Landing an Employment Date

By Lin Grensing-Pophal

 

 

Although there are clear differences between finding a perfect mate and landing the perfect job, Fortune 500 recruiter Yolanda Owens says there are also some similarities. She compared the job scene to the dating scene in her book How to Score a Date With Your Potential Employer (iUniverse.com, 2010).Owens says the analogy first struck her back in her college days, when she noted that dating and job seeking rituals had a lot in common: looking for the perfect outfit to wear, considering ways to impress your date/potential employer, trying to make a positive first impression and so on.
Here are Owens’ top five tips for landing a date with an employer:

• Reflect on stories from your employment history that really display your strengths and abilities. Just as you’d work to put your best foot forward with a date, consider how you’d like to position your strengths, leadership abilities and professional dexterity during the job interview. Importantly, she cautions, while you should rehearse, don’t make your stories seem overly planned or often-delivered. “Have that same enthusiasm whether you’re telling it for the first or the one hundred and first time!”
• Use job search as an excuse to hit the bar and club scenes -- though not in the traditional sense. What Owens means is getting involved with trade and professional associations and groups and taking part in their social events, which are great opportunities to mingle and make connections. But, she says, “Keep it classy and subtle; you don’t want to be that person who cruises the bar asking everyone for a date with the hopes of getting lucky. Desperation is never a desirable quality in any dating scenario.”
• Update your dating profile. By this, she means your social networks and resumes. “A hot item in the recruiting scene right now is creating websites that showcase your work and some of your talents,” she says. “Seeing you not only on paper but also through PowerPoint presentations or video clips from presentations you’ve done can provide a more tangible sense of the things you’re able to do.”
• Use your social networks to flaunt your “brainiac muscle.” “Intelligence is a very sexy quality that all employers are attracted to,” Owens says. She also recommends using social media to stroke employers’ egos by posting comments on their social media sites, re-tweeting employer insights and so on. “This kind of flattery gets you noticed in a very positive way,” she says.
• Ask friends to set you up on “blind dates.” Employee referrals are one of the best ways to get noticed by employers, says Owens, who as a recruiter says that those individuals who come with referrals get moved to the top of the list. Learn to use your “six degrees of separation” to connect with recruiters and other key contacts. “For recruiters, it can get maddening when you get all of these e-mails from individuals you’ve never met, asking you for a position,” she says. She recommends using LinkedIn to find mutual connections and ask for an introduction.

As ambitious New Year’s resolutions seem further and further removed from day-to-day reality, she says, it’s easy for job seekers to lose hope. “One of the key things they need to keep in mind is to keep that same energy, ambition and self-confidence throughout the year. Plan for each ‘dating’ experience like it’s New Year’s Eve.”

http://www.shrm.org/HRCareers/Pages/0112date.aspx