Tuesday, December 8, 2015

Patience is not the ability to wait…

But the ability to keep a good attitude while waiting (Joyce Meyer)

Remember that feeling: you nailed the interview and there is perfect chemistry between you and the hiring manager. Your hearts skips a beat when they call you to tell that you are the preferred candidate and that an offer is being prepared…and then comes the waiting part….
Day one goes by without a call, as does day 2. By that time, you have checked whether your phone is actually on, you have sent a test-mail to yourself to make sure that that is still working as well…in a nutshell, you are stressing out!

A couple of candidates called me in these last few days, suffering from waiting anxiety. Here is what I told them on keeping your cool in nerve-racking times:

Time moves slowly for you but it flies on the company side.
Preparing an offer involves calculations, approvals… activities that often require other people to intervene in the process. As important as the job offer is to you, for others it is merely a task on their to-do list.

Follow up with purpose
If you call and get voicemail, no need to try again after 30 minutes, 60 minutes, 90 minutes…. It looks pretty stalkerish on caller ID.
That does not mean that you cannot take any action. It’s ok to call or to send an e-mail when the timeline that they told you has passed but limit your follow up to once. If you are the strongest candidate, you don’t need to keep yourself in the forefront of the hiring manager’s mind, you are already there.

Keep applying and interviewing for other jobs.
Appealing as it may be to cancel all planned interviews when you hear that an offer will be prepared, don’t. You never know what may happen. An internal candidate may pop up; a sudden hiring freeze may be imposed.
Should this happen, you don’t want to be in the position where you have blown up all other opportunities that you were working on.

Bluffing that you have another job offer won’t speed things up
If you are trying to use another job offer to speed things up, be it fake or real, it may blow up in your face.
Employers typically like to think that they are your number one pick. They also assume that you have thought things through and are not accepting just any job. Waving with another job offer may ruin that picture. There is no way back if an employer tells you to accept the other offer.

And last but not least: Stop obsessing
If the hiring manager does not accept your linked in invitation immediately, it does not mean that he has changed his mind. If the job is reposted, it does not automatically mean that they are looking for additional candidates. Difficult as it may be, try not to read something in small details. It won’t change the outcome; it will only make you miserable.

There is no one single right way to spend the waiting time for an offer. These suggestions may help you to put it in perspective but the golden rule remains: go do something else to get it out of your system, something that takes your mind off the wait. And you’ll see…when you least expect it…the phone will ring J.

I look forward to hearing from you,
Isabel






Through a personalized and tailor-made approach, Ingenium Executive Search aspires to assist you in attracting the right talent that matches the DNA of your company

Check out our website http://www.ingenium-search.be
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