Sex and Your Job Search 2013: A Guide to Scoring Your Dream Job (30 page)

HOW TO TAKE TIME OFF FOR AN INTERVIEW: TEN EXCUSES

Most job-search books don’t mention how to take time off for interviews. Maybe they’re chicken? Not sure. But doing so is a fact of life for the millions of employed people who are looking for a change. The best-case scenario is that you will be able to take a vacation or sick day for your interview. If this is not possible, you will have to make up an excuse.

Just a note, I don’t like lying. I questioned whether to even put this in the book. But you can’t tell your employer you are interviewing. It’s part of the game, especially when you are in a crappy situation and are afraid of retaliation. At the very least, you will appear less committed to your employer once they find out you are interviewing elsewhere.

That being the case, your best bet is to use one of the lines below. Think of them as something you would say to your employer before breaking up with them. Not as if you are about to cheat on them.

As a rule, try to schedule your interview for the beginning of the day or the end of the day. Here are ten excuses that work:

1. Personal matter or family business to attend to (it’s the truth and it’s vague)

2. Doctor or dentist appointment for yourself or family member (If pressed for details, hint toward colonoscopy or painful injections. No more questions will be asked.)

3. Sick child or family member

4. Twenty-four-hour bug

5. Food poisoning

6. Have an appointment and/or have to sign documents with a financial planner, attorney, or accountant, especially in the three months before the April 15 tax deadline. You can also use October 15, as that is the tax date for people who deferred paying taxes.

7. Car trouble

8. House-related problem: plumbing, alarm, etc.

9. Migraine

10. Childcare issues

If this issue is brought up by the interviewer and not your boss, just smile and say you took some personal time off. You may also throw in that it was a convenient time to take time off and that you wouldn’t jeopardize your current employer’s business.

PRE-INTERVIEW CHECKLIST

Now that we’ve gone over the whole interview process and you’re a (s)expert, here is your Pre-Interview Checklist. You can also download this as a PDF from my website
urdreamjob.com
.

• Name of person you are going to meet with:

• Date and time of interview:

• Address, including suite number:

• Google Map the directions or print them out.

• Check Google Maps traffic function days before so you can anticipate travel time.

• Research educational, work, and volunteer info about the interviewer from LinkedIn and Google.

• Research names of other people who might be there i.e. the interviewer’s boss and who that person is connected to on LinkedIn (if accessible).

• Review key points about the company’s history, mission, values, and recent news.

• Do five minutes of research about industry trends, so you won’t say, “I don’t know anything about your industry” during the interview.

• Follow dress guidelines from Chapter 6, so you’ll look like a million bucks. Professional and subtle is key.

• You have a padfolio that includes:

  - Five copies of your resume on good paper

  - Color copies of letters of recommendations stapled together

  - Examples of your work projects (one or two)

  - The Questions to Ask and Seven Keywords that reference your Seven Interview Go-to Stories printed on resume paper. Or they can be written on the pad of paper in your padfolio.

  - One or two emergency Tic Tacs tucked into a side pocket of the padfolio, as well as one or two in your suit pants or jacket.

Congrats, you’ve already done what the majority of applicants won’t do before an interview. You go, boy or girl!

Again, as a reminder, make sure you didn’t eat anything spicy within two days of the interview, don’t take a multi-vitamin the day of the interview, and don’t drink a ton of water or coffee right before the interview.

LOOK THE PART

Before you leave the house, blow your nose. Make sure nothing is in your nostrils that will come loose if you laugh through your nose.

And clean your ears. Both with Q-tips and tissue to get any earwax out of your ears. Men, check for small whiteheads that can miraculously develop within ten minutes after shaving.

Look at yourself in a full-length mirror. Make sure there are no loose threads stuck to your clothing and that you are free from any pet hair. FYI, scotch tape wrapped a couple times around four fingers works as an emergency lint roller.

Place you suit jacket gently on the backseat of your car. Obviously, if you are being green friendly and taking public transportation, make sure the subway, bus, or rickshaw’s seats are clean.

Good, you’re one of the hottest applicants out there!

Well done! All of your hard work and effort has paid off. Now that hot model wants to hook up with you
so bad
. And on top of that, you find out they’re loaded. Which whips your emotions and hormones into more of a frenzy. This is the best position you’ll ever be in with your employer, as it relates to negotiating power. Now what?

This chapter covers the fundamentals of the job offer and negotiating all aspects related to it. This includes salary, benefits, and additional perks.

YOU DOWN WITH EVP? YEAH YOU KNOW ME!
FINDING BALANCE AND
A WIN-WIN JOB OFFER

Yes, I’m playing off the Naughty by Nature song. But in this case we’re talking about the important topic of Employee Value Proposition. EVP is at the core of all job offers, for both you and the employer.

By definition, EVP is the balance between what an employer offers you and what you can give to the employer. The job offer negotiation seeks to find that balance. For all parties, this encompasses much more than just a salary. You’re probably interested in all the benefits you may be receiving, career development, work location, relocation services (if offered and needed), and other perks. In many instances, benefits add 15–45% to your base salary. For the employer, they’re concerned with the skills, values, capabilities, and work and life experiences that you bring to the table.

A win-win job offer seeks to engage you as an employee and retain you for the foreseeable future. Ultimately, this reduces costs for the employer since a motivated and committed employee (you) is willing to go the extra mile. In addition, the cost of replacing an employee is generally estimated to be one and a half times that employee’s annual salary. This is calculated by factoring in the following expenses: recruiting, advertisement, interviewing, orientation, training, administrative, and lost productivity. Keep this in mind as you assess your needs, the work situation, and the job offer.

YOU CAN DO IT, PUT YOUR MIND INTO IT:
PREPARATION AND RESEARCH

Before you hook up with an employer, it pays to do some research so that you don’t panic and sit there completely speechless. You must be able to maneuver yourself through this process, so that both you and the employer are satisfied. This includes figuring out what salary the employer would like to pay you, as well as the benefits you may get out of the relationship.

During the interview and up until this point, you’ve attempted to increase your value in the mind of the employer. You’ve also put off discussing a salary with the hope that you will increase your worth as the interview process went along. In addition, you’ve tried to determine all of the job responsibilities of the position. Now it’s time to find out what salary range the employer is willing to pay for your services. Obviously, your goal is to be higher on that range.

How do you find out what this range is? Doing a little research can be well worth your time and effort. Some job seekers just accept an offer when it comes. This could cost you hundreds of thousands over the course of your career. I’ll talk more about that in a little bit. Even if there is no room for negotiating, the employer still expects an applicant to counter the offer. If not, they may lose a little respect. This could be as simple as asking a few questions. If someone doesn’t ask any questions, an employer may be happier, but think that you may not have the potential they thought you had.

Taking an hour or two to research salaries may be some of the most productive time you’ve ever spent. If you can get your salary bumped by five thousand dollars a year, that amounts to twenty-five thousand dollars over the next five years. Not too shabby, as Adam Sandler would say, for a few hours of work. And that doesn’t take into consideration the compounded interest on that money if invested wisely. Also, your future earnings and raises are based on whatever salary you start with. OK, you get it. I’ll stop trying to convince you to take this very seriously and to be courageous in the event that you are a little apprehensive addressing this topic with an employer.

Let’s start at the beginning. Some employers post wage information on the job listing. If you have that printout or screen capture, reference it to find out the wages for the position.

There’s also a ton of good free information on the Interwebs. Check out the following sites for more information:

Salary.com. The best site, in my opinion. It gives salary calculations by job title and location. You can enter your city or zip code. In addition to providing salary info, Salary.com provides salary-related advice as well as job openings similar to the title you searched for. This is a similar feature that LinkedIn has. I love it. Great website used by job seekers and HR professionals for planning compensation packages.

Check out the job titles you perceive to be above and below the position you interviewed for. Look those up as well to verify where your wages would fall in between them.

Other top salary-related advice websites include: Payscale, which was recently featured on CNNMoney, CBSalary, a free salary calculator by CareerBuilder, Monster.salary.com, and Craigslist.org. Go to Craigslist and find the city nearest to you and/or you’re interested in and do a search for variations of the job title. Fantastic information on these sites.

Another option is to continue doing searches for the job title you interviewed for on the Internet and at competing organizations’ websites. You may come across wage information this way as well.

While this info is quite accurate, you may also want to talk to people in the field. This can be done in person or online. I do this all the time at HR association meetings that I go to. Try to get in touch with the networking contacts you have established and the forums or blogs you’ve found online that relate to your career. As I mentioned earlier, LinkedIn is a phenomenal way to network within your industry.

I WANT YOU THIS MUCH: 3 RESPONSES TO QUESTIONS ABOUT YOUR SALARY EXPECTATIONS

1. At this point, you should have a salary range determined, with a minimum and desired amount. Try not to be the first person to mention a dollar amount. If you are asked to name a figure, respond with something similar to:

“I’d be interested in knowing what range you had in mind. You know the position in much more detail than I do.”

2. If they push you to name your salary requirements, go ahead and respond by saying:

“As I understand the job duties to be, they include…” and list all of the job duties and responsibilities that you have discovered up to this point. Show how you’ve determined that they correspond with departmental and organizational goals. Then continue with “If this summarizes the job, and please correct me if it doesn’t, I would like to be paid fairly for someone with my skills, abilities, values, and experience. What figure did you have in mind?”