Job hunters: 'stop selling yourself' (podcast)

Author Cathy Keates talks about the harmful impacts of “selling yourself” for a job. Learn more about her at www.careerconsiderations.ca.

TRANSCRIPT

Chris Russell: The harmful impacts of selling yourself. That's next on this edition of Secrets of the Job Hunt.

[Music]

Chris Russell: Welcome to another episode of Secrets of the Job Hunt. Now syndicated on jobradio.fm. I'm Chris Russell your host. Today's podcast is sponsored by Jobs in Wind Power. Want a green job to help save the planet? Visit jobsinwindpower.com and search wind energy jobs across the US.

Cathy Keats is my guest today. She has been a career counselor for the last decade - helping clients strategically create careers that they will love. She regularly speaks and writes about how to find jobs without losing yourself and is the author of a new book called “Not For Sale - Why We Need a New Job Search Mindset”. Cathy welcome to the podcast.

Cathy Keats: Thank you Chris.

00:50
Chris Russell: All right so we're calling, talking today from lovely Canada. Our neighbors to the north. So, your email you sent to me, looking to come on the program was interesting. Specifically your premise of the book, which is not for sale. And that goes against the grain of what we generally tell people in terms of job hunting. You really have to promote yourself and create a brand name for yourself. So, why did you write this book? Why not for sale?

Cathy Keats: Yeah and it absolutely does go against the grain of most of what advice is out there. And the reason that I wrote the book is that what I was noticing, both with my own clients that I work with, but also talking to other career coaches and career counselors was the advice that is out there was not working for 75 to 80% of our clients.

That while it's very popular to talk about job search as if it's a sales campaign and then to use all those strategies about self-promotion and 30 second commercials and thinking about your resume as if it's an ad, is that actually seems to be getting in the way of an awful lot of people feeling comfortable and confident and making those real interpersonal connection that actually lead to job opportunities.

02:04
Chris Russell: So, what's the alternative then I'm curious as to what they should be doing differently as opposed to that?

Cathy Keats: Yeah. So, I think part of the alternative is starting to look at OK what are the challenges of sales? And the challenges of the sales for a lot of people is that it feels very inauthentic. So, to say OK be a sales person and see yourself as a product, leads people to often create this job seeker facade of something that they're not.

And as we know from how people find work, most job opportunities are found through connections with other people, through conversation that you have, formal, informal, following up on leads from other people that things happen through people.

So, think instead of seeing our conversations with other people as sales conversation. Instead we take away that whole mindset of sales and just see them as real authentic conversation. And so the alternative that I present in the book and it's probably just one of many is to, instead base your job search on integrity.

03:09
And integrity has three components. One is ethics and that's very important in your job search. It's thinking about feeling very ethical. One of the key ethical things in job search is often that, you know stretching the truth - sort of thing that can happen. They're really wanting to be....

Chris Russell: So, that means.

Cathy Keats: Sorry, go ahead Chris.

Chris Russell: So you're saying, so it means putting not strictly truth in your resume too right?

Cathy Keats: Absolutely you really want to of course present your very best face, but it still needs to be your face. So, yeah ethics and honesty and then dignity. And one of the challenges of thinking of ourselves as products is that can eat away at our sense of dignity and value as just a human.

But the third piece of integrity is authenticity. And this is the one that seems to appeal to most people that so much of what they're doing feels inauthentic and then the relationships that they're trying to build with people just aren't getting to the depth and comfort that they could be if they were bringing more of their true self to the conversation.

04:10
Chris Russell: You spoke of authenticity and I think that's definitely a key part of a job search. To me that come across particularly in the interview where I have asked people to tell a story about yourself. That really humanizes yourself and makes you authentic. So, what else can they be doing as opposed to selling yourself?

Cathy Keats: Yeah I think the key thing is, we've all heard it which is networking. But looking at networking perhaps a little bit differently. A lot of networking advice is that you develop, what we use to call the 30 second infomercial and then it was the 30 second pitch and it became sort of the 30 second elevator pitch.

I think people has been shying away from using the sales language. But it's still very much a pitch and instead of seeing, when you meet someone as an opportunity for you to be pitching yourself. Seeing that really as an opportunity to be curious about that other person and to see what the real connection is.

05:06
And those kind of conversations tend to get you a little bit farther along because you're connecting based on real shared interest and a genuine interest in that other person and who they are and what their organization does.

Chris Russell: I kind of get where you're coming from here. But just playing devil's advocate, there are I don't know 14 million people out of work nowadays. There's tremendous competition for the job, whatever jobs there are out there. And if you don't stand out from the pack, how are you going to get noticed?

So, does your book tackle some of that? How are you going to get noticed with a mindset like this if you're not trying to sell yourself?

Cathy Keats: Yeah. I think you tend to be more successful when you're not trying to sell yourself. I mean some people are just very good at it and that's their natural way of being and they'll find a lot of success that way. But for people where it's not their natural way of being it's actually interfering with their success. So instead of an interviewer really getting to know them which is what an interviewer wants. They really want to know who is this person going to be if we hire them on the job.

06:13
And if they are not accessing that. If trying to sell themselves is adding to their nervousness and anxiety, that's interfering often with them giving great answers and showing who they are and even sometimes smiling. That's the first thing that often goes when people get really nervous is they stop being their full self. And you really need to bring your full self to an interview.

And I guess the whole notion of standing out is that it really is still about showing the fit. So, if there is opportunity that you really think you're good fit for, you're still very much trying to show what that fit is, you're just not doing it in an sales way. You're really doing it in a here's what you need, here is what I bring, here is why that's a great fit.

06:55
Chris Russell: So, are there any tips or techniques that you give in your book as far as maybe the resume or the interview process that someone can take in the job hunt?

Cathy Keats: Yeah that's such a great question. The first book is really about mindset and there are some tips. I'm working right now on the follow up book. One specifically about resumes, called “Resumes That Reflect the Real You” and the networking one is not just the normal networking advice.

But I think the basic tips that are there are about anchoring your job search in things like optimism and a sense of abundance which is really challenging right now, given that we see what looks like lots of opportunities going away. But trying to see where opportunities can be grown from.

Chris Russell: What are you telling your clients these days as a, well first, how is the job market in Canada and tell me about some of the clients you're working with now.

Cathy Keats: The marketing in Canada looks like it's cushioned a bit. So, certainly in some sector there's a lot of job loss. In other sectors not so much and it also depends very much part of the country. So, some parts of the country are doing extraordinary well and are desperate for new staff like, places like Saskatchewan.

08:13
In other places not as much, who are tied more to the automotive industry or the oil and gas. So, it's one of those things that you can look at the big job market statistics. As an individual really about figuring out where exactly you might fit and the growth opportunities that might be of interest to you.

And in my work with clients, it's always about that. While it may look very bleak on the big picture, there's always turn over, there's always growth, there's always opportunity. And sometimes it's about hanging on to that. Believe that there is something and in figuring out where that something is going to be just for you.

Chris Russell: Is there anything that I didn't ask you yet that you would like people to know about the book and job hunting in general?

Cathy Keats: What a very generous question. I'm not sure. I guess, I think what it is is that there are alternatives. So, whenever I hear any advice that says “This is the one way that you have to” and a lot of jobs search advice is presented as “You must think yourself as a sales person. You must get out there and market yourself. You need to do this.” Is that there's no one size fits all approach.

09:22
And that while a lot of what you read is about sales, you can look beyond that and find other approaches that may, if that one doesn't work for you, another that will work better.

Chris Russell: Yeah that's a good point. There's a, you ask 10 HR people about how to write a resume you'll get 10 different answers basically. So, yeah I definitely think you're right - there are alternatives to job hunting. I guess just find the best one that works for you, right?

Cathy Keats: Yeah absolutely.

Chris Russell: Well, Cathy. Where can people go to learn more about you and your books?

Cathy Keats: You can go to www.careerconsiderations.ca. There's information about my speaking and training, as well as the book that's already out and the ones to come.

Chris Russell: Excellent. All right. We're out of time. Cathy thank you very much for joining us today.

Cathy Keats: Well, thank you very much Chris.