Why smiling helps you get hired

Randy Place

Because you feel good whenever you smile, it helps establish a good mood and reduces anticipatory stress prior to each interview or sales call. That’s why Your Career Service suggests smiling helps you get hired.

There are several reasons why you need to smile at interviews; especially as you meet and greet --

1. A smiling face informs interviewers that you’re both cheerful person who is easy to work with and happy to be in the interviewer’s presence. 
2. Hiring managers hire candidates who appear cheerful and happy, according to studies. 
3. Feelings are contagious. And the smile on your face will make a hiring manager or sales prospect feel better. Hiring managers tend to hire candidates with whom they feel comfortable. Your smile can do the trick

“So what happens when I don’t feel like smiling,” you ask? Take a cue from the song, “Smile,” and smile anyway --

“If you smile through your fear and sorrow

Smile and there’ll be tomorrow

You’ll see the sun come shining through if you’ll smile….”

As the song suggests, smiling also makes you feel happy. Or happier. Studies show there are two ways to elicit feelings – good and bad: Through your thoughts. And through your facial expressions. 

To think happy thoughts can cause you to smile, as negative thoughts can cause you to cringe. Even cry.

And when your facial expression spells s-o-u-r-p-u-s-s, chances are you’re not in a very good mood. You can change that feeling by smiling.  A smile makes you feel happier. Try this experiment –

For the next few seconds, hang your head and wear a sad expression on your face. Notice how your feelings correspond to your facial expression.

Now, sit up straight and take a deep breath. As you exhale, smile broadly. Notice the happy feelings generated by your smile.

How can you apply this to your next interview or sales meeting? Just before you meet and greet your prospect, smile broadly. Even though you might find it hard to smile while the unemployment rate is over 9%, the John Turner lyrics to “Smile” confirm the value of smiling anyway – 

“Light up your face with gladness

Hide every trace of sadness

Although a tear, may be ever so near,

That’s the time you must keep on trying,

Smile, what’s the use of crying?”

Actors, who give the same performance night after night, have personal problems like the rest of us. But they don’t bring them to performances because they’ve learned to “Hide every trace of sadness” during their two-hour performance. Your interview performance is a lot shorter. And you can learn to do the same. No matter how low your feelings, you can smile your way through an interview. When it’s over, go back to feeling sad if you want. However –

“You’ll find that life is still worthwhile,

If you just…

Smile.”

The melody to “Smile” written by Mr. poker face himself

 – Charlie Chaplin.

So when whenever your belly is filled with butterflies, due to pre-interview stress, smile anyway. A smile will make you feel happier, reduce anticipatory stress, and help you get hired. When you smile, you’re using one of the most powerful interview tools of all. 

A related post on Your Career Service is, "How to do a phone interview," the second part of our series on giving phone interviews. 

Manage your work to enjoy more free time

Randy Place

While having everytime free is a pipe dream, you’ll have more free time when you manage your work. This means you’ll accomplish more with less stress and have time left over for family and friends, hobbies, and outside activities. 

Managing your work becomes easier when you postpone checking your e-mails. You’ll get more done by working on your task list first thing each day. E-mails can be checked a few hours later. Many of you work in reverse order and react to e-mail chores first. This prevents you from accomplishing important tasks. So if you keep a task list, consider making “check e-mails” the third of fourth item. 

Another way to manage your work for more free time is to remember  80/20 principle referred to in the June 15th post on Your Career Service --"A human principle that will save you time." Although success is equated with hard work, productivity is not necessarily equated with long hours. That’s why you’ll work smarter instead of longer by focusing 80% of your efforts on 20% of your most important tasks and contacts. Then you’ll have time to play golf without feeling guilty.

Whenever I suggest job search candidates prepare a networking list, I ask them to select 20% of the most important names to focus on first. This will yield 80% of the results. 

So make your goal to use the Pareto Principle in all your affairs. When it comes to setting goals, click here to read, "How to achieve career goals."

Project managing your job search

Randy Place

 When it comes to your search, you can manage success by applying principles of project management. PM is a hot area.  That’s why Your Career Service is presenting a series of posts on how to apply project management to your job hunt. 

Lots of my job-hunting clients have elected to become certified in project management. Some are project managers who want to become certified. Others, inexperienced in project management, want to offer this skill on their next jobs. 

I tell my clients, ”project management begins with your job search” which is a project that has a beginning and an end to it. Project management is conducted to meet goals you’ve established surrounding cost, scheduling, and quality control. It brings together and optimizes the resources necessary to successfully complete the project. 

Sound familiar? You’ve already managed many projects. As a student, you managed study projects. As a host or hostess, you’ve managed parties or business events. And at work, you’ve managed tasks, large and small that had been assigned to you. 

So why not capitalize on the same theory of project management used by business pros in your job finding campaign. You’ll conduct it more successfully. 

You can begin the process of managing your job hunt by keeping in mind a beginning step in project management: The project life cycle. Every project moves through a predictable cycle of four phases --

1. Conceiving and defining your project
2. Planning the project
3. Implementing your plan
4. Completing and evaluating the project.

You work through the first step by defining the job you want, where you want to do it, and for how much; along the kinds of people you need to reach out to in order to find it.

Then plan your search project by selecting job search techniques you’ll use to accomplish your goal. Tactics include networking, attending job fairs, targeting companies you would like to work for, answering ads, and posting on the Internet. 

Then implement your plan with the GOYA formula. The acronym GOYA means “get off your butt “ and work at least five hours a day to implement the job search plan you’ve created.

While you can’t predict when you’ll complete a job search project, you can evaluate it by taking weekly inventories of your campaign. Ask yourself these questions –

• How many interviews did I go to this week?
• How many calls did I make to new and established networking contacts?
• How many ads did I respond to on the Web or newspapers?

As the project manager of your own campaign, feel free to design the set of questions whose answers will inform you whether or not you’re on track. 

For example, when evaluations show you’ve answered lots of ads but failed to schedule any networking meetings or interviews, this informs you the search is lopsided and needs to be balanced with other job finding techniques that will yield meetings and interviews. 

More on project managing your job search in an upcoming report on Your Career Service. 

In the meantime, click here for "How to get hired," a previous post on Your Career Service.

A human principle that will save you time

Pareto improvement

Randy Place

A human principal that will save you time in all endeavors is called Pareto Improvement. Also known as the Pareto 80/20 principal and Pareto efficiency, the technique can help you get more done in less time and with less stress. 

Pareto is a good rule to follow. To work like a slave thinking someday you’ll be able to enjoy life is an elusive and stupid goal. Elusive, because it won’t happen unless you organize your time – in business and life – to carve out some time for enjoyment.  And stupid, because unless you take time to make more time for yourself, family, and hobbies – you’ll deprive yourself of the benefits of a balanced lifestyle, will be less healthy, while driving yourself nuts.  In fact, to work like a slave can shorten your life span. 

You can cut some dullness out of your life while freeing up more time to enjoy it by understanding and applying Pareto’s Principle. This is the 80/20 rule mentioned earlier that helps you become more effective. 

This human principle means 20% of your effort will yield 80% of your results. To put it another way -- 80% of what you do is trivial, while only 20% is important. So you need to focus 80% of your time and energy on the 20% of your work that’s really important. Here are five examples of how Pareto’s 80/20 principle works --

• When networking for a new job, call the top 20% on your list. They’ll yield 80% of the results (meetings and referrals)

• 80% of your sales are produced by 20% of your prospects. Therefore, determine which prospects really matter and focus on them. That 20% will produce 80% of your results.

• 80% of your sales will come from 20% of your sales staff. You, as sales manager, should spend sales training money on them.

• 80% of buying decisions are concentrated on 20% of the benefits you offer a prospect.

• You use only 20% of your living room rug 80% of the time

• You wear only 20% of the clothes in your closet 80% of the time. Why keep clothes you don’t wear?

You can apply Pareto power in your job, job search, and life by constantly asking yourself, ”What is the 20% that’s leading to the 80%. Again, to state the Pareto’s Principle differently -- find out where you are losing and get out.

Pareto helps you organize your time and your life. Click here to learn about "Organizing writing during your search,"

Checking e-mails at the right time...

...can save you time

Randy Place

You find it impossible to check off all your tasks each day because you don’t know how to handle e-mail. The way you check your inbox now is a big waste of time. Here’s why --

Experts in time management agree that checking e-mails first thing in the morning is a time waster. Why? Because handling all that e-mail this way places you in the position of responding to manufactured emergencies, much of today’s to do list goes undone. And you’re left scratching your head wondering why the heck you didn’t accomplish work you set out to do.

So you need to resist the temptation and compulsion for checking emails until later in he morning. Around 10 a.m. will do nicely. Don’t worry, your rear end won't fall off if you let e-mails accumulate for awhile. This gives you time to focus on your task list instead of reacting to e-mails right away.

You can set aside several periods a day to work through your batch of e-mails. Set limits of 15 minutes to an hour to accomplish this. Your e-mail batch period is divided into two easy steps –

1. Scan through your in-box and respond to the important correspondence first.
2. Then go back and work thorough as many of yesterday's emails as possible. .

That’s right, I said yesterday’s emails. Time management expert Mark Forster suggests you respond only to the important e-mails of each day, postponing acting on the rest of your correspondence until tomorrow. Mark explains his rationale in his book, “Do it tomorrow.”

But right now, click here to read, "E-mail and Internet Etiquette," a related posting on Your Career Service.

Your business card is a marketing tool

by Randy Place

 How to design business cards? First, you need to understand that a business card is a marketing tool, not just a card to hand out. You can make your business or job-hunting card a strong marketing tool by designing a two-sided card. That’s the most effective business card for both job hunters and small business owners. 

Because the front of your card contains basic information like your name, logo, phone number, e-mail, and website, recipients might not be clear about your offer.

So you can explain that on the back of your business card. Examples would be your logo, mission statement, or one line pithy advertising copy when you’re a small business. For job-hunters, list several one-line bullets that relate to your most outstanding achievements

It’s unwise to put all of this information on the front of your card. You would have to make the font so small, your reader would need to use a magnifying glass to read the text. But when you put some of that info on the back, your card will look better with plenty of white space surrounding the information. 

Business cards are descendants of the old fashioned calling card that had a person’s name embossed on the front. Period. A calling card’s purpose was to introduce oneself. The purpose of today’s business cards is to both introduce and market yourself. 

That’s why I said at the beginning of this post that your business or job-finding card needs to be a marketing tool in order for you to stand out. You need to consider a business card as advertising space. That spaced is maximized by using both sides. So why not take some time to rethink your business card. 

For more information on business cards, read "Business cards for your job hunting campaign," a related post on Your Career Service.

How to become employed

Become a freelancer and employ yourself

by Randy Place

You’ll recall last week’s post on Your Career Service about how to become employed -- “How the unemployed can become self-employed” -- gave ideas about getting customers for your new freelance business. But when you’re busy serving the clients you have, when do you find time to solicit?

I faced this problem after starting a writing/communications business some years ago. When early selling efforts landed my first three clients, I thought it would be easy street from there on in. But after I finished the assignments for those new clients, easy street came to a dead end street. With no new business coming in, I found myself unemployed once more. 

Then I bumped into an acquaintance on the commuter train. A copywriter for Compton Advertising for many years, my friend had left the agency to start his own writing business just as I had. But he had many more clients. When I asked the secret of his marketing success, the former advertising man replied, “I write for my clients at night and solicit new ones during the day.”

While preferring to write early mornings, I learned from my friend the necessity of marketing each day in order to stay in business. So I continued to write each morning and made solicitation calls before lunch each day. The lesson I learned the hard way – even though you’re a freelancer swamped with work, keep on pitching in order to promote your freelance service. 

Freelancers can beat unemployment by pledging to make one call each day before lunch. After a week, you’ll have made five solicitations; and that’s 20 a month or over 220 per year. Your efforts will bring in more work. Guaranteed. 

A dry spell isn’t the result of a dry spell in business. It’s the result of slacking off in your sales role. Remember, when you go freelance, you run the show. You’re the CEO, advertising, sales, and accounting departments. 

Your one-man sales department needs to make something happen. Things will happen when you make at least one or two calls every day before lunch.

Click here to read, "Freelanced work -- another way to avoid a pink slip," a previous post on Your Career Service.