Suggested Interview Questions

What is the biggest mistake job seekers make?
What can college students do to get hired right from school?
When you lose your job, what should you do first?
How is an effective job hunt conducted and how long should it take?
What is the one magical question you should ask on any job interview?
Who is the best person to send a resume to?
What is the most effective way to find job opportunities?
How do you overcome objections in the interview?
What should you do if you don't have as much experience as other candidates?
To what extent should you use the Internet in your job search?
What is the role of recruiters and headhunters?
Is there any hope for anyone who wants to change careers in today's economy?
What about “dumbing down” your resume?
How do you handle the age issue?

FAQs

What is the Traditional System?
The Traditional System is the system of job hunting that nearly everyone is familiar with and most people rely on to get a job. It includes answering want ads (posted or published), going to job fairs, contacting recruiters, going through Human Resources, and networking with everyone and anyone.

What is the Contrarian System?
The Contrarian System of job hunting is a revolutionary, but very simple approach to job hunting based on common sense, sound business judgment and an understanding of basic human psychology. It is contrary or opposite to the Traditional System in every way. Here’s a comparison between the Traditional and Contrarian Systems:

You Think:

Traditional: “Getting hired would solve a lot of my problems.”
Contrarian: "Who can I help and how can I help them?"

Your Approach Is:

Traditional: Reactive – hoping something close to what you want will come along soon, but you’ll take pretty much any job now.
Contrarian: Proactive – you decide what you want to do, for whom and on what terms, take the proper actions and allow it to come to you.

You Use:

Traditional:
1. A large list of companies and a catch-as-catch-can, and "playing the numbers
    game" approach.
2. A generic cover letter that pitches your qualifications.
3. A jam-packed autobiographical resume that details your attributes and
    accomplishments, and
4. Wishing, hoping and pleading with God.

Contrarian:
1. A small, well-researched, detailed list of specific companies and key executives.
2. A targeted cover letter tailored to each company’s needs.
3. A resume that presents you as a problem solver without pitching yourself, and
4. Positive affirmations, visualization and the confidence that comes with knowing your dream job is already yours, even if you can’t yet see it.

You Work At:

Traditional:
1. Writing, updating and polishing your resume.
2. Contacting Human Resource departments, executive recruiters, and anyone at all
    any time you get a lead.
3. Networking with everyone you know.
4. Waiting for something to happen.

Contrarian:
1. Mailing or emailing a limited number of letters every week to contacts on your list.
2. Calling each person you contacted one week later to discuss their needs.
3. Sending proposal-like follow-up letters.

You Feel:

Traditional: Helpless, powerless, disillusioned, disappointed, depressed, unskilled, unwanted and unemployable.
Contrarian: Strong, confident, in control, empowered and enthusiastic.

You Subconsciously Say:

Traditional: “Please hire me. I really need a job!”
Contrarian: “I’m raring to go. Let’s get started!"

But don’t you have to sell yourself? How else can you convince an employer to hire you?
In the Traditional System, it’s your responsibility to convince a potential employer you are the best candidate for the job. You’re supposed to do this by using flowery hyperbole to describe yourself, inject action verbs and power phrases into your resume and use any number of other tactics – and this is just to get the interview!

In the interview, one or more total strangers are allowed to ask you interrogation-like questions about your professional and personal life, and you’re supposed to “sell yourself” to them as hard as you can, hoping to overcome their inherent assumption you’re not what they want.

One of the basic principals of human psychology is that no one likes to be sold, but everybody loves to buy. Since employers are people, and they don’t like to be “sold to” any more than you do, so they’ll instinctively resist whoever is “pitching” to them.

In the Contrarian System, you never “sell yourself.” Instead, you help your potential boss “buy” you by realizing he has a problem and that it’s quite possible you might be able to help him solve that problem.

When you approach your potential boss with this mindset, you’re more likely to be welcomed in with open arms because he will have “bought” you with little or no effort on your part.

All you’ve really done is change your perception of him, you and the ways things are “supposed to” happen. It’s important to remember that you’re not manipulating your potential boss in any way; you’re simply giving him what he wants, and he in turn will give you what you want. It’s just basic psychology.

Who can use the Contrarian System?
Anybody can use it, but not everyone will because it requires you to:

1. Assume responsibility for your own successes or failures. Only you determine what happens to you, and only you have the power to change your life if you don’t like the way it’s going.
   
   Those who need to feel victimized or helpless or don’t want to be responsible for managing their lives will not feel comfortable with the Contrarian System.
   
   
2. Recognize that your conscious and subconscious thoughts and beliefs are now out-picturing as your life, and be willing to discard or change them if needed. If you are ready to stretch beyond your comfort zone, you’re ready to make some changes.
   
   
3. Be willing to look at yourself, the people you’ll contact and the job hunting process in a way that benefits everyone, not just you. Contrary to popular belief, job hunting is not a battle to won, other job seekers are not competitors to be vanquished, and there is, in fact, more than enough opportunity for everyone who wants to work.

Generally, the people who cannot relate to the Contrarian System are those who cannot or will not let go of negative, limiting beliefs that are holding them down and keeping them from being happy, fulfilling and well-compensated in their work.

How can my thoughts and beliefs have any impact on my getting hired?
In the physical world we can see, there are numerous laws that govern how things work, such as the Law of Gravity and the Law of Electricity. And the same is true for the metaphysical world we cannot see, where specific laws are also at work, chief among being the Law of Attraction.

Like all universal laws, the Law of Attraction works exactly the same way for everyone all the time: you can’t turn it off, you can’t get away from it, and you can’t change it, but if you understand how it works, you can use it to change your life and bring you your desired good, such as that terrific high paying, satisfying job.

Whether you know it or not, you are a magnet. Through your conscious and subconscious thoughts, feelings and beliefs, you are drawing people, things and situations to yourself that reflect those thoughts, feelings and beliefs.

If you want to know what you believe to be true about yourself, take a good, hard look at your life. If you don’t like what you see and want to make some changes, the changes must occur on the inside first in order for them to manifest on the outside.

You may have heard stories of lottery winners who eventually ended up broke. Ever wonder why they couldn’t hold on to their money? It’s because they “thought poor,” and so their lives inevitably reflected their belief that they were poor, and they were.

Contrast that with motivational speaker Tony Robbins who was a millionaire at a very early age and through a series of bad decisions, lost all his money. Within a year, however, Tony not only regained all the money he had lost, he got a whole lot more!

You see, Tony had only lost his money, but never his wealth consciousness. He believed he was prosperous in numerous ways – even when he didn’t have any money – and the Law of Attraction obediently responded to his belief by showing up as lots of money and opportunities to make more money.

You, too, can transform your life and get your dream job simply by changing your thinking. For example, if you believe you’re not getting hired because of your age, the Law of Attraction will make sure you get plenty of demonstrations leading you to believe your age is a factor why you’re not getting hired.

It doesn’t matter how you got that belief, whether through a thought or feeling you had, from what someone told you or what you assumed from what you read somewhere. What matters is you have that belief, and that belief is constantly out picturing in your life in a way you don’t like.

But if you release the belief that age is a factor in your getting hired, the Law of Attraction will present you with lots of opportunities for you to get hired in which your age – or your skin color, gender, height, sexual orientation, cultural heritage, religion, gap in your resume or any other excuse you now use why you can’t get hired – doesn’t matter at all.

You see, your “problem” is not the problem; it’s your belief in your problem that is the problem. To put it simply, the more you think about how hard it is to find a good job, the harder it will be for you to find a good job!

When you eliminate your belief in job hunting being hard, and you’ll find out how easy it is to have someone say, “When can you start?”

Can’t I blend the Traditional and Contrarian Systems to double my chances of getting hired?
Unfortunately, no, because the Contrarian System is completely opposite to the Traditional System. Once you get familiar with the Contrarian philosophy and start applying its strategies, you may find you’ll never want to go near the Traditional System again.

The structure of the job hunting process is the same in the two systems – approaching potential employers, letting them know who you are and why they should care, meeting them and then following up.

But everything you do within that structure is different – how you approach your potential boss, what you say in your letters, in your resume and on the phone, what happens in your meeting and what “follow-up” really means.

In the Traditional System, getting hired is a combination of lucky circumstances supported by your aggressive, hard-sell tactics to win over a reluctant employer in a highly competitive situation.

But in the Contrarian System, getting hired is the natural, logical outcome of a budding relationship between you and your potential boss, which is built upon a framework of mutual understanding, compatibility and trust.

Job hunting doesn’t have to be difficult, complicated, arduous or time-consuming, but if you believe it does, you can count on it being that way for you. When you change your thinking, you change your life.

Changing my thinking sounds easy. All I have to do is tell myself I already have what I want, and then I just sit back and wait for it to show up, right?
Simply saying “I now have my dream job” won’t do a thing if you don’t mean it.The purpose of repeating affirmations and visualizing yourself in your dream job is to reprogram yourself consciously and subconsiously to believe that what you desire is already yours. Without the belief, the words are meaningless.

Once you actually believe what you’re saying, you should expect your demonstration of your new belief to show up, and here is where “release” comes in – you have to allow the Universe to do its work.

And some sort of action is almost always required, so that means you must go out into the world, do your “work” and know that what you have asked for is already on its way to you. And so it is.