Human-Voiced Resume

Imagine that your friend tells you "I'm meeting with a guy I know who's the VP of Marketing at that up-and-coming startup, Appliantology Inc. He and I are having lunch at Chez Bruyant down the street. If you stop by our table at 12:15 I'll introduce you, and you and he can chat for a moment."

You jump on the offer. You're excited to meet the Marketing VP, if only for a moment, and especially via an introduction from your friend who is so credible and who regards you so highly.

Here's the question you'll ponder between now and your mini-introduction at Chez Bruyant: what will you say to the Marketing guy when you meet him? What would you most like to convey in one or two minutes, to let the Marketing VP know who you are and how you could help him?

What to say to a prospective hiring manager is the burning question for every job-seeker.

The traditional resume format does the world's worst job of conveying your heft and power. What can the traditional resume communicate that the hiring executive hasn't heard a million times already?

"Oh wow, look here, this guy is a Results-Oriented Professional. I've never seen one of those before!"

When we repeat the same old tired cliches that every other job-seeker uses in his or her resume, we diminish our own power -- and worse than that, we sound like everyone else.

The whole point of branding is to sound like ourselves, not every other monkey in the barrel!

You don't have to sound like a zombie in your resume. You can sound like a human.

I know what you're thinking. "But Liz, those Applicant Tracking System Black Hole systems want to see my resume stuffed with keywords."

I'm glad you brought that up. You are done with that Black Hole nonsense. Those systems don't work. Your likelihood of hearing back after lobbing a resume into the Pit of Resume Death is about the same as your odds of winning the lottery for ten million dollars.

I take it back. Your odds of winning the lottery are better, because by law the lottery commission has to pay out. Employers don't have to hire anyone. They don't have to invest the eight-tenths of a second that it would take them to reply to your resume pitched into a Black Hole.

That channel is useless for job-seekers, and my advice is to abandon it, pronto.

The only thing that's going to get a hiring manager's attention is a direct communication that mentions the obstacle the manager is trying to get over. We call that obstacle the Business Pain in the manager's hiring equation.

Employers don't talk about the Business Pain in their job ads. If you read the job ad unskeptically, you might get the idea that this employer has no problems at all and that everything is hunky-dory and perfect throughout the company. You might start to believe that the employer was doing you a favor by considering you for employment.

Don't believe that nonsense. If there were no pain, there wouldn't be a job ad! Why do companies hire people -- for their health? No. They hire people when the cost of hiring a new person is much less than the cost of the Business Pain they're already experiencing.

Your job is to identify that Business Pain, not exactly, but in general, and mention it in a Pain Letter that you'll send directly to your hiring manager's desk through the postal service.

Yes, the most effective job search channel in 2014 is the old-school letter sent in the mail!

You can't send a Pain Letter by itself. You'll send it with your Human-Voiced Resume stapled to your Pain Letter with one staple in the upper left-hand corner.

A Human-Voiced Resume is like a traditional resume except that the words on the page sound like a human being instead of a Star Wars battle drone. (There's a sample Human-Voiced Resume below to give you the idea.)

Imagine that you're a busy hiring manager with just one precious job opening to fill. It's imperative that you hire someone smart and nimble, someone who understands what you're up against and has been there. Who are you going to look at most seriously: the sheepie candidate whose resume arrives in a resume pile spewed out of your company's Black Hole, or the candidate who took the time and initiative to research you and your firm and write to you directly - not about him- or herself but about you and your business issues?

That's why Pain Letter-Human-Voiced Resume packets sent through the mail work so well. The manager is in pain, s/he opens the day's mail, and look! Here is Doctor You with the morphine.

A Human-Voiced Resume starts with a Summary. The Summary is the most important part of a Human-Voiced Resume, because it frames your background and your next career steps for the hiring manager's benefit. Once your reader (your hiring manager) reads your Summary, he or she understands who you are and how you roll. Your job history follows the Summary and amplifies the frame you shared in the Summary.

You won't list tasks and duties in a Human-Voiced Resume? Who gives a fig about your tasks and duties? What's important is what's in your wake at each job. What did you fix, discover, create or upgrade at each assignment? How did you leave your mark on the place?

You'll share your past accomplishments in the form of quick Dragon-Slaying Stories. Each Dragon-Slaying Story has three parts.

First, you'll explain what was missing or broken. Next, you'll share your solution -- what you did to solve the problem. You'll finish a Dragon-Slaying Story with an explanation of the impact of your smart thinking and your actions. We want to let the manager know why your solution was the right one for the situation!

You won't use self-praising terms like Savvy, Seasoned, Innovative, Disruptive (sorry - threw up in my mouth there a bit as I was typing) or Creative in a Human-Voiced Resume. You aren't going to stoop to praise yourself. Only fearful people do that. You're simply going to tell your story.

What if a hiring manager has a stick lodged where it shouldn't be and doesn't appreciate your direct approach? What if someone is miffed that you skirted the Black Hole tar pit and took communication with your future boss into your own hands? In that case you won't hear from them. That's a good thing! You can cross that manager off your list.

Only the people who get you deserve you. Not everyone will get you! That's okay. Your brand, like every brand, is a magnet. A magnet has two poles. Your goal is to attract the right people and repel the rest!

Here is an excerpt from a Human Workplace 12-week virtual coaching group lesson. This excerpt includes a sample Human-Voiced Resume for job-seeker Melissa James, and an explanation of the most significant differences between a traditional resume and a Human-Voiced Resume.

___________________________________________________________________________

Melissa James

Brighton, Colorado (303) 867-5309 melissa.jillian.james@gmail.com

http://www.linkedin.com/in/melissajillianjames

Public Relations Manager

Since I started covering business stories for my campus newspaper, I’ve been a zealot for business storytelling and its power in shaping audience behavior. As a PR Manager I’ve gotten my employers covered by CNN, USA Today and the Chicago Tribune. I’m in search of my next Public Relations challenge with a consumer products firm looking to grow.

Career History

Angry Chocolates, Elmhurst, Illinois

2009 – 2013

Public Relations Manager

I was recruited to Angry from Jujube, the PR agency where I’d been their account executive for four years. I got Angry its first national press and an interview on the NPR radio show “Fresh Air,” and created Angry’s first PR strategy and media outreach campaign. Now that Angry has become a division of Mighty Big Chocolate I’m on to my next adventure.

Jujube Public Relations, Chicago, Illinois

Account Executive

2005 – 2009

Jujube was formed when Goliath Pizza spun off its in-house PR and marketing group. From 2005 when I joined Jujube to 2009 when I left, we grew from $1.8M in annual billings to $25M and became one of Chicago’s most well-known firms. I left to join my favorite client’s team at Angry Chocolates.

Page Two

Massive Uncreative Industries, Chicago, Illinois

Marketing Coordinator, 2006 – 2009

I joined Massive straight from college and got a tremendous education in marketing there. I put together the Massive trade show program, worked on fifty different promotion campaigns and built our first email newsletter database and calendar.

My proudest accomplishment at Massive was a collaboration with Human Resources to develop a grass-roots employee and customer referral program that brought us 47 new employees in one year. We cut our division’s $1M recruiting budget in half and got the highest new-employee-satisfaction ratings in the company’s history.

Education

Northeast-western Illinois University

B.A. Communications, 2006

I was the Business Reporter for the Northeast-western weekly newspaper, “The Scourge.” I won a journalism award in my junior year and was a Resident Advisor to freshmen in my senior year.

Interests

I’m an amateur jazz pianist. I play with a combo at the Limerick Tavern on Friday nights. I enjoy playing Frisbee Golf and doing agility trials with my spaniel, Igor.

__________________________________________________________________________

What did you notice about Melissa’s Human-Voiced Resume™ that differentiates it from a traditional resume?

_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Here are some of the differences between a Human-Voiced Resume™ and a traditional resume:

• A Human-Voiced Resume™ tells a story. We can see the resume-owner’s career moving forward (from the most recent job to a more distant one – that is, in reverse) as we read through the resume. The ‘connective tissue’ is included in the resume, to explain what hiring managers want to know more than almost anything, namely, why did you leave each job and take the new one?
• A Human-Voiced Resume™ uses the word “I” and a conversational tone. When you read a Human-Voiced Resume™ you feel as though you are reading a person’s spoken words. We want to bring you across on the page in your Human-Voiced Resume™!
• A Human-Voiced Resume™ uses full sentences. There are situations where we can use sentence fragments in a Human-Voiced Resume™, but we never use the dry, boring, governmental language that characterizes the typical traditional resume.
• A Human-Voiced Resume™ tells stories. In each past job included in your Human-Voiced Resume™, we can almost see you in action in our minds. A Human-Voiced Resume™ aims for a visual, cinematic effect – we want your next boss to see you in his or her mind's eye, starring in the movie called Your Career!
• A Human-Voiced Resume™ tells your hiring manager right away in your Summary what you plan to do next and why. Your human voice is already present in the first line.
• A Human-Voiced Resume™ doesn’t use a street address like “123 Pine Street.” Employers don’t need that information these days, so we jump straight to your city and state. We don’t need your ZIP code or postal code in the resume, for the same reason.

Our company is called Human Workplace. We are a publishing, coaching and consulting firm based in Boulder, Colorado. Our mission is to reinvent work for people.

Our popular 12-week virtual coaching groups like Put a Human Voice in Your Resume, Job Search after Fifty, Launch Your Consulting Business and Grow Your Thought Leadership Flame teach the same new-millennium career skills in weekly lessons that Liz Ryan teaches in her columns.

Sure-Fire Ways to Make Sure Your Emails Are Opened and Read

This is part II in the Email Marketing Mastery series. Missed Part I? Read it here.

In the last post, we saw 15 different ways you can instantly boost your email open and read rates today.

We looked at how you can be play ethical, use hypnotic words, create a stellar autoresponder list and a personalized welcome message, among other things.

Here are 16 more ways to make sure your emails are opened and to boost your click-through rates.

1. Stick to the same time

Sending emails when your readers are getting ready for work or going to bed? Chances are your emails won’t get opened.

Given that 24% of emails are opened in the first hour, reach out to your audience when they are not too busy.

2. Woo your audience in footer

Never underestimate the footer. Always give your readers one large-sized, clear and concise call-to-action in the footer.

It could be a new product promo, a discount or an invite to register to an upcoming webinar.

3. Be regular

The GetResponse blog created an infographic based upon research which analyzed 300 million messages. It showed that auto-responder emails that were sent on a regular basis had a 24% higher open rate and 47% higher “click through rate”.

4. Send more emails for a lower unsubscribe rate

Sounds ironic, doesn’t it?

After all, we’re so cautious with our lists and fear we’ll “piss off” the reader and end up sending way fewer emails a month.

But pro data analyst Dan Zarella says that if you want to reduce the number of unsubscribes, send emails more often.

We’re creatures of habit. For most of us out of sight is out of mind. If you’re sending an email only once per month, it’s time to up your frequency because people will simply forget who you are, unsubscribe and flag you as spam.

5. Go visual

Beautiful visual emails work better.

83% of learning happens visually. In short, a majority of us are visual learners. Contrast this with people remembering only 20% of what they read every time.

88% of senior marketing execs say integrating video with email has a positive impact on email campaign performance and 76% say that videos in emails generate higher click-through rates.

According to website builder IM Creator, visuals make your text more easy-to-digest, because let’s face it, they aren’t going to read but scan it. Make sure you also do A/B tests and include visuals in your emails.

6. Juxtapose content with promo

For every three massive-value content emails, send a promo email nudging them to buy a related product. According to Convinceandconvert.com, in 2012, 44% of email recipients made at least one purchase last year based on a promotional email.

Pat Flynn does this well. This is how his auto-responder series look:

Source: Pat Flynn.

7. Subscribe to your competitor’s list

A sneaky yet great technique to stay on the top of what others are doing. Evaluating just their blog or website won’t cut it.

You want to become an insider and keep a tab on their content, frequency, style, design, subject lines to name a few.

8. Use a power phrase

Power phrases are “evergreen” subject lines that you can use over and over again irrespective of the subject. Create a swipe file of power phrases that you’ve tested for yourself and that generate higher open/click-through rates for your emails.

For my meetup groups, I’ve tested the phrase “Did you get this?” as a follow up subject line to an invitation. It piques people’s curiosity and they want to know whether they missed something.

9. Take time to respond

Do you respond to every email that you get? Do you claim to do so?

If you’re not answering your subscriber emails, you’re missing out on a huge opportunity to build stronger relationships with your audience. Contrary to conventional thinking, this applies especially if you have a bigger list. (If you have thousands of people and replying to emails takes too much time, consider investing in a VA).

Granted, not everyone is in the “build relationships” stage yet. You may not have enough subscribers and don’t have to worry about in-depth connections with readers (yet) because there are too few of them. If that’s the case, don’t claim you read and reply to every email, because it will cost you your reader’s trust. Say what you do and do what you say.

10. Make use of the pre-header

I use MailChimp for me and my clients. Each campaign provides a snippet of content or a pre-header which is the first thing your mobile readers will see.

See arrowed text area below:

With 47% of email being opened on a mobile device, it becomes even more important. What’s more, 30% of consumers now read their email exclusively on mobile devices.

11. Tell a story

I once attended an info-sharing evening where the host wanted to share her experience with a business model. In the email copy, they told a great story and I was intrigued to sign up. On the evening, everyone turned up expecting the host to share her real, raw story with us.

Sadly, it turned out to be a sales pitch even though it wasn’t promoted as one. She had a great copywriter, but there was no alignment between the picture that was painted and what we really got at the event. There was no story, no connection built. It was all sales figures and hard-to-understand data on Powerpoint slides.

The result? Several pissed off attendees who didn’t care to buy.

Almost all of my emails start with a story and lure the reader in, before I’ve even made a “point” or mentioned a product.

Why? Simply because everyone loves a good story.  Stories are how we grew up. We relate with them.

12. Employ the WINFM principle

Before your subscribers even consider opening an email, they have to answer “What’s in it for me?”

Make it easier for them to answer the question by learning what your customers truly want. People are buying a desired resulting feeling. For example, someone who buys an Armani suit is really buying the feeling of luxury.

13. Hook them

Once you execute #11 and #12 well, you’ve had them hooked!

Don’t be afraid to talk about feelings. Feelings are energetic and magnetic.

Talk to one person at a time, not the masses. Make them matter. Get a conversation started. Forget the grammar “rules” once in a while. It’s OK.

Oh and remember, it’s never about you but them.

14. Have a clear call-to-action

Especially for promo emails, have a call-to-action between clear two to five words. Better yet, try visual CTAs and cues that work.

Here is another style that CopyBlogger uses at the end of their blog post: (http://www.copyblogger.com/smart-people-personas/)

15. Condition them

In his course Serious Bloggers Only, Jon Morrow teaches how to condition your reader using a simple tactic: Write short emails, no longer than 100 words with a link pointing to full content. Publish the rest of the content goodness on your website.

This will condition your readers to click on a link every time in order to receive something good. In their minds, click = good stuff.

Simple but pure genius!

16. Don’t be generic

And segment your list instead. Avoid “batch and blast” approach. Segmented emails are well-targeted and generate 30% more open rate and 50% more click-through rate than blast-emails.

As an example, someone who abandoned a product in their cart can be sent a discount coupon email to bring them back.

Now that you’re armed with tons of new ways to engage and re-engage your readers, which one are you going to try out first?

Here’s a recap of 30+ ways to make sure your emails are opened and read.

1. Push ‘Send’ to add value
2. Use your real name
3. Use your real email address
4. Be ethical
5. Use hypnotic words
6. Use clear subject lines
7. Write benefit-driven subject lines
8. Use a simple design
9. Replace “I” with “You”
10. Be familiar and personal
11. Have a personalized welcome message
12. Use the power of P.S
13. Give them some (white) space
14. Give them everything or a teaser
15. Churn out insanely useful autoresponders
16. Stick to the same time
17. Woo your audience in footer
18. Be regular
19. Send more emails for a lower unsubscribe rate
20. Go visual
21. Juxtapose content with promo
22. Subscribe to your competitor’s list
23. Use a power phrase
24. Take time to respond
25. Make use of the pre-header
26. Tell a story
27. Employ the WINFM principle
28. Hook them
29. Have a clear call-to-action
30. Condition them
31. Don’t be generic

Four Types of People for Hire. Which one are you?

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Ifthere is no difference between the top-third of people you hire and the bottom-third, you can safely ignore this article.

If there is a difference, consider that when it comes to hiring, there are only four types of people in the world.

• Type 1: those you should never hire. If you’ve ever hired someone who is a true misfit it’s apparent to everyone else you did something fundamentally wrong. The likely causes: you didn’t look at the resume, you trusted your gut, you didn’t know the job, you hired largely on presentation and personality, you were desperate, or you didn’t conduct a background check.

• Type 2: the bottom-third of those who are hired. Typically these people have the basic experiences, technical skills and academic background, but they’re assessed primarily on their personality, first impression, affability and presentation skills. One big problem with these hires is they need more coaching and supervision to do average work. Worse, some demotivate everyone else on the team.

• Type 3: the middle-third of those who are hired. These people also have the basic skills and experiences, but in this case the assessment is more thorough. Generally this involves more behavioral-like interviews with more people, a more in-depth technical assessment, a battery of questionnaires, and a thorough background check. This is the interview process most companies use and it’s one designed largely to prevent mistakes. The unintended consequence is hiring people just like those who have always been hired since it’s the safer decision. The reasons these people aren’t in the top-third typically involve lack of motivation to do the actual work, some cultural fit problem, a style-clash with the hiring manager, or lack of necessary drive, leadership or team skills.

• Type 4: those you hire who wind up being in the top-third of those hired. These are your star performers – the strong leaders who get results regardless of the challenges. They’re highly motivated to do the actual work required, they take on projects no one else wants, and they fit seamlessly with the people, culture and manager.

Here are some commonsense things you can do to hire more Type 4s:

Four Big Ideas for Hiring More Type 4 People

1. Define Type 4 performance. Take every “must-have” factor and generic responsibility on the job description and have the hiring manager define how the person uses the skill on the job. This should be in the form of a task or an activity. Then ask what the top-third people do differently doing the same work. Put the top 6-8 of these performance objectives into priority order. These are the same things you tell the new person what needs to be accomplished on the first day on the job. Here’s a complete handbook for preparing these types of performance-based job descriptions for any job. Here’s the one-minute management version.
2. Attract more Type 4 people. Since everyone wants to hire these Type 4 people, you’ll need to use compelling recruiting advertising that emphasizes what they’ll be learning, doing and becoming. Whether this is a job posting, email or voice mail, you’ll need to attract the person’s attention and enter into a series of exploratory conversations to keep them engaged.
3. Assess and screen for Type 4 performance. Since they’re handling bigger projects sooner than their peers and getting promoted faster, Type 4 people typically have less experience and depth of skills than Type 3 people. This is offset by the intensity of their experiences, their ability to rapidly learn and apply new skills, and having the opportunity to develop their team and leadership skills early in their career. Dig deep into their major accomplishments, seeking out these Type 4 level indicators. The Most Important Interview Question of All Time can guide you through this process.
4. Stop using processes designed to attract and hire Type 3 people. If the bulk of the people you’re seeing are Type 1, Type 2 and Type 3, you won’t hire many Type 4s. Weeding out the weak in the hope that a few strong survive is an exercise in futility. Since Type 4 people, whether they’re active or passive job-seekers, are always more discriminating, you need to design your hiring processes around how these people look for work and how they expect to be interviewed and hired. Here’s how to get out of thisCatch-22 Staffing Spiral of Doom.

If there is no difference between the top-third of the people you hire and the bottom-third, you can safely ignore this article. However, if you want to see and hire more Type 4s and raise the talent bar, you have to design your hiring processes around how these people look for new career opportunities and how they expect to be professionally recruited and interviewed. It starts by doing the right stuff while stopping doing the wrong stuff. Unfortunately, the stopping is far more difficult than the starting.

Deadliest Job Interview Mistakes

A lot of people are confused about job interviews. They think a job interview is like a citizenship exam. They think that if they study hard and give the right answer to each question put to them, everything will be fine.

At a citizenship exam, if you answer the questions correctly you'll get your papers. Everyone who shows up to the exam that day can become a citizen, and we can have a big party and celebrate. Your goal in the citizenship exam is to give the right answer and wait for the next question.

A job interview is exactly the opposite! Only one person can get the job, so the last thing you want to do is sound like everyone else. Yet our office is flooded with mail from people who are unclear on the 'one person gets hired' concept as it relates to job interviews.

"You say that I should answer the question 'Why should we hire you?' with a non-traditional answer," goes a typical query. "What's wrong with 'You should hire me because I'm qualified, hard-working and eager to make a difference!'?"

You can answer the question that way if you want to, but why on earth would you want to? Every other candidate will answer exactly that way!

The last thing you want to do on a job interview is disappear into the confusing sea of job-seekers that a hiring manager is desperately trying to keep separate in his mind.

Your job on a job interview is to get the manager thinking and to exercise your own brain, too. Neural activity is the key. If you stay in the standard frame and answer the questions like a good little sheepie job candidate, the manager may literally forget who you are.

I was an HR chief for millennia. The biggest problem job-seekers face after job interviews is that hiring managers literally can't remember them.

"Now Amy Jones - which one was she, again?" a hiring manager would ask me.

"Blonde curly hair, Southern accent," I'd say. "Oh, yeah, her!" the hiring manager would reply.

How would you keep a dozen job candidates straight if you met them all over three or four days? The more cues you can get during the interview (the Navy Guy, the woman who wrote a kids' book) the easier it becomes keep each candidate distinct in your mind.

The more you stick to the script and sound just like everyone else in the lineup, the worse the problem becomes.

Managers feel bad when they meet people and forget them, but it happens every day.

"Did I meet Chester Anderson?"

"Yep - tall guy, rides a Harley, remember?"

"Oh yeah, the Harley guy."

Once a manager forgets you, all the thank-you notes in the world won't bring you back to mind as a living, breathing human being, much less a contender for the job. Your aim at a job interview is to make an impression, not to sit in the chair like a ventriloquist's dummy and spit out pat answers on cue.

Here are the five deadliest interview mistakes we see in our work with job-seekers and hiring managers. We've provided remedies on the three linked blog pages. Take charge of your next job interview, and make it a high-mojo conversation!

MISTAKE NUMBER ONE: Neglecting the Basics

You've got to go to a job interview prepared. If your first question for an HR person or hiring manager is "What does your company do?" you can bet that the interviewer is drawing a big red X through your name in his mind, even if he's too polite to say so.

You have to know what the company does and for whom, where its various locations are and who its competitors are. You have to know what's new in the organization and what people are saying about them. Here is a list of of critical pre-interview research topics and where to find the information you need.

The goal of your pre-interview research is not to show that you're a good little student and a get a gold star, but to understand the company's business situation. That's for your own benefit, and your knowledge will help you compose thoughtful interview questions to ask your interviewer, too.

MISTAKE NUMBER TWO: Showing Up Without Questions

"Is there a bus that runs by here?" is a perfectly fine question for a job-seeker to ask an interviewer if the job-seeker is 18 years old or younger. Once we hit adulthood, we're expected to develop higher-altitude questions about the role, the company's situation in its marketplace and the hiring manager's priorities.

Click here for a list of interview questions that you can jot on your spiffy notepad (tucked into your leather or vegan leather portfolio, which you'll bring to every interview not only to prep yourself with pre-written questions but also to take notes) and refer to when you need it.

The best interview questions, though, are not the ones on our list but organic questions that spring from the unfolding conversation, as in this example.

MISTAKE NUMBER THREE: Answering and Going Silent

When we have in mind that a job interview is like an oral exam, we answer a question and then clam up and wait for the next one. That's citizenship-exam behavior. That's not how humans converse, and you're not going to start an intellectually-stimulating conversation by following the boring, standard script. If you interview in the standard sheepie way, the manager will forget your conversation two minutes after your tush disappears through the revolving door.

Here are two contrasting answers to the lame interview question "Where do you see yourself in five years?"

MANAGER: Where do you see yourself in five years?

APPLICANT: Here, hopefully, working in Accounts Payable or perhaps in Finance.

Is this manager going to say "Wow! There's a lively thinker!" upon hearing this answer?

Heck, no. Not one neuron is firing in the manager's brain while you're matching the lameness quotient of his lame question with your own lame answer.

Let's try it again:

MANAGER: Where do you see yourself in five years?

APPLICANT: I don't have a timetable, but I'm interested in astrophysics - yes, don't laugh! It's true. I love science, and I don't know exactly where I'll go with it but I read everything I can about quantum mechanics, cosmology and the point where engineering and physics intersect.

MANAGER: Wow -- but you're an Accounts Payable person!

APPLICANT: I worked at my grandpa's hardware store in high school and I learned bookkeeping and then Accounting. I got my BS in Finance because I like fitting the numbers into the rest of the business processes like Purchasing, Sales and forecasting. Somehow I'm going to weave the science in, at some point. Life is long!

You can turn even a brainless interview question like "Where do you see yourself in five years?" into a conversation-starter if you bring a little mojo to the interview.

What is there to be afraid of, after all? The only mistake you can make is to hide behind the script and be forgotten. As long as you stay calm, don't evaluate or censor yourself and listen to your body, you're going to do fine.

MISTAKE NUMBER FOUR: Leaving Without Learning

Notice how I keep talking about getting the manager's brain and your own brain working? To do that, you've got to listen carefully to everything your interviewer says, get off the script and react appropriately. You've got to let the conversation unfold, and that means keeping the conversation human instead of retreating to the boring and robotic standard interview script.

Let's compare two answers to the question "What do you know about FrammelSoft?"

MANAGER: Tell me what you know about FrammelSoft.

CANDIDATE: I'm sorry that I'm not familiar with that software, but I'm a quick learner.

This is a classic interview mishap. You're an experienced Accounts Payable person and you've never heard of this piece of software, yet you apologize for not knowing it?

You have nothing to apologize for. Let's try it again, this time staying human and pushing for some learning on both sides of the conversation.

MANAGER: Tell me what you know about FrammelSoft.

CANDIDATE: Is that an Accounts Payable application?

MANAGER: Not specifically - it's a kind of mid-range ERP, but there's an Accounts Payable piece. We've been using it since before I got here.

CANDIDATE: How does it fit into the A/P pipeline specifically?

MANAGER: Well, we enter the vendors into FrammelSoft and then it creates vendor reports used by Purchasing. It's kind of ancillary to A/P but it's a tricky system and I was wondering if you'd used it.

CANDIDATE: I haven't heard of it, but it makes me curious, because I thought I read in the job ad that you use SAP.

MANAGER: We do use SAP - this Frammelsoft program is a legacy thing that is actually kind of a pain in the neck.

CANDIDATE: Would it be worth exploring a way to get out of the dependence on FrammelSoft and get that functionality from SAP, which already cost your company a bundle?

MANAGER: That would be heavenly, but our Purchasing guys are completely committed to FrammelSoft.

CANDIDATE: It makes me think that if I were the person you hired for this job, the Purchasing folks would be a high priority for me -- getting to know them and then understanding what they get out of FrammelSoft that they can't get from SAP.

MANAGER: I have to think our SAP Account Manager would be your ally in that.

The hiring manager is mentally imagining you in the job, already! On a job interview, don't give a harmless little answer and be quiet. Listen, learn and respond! You'd do that naturally if you weren't experiencing interview jitters.

You can lessen the jitter factor by reminding yourself that not everyone is worthy of your gifts. Only the people who get you, deserve you!

MISTAKE NUMBER FIVE: Groveling

Groveling means cowering and begging. It means watching the interviewer's face to see how he or she reacts to every word you utter and every non-verbal signal you send. It means shutting down your true personality in order to be pleasing to the interviewer.

You don't go on dates to please people, do you? You go on dates to figure out whether you and another person have enough chemistry to continue the conversation. A job interview works the same way!

As long as you believe that an employer has something wonderful and precious that you desperately need -- that is, a job -- and that you are nothing and they are godlike, you are sunk. The only kind of people you'll bring in then will be fearful managers who are sure to undervalue and abuse you.

When you know in your heart and your gut that you bring to the table something just as valuable as a paycheck and maybe much more -- your tremendous experience, intellect and instinct -- you'll carry yourself differently. You won't trip over your words in an effort to please His Majesty or Her Highness, because you'll see yourself and the interviewer as equals on a level playing field.

If the energy is right, you'll have a new job and they'll have an awesome new employee in a few weeks. If the energy is wrong, your mojo won't even flicker, because you'll be one step closer to the perfect opportunity waiting for you, working among people who will grow your precious flame.