For both employed and unemployed job-seekers (you’ll see the answers will be different):

1a) How many hours are you spending each day on your job search?
1b) How many hours are you spending each week on your job search?
1c) How many resumes did you send out last week (by email or mail)?
1d) How many people did you speak to last week about a potential job for you?

3) What has been your favorite project you worked on in the past five years?

WHY DO WE ASK QUESTION 3?
Because this is the kind of job you will be leaning to. Learn this about yourself. What do you like. How can you do more of this. You can take the VIA strengths assessment (takes 20-40 minutes and tells you which strengths you use the most). You can write down a few stories of when you’ve felt most alive. Really have a general answer for what you want to be doing work-wise.

WHY DO WE ASK QUESTIONS 1a-d?
So that we can tell how much work we are putting in, and see how much more we can still put in to get the results we want. The Five O Clock Club (an excellent coaching and training service for people who are unemployed) suggests that the best results come to people who spend:
1a) 3 hours on the job search while employed; 7 per day when unemployed
1b) 15 hours per week while employed; 35 hours per week while unemployed
1c) Sending out at least 10-20 resumes per week (for an expected total of 200 for the full job search)
1d) And speaking with at least ten people each week about potential jobs. These can be friends to start. Most importantly: if the person has no lead, ASK WHOM ELSE THEY CAN RECOMMEND THAT YOU SPEAK WITH. This way, you are constantly moving and networking, and through reliable, strong bonds!

WHY DO WE ASK QUESTIONS 2a-c?
Because we don’t always think about what the answers could really be!

Let me suggest these as answers:
2a) What are your one-two most important goals when speaking with someone about finding a job?
a) Get the job or b) get a lead to another person to speak to about a job.
2b) When deciding what information to include on your resume, what are your criteria for including and emphasizing something you have done?
Every item must lead to the interview. If not, don’t do it. If you don’t want to do something again, you probably don’t want to list that front and center on your resume.
2c) What is the single best thing you can do to prepare for the interview?
Practice your results stories (especially using the SARI method).

We went through this when I was on Lisa Wexler’s radio program on Tuesday, Jan 28, 09.

1) ASSESSMENT

• Listen to Live! with Lisa tonight for our questionnaire (Updated 1/28: Questionnaire is typed up here)
• Do a strengths assessment: for example, VIA Signature Strengths Questionnaire
• Write out several stories of when you most enjoyed your work

2) TARGETING TOOLS

• Meetup.com
• Alltop.com
• Job sites – especially industry specific
• Friends and colleagues – 48+% find their job through referrals

How else can you target your new job:

• Apply – apply to jobs
• Pre-apply – do informational interviews, group meetings
• Work – run a Meetup group, be a contributor to a blog, start a website or twitter account about your industry, volunteer in it. You can do a lot of work without officially being employed. And then – BIG BENEFIT – it’s not like you were unemployed for ten months. It’s like you were running community events on that field in your industry.

3) ACTION STEPS

• Resume
  • Put in those things relevant to getting called in for a job, and only those things
  • Put in those activities that you want to do, not those you don’t want to do!
• Interviewing
  • The one thing to know in a job interview
  • Prepare specific (situation-action-results SARI) examples like this

IN THIS ECONOMY:

• How to get a job in 2009 by Charlie O’Donnell
• In this economy, we’re all entrpreneurs by Charlie O’Donnell
• Follow-up to “everyone becomes an entrepreneur” by Fred Wilson
• “How to use Social Media to land your next job” by Mack Collier

——————
I wish you all the best and I wish you the most beautiful fate!

That’s it. That’s the most important thing. Make your interviewer Joe have a good time; make your interviewer Joe enjoy himself in interviewing you. Make your interviewer Sally have something that she can say back at home to her spouse about how her day went. Make something you say able to be repeated by your interviewer Marcel at a cocktail party.

Make it a conversation.

Well, what do I mean “make it a conversation?” Specifically, I mean:

• Two-sided
• Cocktail-party interesting
• Having a lot of stories in your interview
• Enthusiastic and lively

These may be a lot of bullet points to remember, but you don’t need to remember them. All you need to think about is “How can I make this into an interesting conversation?” I work with clients frequently on interview practice, specifically the interview start.

Two specific tips:

1) How to start the interview in a fun way

• Ask the first question. Intrerviews follow a path of inertia once they get started. If the first question is to you, you’ve alredy turned the tides into a routine interview. So ask the first question. Ask about the company. Ask about the specific position. Learn something from the answer, and then address what you have learned in some of your follow on questions.
• Be curious. You don’t know everything. No one expects you to. Ask for clarification when you need it.
• If boxed into answering first, clarify the question to create a sense of back-and-forth.

2) How to have a conversation within a question

• Clarify the question. If you’ve been asked something and you don’t want to fall into the routine, “Interviewer asks, interviewee answers,” then clarify the question.
  
  Interviewer: “Tell me about a time when you’ve shown leadership.”
  
  YOU: “Would you like that to be in some recent experience or my overall largest example of such a time?”
  
  Interviewer: “An example from your current job would be great.”
  
  YOU: “Ok…”
• “To answer this, could I first ask you a couple of things about [the position, the work environment, the projects]?”
• Respond to conversational invitiations. Sometimes your interviewer Reggie may take an important call, and then after hanging up, may say, “That was from Operations. We’ve announced that we’re looking to buy a new plant.” Respond to this. Feel free to ask, “Is that good news or bad news?” Be open to these parts of the conversation.

~ Abraham Maslow

Then he tricked us. Or he gave us a lowball. Depending how you think of it.

We walk into the exam, and there were three questions – each worth 33%. The last question was, “Write the question you wrote to prepare for the exam (unless it was about the role of death), and write the answer you wrote to prepare.” !!!!!!!!! Exactly!

Sure, I’d prepared, and done as he had suggested, but I could have put more time into that pre-exam!

That’s what today’s game is about. Penelope Trunk writes about media training that she took in preparation for the radio and TV interviews for her book. She excerpts a section of the training manual from Clarity Media Group:

“Don’t try to prepare for every possible question that could arise. Determine the 6-8 topics that are likely to come up during your interview and then:
a. Hone a key message for each topic.
b. Identify anecdotes you can tell that illustrate each message.
c. Prepare specific examples or compelling data to prove your point.
d. Think of clever analogies if appropriate.
Think of these interviews as the equivalent of a good movie trailer, in which your quest is to independently drive to the very best scenes, anecdotes and newsworthy revelations in the book.”

You know when Joan Rivers or Carson Daly have come up to celebrities on the red carpet with the big microphone to ask one pointed question? That’s you – the celebrity! And that’s you – Carson Daly! You’re both the interviewer and the interviewee – you’re on both sides of the mike.

————————————–
When:

* When preparing for a job interview

Goal of the Game:
* To prepare well for a job interview – just like for that English final.

How Long to Play:
* 20 minutes. Play by yourself to prepare, and later potentially run your answers by a friend.

HOW TO PLAY:
1) Prepare 6-8 questions that the interviewer might ask you (”Tell me about yourself,” “What is your greatest professional accomplishment?” …)
2) Prepare stories for each answer.
3) Prepare specific examples or SARI (situation-action-result-interesting thing) answers.
4) Run these by trusted advisors and friends.

ROCK ON!