You Will Get That Great New Job: Interviewing Tips From A Top Recruiter That Will Help You Succeed

By Jack Kelly

Jack Kelly will help you get that great new job!

Jack provides insightful interviewing and job search advice learned from his 22-plus years of hands-on recruiting experience placing thousands of people in great jobs with top-tier companies. He brings a refreshing and real-world, behind-the-scenes understanding of how the hiring process act

• Language: English
• Publisher: WeCruitr
• Release date: Dec 10, 2019
• ISBN: 9781734393507

Jack Kelly

JACK KELLY is a journalist, novelist, and historian, whose books include Band of Giants, which received the DAR's History Award Medal. He has contributed to national periodicals including The Wall Street Journal and is a New York Foundation for the Arts fellow. He has appeared on The History Channel and interviewed on National Public Radio. He grew up in a town in the canal corridor adjacent to Palmyra, Joseph Smith's home. He lives in New York's Hudson Valley.

Book preview

Prologue

Before we start, in full disclosure, you should know that I’m not a professional author. I’ve never even taken a writing class. Although I’m pretending to be modest, I think a non-writing background is helpful. I’m not obsessed with all the niceties, annoying grammar and confining sentence structures. I couldn’t care less about being polished or worried what the critics will say. The only thing that matters to me—is you. My sole purpose is to effectively communicate, motivate, coach, cajole and provide the tools and knowledge for you to succeed in the interview process and get a great, new, well-paying job that will change your life and the lives of your family. Okay, I’m lying a little. I’d like to sell a lot of books too.

What I lack in writing abilities and sophistication, I make up for in hands-on experience. I am the CEO, founder and executive recruiter at one of the oldest and largest global search firms in my area of expertise. I’ve personally placed thousands of executive-level professionals with top-tier companies over the last 20-plus years. 

I am passionate about advocating for job seekers. In doing so, I founded a startup, www.WeCruitr.io. Our mission is to make the job search more humane and enjoyable. No robots or artificial intelligence, just real-life human beings helping one another in their quest for a new job. 

As a champion of career growth, I am excited to share my insider interviewing tips and career advancement secrets with you in an honest, straightforward, no-nonsense and entertaining manner. My career advice will cover everything you need to know, including helping you decide if you really should seek out a new opportunity, leaving your job for the wrong reasons, proven successful interviewing techniques, negotiating a salary, accepting an offer and a real-world understanding of how the hiring process actually works. 

Since this is a new experience and I am unfamiliar with the publishing world, the following may seem like a really stupid thing to do—after reading my book, if you feel that it didn’t help, please call me directly at 212.997.5061 and I’ll offer personalized advice. If that doesn’t help, I’ll gladly refer you to some smart and capable career coaches and recruiters that specialize in your area of expertise. If this doesn’t help either, I’ll refund the money you spent on the book. I figure if none of these things makes a difference, you’re in a really bad spot and could use the few bucks spent on the book. I’ll still be available to you for help after the refund. 

No More Excuses—Let’s Get Started Right Now

Life is hard and looking for a new job definitely brings along its challenges. You’ll be treated rudely, ignored, denied feedback and the victim of discrimination and prejudices by people who just don’t like you. 

Navigating your career and trying to advance within your company and profession is tough. The process is fraught with pitfalls and people who are out to sabotage you. This sounds pretty harsh at first blush. It's probably not what you were expecting from a motivating job search and career advice book. 

Most writers covering the career vertical don’t have a clue. They are tasked by their bosses to write something about interviewing, maybe because it's the beginning of a new year and it seems like an opportune time to do so. Their brilliant and insightful pieces offer the breathtaking exhortation to provide a firm handshake, bring multiple copies of your résumé and don a bright smile. In following their advice, they’ll ensure that you will just nail the interview. The vast majority of interviewing and career advice content ranges from awful to horribly misguided. After more than two decades of recruiting, I can assuredly tell you that finding a new job and advancing up the corporate ladder is not easy. However, you can do it. By purchasing this book, you have already demonstrated that you’re smart, motivated, driven and have good taste. 

This will be a very different type of interviewing and career advice book. I want to share with you everything that I’ve learned placing thousands of mid-to-senior level executives and helping people fast track their careers. This how-to guide will entail content that is motivational, hand holding, guiding, pushing, nagging and cajoling. There’s no bullshit. No excuses. No procrastination. We will make this happen together. You will get that great, new job! Let’s get started.

How To Get A Job And Accelerate Your Career By Adopting The Zero-Fucks-Given Philosophy

Do you wake up exhausted in the morning? Does your stomach feel queasy and the only thing you want to do is pull the covers over your head, go back to sleep and hope that your life will be miraculously better? Once you schlep into the office, do you feel trapped and frustrated at work? Have you obediently followed all the rules since you were a kid, did everything you were supposed to do, but now feel misled? Is there a simmering resentment bubbling up from within that you’ve missed out on things due to bad guidance and it's only getting harder to suppress your rage?

Since we were children, our parents, teachers and society inculcated and berated us with lectures of how we’re supposed to speak and act. It was always stay within your lane by acting polite and nice and do what you are told. The problem is that the years go by and you’ve come to the cold, stark realization that all the well-meaning guidance was unhelpful. In fact, it was downright harmful! By acting the part of the good, little boy or girl, listening to society’s indoctrination program, you feel cheated and betrayed. You were pushed to spend a fortune on tuition and are now saddled with hundreds of thousands of dollars of debt. Your parents pushed you into a safe profession—one that is respectable, status signaling, offers a large salary and gives your parents the right to brag about you to all of their friends. Meanwhile, you naively became an accountant or lawyer to make everyone happy, even though you had no interest or talent in the profession. 

Deep down in your bones, you know that you must do something to change course. If you don't act now, you’ll be stuck in this job for the rest of your career. Humans are crazy! They’ll know that they’re unhappy and desirous of a change, but the fear of the unknown will be too overwhelming. It's too easy to continue doing the same old thing, day after day, after day. 

The big challenge is that you’re unsure of what to do next. There are thousands of books, articles and podcasts extolling the virtues of mindfulness, gratitude and all other sorts of New Age mumbo jumbo designed to make you feel better about yourself. Most of them end up making you spend all of your time on your inner self. I’m a big believer in the way you think, see the world and how you respond to things shapes your life. You can control your own destiny, but in addition to contemplation, you have to get out of bed and actually do something productive.  

Before my daughter headed off to college, every Saturday morning, I’d drive her and a friend to the local YMCA for yoga class. While she did her postures, I worked out in the gym. After weeks of the girls teasing me that I couldn’t do what they did in yoga, I signed up. Now, I’m a regular adherent to the practice and have incorporated the teachings of Zen Buddhism into my life. I’m a fan of motivational podcasts and YouTube videos. This would have been unthinkable to me while I was growing up in pre-hipster, working-class Canarsie, Brooklyn. Yoga and Zen meditations help chill me out to counterbalance being a CEO. Self-help stuff helps my motivation.

What you desperately need now is something different—a way to rekindle the fire in your belly. You need an aggressive new philosophy to get you up and out of bed in the morning...something to give you an edge and fuel your ambitions and drive. Imagine how liberating it would be and what you could accomplish if you had a fresh, new way of looking at your career and life. 

Allow me to suggest my Zero Fucks Given (ZFG) philosophy. I didn’t make up this term, but have repositioned it—relative to career-related matters. The ZFG attitude is really simple to adopt and put into practice. The ethos is easy: do what you want, do what you can, do what you love and don’t care about what others think or say. Live your best life without worrying about conventional norms and restrictions. Block out the haters and negative people around you. Surround yourself with people who are positive, optimistic, smart and possess a good sense of humor. Go after what will make you happy and successful. When you get knocked down, laugh, dust yourself off and get back up again. When used in your career, it will provide you with the confidence, swagger and mindset to help you succeed and kick ass.   

I’ll walk you through how this attitude can change your life. Let’s start with your morning commute into the office. Invariably, there is always an annoying dude sitting next to you, taking up half your seat, disgustingly sneezing into his hands and wiping it onto his pants. The train or bus is, of course, overcrowded and sweltering. He then breaks out coughing uncontrollably. God forbid, he covers his mouth before it's all over you. Most people will quietly suffer this indignity. They don’t want to make a scene or be seen as a troublemaker. They’d be concerned about hurting the guy’s feelings and incur the wrath of icy glares from strangers.  

With your new ZFG mindset, you can confidently turn toward the gentleman and say, I’m sorry you're not feeling well. Here's a handkerchief and throat lozenge. Maybe you could scooch over a little bit too? Thanks! Also, you may not be aware, but all of your uncovered sneezes and coughs will get everyone on this bus sick. Could you please be a little more courteous?  Everyone on the bus collectively breathes a sigh of relief, comforted by the fact that they can now make it to work without catching whatever plague the rude dude was spreading.

After you get off the bus, you head to Starbucks for a coffee and bagel. The line is long and the beanie-wearing, tattooed, scraggly bearded baristas are joking with each other, blatantly ignoring the restless, hangry customers. When it's your turn, you ask for a venti with room for milk. The purple-hair coffee kid, with one of those earrings that weirdly stretches out your lobe who looks like he weighs 95-pounds soaking wet, repeats back to you, Tall sweet with soy, Chad. You give him a lethal, death glare and calmly respond, Hey, I clearly ordered a venti! Then, pause to get his full attention. If you weren't fooling around, you would’ve gotten the order right. How about paying attention to your damn job? It's not that hard! If you haven’t noticed, there’s a line out the door. Should I talk to the manager? This is said in a flat, but serious tone without anger or raising your voice. It denotes that you mean business. The people behind you in line suppress smiles and laughs, but give you looks like you’re a hero for saying what everyone else was thinking. You walk out feeling good that you took an unpleasant situation and stood up for yourself.

When you arrive in the office building, the security guard that has checked you in every damn day for 10 years still acts like he doesn't know you. Today, when he fails to look up, just grunts for your ID card and barks for you to go through the metal detectors, call him by his name (which is on the badge hanging off of his cheap, threadbare, navy blue blazer), look right into his eyes (which may be a little uncomfortable since he’s six feet six inches tall and weighing about 250 pounds) and confidently and calmly state, It's Mr. Jack Kelly and I’d appreciate a little politeness and less attitude. Even though he is a scary giant, the guard needs the job and won’t do anything to lose it. He reluctantly acknowledges his rude, abrupt behavior and says, Sorry, sir. It's always nice to see you. Have a good day, Mr. Kelly.

You arrive into your office, get settled, check voice messages and emails and then head into the conference room for a meeting. Usually, you’ll quietly endure the unending drivel that takes place. Today’s different. When your annoying, know-it-all co-worker—who actually knows nothing—starts pontificating pure BS, you call him out on it. You hit him with facts, figures and statistics that contradict his plans and you do it coolly and politely. Don't gloat or smirk. Revel in the feeling you have for standing up for yourself and showing everyone that the emperor has no clothes. Have the courage to then offer your own smart, sensible and logical answers that could help the company and improve your stature within the organization.

Think of how great it would be to apply ZFG to your career! You don’t need to be afraid or worried about anything. I’ll help you make it happen. I can’t predict when you’ll get a job, but you will. It may take a month or three months, but you will find a new job. We’ll work together to build up your confidence, motivation and drive, along with the nuts and bolts of successfully going through the interview process. It's a game, like anything else in life. I’ll show you how to play it and win!

We’ll work together to build and practice your elevator pitch, prepare for interviews, tighten up your LinkedIn profile, put together a résumé and negotiate a job offer. It's my job to ensure that you strut into the interview bursting with confidence. It won’t faze you when the interviewers ask all-too-personal questions or speak in condescending terms. You will be armed with knowledge, ready and pumped. You will have the inner peace of mind knowing that you possess the right background, experience and skill sets to get the job and excel once you are there. 

Be prepared, sometimes things won’t work out as planned—and that's okay. If you get the job, that's awesome. If not, it won’t wreck your confidence or ruin your momentum. If the company doesn’t realize all of the awesome traits you have to offer, then to hell with them! They don’t deserve you! Life is way too short to waste it working for someone who doesn’t value you. Searching for a new job is a marathon and certainly not a short sprint. Sometimes, a person is in the right place at the right time and everything just clicks. Other times, it will feel like you're consistently hitting into brick walls and can’t catch a break. Pace yourself for the long run. Accept the fact that it may not come easy. Does achieving anything big and important ever come easy? It's hard work, but well worth the effort. We’ll work on staying mentally and emotionally strong throughout the entire process. I’ll be there with you. 

I’d like to offer some assistance if you aren’t looking for a new position and seek to take your career to the next level at your current company. Navigating the corporate world is treacherous, like walking through a minefield. Did you ever fail to compete for a promotion because the other person was nice, has been with the company far longer and you felt guilty challenging them? Even when you and everyone else know that you’re the best, most appropriate and suitable candidate for the job. Next time, you’ll know better. You’ll summon up the courage and confidence to go for it. 

Maybe you haven't received a raise or promotion in years and have rebuffed recruiters because you were scared. Instead, you’d make excuses, like it's not a good time, my boss needs me or I’ll look next month—which turn into next year and then eventually never. You get trapped into complacency. There will always be excuses to blow off the chance to interview. The real problem is the fear to confront the unknown. The devil you know is better than the devil you don’t know.  

With a new ZFG philosophy, knock on your boss’ door and ask why you haven't received a promotion or raise. If the reasons are not valid, call them out on it and demand what's fair and rightfully yours. If you’re constantly passed over for important assignments, don't let it slide. Ask why you were not selected and sell them on why it should be you to get that plum assignment, larger bonus, raise or promotion. If there are better jobs open at other companies, don't let your fear of the unknown hold you back. Go for big, audacious and career-boosting opportunities without reservations. Tell the manager who yells, screams, berates and humiliates you in front of others, what you think of him, stand up for yourself and fight back.

Please don't misinterpret my message. I get it—it's easier said than done. Don’t worry; you don't have to be an arrogant jerk about things. I’m offering the mantra and mindset that you believe in yourself and know you have a lot to offer. Therefore, there is no reason to put up with the petty indignities that are heaped upon us each and every day. It's not rude to champion your own cause when you believe that you possess the skills, intelligence and ability to do things that are going to other people. If you believe that you have done a great job, exceeded all expectations and are still not treated as well as other, lesser co-workers, there is no reason to accept that. While some people may believe this is an obnoxious way of thinking, it's just the opposite. It's having the confidence to be yourself and not accept less than what you deserve. Why should people with less to offer reap the rewards, when you don't? With ZFG, not caring about what others think, standing up for yourself, speaking your mind and having the confidence to go after what you want is liberating and invigorating. 

There are a few caveats to be aware of—the sneezing guy on the bus could easily sit on you and squish you, the twerp from Starbucks may spit in your coffee the next time you are in the shop, the burly security guard may lurk in the shadows one night, waiting for you to leave, so he can punch you in the face for embarrassing him in front of his guard friends. Your know-it-all, weasel co-worker in the meeting could turn out to be the son-in-law of the CEO and it didn't end well when he complained about you.

Even if these things happen (and the likelihood is that they won’t), it doesn’t matter. You will keep moving forward and can't be stopped by some saliva in your coffee.

What You Need To Do Before You Start Your Job Search

You need a clear head before you embark upon a search. This is