Cold Calling: A Time-Tested Method of Job-Hunting

By: Randall S. Hansen, Ph.D.

There are many avenues of job-hunting for job-seekers looking for full-time employment to follow. Certainly job-hunting on the Net is one method that has been receiving the most attention lately, but there is a traditional method of job-hunting that can be quite effective for you if you simply follow all the steps outlined in this article. The method? Cold calling potential employers.

Cold calling, or uninvited job-hunting, is a proven method of finding employment. When you consider that four-fifths of the job market is "closed," meaning you can’t find out about available job openings unless you dig for them, this method of job-hunting takes on great importance. That digging, as well as all aspects of the process that follows, is what this article is all about.

The first step in this process is compiling a list of all companies that you might be interested in working for -- and don’t worry if the list is a long one. In fact, it is better to have a longer list than a shorter one since your odds increase as your list gets longer. You could gather this list of companies by focusing on a specific geographic area, a specific industry, a ranking of the best companies to work for, or any other method. The point of this step is gathering a list of companies that you are interested in working for.

The second step in the process is gathering the names of the people who have the power to offer you a job. This step is accomplished by calling each company’s main number and asking the receptionist (or department assistant) for the name and title of the hiring manager in your field of expertise. Don’t let them give you the name of the Human Resources manager (unless that is the department where you are trying to get a job) because your first point of contact should be with the hiring manager in your field. This step is essential -- you must get a name and title. Many hiring managers have said they throw away any letter that is not addressed to them by name. Do you open your junk mail? Be persistent.

The third step in the process is writing a dynamic cover letter. While you may be sending out a great many letters, make sure that each letter is individualized by addressing each to a named individual, and, if possible, saying something about the company to showcase that you’ve done some homework about the company. Remember that your cover letter is extremely important since it serves as the point of first contact with the employer. Enclose a clean copy of your resume with each letter you mail.

The fourth step in the process is contacting the people you wrote to in the third step. For many people, this step is the hardest. It means getting on the phone and contacting these people and asking for a job interview. Be persistent, even if the potential employer says there are no current job openings, but do not be rude or too pushy. If the person is unwilling to grant you a job interview, you should request an informational interview, where you can gain more knowledge of the field -- and perhaps get the names of more people to contact. Your goal should be to get as many interviews with potential employers as possible. Even if the majority of them say there are no current openings, interviewing with them gives you the opportunity to dazzle them -- and then ask for referrals to other employers who might have job openings available. Make sure you are best prepared for these interviews by checking out some of our job interviewing resources, including our job interviewing tutorial.

If you follow all these steps -- along with all the other rules of job-hunting (the Domino Effect, phone manners, dress for success, and thank-you letters) -- you’ll find cold calling to be a successful tool in your overall job-hunting strategy.

Dr. Randall S. Hansen is founder of Quintessential Careers, one of the oldest and most comprehensive career development sites on the Web, as well CEO of EmpoweringSites.com. He is also founder of MyCollegeSuccessStory.com and EnhanceMyVocabulary.com. He is publisher of Quintessential Careers Press, including the Quintessential Careers electronic newsletter, QuintZine. Dr. Hansen is also a published author, with several books, chapters in books, and hundreds of articles. He's often quoted in the media and conducts empowering workshops around the country. Finally, Dr. Hansen is also an educator, having taught at the college level for more than 15 years.

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How Do You Like Your Work?

By: Liz Sumner, M.A. CPC

That question is intentionally ambiguous to see where you go with it. Did you answer with the degree to which you like it -- on a scale from "not much" to "really love it?" Did you go with a flip remark such as, "I like it over easy with a side of bacon (the kind you bring home)?" Or did you begin to examine what it takes to enjoy what you do?

Let's assume that you are currently dissatisfied and looking for a change. How will you make sure that you don't end up with the same thing all over again? You are responsible for your job satisfaction. Will you recreate the same dynamics at the next place?

How does a person design work that he or she likes? Job descriptions talk about required skill sets, but other qualities need to be considered to see if this situation is a good match for you. It's your choice. Here are a few questions to ask yourself:

• How much autonomy do you like? How much community?
• How much approval do you need to do your best work? In what form?
• How much responsibility do you desire? Are you sure?
• How much creativity and individuality does this industry encourage? Does that match with your style?
• Are you ambitious? Do you see opportunity?
• What about this work inspires your passion?
• Whom do you want to serve? How does the company's mission fit with your personal one?

HR Managers will tell you that an employee with adequate qualifications and a great attitude will succeed much more often than another candidate with impressive credentials and a chip on her shoulder. Liking your work is the main ingredient of a good attitude. Knowing what you like and how to get it is an essential part of happiness. You must bring your contentment with you, not expect it to be provided.

We've all worked with naysayers -- the people who make you roll your eyes and cringe. I have a soft spot for them. I was once called into the general manager's office and "talked to" because I was perceived as negative. I was flabbergasted. Here I was serving the company by pointing out all the pitfalls that I was foreseeing, and it wasn't appreciated! That experience helps me remember that the crankiest Eeyore may think she's doing everybody a service with her doom and gloom.

What will it take for you to be enthusiastic and positive instead of hesitant and resistant? What aspects of your work can you say a wholehearted "Yes!" to? How might you increase that and reduce the parts you dislike? Look beyond your initial inclination to be glib. What if there was a way for everyone to get what he wants? What if work worked for everyone?

How do you like your work? Simply stated, here's how:

1. Determine what you really want. What qualities and values are most important right now?
2. Choose that. Ask for it. Move toward it. Assume you deserve to get it. Commit wholeheartedly. Determine what stands in your way.
3. Stop doing what you hate. Recognize that you have choice. Don't wait until somebody makes it for you.

You deserve to feel good about your work, and you are the only one who can measure your success.

Liz Sumner, M.A., CPC, of Find Your Way Coaching, specializes in mid-life career change. Are you happy with your direction? Do you feel good about yourself? Are you fearless? Joyful? Energized? You could be. Visit Find Your Way Coaching, or e-mail her at liz@findyourwaycoaching.com or call her at 603-876-3956 for more information.

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Don't Get Stumped by Off-the-Wall "Wild Card" Job Interview Questions

By: Katharine Hansen, Ph.D.

Picture yourself in this scene: You're in a job interview. Everything is going better than you imagined it could. You look professional and fabulous. You are totally prepared. You are on a roll. You're nailing every interview question. You feel wonderful rapport with your interviewer. Suddenly, out of the blue she asks you:

"Imagine you could trade places with anyone for just a week. The person could be famous or not famous, living or from history, real or fictional. With whom would you trade places?"

It's all you can do to keep your jaw from dropping. You're stunned. You feel your mouth drying up and sweat forming on your forehead. Your head is spinning, and your mind is a blank. You're thinking, why in the world is she asking me this absurd question?

Welcome to the world of the off-the-wall interview question -- weird, wacky, gimmicky, and off-beat "wild card" questions that seem to have nothing to do with your ability to handle a job. If they're irrelevant to job performance, why do employers ask them?

They want to see how well you can think on your feet. They want to see if you'll get rattled. They may want to test your creativity or sense of humor. They want to challenge you. Employers who ask these goofy questions no doubt may feel the questions do relate to job performance. In creating stress by asking you a weird question, the interviewer may be testing how well you'll respond to the stress of the workplace.

And let's face it; job-seekers have vast resources at their disposal in the form of books, articles, and Web sites on how to respond to traditional and even those tricky behavioral interview questions. So interviewers sometimes want to lob a curve ball at you by asking a question that you probably didn't prepare for. In his book, College Grad Job Hunter, Brian Krueger calls these question "dumb" questions, whose purpose, Krueger writes "is to get past your pre-programmed answers to find out if you are capable of an original thought."

Of course, we won't refute the possibility that some employers may just be sadistic and want to see you squirm, or they relish the amusement of seeing how you'll answer an oddball question.

Because an off-the-wall question can be virtually anything, they are nearly impossible to prepare for. Still, some, like the question about being/meeting/dining with a famous person, have been around for awhile and are worth preparing an answer for -- just in case.

The key to responding to an off-the-wall question is not to let it rattle you. Don't adopt a deer-in-the-headlights look if you get hit with one of these funky queries. Simply smile, take a deep breathe, and take a moment to compose your response. A little bit of silence is better than blurting out something even sillier than the question. You don't have to brilliant. You don't have to be witty. Just be yourself and give an honest response. If worse comes to worst, and you absolutely cannot think of an answer, ask if you can come back to that question later. You may lose a few thinking-on-your-feet points, but you'll gain points for handling a difficult situation with poise.

Above all, take comfort in the fact that there is rarely a wrong answer to these offbeat questions. True, some responses can raise eyebrows. When I taught college students and conducted mock interviews with them, I would occasionally get "Adolph Hitler" as a response to the famous-person question. Rather than thinking the student was a Neo-Nazi, I chalked up that answer to a student who probably knows so little about history that Hitler was the only person he or she could think of.

If you can turn your answer into something job-related, that's a bonus, but it's probably above the expectations of the interviewer. For example, if you're interviewing for a finance job and are asked what you'd do with a large windfall of money, you could give a clever response about how you'd invest the cash.

Below, we've provided some sample off-the-wall questions. The first group are questions submitted by readers, along with the answers they used. Be aware that studying this list of questions may be no help at all if you're ever asked a weird question because you may be asked something totally different from any of these questions. The point is to expect the unexpected, and looking over these questions will at least give you the flavor of what might be asked and enable you to do a little out-of-the-box thinking about how you might respond when you're asked a question as strange as these:

Shelley Feakes, resource navigator at Queens Career Resource Center in Nova Scotia, Canada, was asked: "If aliens landed in front of you and, in exchange for anything you desire, offered you any position on their planet, what would you want?"

"I thought about this question for a minute," Feakes recalls, "then responded: 'First I would want to go change my clothes since the aliens just scared the crap out of me! ... then I would for a job as Chief Navigator so I could enjoy coming to Earth and scaring the crap out of other human beings."

Explains Feakes: "My strategy was this: I first thought that it was a psychological question, that the interviewer was trying to see how far up the ladder I desired to be ... then I thought twice and decided that I would express my creativity and go for an answer that was just as odd as the question itself. It must have worked ... I got the job!"

Another reader was not happy about the odd questions she was asked. "I was asked who my heroes were and how I felt about affirmative action in the same interview. Talk about loaded questions! Looking back, it was obvious that I would be required to be very [politically correct] and think just like them to work there. If I hadn't been a single mother and desperate for work, I would have answered, 'I think this interview is over.'" She doesn't remember how she actually did answer, but notes that "Those questions have nothing to do with the ability to do a job and are out of line. I'm probably lucky they didn't hire me because I'm sure I would have been unhappy there."

Still another reader was asked "if you could be any animal in the jungle what would it be?" He answered: "I would be a gorilla so I could be the king of the jungle because it is survival of the fittest in the jungle. I would also be able to climb trees well and get a bird's eye view of what is going on so I could stay abreast of what was happening in the jungle scene." The reader felt the employer liked his response because he got a second interview. "I thought it was a pretty good answer myself," he observed.

Katharine Hansen, Ph.D., creative director and associate publisher of Quintessential Careers, is an educator, author, and blogger who provides content for Quintessential Careers, edits QuintZine, an electronic newsletter for jobseekers, and blogs about storytelling in the job search at A Storied Career. Katharine, who earned her PhD in organizational behavior from Union Institute & University, Cincinnati, OH, is author of Dynamic Cover Letters for New Graduates and A Foot in the Door: Networking Your Way into the Hidden Job Market (both published by Ten Speed Press), as well as Top Notch Executive Resumes (Career Press); and with Randall S. Hansen, Ph.D., Dynamic Cover Letters, Write Your Way to a Higher GPA (Ten Speed), and The Complete Idiot's Guide to Study Skills (Alpha).

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Why Should I Hire You? Critical Job-Hunting Strategies

By: Mariette Durack Edwards

The other day I was speaking with a young fellow who had been laid off from his job at a large consulting firm. His education and work experience were exceptional so I was surprised to learn he had been out of work for eight months. "Why so long?" I asked him. He launched into a list of things he couldn't do, experience he didn't have, and technology he didn't know. All of these deficiencies plus "the economy" were why he was still looking for a job. It wasn't until I asked him what he wanted to do in his next job that a glimmer of passion entered his voice.

Being out of work for an extended period is certain to erode even the most confident job-seeker. That's why it's so important that you stay focused on your strengths and how your special qualities, skills and abilities can benefit a potential employer. Remember you are the only person in the world who knows everything about what you know!

Here are a few suggestions to help you stay on track with your job-search.

Never argue for your limitations
It's easy to start thinking in terms of what's missing if you've been out of work for a long time but arguing for your limitations will never bring you the work you seek. Focus instead on how you can position your unique skills and abilities to support a potential employer's goals. Pay particular attention to the things that are so easy for you that they seem unimportant.

Fill in the gaps
Brag about your efforts instead of shining a spotlight on what you don't have.

Think of yourself in terms of results
People buy solutions. A client who is a voice-over talent left this message recently for a customer she wanted to win back. "Hello, Bill. This is Jane Doe. I was the voice of Top Notch News during the three or four years when the network had its highest ratings. How can I help you regain that position? Call me at ..." She got a request to submit her demo reel the next day. How will hiring you move others closer to their goals?

Ask good questions
Craft a series of questions that are open ended, thought provoking and position you in terms of results. Avoid directive questions that signal the answer you are looking for or require a yes/no response. Ask yourself, "What are the biggest questions I can ask in response to this opportunity?" For example, "What are the organization's most important goals?" "How do you see this position impacting on the achievement of those goals?" "If I were offered the opportunity to work with your organization, what would you like me to accomplish in my first 90 days?"

Learn the art of selling
True selling is actually a wonderful process of learning about others and listening for an opportunity to serve through what you offer. It is the single most important tool in your job-search kit.

Mariette Durack Edwards is a business and personal coach, consultant, speaker, and writer. Her latest book is The Way Things Work: 25 Must-Know Principles for Making Dreams Come True.

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