Hey Reader, something weird happened to a job seeker last week.
Last week, I wrote that you should take control of your own interview process once you hear good news from your application.
Maybe you were invited for an interview from a cold application recently.
Or perhaps you wrote to a manager, had a short call or online chat, and they invited you for a formal interview.
How do you take control after this point?
It's a good question, and one that I thought previously was impossible, considering you don't really know how they are talking about your profile inside of the company.
Let me give you a great example that I heard recently from a long-time follower named Richard.
Basically Richard heard from a recruiter on a Friday, which is not unusual.
Apparently the job opening was urgent, and looking to be filled within the next week. So Richard scheduled ASAP and took the weekend to prepare.
On Monday, he was completely ghosted.
Then they emailed him that the position was "On-Hold." This is where I would feel totally out of control and confused.
I could understand why most people would give up after this encounter, and call it a mistake in the first place.
But these are the exact instances where I want you to take control!
Find out how he turned this situation around, and got his application into the right hands.
Even though I usually advise you to start off with contacting the managers on your own to show initiative & sincere interest, sometimes recruiters do reach out first.
In these cases, just like when you reach out first, make sure to direct how the first call will go.
This includes: setting an agenda, setting a time that actually works for you (most important, understanding that it might not happen or it could be rescheduled) or even better, asking to have the hiring manager there too, so that you can all talk together!
How Richard resolved this situation was brilliant. He went direct to the source, making sure to remove any confusion in-between with the recruiter.
Now, he at least knows the right people are evaluating his application, and that's all you can ask for.
See how he just skipped 3 stages in the interview process?
Now, even if he hears a "No" on his profile, at least he knows it was actually evaluated.
And that's what you need, at scale.
Once that starts happening more times than not... you'll get a job offer.
Have you ever had something like this happen? I would be glad to hear from you.
Best,
Kevin