I am looking forward to celebrating with you when you accept a job offer -- and not just any job offer, but a wonderful offer from a fantastic organization where the people are smart and the work is stimulating.
I can't wait for that day, but I have to warn you about certain dangers that are likely to appear on your path between now and then.
Anybody can call you up and say "Come in for a job interview." You can go there and find a down-at-heels, dirty, unsavory boiler room operation that smells like cigarettes and sweat.
You can go on a job interview and find that the company is a shell for semi-Mobbed-up shysters you wouldn't trust any farther than you could throw them.
Don't go to just any job interview, simply because you get an invitation. Some job interviews are bogus. Some of them aren't worth your time. You have to ask a few questions before you say "Okay! I'll be there!"
Our client Melissa was invited to a job interview with a well-known technology company, or so she thought. The recruiter used the company name. She looked up the company address and it was different from the place the recruiter told her to go for the interview, so she called him. The recruiter was brusque with her on the phone.
"We interview candidates at a lot of different places," he said. Melissa went. She met the guy in the back of an office of a printing company that had nothing whatsoever to do with the big tech company she thought was applying to.
It turns out that the recruiter didn't have an assignment from the big tech company at all. He was hoping to lure Melissa into his trap and then submit her resume to the big tech company in order to get an 'in' with them. It took Melissa about fifteen minutes in the borrowed conference room in the back of the printing company to say "I'm outta here."
Some people don't have ethics or judgment. They will try to snare you into interviews in order to pick your brain or to get access to your network. When I was a corporate HR leader, I used to have fly-by-night recruiters call me all the time. "I have people in my database from
"Great!" I'd reply. "Please send me some resumes." They'd send the resumes. I'd call a candidate or two to check in with them. I'd ask the candidate how long they'd been working with the recruiter -- Joe Smith, let's say. "Joe who?" the candidates would ask me. They'd never heard of the guy. Joe had downloaded their resumes from Monster and was trying to pass them off as his hand-picked candidates.
There are all kinds of slimebags and skeevy people in the business world, and many of them find their way into the recruiting profession.
That's not to say that there aren't also amazing and upright people working as recruiters, of course. A great recruiter can make your career. You have to choose wisely!
Before you go on a job interview, get these questions answered on the phone or even better, via email (that way there's a written record):
- What is the name of the employer?
- What is your relationship (you, the person who's inviting me to the interview) with this employer and this hiring manager?
- When is the company looking to hire someone?
- How much (roughly) does this position pay?
- How long has this position been open, and why is it open? Did someone quit or get promoted, or is this a new position?
- What is the hiring manager's name and title?
If you can't get answers to these questions, don't bother going on the interview. Any search firm, for instance, that tells you "We want to meet you, and then decide whether or not to tell the employer about you" is not worth your time, not if you've already got a
They can look at your LinkedIn profile and talk to you by phone to learn anything they want to know about you.
Some recruiters will say "We don't trust you. You might end-run us and contact the employer directly, if we tell you who it is." You can say "Don't tell me who the employer is until you're confident, through our phone conversation and your inspection of my LinkedIn profile, that you'd like the employer to know about me.
"You certainly won't get my approval to share my resume with anyone until I know who the employer is and which department is hiring."
Trust cuts both ways!
Sad to say, physical danger is an issue these days. If you spot a job on Craigslist, for instance, don't you dare get in your car or on the bus and go to the office until you've checked out the organization. Search LinkedIn for the person who contacted you about the interview. If his or her profile doesn't list the company that he or she supposedly works for, run away!
We had a client, Justin, who had that experience. He got an overture through LinkedIn from a guy who wanted to talk to Justin about a Marketing Director position. Justin smelled a rat right away, because he's only 26 and was working as a Marketing Coordinator when he got the message. "How did you find me?" he asked the guy. "On LinkedIn," the fellow replied. "Your profile is impressive."
"I think my profile is okay, but there are at least a million other Marketing Coordinators on LinkedIn," said Justin. "I asked a few questions, and the opportunity got sketchier by the second."
The guy who contacted Justin didn't have the employer listed on his own profile. Justin asked him why that was.
"I'm just doing this as a favor to the owner," he told Justin. "I'd love to meet you in person before I forward your resume to the company owner."
We smelled a rat, just like Justin did. We called the guy ourselves and told him that we know lots of junior-to-mid-level Marketing folks, which of course is true.
He got excited. "That's great!" he said. "We are launching a new product and we're signing up young marketing folks to try it and blog about us, and spread the word." It was a marketing ploy. There was no job opening. Justin's instincts served him well!
Trust your gut and don't rush off to a job interview until you thoroughly check out the situation. You deserve to spend time with people as professional as you are, and leave the rest to crawl back into whatever pond they clambered out of.
