While Searching For A Job, These 6 Bits Of Advice Were A Lifesaver

Searching for a job looks easy until you have to do it yourself. Sometimes you’re not prepared and that can make the task even harder — especially if you were fired unexpectedly.

My job search happened in 2018 and took nine months despite me telling my friends it would take four weeks. During this time there was lots of advice offered to me and a few bits of that advice were incredibly helpful and ultimately led me to the right role.

It was a long, emotional battle to search for a job. Not because finding a job is necessarily hard, but because finding the right job is.

These 6 bits of advice will help you in your job search:

Show up early

“If you’re lucky enough to be offered an interview or even a coffee with a hiring manager or recruiter, show up early”

The magic number in my job search was 10 minutes — show up 10 minutes early for every meeting. This piece of advice was offered to me by another blogger. It sounded like productivity nonsense at first. It wasn’t.

Showing up early showed respect more than anything. It also made the meeting more relaxed and demonstrated that I had my sh*t together.

With the extra ten minutes, you’re able to relax, take a deep breathe and prepare your mind for what follows. Being late, as I was a few times, is the worst thing you can do when searching for a job.

During the times where I was late, stress took over and it showed in my delivery. Those meetings generally didn’t go anywhere.

Share a story

Unless you want to sound the same as every other candidate, consider sharing a story in your interview or coffee catch up.

This bit of advice came from my former boss. Think carefully beforehand about three or so stories you can share that demonstrate the following:Your resilienceYour determinationHow you go about a taskA failure you’ve encountered

We all know stories are powerful, but very few of us remember that when we’re going for interviews. That’s why preparing beforehand helps.

(One caveat with storytelling, though, is you need to keep them succinct. If it takes too long for you to get to the point, you could soak up all the allocated time leaving the hiring manager or recruiter with limited time to ask you other questions).

Insert gaps of silence

Silence in an interview is golden. Do not fill it.

This bit of advice came from Cal Fussman when he was on Tim Ferriss’s podcast. His point was that you don’t want to fill up all the silence. Silence gives the person you’re meeting a chance to process what you’re saying.

If all you do is talk, they won’t have time to reflect and ensure they ask you everything they need to, to satisfy the criteria they’ve been given. The tendency in an interview is to avoid silence because it might feel awkward. Embrace the awkwardness.

Specify when you need to leave

“Set the end time of the meeting and mention it’s flexible for you.”

Okay, this is one of my bits of advice. When you meet someone to talk about a job, they often think you have to leave on time because you have your current job to go to. This may be true. If you can, I’d recommend leaving time at the end for the interview to go over.

A really good interview often lasts more than the one hour that is scheduled. What you don’t want to do is destroy this opportunity to sell yourself by having to rush out at exactly the one hour mark.

If you don’t communicate that you’re flexible up front, the person you’re meeting will assume you need to leave. At the same time, you also want to ensure that you indicate that you can be flexible and that you respect their time and can finish early if needed. Doing this up front makes a huge difference.

Last year, having flexible end times to interviews allowed two of them to last a really long time which ended up becoming the final two opportunities I had to decide between.

Show some enthusiasm and smile

This is what sets you apart and you can easily look pissed off when, in fact, you’re being serious and trying to do your best.

This was said to me by a guy I used to work with. He would frequently comment on how he’d see me in meetings being overly serious and never smiling. He said that my face made me look angry and this didn’t make me look inviting to talk with or approach.

Enthusiasm is the second piece. People want to hire someone that genuinely cares about their product or service. They’re looking for the way you talk about what they do. If it’s dry and bland in an interview, how are you going to sound if you are communicating the company’s vision to a customer or an internal stakeholder?

This is a tough one if you don’t care for what the company does. My advice would be to apply for roles where it’s hard not to be enthusiastic about what they do.

Research and know their stuff

“When I interviewed at Amazon, I learned all of their 140 products before the interview. This made me know my stuff when they asked me questions.”

My friend Chris gave me this advice. If you walk into an interview and you haven’t done your research, what you’re really saying is I don’t care.

This was demonstrated to me perfectly when someone I knew at Salesforce told me that if you went through the recruitment process with them and hadn’t done (can’t remember the exact number) one hundred badges of their online learning, you wouldn’t even be considered for a role.

Companies you want to work for expect you to do your research. It tells them you’re serious and not just interviewing with every company that has a vacancy or a catchy brand in the market.