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Behind the Scenes: How Companies Really Hire
This will change how you think about getting a new job.
Over a decade ago, I interviewed with Vodafone. Through the windshield of my rental car, the building looked like a spaceship. It was in a huge complex, with a security gate. Once I got inside, there were weird lines on the carpet.
“They’re for the mail robot,” said a man in a blue suit noticing me noticing the lines. Those were the only words he spoke as he walked me to the interview.
The interview went well, I’d prepared a Bear Bryant quote — It’s not the will to win that matters, everyone has that. It’s the will to prepare to win that matters. I thought it landed perfectly. Still, the executive hiring for his team strung me along for a few months and then ghosted me, except it wasn’t called “ghosting” then. It was called, “…and I never heard from them again.”
That experience was a harbinger for what was to come in the job market: feeling unable to meet a secret criteria and then getting ghosted.
Turn the clock ahead 15 years. If you’ve been job hunting and thinking, “What the hell is wrong?” you’re not alone. The white-collar job market is as flat as a lake at night right now.
No, it’s not you. You’re not imagining it
It can take a year to find a job, and that’s if you’re in the top 5%.
I’ve talked to people who are still looking after two years. People aren’t talking about this shift because it’s embarrassing to them, yet it comes out, usually attached to a question like, “Is this normal?”
Yes. It is.
Eight months is the fastest I’ve seen a client with above-average credentials get a new job. This client was laid off in a buyout that got a lot of press coverage. To give you a sense of this person as a candidate— several press releases went out when she was laid off and several came out eight months later when she was hired for a new job.
She might not have explicitly known what I’m about to tell you, but she understood it and acted on it.
Full disclosure: this guidance is not some “instant” miracle that will make cats sleep with…
