It Is Permissible To Be A Pest In Your Job Search - Career Pivot

It Is Permissible To Be A Pest In Your Job Search - Career Pivot Being a Pest is not Just Permissible it is Required I cannot tell you the number of times I have heard from the unemployed, I do not want to be a pest. They may get angry with me and reject me. If you want to get the attention of a prospective employer, you may very well have to be a pest, a nice persistent pest but a pest none the less. You may reach out to a prospective employer by sending an email or calling them and leaving a voicemail and then you get nothing, it feels like a black hole. Many of you will stop right there and give up. No, you need to be persistent. Check out my post called 3 Steps to Get the Hiring Manager or Recruiter to Respondwhich explains that it sometimes takes 3 touches to get a response. You are being a pest! The reality is you have no idea why some hiring managers or recruiters have not responded. Let me give you some recent examples. Dragging Their Feet Hiring Example Sometimes, hiring organizations just drag out the hiring process for a whole variety of reasons: Budget issues Disagreement on what would make a good candidate Turf war on who this position will report to Changing market conditions Hiring manager goes on vacation Recruiter’s mother gets ill and has to take 2 weeks off to take care of her Hiring manager’s dog gets attacked by a pit bull and drops everything to take care of her dog I can tell you all of these have happened and none of these reasons would have been evident to you. Sam is a member of the Career Pivot Communityand had multiple job opportunities that just went dormant. He had not heard anything from any of them in a couple of months. Listen to the most recent episode By not being a pest and following up, he started to suffer from MSU disorder, he just made stuff up in his head. Follow Up Email Sam sent the following email to all of these dormant opportunities: Dear hiring manager or recruiter, I have not heard from you in several months. I wanted to follow up with you and see if I am still in the running because I have several other opportunities in the pipeline. If I am no longer being considered please let me know and let me know if I can be of any help in filling the position. Thanks Sam This follows the process described in the post3 Steps to Get the Hiring Manager or Recruiter to Respondwhere when you offer the hiring manager an out, and you are still in the running, they will respond immediately. He sent 5 emails and received 3 emails back in less than a day stating that each opportunity was still open and he was being considered. In all 3 situations, the hiring organizations were dragging their feet in the hiring process. Why did he not follow up sooner? He did not want to be a pest. He is now following the poke, poke and poke some more method of follow up. Be a persistentpest, a nice pest but still a pest. Overly Busy CEO Charles is also a member of theCareer Pivot Communityand is executing a long-distance job search. He wants to find a job before he makes a move, and one of his most recent visits to the place where he wants to relocate, he met the CEO of a company that was a really good fit for Charles. The CEO was looking for a VP of operations, he was in his early 50s, Charles is around 60 years of age, and they really hit it off. The CEO told Charles to look him up the next time he was in town. Before his next visit, Charles sent the CEO an email and got no response. He later texted him and did get a non-committal response about getting together. Charles made the trip and could not arrange a meeting. He continued to text the CEO regularly, every 3-5 days. CEO eventually got back to Charles and set up a meeting. What surprised Charles was that the CEO thanked him for being so persistent. The CEO told him that he was really a marketer and did not know much about operations. He knew he needed a really good operations person but kept putting it off. It was Charles being a pest that eventually got him an interview. Charles will be waiting on the outcome of that interview in the coming weeks by still being a pest. It is Okay to be a Pest Just like in Charles situation, the CEO appreciated his persistence. Charles did not know that the CEO was just procrastinating about hiring a VP of Operations. How would he have known? When we do not know something or there is a void in our knowledge about a situation, we all have the habit of wanting to fill that void orMake Stuff Up. Instead, we can be a pest and poke and poke and poke. Remember I said to be a nice pest but be persistent so that you can fill that void in your knowledge. You may not get a response and you will probably never know why. More often than not, being a pest will get you a response. Have you been a pest? Has it paid off for you? Marc Miller Like what you just read? Share it with your friends using the buttons above. Like What You Read? Get Career Pivot Insights! Check out the Repurpose Your Career Podcast Do You Need Help With ...