This includes fifteen questions and a commentary on each. Before you read the questions, however, let me warn you that you may not be able to answer all or some of them. To put you at ease, let me tell you a remarkable incident that occurred in a class I gave for a group of job-seekers nearly a decade ago.
Shortly after I handed out to the class a mimeographed sheet listing the questions I'm asking you to answer, one member (a tall blond man in the back row) raised his hand. When I acknowledged him, he exclaimed, "Your course on how to get a better job can't help me!" "Why?" I asked. "Because," replied the tall blond gentleman with a strong foreign accent, "I can't answer any of your questions." I asked the gentleman to be patient and listen to other members of the class and answer some of these questions. Throughout the class he remained silent, sullen, and unconvinced.
After others in the class had answered one or more of the questions, I asked the tall blond foreigner if he felt any differently. "Not at all," he replied. On the spur of the moment I said to him, "You have a strong accent. Where are you from?" "Czechoslovakia," he replied. "How long have you been here?" "Three years." "And who taught you English?" "I learned it myself." "How?." "Well, I learned it while I was on the job." "Did you speak English at all before you arrived?" "Not a word."
I pressed on. "Tell me," I asked, "how did you get out of Czechoslovakia?" "I escaped," the man answered. "Did you come alone?" "No. I managed to get my family out." "How?." I asked. "Well, I devised a scheme. I built a rubber life raft in my home. The Russians were very careful about where one traveled, but they allowed people to go to Yugoslavia for their holidays. My wife, two children, and I went to a resort town on the Adriatic, just across from Trieste. I had the rubber life raft, deflated, in a fake compartment of my suitcase. In the dead of night, I inflated the life raft and we floated fifteen miles to Trieste."
I turned to the class. "This incident tells a lot about this man. It tells us he has courage to start life a new in a foreign country with no knowledge of the language. It tells us he is creative. It tells us that he can organize and succeed."
Someone in the class suggested applause for the gentleman from Czechoslovakia, and this gentleman, who thought he couldn't accomplish anything, received a standing ovation.
The point of this story is simple. If you can't answer one or two or three of the fifteen questions, don't be alarmed. It may be that you can answer other questions that are equally important because they show that you are a person who can accomplish difficult, if not impossible, things.
Now on to the fifteen questions you should answer as best you can.
- Did you help to increase sales?
How? How much? Be specific in your answer. By what percent did you increase sales? How many dollars? What were the circumstances? What was your contribution? Did you help someone else to increase sales? What was your part in the sale? Specific dollars are the most convincing evidence you can offer. Use percentages only when revealing the actual dollars would mean giving away sensitive or current information that a competitor could use, or when the actual numbers are less meaningful than percents.
- Did you save your company money?
What were the circumstances? How much did you actually save? What was the percentage of savings? Was your ability to save your company money greater than that of the person before you in your job? Of other people in your company?
- Did you institute a new system or procedure in your company?
Why? What was the situation that led to your instituting the change? Who approved of your change? Did your procedure compete with any others? Why was it selected over others? What happened as a result of the change in procedure that you initiated? Has your procedure been adopted elsewhere in the company? Where? In other divisions? Departments?
- Did you identify a problem in your company that had been overlooked?
What was the problem? What was the solution? Why was the solution overlooked? When you answer this question, you prove that you have the capacity to dig deeper than the next person. And this is important. Let me illustrate. One of the men I coached worked as a market researcher for a company that markets a well-known women's bath powder. Over a few months he discovered a number of complaint letters concerning the powder's new fragrance. Yet the company had conducted a wide-scale fragrance test, and the new fragrance in the product was the one women greatly preferred over the previous one. Still the letters came in. Then he went digging. He found out that the fragrance in the powder was not the same as the one that had won the test! What had happened was that an overzealous purchasing agent had talked to a different fragrance house, which promised him it could produce "an exact duplicate of the winning fragrance for about one-third the cost." On his own, the purchasing agent had substituted the so-called duplicate. Unfortunately, the duplicate broke down over time in the powder base. Hence the complaints. This story was a major factor in the market researcher's ability to get a better job. Have you demonstrated your capacity as a super sleuth? If you have, let all your prospective employers know it.
- Were you ever promoted?
Why did your boss promote you? Was there some one thing you did that your management thought stood out? How long (or short) a period occurred between this and your previous promotion? How much more responsible was your new job than your old? How many more people reported to you? The phrase "was promoted" is the only passive verb that is worth a damn in a resume. It's proof that a third party thought you were better than your competition, that you had potential for growth. If you have been promoted several times by several different third parties, it is substantive evidence that you have potential for growth. Your prospective boss wants and needs to know this.
- Did you train anyone?
Did you develop a training technique? What was this technique? How long was the training time by your technique as compared to the old one? What happened as a result of your training technique? Is your training technique being used by others in the company? It's a well-known truism that executives don't get promoted until they've trained a replacement. Employers are always on the lookout for people who know how to train someone to succeed them. If you're one of them, let it be known.
- Did you suggest any new products or programs for your company that were put into effect?
What were they? Why do you think they were adopted? Did they result in extra sales to your company? Did you win any incentive awards? Did you develop any patents for your company? Did you win any industry awards for your company with your suggestions? Did you receive any extra bonuses for your product or programs contributions? Did you represent your company at any industry-wide symposia at which your suggestions or programs were presented? Have your ideas for programs been published in any industry magazines or journals? Think hard for your contributions in this area. I'm unaware of a company that doesn't want to meet people who know how to innovate.
- Did you help to establish any new goals or objectives for your company?
Did you arrive at these goals by any new or unusual thought process? Did you convince management it should adopt the goals you established? An executive I once knew was asked by management to take responsibility for integrating a newly acquired firm into his current company's operation. After six weeks' study of the methods of distribution of the newly acquired firm, the executive recommended that the new firm not be integrated into the operations of the parent company. He reasoned that both the customers of the new acquisition and its methods of distribution were sufficiently different to make integration a hardship on both the acquisition and parent company. Management bought my friend's recommendation.
As a result of his personal goals, my friend decided to leave the company shortly after he wrote this report. Because of the timing of his move, he was unable to write on his resume that he had "succeeded in building the sales of the newly acquired company." My friend's resume, however, did include a statement that he had evaluated the acquisition policy of the parent company and recommended strongly to management that it operate the newly acquired firm independently. Management endorsed his recommendation. In this instance my friend sold prospective employers on his ability to evaluate and his ability to convince top management of the wisdom of his recommendations.
- Did you change, in any way, the nature of your job?
Why did you redefine your position? How did you redefine it? Have other persons in jobs similar to your own had their positions redefined per your definition? Have there been any significant responsibility changes as a result of your redefining your job?
Whenever I think about the importance of redefining a job, I can't help remembering a young woman in one of my classes. She was a college graduate, an economics major. She graduated with honors. She wanted to work on Wall Street but was unable to get a job. (This took place twenty years ago before women were accepted in executive positions in this field.) And so she accepted a job as a clerk in the personal trust department of a large New York bank. Each day she added up figures, on the instructions of her immediate supervisor. One day, after a week on the job, she asked her supervisor why she was adding up the columns of figures. He told her. Then she said, "If that's what you want to find out, you're going about it the wrong way." She explained to her boss how she would approach the problem. A week later her title was changed from clerk to departmental statistician. Not surprisingly, at the time we met her in our class, she was head of the bank's personal trust department. The essence of her case history is this: If you were able to redefine your job, broaden your responsibility, widen the scope of your authority, your prospective employer will be interested in knowing how you did it. Companies are continually seeking leaders. People of sufficient ability to assume leadership positions don't come down the pike every day. If you possess the ability to shoulder more responsibility than other people in your position, let it come to the surface.
- Did you have any important ideas that were not put into effect?
What were these ideas? What effect would they have had on sales or profits? Would they have led to extra savings? How did you develop these ideas? Why weren't they put into effect? The idea behind this group of questions is to turn each of your lemons into lemonade. Let me give you an example. A young man who worked for an advertising agency included on his resume the fact that a product he helped to promote (a spray starch with silicones) did enormously well in test markets and would have been introduced nationally, were it not for a prior commitment on his client's corporate funds. A part of his resume read like this: "Helped introduce a new spray starch brand into test market. After four months, brand secured first place position in this growing marketplace. Results were so well received by corporate management, tentative decision was made to introduce spray starch nationally. Limited funds, however, delayed national introduction." The fact of the matter is that the delay in introducing the product nationally was disastrous. The company's major competitor reproduced the spray starch with silicone formula and copied the advertising word for word and idea for idea, and the competitor's product was introduced nationally, but the original brand died in test market. Despite the sad ending, the man's contributions to the test marketing of a new product made good reading for his prospective employers. The fact that his plan wasn't used except in a test was only a small handicap to selling his original efforts.
Obviously you are better off using positive worth points-examples in which management went along with your recommendations and achieved the results you said they would secure. But if you can't come up with any positive worth points, keep the negative ones in mind as a last resort. A woman who was formerly a vice-president of a leading New York brokerage firm left this firm because she was unable to convince management to go along with her recommendations as to when to sell certain stocks during the recession several years ago. In her resume she reveals that, had her "sell" recommendations been adopted, the firm's customers would have saved hundreds of millions of dollars. She sold her talents to a major bank that realized she had ability to contribute if stumbling blocks weren't put in her way.
- Did you do anything on your job that you thought you couldn't do?
Over the years this question has sparked many job-seekers to come up with items of real worth in their experience. One analyst told me how he completed a two-hundred-page report on a company that his firm was considering acquiring in just ten weeks. Even he thought the assignment was impossible. How had he done it, I asked? "By working twenty hours a day," was his reply. A salesman told me how in six months he had sold a customer that no other person in his firm had been able to sell in fifteen years of calling on this prospect. How had he done this? By asking the prospect why he had always refused to buy. A general manager told me how he had taken over the direction of a company that was ninety days from bankruptcy. By finding a purchaser for its most unprofitable operation, he actually saved the company. "It was a lucky break" he confided to me. "I might have waited ten years for a buyer who needed that sort of operation and who thought he could make it profitable. As it was, one came along in six weeks." If you have done the impossible in your current or previous position, your prospective boss might expect that you can do the impossible again for his company!
- Did you ever undertake an assignment or project that wasn't part of your job just because you were intrigued with the problem?
If you have, you are the sort of person who is totally involved with his work. Any such project you undertake is proof of your interest in increasing profits. Prospective employers will be interested in this kind of dedication, particularly if this "extra" assignment led to significant results for your firm.
- Did you ever do anything simply to make your own job easier?
Did you ever do anything to lighten your own load with no thought of its value to the company you work for? A very shy person once took my course. He was a supervisor in the costing department of a paint and chemicals company. When I asked him if he had done anything for his company he said "no," emphatically! The class wasn't satisfied that in ten years with his firm he'd done nothing of value at all. After a while his classmates prodded him in an encouraging way to reveal a single worth point. Finally I asked him the question about making his own job easier. And I guess it got to him. He told us how he became fed up when he discovered again and again that the people who worked for him had unknowingly processed duplicate cost requests. This happened frequently because several salesmen would ask his department to analyze the very same formula within weeks of one another. In order to avoid this needless extra work he came up with a way of cross-referencing cost requests by individual component. As a result he and his staff eliminated costing out all identical formulae that had been costed out within six months. I asked him how many requests he was able to avoid costing: "About one in five," he told us. I prodded further: "Did this save your company any money?" "Well," he told the class, "we were eventually able to let one of our six people go, and we still get out the work faster than before." The point of this story is simple: anything you do to streamline your own job probably will result in saving your company money, or helping it to increase sales, or both. Did you do anything to make your own job easier?
- Did something so good ever happen at the office that you had to come home and tell somebody about it?
A project that worked out particularly well? A compliment from the boss? A suggestion you had that was adopted? Maybe the news was so good that you invited your spouse or best friend to go to dinner with you! Review this question with your family and close friends. They may remember those "exceptional" days better than you do.
- What would you say would be the most important qualities of the "ideal candidate" for the position you seek?
Put yourself in the shoes of your prospective boss when you answer this question. Decide on the half-dozen most important characteristics you would look for in a candidate if you were in a hiring position. When you have listed these qualities, think back over your own experience. Look for examples that would prove you had each of them. Don't just say to yourself, "Yes, I am conscientious." Instead, jot down specific worth points that demonstrate you have these characteristics. These illustrations will do a better job of convincing your prospective employers you have what they are looking for than any "claims" you make for yourself in your resume or interviews.
CAUTION: Don't read any further until you promise yourself to answer these fifteen questions. And put your answers down on paper. Don't take a chance on forgetting them.
