The Musings Of A Candidate

I spoke to a wonderful candidate recently who was retrenched last year and is actively job hunting.  I want to share our conversation because I was so impressed with his attitude and mindset.

We spoke about the expression that “Looking for a job is a full time job,” and he felt that while everyone says this, in fact it’s not true.

This candidate went on to explain that after his retrenchment he felt under-rated, disjointed, overwhelmed, depressed, upset and otherwise fixated on getting a job. Any job!

Initially he applied for all jobs, sending out resumes and hoping to hear from someone. “It’s all a numbers game so something will come up sooner or later”. Mind you his personal results have yielded only 2-5% return of a reply from the recruiter or company which is a poor reflection on the process.

My candidate then talked about how he changed his thinking and changed his school of thought.

He started to look at each of the job alerts / posting and ask three questions on a scale of zero to 10 (with 10 being very much agree):

First question: does the position sound interesting?

Second question: do I have the skill set and competencies?

Third question: Do I want to work for this company?

If, and only after his research, the answer was 8, 9 or 10 for each question he would then apply for the job. That way, he felt that if successful he would enjoy the role. Whereas if the role had only scored 5 or 6 and he was successful he would probably hate it

He also made the choice not to job hunt 24/7. He felt this was one way get very depressed and start to hate your life.

So as he said “I started to sprinkle it with balance and make time to have fun.”

He gave me an example of his day.

• “Worked on job hunting and research. Answered the three questions and then organised my resume and covering letter to fit the specific requirements of the job ( remember he only goes for jobs that rate 8, 9 and 10’s for the three questions)
• Called /texted/emailed people in my network (2 people yesterday)
• Paid some bills
• Spoke to friends about sporting events over the weekend
• Arranged to meet friends for a golf game later in the week
• Enjoyed a nice lunch with my wife
• Walked the dog and enjoyed the fresh air
• Finished everything at 6pm so I could enjoy a quiet drink with my wife, celebrate the day and catch up on the local and international news on TV.”

As he says its all about a balance in your life, keeping positive and fulfilled in your life DON’T LET THEM GET YOU DOWN….continue to be positive, have fun, and enjoy the time off until you go back to work.

The best part of my job is listening to the candidates that come through our door via email, phone, Skype and face to face interviews.

It isn’t easy advising candidates they were unsuccessful for whatever reason but remember there is another role out there, so chalk it up to experience and keep moving forward.

As Mahatma Ghandi said “A man is but the product of his thoughts. What he thinks, he becomes.”

I’d love to hear your comments – do you have any thoughts to share?