INTERVIEW SPECIAL How To Talk About Unimpressive Work
Experience In An Interview
Employment gaps and unrelated jobs don't have to
be a big deal. What matters is how you used them to get to where you are now.
The Great Recession threw a wrench
into many people's career plans, forcing detours into lower-status or unrelated
jobs and periods of unemployment. Explaining those periods of career diversions
is a new challenge—but, like any other part of the interview process, it's all
about how you sell yourself.
Here's some expert advice for how to
talk about résumé gaps and unimpressive jobs.
Yes, the world threw you a
curveball—perhaps a few—and your career timeline took some hits. It's easy to
fall into a bitter mindset that you were the victim of forces beyond your
control. But that defeatist pattern makes you look like a victim to employers,
says career coach and entrepreneur Elatia Abate. Over 15 years of talent
hunting for Anheuser-Busch and Dow Jones, Abate saw a lot of candidates. She says
the worst thing they can do is claim victimhood, or suggest they can't overcome
obstacles and will continue to be buffeted by the world's whims.
It's not just puffing up your chest
and putting on your game face—it's walking into that interview owning your
experiences.
Part of the attitude fix is in
tweaking your interview game. If you're approaching the interview thinking, I
just need a job, I just need a job, you're feeding all the power to the
interviewer, says Abate. It's not just puffing up your chest and putting on
your game face—it's walking into that interview owning your experiences.
"If you come to the interview
afraid, meaning you prepare answers you think the other side will want to hear,
but you don't actually want the opportunity, your ship will sink," says
Abate. "Don't be afraid of your experience or lack of experience you've
made in the past. Especially in this day and age, there's zero stigma about old
experiences—nothing is particularly bad or good. What matters is that you did
it, and, more importantly, how you used the time you had."
You're going to need to plan how you're going to
talk about these unimpressive periods of your professional life. But this
doesn't mean glossing over it or fibbing around problematic periods—it's
talking about how you stayed productive on the path to where you are today.
Building that story means looking at those unimpressive jobs from different
angles and relating the skills you built there
to the job you're applying for.
"What trait can you find in
your work that can still be related to the opportunity you're looking for?
Things are not as disconnected as they seem on the surface," says Abate.
"Let's say you're applying for a marketing associate or entry-level
analyst but had to work at Starbucks to cover that gap. What from those jobs is
relatable: the customer service, the increased revenue of the store, the things
you pull from the day-to-day and make them relevant to the opportunity you're
applying for?"
Then there's the big scare: explaining periods
of unemployment. That's not so terrible, Abate says, because she doesn't think
anyone's just sitting around on the couch. Even something so simple as taking
coding classes on the side shows your initiative to improve.
But even if you did just kill time on the couch, the fact
that you got the interview shows that the employer believes you have something
to offer.
It doesn't matter if you had an
employment gap. It matters how you use what you had to make it to the
opportunity you have now.
"From where I sit, it doesn't
matter if you had an employment gap. It matters how you use what you had to
make it to the opportunity you have now," says Abate.
The one thing you should never do is
use the Great Recession as a crutch, says Abate. Even if you took jobs below
your rank after getting let go from a previous position, you should wear that
as a badge of honor, says David Lewis, president and CEO of the HR outsourcing
and consulting firm OperationsInc. You survived.
Let's face it: That transition was
probably painful and humbling. But the worst thing you can do in an interview
for a new job is get bitter about explaining how you lost your old one. Don't
be bitter. Instead, lean on business explanations. Have statistics about how the
recession savaged your industry: You could say that, for example, 20% of your
industry's employers consolidated and you happened to be the one in three
people at your rank that got let go. If they offered you a compensation
package, tell the interviewer that you took the package. Then explain how you
had two choices: to wait for a job at your previous rank or compromise for a
lesser-paying one. Compromising for that midlevel or entry-level job put food
on the table and showed that you weren't afraid to get back to work. Portray
yourself as a student of industry who is working back up to your previous rank.
"You have to keep away from bitterness and
anger and finger-pointing, especially when those fingers are being pointed at
individuals or old employers," says Lewis. "It's so much better to
show yourself as a savvy businessperson who has worked within your
circumstances than to lay blame at the feet of others."
MapYour Skills
We humans are pretty poor at
evaluating our own capability. Abate has her clients literally draw up a map of
their skills, abilities, and work experience. You'll find that you know how to
do a lot more than you think, she says.
"It's a logical puzzle in some
ways: How can you trace everything you've done in the past?" says Abate.
"I ask people to sit down and detail out everything they've done,
like work opportunities, and even mundane stuff. You see pretty quickly that
there are patterns of abilities, skills, and knowledge that would be applicable
to a new opportunity."
Then she has clients draw up a
separate map of the skills they want to have in an ideal version of themselves.
The key comes in drawing bridges between what you have and what you want. It
sounds like a silly kinematic exercise, but it's actually a clever
visualization of an action path to build skills via tangible steps.
Human departments often
want square pegs to fit square holes: perfect fits according to the job search
criteria, says Lewis. When employers see candidates with unimpressive job
experience or employment gaps—what Lewis calls "jagged edge"
candidates—the employer has to get creative to determine how their core skills
match up with the job's criteria.
For that reason, jagged-edge
candidates get edged out of interviews in favor of candidates with unbroken
chains of experience. Jagged-edge candidates have a much better chance of
scoring an interview by networking and creatively grabbing HR departments'
attention, says Lewis. How? By getting in contact in other ways than the front
door—like going on LinkedIn and seeing if you have a shared connection with a
leadership person at the company you're applying for, and having your
connection personally hand over your résumé or even make an introduction.
Otherwise, Lewis recommends doing a
ton of research around the position you want and then finding direct email
addresses for executives at the company you want to work for. Send them direct
emails that honestly convey your interest but are short enough to be
"nonscrollable"—so short that the reader doesn't have to scroll to
read your whole email. Leverage any connections: Did you grow up in the same town?
Go to the same college? Get into the same fraternity?
But don't send your résumé with the
email, Lewis stresses—you just want to get across your interest. The goal is to
start a conversation where you will have much more opportunity to explain the
context of the "warts" on your résumé, says Lewis. Build a human
connection, and they will see you as a prospective employee—someone harder to
ignore than a sheet of paper listing jobs and dates.
Here's the part where we tell you to
shoot for the job you want, not the one you think you need. Yes, it's the fuzzy
aspiration to go for your dream job—but after years seeing candidates apply for
jobs they didn't want, Abate was left scratching her head and asking why these
candidates weren't applying for positions they were far more interested in.
People have drilled incapability into their heads until they engage with
cognitive dissonance to say, well, I probably wouldn't get that job, so I
shouldn't even apply, or that their dream job wouldn't pay the bills.
"It's fear disguised as pragmatism. 'Oh, I
couldn't have that job because I have to pay my mortgage.' Is that true? Is
there only one way to pay a
mortgage?" says Abate.
But fixating on a single job
opportunity can be a problem too. People think that if they don't get that one
perfect job, their career could be ruined forever. She tells her clients to not
treat job searching like hunting for a perfect hidden thing, but like an
expedition to the South Pole.
"So if you work for National
Geographic and you're going to the South Pole, you need equipment and
knowledge and preparation, otherwise you'll freeze to death. But once you're
there, you're gathering information. Once you let go, it's all an
experiment," says Abate.
There's a wealth of resources online
to help reshape your attitude and make good habits for a better, more skillful
you. But they won't hold you accountable, says Abate, and her service includes
sending her clients into the world to experiment with job-finding tactics and come
back to her with questions. Obviously, this suggestion is self-serving—but
Abate herself has a career coach, and that's not uncommon.
"Most coaches who are worth
their salt do [have their own coach], because two heads are better than one.
You want someone there to help you get better at your game," says Abate.
"I won't be the right coach for everybody. It's important that people find
a coach who is going to help them transform their life, someone they feel
comfortable building a working relationship with."
Lewis believes employment coaches
are worthwhile resources, but you should only pick ones that a friend has
personally recommended. It makes a whole world of difference if your friend can
vouch for the coach and directly credit the coach for getting a job.
"It's one thing to have a coach
sell you on things they can do for you; it's another thing to have someone
gainfully employed telling you that 'I was in your position six months ago.
This is what I spent, this is where I am, and I can attribute to this coach
that I'm gainfully employed right now,'" says Lewis.
By David Lumb
http://www.fastcompany.com/3049535/hit-the-ground-running/how-to-talk-about-unimpressive-work-experience-in-an-interview?utm_source=mailchimp&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=fast-company-daily-newsletter&position=4&partner=newsletter&campaign_date=08132015http://www.fastcompany.com/3049535/hit-the-ground-running/how-to-talk-about-unimpressive-work-experience-in-an-interview?utm_source=mailchimp&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=fast-company-daily-newsletter&position=4&partner=newsletter&campaign_date=08
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