What "brand" are you?

Everywhere I look on the internet, the buzzword it "BRANDING". Personally I can't wait for it to fade and something else take over, but when it comes to job hunting it's the keyword that you need to think about especially to win interviews.Think about it. Why do companies have interviews? Is it so they can add you to their collection of employees? Nah. They want to know what YOU can do for THEM.

"Sure," you say, "everybody knows that!" But are you really prepared to sell yourself as a profitable investment for an employer?

When you think about it YOU are a product that you have to market; you have to sell them on buying YOU. Each and every question that is asked is an opportunity for you to sell your best features and give examples of how you did that. It doesn't matter if you're being interviewed for Head Fry Guy or CEO of Kajillionaire Corporation, you have to prove how you can improve productivity or profits for a potential employer. Your resume should give teasers with numbers and percentages and that hooks you an interview. Once you get the interview, though, the real pressure is on. How many other people is the company interviewing? What is the company looking for? Why are they hiring? (Is this a new job because the company is expanding? Did the last person get fired for not being the right fit? Is it a maternity leave position and you'd be filling the shoes of Ms. Dynamo? Try to adjust your answers once you get that information if you can get it before the interview; if not, use that question as one of yours when they ask if you have any questions - you know, the part where your mind goes blank because they pretty much told you everything you wanted to know already.)

Look at anything around you that you bought - why did you buy that product or brand? What were the advantages of you investing your money in that product? A company is going to make an investment when they add to their staff - if you are the one they need to hire, you have to prove it to them.

There is an old writers adage "show, don't tell" and it holds especially true for your resume and interview. If you improved customer service, how did you do that? If profits for your department went up 800% while you were there, what was your part in it?

You hooked them with your resume, now reel them in with your fabulous interviewing techniques. Show them the advantages you brought to others and how you can bring those same incredible results to this new company.

If you're having problems trying to word potential answers or want to get ahead by preparing for possible questions, have a look at one of these books. Don't forget to do your company research first so you can weave what you know about your future employer into your answers!

Unethical Recruiters, Unethical Companies

One of the things that I'm reading over and over these days are the unethical practices that recruiters and companies are putting jobseekers through. This has been rampant forever, it's just more prevalent now with the internet making all kinds of reporting avenues open.

The major reason I went into business for myself is because of an unethical small operation recruiting company I worked with. When I met the owner, a guy about a decade younger than myself, he told me he owned the company and worked with a best friend who'd taken off to the Grand Caymans to work. This guy didn't know whether or not his friend was coming back and was looking to expand his recruiting biz into my area. I could work from home, I wasn't supposed to call any of his buddy's established clients unless a definite job needed to be filled and I should get my own business number to declare taxes with. If candidates I put into the system got hired on someody else's job, I'd get a cut. If I filled a job of my own with my own candidates I got 60% of the fee. Seeing as I was the only one in this area, they were 200 miles away in a bigger city, I thought it would be a good thing, no pressure, lots of opportunity, so I agreed to work with him. I hit the ground running. I was getting and filling new job orders within weeks - this guy was making thousands off of my work.

Suddenly buddy came back and hit walls when he started up again. I started noticing that in the internal system where I'd upload all my new candidates into their system the ownership was being changed - this meant less money for me if the candidates I'd uploaded were placed. When I got job orders, mysteriously the owner would "help" and only the candidates with his or his buddy's name (conveniently changed, right?!) would be on the shortlist. Then I got emails from the buddy asking if it bothered me that he contact the companies I'd gotten for them. He'd ask how I was finding all the new companies I was working to put in the system. The friend was a completely jealous, unethical Shmo.Then I got calls from my companies asking me why Shmo was calling them, didn't we have a system where a company shouldn't be contacted more than once by more than one recruiter? Uh huh.

The owner guy put up a Spring and Fall challenge with cash and a hotel weekend which I easily won but never actually received. That pissed off Shmo even more, when I called the owner to address all this he told me flat out that Shmo was not bringing in any money and was jealous that I was beating his ass. Guess Shmo should've stayed in the Caymans.

I placed people left, right and centre. Owner guy wasn't doing anything about his "friend" so I got smarter than these "smart" guys; I took owner guy's advice and got my own business name registered so that I could recruit people through my own email and prove what underhanded bullshit was going on. I got a call from the buddy one day saying they'd cut me out of the system because I'd caught on to them. I'm out about $20,000 because of their unethical ways but ahead because I ended up sticking with my own company.

With my own company I was hired by a private specialized "cheese" company to find a needle in a haystack licensed cheesemaker. Nobody trusted the company, as I found out from the cheesemakers and the governement agencies that I spoke with, and they warned me about dealing with the company. I had a contract and wanted to finish the job so I kept going. I found a cheesemaker who went behind my back and organized a short term"contract" with the jokers who owned the cheese company, as I found out directly from the unethical cheesemaker guy.

Once the cheesemaker's contract was up they went behind my back and hired another cheesemaker from the resumes I'd sent them, and the first guy trained the second guy in that particular kind of process. The company then refused to pay me the $18,000 they owed me because the contract they'd signed with me was for a permanent cheesemaker.

The first cheesey contract guy spilled his guts telling me what a dump the company was operating, the fact that the on-site religious representative had quit and the company was producing regardless of the fact that they weren't providing a blessed product, the fact that the people who worked there were banding together to sue the company - all kinds of neat information. The yahoo thought his confessions were going to soften me up and get him another job elsewhere which will never happen. I won't get into the fact that the one owner was emailing me wanting to meet me in a hotel for "a shower." Yeah, he was married and yeah he had girlfriends on the side. No, I never met this jackass or his jackass partner in person. I hope their company is wildly successful and the wife, when she gets the smarts to leave, takes him for every penny she can - if she hasn't already dumped his ass.

What did I learn? Trust nobody. That's a good one. Religious cheese doesn't mean the cheesemakers adhere to their religious tenents, that's another point. Mostly I learned how to be more ruthless in my business dealings. My contracts are rock solid. I also firmly believe in Karma for lawyers as well.

Ethics are important in all aspects of life, especially business, the object is to check out all aspects, phone references on the people you're dealing with and find out as much information as you can about them. And when somebody tells you a religious cheese company's cheese "tastes like ass", trust that opinion rather than wondering how the person came to that conclusion. If they're turning out a crap product, how can they pay their creditors or their employees?

I rock as a recruiter. I take care of both my candidates and my clients - I have that experience in employment counselling and recruiting plus the fact that I upgrade my recruiting skills regularly to keep on top of employment law, recruiting practices, resume & interview changes etc..

When I read complaints about people not getting calls back, I know there are shitheads like the smart asses I worked with. I can't do anything about those bad experiences, I can only make sure that I take care of my own people and I train my internal recruiters to do the same.

If you've had a negative experience with a recruiter or company, I can only say do what I do - don't take it personally, keep going and doing things right. It pays off in the end - the bastards who are unethical eventually fry themselves; be glad you're above them, I know I am!