How to Go From Job Rejection to Job Acceptance

This office and job could be yours, but you have to show why you're the best fit.

Have you heard this line before? “We’ve decided to go with another candidate who we think is a better fit.”

Ouch. If you made it that far in the process and the interview was practically flawless, what do you take away from the experience? How do you get inside the head of the hiring manager so you can prepare for the next opportunity?

A recent post on the recruiting firm Palladian International’s blog attempts to help you learn from these close-but-not-close-enough hiring situations. From the post:

When a hiring manager decides to fill a position, they will develop criteria for selecting the candidate.  Some of the criteria will be objective, but most will be subjective.  There are few objective measures for most skills.  How do you quantify a person’s leadership skills or their multitasking ability?  You can’t.

That is an excellent point. There are criteria, and then there are psychological nuances to the interview process that compel a hiring manager to say, “This is person I want.”

So what can you do to become that individual? From the same post:

1. • Prepare for your interviews thoroughly by developing good examples of your accomplishments, and how they benefited your employers.
   • Ask questions to learn as much as you can about the goals of the hiring manager.
   • Show specific situations from your background where you met similar goals to the goals of the hiring manager.

The key is showing your ability to succeed.  You need to demonstrate clearly how you will perform better than your competition.  It isn’t enough to show you can succeed.  Your competition can succeed too.

So, implicit in this advice is finding a way to understand where you fit in the pecking order with the hiring manager. Essentially, you need to ask without overstepping your bounds, and then sell yourself. In an article titled Make ‘em Love You — Literally, personal-branding guru William Arruda writes:

To manage and advance your career, you too must inspire loyalty beyond reason. You have the power to become an executive mega-brand by creating powerful relationships with your current or potential employers, managers and peers. The trick is to maximize your emotional connections and consistently exude your brand attributes to build your reputation and be ‘loved’ by those around you. Don’t get me wrong. Being loved is not about pleasing everyone. As an executive, you need to make decisions that are unpopular with some people. And strong brands take a stand; they don’t try to be all things to all people. Developing emotional connections with your constituencies will ensure that people respect you even if they don’t agree with everything you do. Today, the way to succeed is by putting more of “who you are” into “what you do.”

Being able to talk intelligently about your accomplishments and show that you have some inherent loyalty may help you differentiate yourself and win that job you want.

Not sure what kind of brand you are? Get on LinkedIn and study those peer, staff and other professional recommendations. It can’t hurt to know how to talk about yourself through others, especially when you’ve approved these recommendations and you can direct the hiring manager to them. You may even want to include the quotes with your references list.

[Image by Diana Lili M via Flickr CC 2.0]

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