those things, so I had simply buried it until I no longer could.

In the end, it turned out to be a blessing.

Things went as good as they possibly could.  When I left that job, I was broken.  Yes, I was relieved that I no longer had to go to a place where I clearly didn’t fit and wasn’t contributing, but I also had to deal with the fact that I had failed.  Having not failed in a job to this degree ever before, it was gnawing.  It made me wonder, how would I ever even find a job, and once I did, how could I have the confidence that I once did?

Had it been taken away?  I really didn’t know for those first couple of weeks after ending this nightmare.

The Happy Ending

I started a new job search, and I wasn’t sure where things were going to go.  This was 2006 and the market in Michigan was already starting to soften quite a bit, as we were the first state into the great recession.  It had taken me over four months to land this job nine months earlier when the market was better, so I wasn’t sure what to expect.

But, fate was with me.  I started instant messaging (no Facebook or LinkedIn yet!) with someone who had worked for me a couple of years ago.  He was working for a company that had project manager openings for a big project.  He gave me a referral and I got a call the next day after e-mailing my resume.  It was a contract position, which I’d never had before, but the contact there was great, and he got me in for a face to face interview, and I immediately hit it off with the manager.

This time, I made sure I met the qualifications (I did), and I made sure I would be working for the manager that actually hired me (I would).   We hit it off and less than six weeks after being let go from the worst job ever, I was working again.  This is not something I would have ever guessed would have happened in my wildest dreams on the day that I was let go.

On top of that, the job was a perfect match for me.  I fit right in.  I immediately contributed and was recognized as a solid team member.

In short, it was the perfect job for many reasons, but the most important is simple:

I got my confidence back. And, wow, did that feel good.

No, it felt GREAT!

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The Story Of My Worst Job Ever: Part Two

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Here is the second part chronicling my worst job ever.  This job was not only a bad job because it didn’t work out, but it came pretty close to destroying a lot of parts of me that I have built over the years that led me to be successful at many jobs before and after.  This job almost killed it.

Yesterday, I talked about how I came to get the job,  including the interview process and the confidence that I could succeed even though I didn’t have the exact match of qualifications.

My First Day (aka The Day I Should Have Realized I Was Screwed)

My first day came and I was excited.  The job was in a cool building, I was learning something new and I was ready to kick butt.  I was looking forward to getting re-acquainted with the manager I’d interviewed with…and I did.  For exactly one day.

He met me, brought me upstairs, showed me my desk, then explained that in the three weeks since my interview, he’d taken a lateral move and was now running a different group.  The infrastructure group was going to be run by someone else, who I had never met before.  We will call her Bridgette.

Upon meeting Bridgette, she was all business.  She wanted nothing to do with hearing about my past, and wanted me to get started.  She knew I had no auditing experience, which she didn’t really have much concern with, but she didn’t have much concern either with making sure I learned the ropes either.

The way it had previously been explained to me was that, even though I was a lead auditor, I would be teamed up with a lead auditor on at least 1-2 audits, the first one where I would be a junior auditor, and the second where I’d be a co-lead.  Bridgette wanted no part of this.  In fact, she told me that one of the other leads had given his resignation, so I needed to get with him, pick his brain, and get all the information so that I could pick up his audit.  She felt that would be enough to get me ‘up to speed’.

The other lead auditor already had one foot out the door and basically spent about fifteen minutes handing over a couple of file folders and giving me a list of phone numbers.  After that, I was on my own.

Not the first week I’d been hoping for.

Predictable Failure

Needless to say, that audit didn’t go all that great.  Bridgette met with me regularly and couldn’t seem to understand why it was I wasn’t getting the basics.  I tried explaining that I was supposed to have been given more time to learn the process, but she wasn’t really interested.  At that point, I probably should have realized I was screwed, but in the past, I’d been given the ‘dive in and sink or swim’ treatment when it came to new technologies, and I always picked it up just like that.  I figured I could do the same with this.

The problem was that I was able to do that because technology came a lot easier to me than learning a new process.   I didn’t realize this at the time, but if I would have, I probably would have started looking for other jobs and just taken the loss.

But I didn’t.

I kept on.

The Second And Third Act

By this point, Bridgette had already likely made up her mind on me.  So, shame on me for not realizing that I wasn’t going to make this work, but shame on her for not being a good manager and saying ‘Hey, I just don’t think this is for you’.

But she didn’t do that.  Because she was the devil.  At this point, I had gone of being fearful of her yet trying to please her to simply believing that was awful.  I hated going to work because it meant seeing her.  When she came in (I got in first) and I heard her coming, it sent a feeling of dread upon me that lasted the rest of the day.  It wasn’t healthy.

She assigned me as a junior auditor on the next audit.  I was given all my goals and I did them.  When she reviewed me at the end, she wanted to know why I didn’t step up and take more of the lead’s responsibilities.  I told her that I wasn’t the lead, but apparently it was assumed that I would co-lead, even though it was made perfectly clear that there was only one lead.

Interlude

Bridgette had this computer case that was bright pink.  I have no idea why as she had none of the cheerfulness associated with someone who loves pink.  Still, she had it.  One day we were looking for a birthday gift for my father-in-law and he wanted a new computer bag, so we went to Staples.  While we were looking, I spotted the same bag that Bridgette had, and I started kicking it.  Right there in the store.

My then fiancé (she still married me, can you believe it?) actually had to pull me away from kicking this computer bag.

See, what I realize now is that this job was eating at me.  It was taking the image I had built of myself as a successful, confident person, and it was being torn apart, bit by bit.  I can say this now, but at the time, I wouldn’t admit it.  Not even to myself.  If my fiancé or parents asked how work was going, I would always answer positively.  Same with friends.  I couldn’t even admit to myself that it wasn’t good.

I’ll wrap up tomorrow with the inevitable conclusion and some of the lessons learned, as well as see how things turned out in the grander scheme of things.

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The Story Of My Worst Job Ever: Part One

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Many months back I started going through the various jobs that I had.  I figured it would be about a four part series, and I got through part one and part two, fully intending to hit the third and fourth part shortly thereafter.

Oops.  Turned out I probably just didn’t want to talk about part three.  And it also turns out that part three has multiple parts in itself.  I think I waited to post it because it was a hard story to write.  Why?  Because for the first time in my life I failed at a job, and couple that with the fact that the company reneged on promises made at hire and I had a manager who I believe was just an awful person, and it was one of the darkest times of my entire life.  Not just my career, but of my life.

See, this job wasn’t just a bad job.  Don’t get me wrong, it was a bad job, but I almost let it get deeper than that.  I came pretty close to letting it change me, and not in a good way. So, yes, it was definitely the worst job I’ve ever had and hopefully I never come anywhere close to this again.

The Brief Pre-History

After having lost my job in March 2005, rather unexpectedly, I was pretty bummed out.  Until then, my career of just under ten years had been on an ever increasing trajectory.  After college, I started on a technical help desk, quickly became a team lead, jumped jobs to get a big salary increase and learn lots about the server and network world, became team lead there, jumped jobs again when I couldn’t go any further, became manager, was sent to three locations to improve customer service numbers and did so.  I hit a wall there when I ran into a manager that, truth be told, I think didn’t want to be surrounded by successful people, and had no idea when I was blindsided and let go.

So, my confidence was a little low, simply because this was something I had never expected and had never been used to.  I spent a little time taking a break and decompressing before I got really into looking for another job.

I wanted to get in at a big company that my friend happened to work at.  They had outsourced most of their IT stuff, but my friend advised that I look for jobs that might not be directly in line with what I do or wanted to do, but the important thing would be to get noticed.  This strategy actually had worked with my last job, as I applied for an engineer job, but was hired in as  a manager.

So, I tried again.

The Phone Call

The first thing I did was apply for a job in my field.  The closest that I found in the location I wanted was as a Lead Auditor.  I had never done auditing, but many of the secondary skills such as organizing teams, technical knowledge, and time management, were right up my alley.  I applied and within a couple of weeks I got a call.  I had a good conversation with the director of the IT auditing group.  I was a little surprised that he was interested, and I even asked him this up front.

He assured me that the secondary skills were just as important, and that they could teach me the auditing aspect, which would likely be second nature to me.  This seemed fair enough, and it might have actually worked had they followed through.

Still, it was a great phone screen and I was promised that I’d go through the interview process, which was actually a marathon of interviews all held over the course of half a day.

The Highlight Of The Job

A couple of weeks later I showed up, ready to go.  I was set to have a long interview with the manager of the group I would be working with, followed by two short interviews with perspective colleagues, and if they all gave the quick thumbs up, I would meet with the executive director.  I had been told that the meeting with the executive director was pretty much a guarantee that you’d be getting an offer.

The long interview with the manager went amazingly.  He and I hit it off right away.  I was up front about not having audited, but he was cool with that and again reassured me that this wouldn’t be an issue.  He was impressed with what I had in terms of technical knowledge, and thought there’d be an opportunity to expand the audits into areas which they didn’t do because they didn’t have anybody with technical knowledge to put that together.

It was awesome.  And it was the highlight of my entire time there!

I had the two colleague interviews and was also given the opportunity to meet with the executive director, which went just fine.  All in all, I was confident I would get an offer, and I did.

About three weeks after the interviews, I showed up for my first day.  This is where I will begin tomorrow.

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Forget Jack Welch’s Theory, Fire These People Instead

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Jack Welch was the former head of General Electric and saw the company through a tremendous period of growth.  I read his autobiography a number of years ago, and one of the things that he put in place was a system where the bottom 10-20% of employees were let go every year.  Even if the company was in a growth mode, he felt that having the people who were performing the least were not suited for their jobs.

It sounds pretty harsh, and sounds like a good way to keep the HR department busy, if nothing else.

Lately, I’ve been thinking that there should be some sort of process that could be applied to any company to make sure that the best people are kept and the worst people aren’t.

Instead of using some of the standard metrics or evaluation criteria that I’m sure many companies would use, I think that companies should instead focus on personality traits or habits.

Simply put, people that do the following things should be given their boxes and shown the door:

  1. The person who doesn’t re-fill the coffee pot.  There’s one in every office, the person who takes the last cup of coffee in the coffee pot and since no one is looking, sneaks away without making a new pot.  If they leave a trace bit in the pot, figuring this ‘technicality’ gets them off the hook, then double shame on them.
  2. The person who’s constantly late for meetings yet insists on getting brought up to speed. This one will likely weed out some at the manager or director level.  You know the type.  They stroll in fifteen minutes late to a meeting that’s already gotten started, but wants to know everything that’s been done, effectively re-starting the meeting and wasting everybody’s time in the process.
  3. The person who wears too much cologne or perfume.  If your scent can be detected ten feet away or more, it’s time for you to go.
  4. The person who doesn’t flush.  I wouldn’t want to be the person who gathers the evidence here, but walking into the bathroom and finding an unflushed toilet is disgusting and whoever does it should be flushed right out the door.

What other worker types should be given the old heave-ho? 

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When Getting A 20% Raise Kind Of Sucks

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Just to start things right, I haven’t gotten a 20% raise recently.  The one and only time, and the focus of this story, was in 1999 I think.

But the lesson learned is still applicable today.

My first job out of college was working in a call center.  I started at a pretty low salary, but the company I was working for had a great reputation in the IT industry, and many an IT professional used them as a stepping stone to bigger and better things.

After a couple of years there, I was itching for more and ready to be one of those ‘stepping stone’ stories.  I would have stayed there, but they stopped my training path and they declined my request for anything more than a 3% raise.  So it was time to jump.

If you go back and recall, that’s right around the time when the entire Y2K thing was heating up.  Companies were basically prepared to address anything on the hardware side of thing by replacing everything.  So, it was a good time to be an expert in Windows server, desktop, and networking technology.

I interviewed around, and I happened across a very small company, just growing in that area, looking to hire their third person.  They were a company of about fifteen people, with most being on the application development side of the fence, but they wanted to grow the hardware side of the fence, so they took a look.

Being that the company was so small, I was a little leery, as I was coming from one of the biggest IT companies in the world.  Yet, the minute I sat down with the owner, I knew I had a great fit.  We clicked and the interview was more of a talk.  He was someone that really earned my respect, and he still has it today, even though I haven’t worked for him in a number of years.

When it became clear that it was a fit, we started talking salary.  He asked what I was looking for and I threw out a number that was roughly a 40% increase over what I was making.

He didn’t balk and agreed to the number.  I was ecstatic as that was a pretty huge raise.

After about a year, we sat down for lunch for my review, which was great, and at the end he handed me an envelope that included my new compensation number.  I about fell over when I saw it was 20%.

Another year passed, another lunch, another envelope, and this time it was around 15%.  I’d over doubled the salary I left my last job for within two years.

Around the time of the second salary increase, I offhandedly mentioned that I was looking to start my MBA.  I told him simply because I wanted to give him a heads up that I’d be focused on other stuff after hours (and being a small place, there were many times when we were needed after 5pm).  He offered to pick up the tuition.

At that point, I was still only around 25-26, so I didn’t see the flip side of this. While the salary increases were great and getting a free MBA where I’d been all set to pay the roughly $10k, it only took until I got a few years older to realize that I’d likely underpriced myself from the beginning.

I likely lowballed myself when I asked for the initial amount.  He knew, though, that eventually I’d learn my market value, so the initial two increases were to make sure that I was still happy, and let’s face it, three big raises (including the ‘jump’ raise I got when coming aboard) in that short of time was going to be seen as great.

Did I feel taken advantage of?

Not a single bit.

After all, I got exactly what I asked for.

By the time I got the second increase followed by the roughly $5,000 per year in MBA tuition, I was right in line with what salary comparison websites were saying was standard, so while I likely undercut myself, it was only for two years, and the gap definitely narrowed the second year.  All in all, I probably could have gotten $5,000 – $10,000 more those first two years had I gone in with a better number.

But, since I loved the work and loved who I worked for, I never have felt bad about it at all. Still, it serves a lesson to make sure you know your value going in.  I fell trap to the big increase I was getting, not really believing that I could have gotten even more had I asked.

So, while I look back at that 20% increase as the pure awesomeness that it was, a part of me looks back and realizes that a portion of that was making up the fact that I undercut my value.

What was the biggest raise you ever got?  Did you ever feel that a big raise meant that you’d been working below value prior to the raise?

 

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