EP 295: The top 5% - What it takes to get the offer now

I did a presentation a little while back, a webinar style. It's about the top 5% of what gets people job offers right now. This was inspired by a client who had been job interviewing and had realized his mistakes too late. And he was really beating himself up about it. He was like, I can't believe I didn't see that. I can't believe I didn't realize that. And now I've lost that opportunity. And he was feeling really bad about it. If you can relate to that, this is for you. It is a recording that I previously did, and I'm just sharing it here on the podcast because it was that impactful. So enjoy.

Welcome. This is the top 5%, what it takes to get the offer. And we're gonna be going into mindset. This is mental stuff today. So top 5% of what it takes to get offers. I'm so excited about this because it's gonna share what, what all my clients have had to go through to get to the other side in conditions that seem so incredibly difficult. And I think that the way that I'm going to present this today is really going to illuminate why it's so difficult and what you need to— how you need to think in order to get to that other side and be in that top 5%. Because people are getting there, and it's, it's because of the way they're thinking. So if you're anything like me, You've been through your share of failures and things not working out in your career and false expectations and promises and things that you really wanted to work out not working out. And I'm going to show you today how to get through that whole it's not working so you can start to see how things can work for you, how things do work in the end. So here's a few scenarios. I'm going to go through the scenarios of what usually happens with my clients, and I'm working on this problem every day, so I'm seeing this happen all all the time and just really working on what it is that makes that— makes people actually break through, actually succeed. When a lot of people do give up, they end up going off on a different path, taking something easier, just accepting, you know, accepting defeat. And the people that don't, the people that actually get through. So here's one scenario. You work hard on tailoring your applications. You're really proud of your resume. You're submitting them. You send off a few, and either you'll be in one of two categories. You either won't get any interviews at all, you'll hear crickets, Or you will get an interview or 2. And feel free to put in the chat if any of this is resonating with you at any given time, if your experience is in line with this. And sometimes what I find happens is it can feel worse when you didn't even have the interview because you don't get any real feedback. So one of the biggest problems with the job hunt is that we don't get real feedback, right? We get bogus feedback. We get told we went with someone who was more aligned, or we went with someone who had more of this experience, or— but it's not a real actionable answer. That you can really do something about. And a lot of the times it's not even a real truthful thing that they're telling you. They're not actually telling you why they chose the other person. That truth is not something that you get. So that makes it even harder. So this registers as worse for the human brain— and I'm sorry about all these typos, I don't know what happened here, but you know, it's human. I wrote it, it was human, it wasn't AI. So this registers as worse for the human brain because it's uncertainty followed by more uncertainty. So the reason why the job hunt in general and career instability is so difficult for people is because it is uncertainty followed by more uncertainty. Because when you either go for the interview, you can't know for sure what's going on there, why you didn't get the offer, and all you can really do is wonder what you're doing wrong and keep trying. But you have no real data, no real information. So without feeling like you have a clear path forward to success, that makes it a lot more difficult and a lot more is required for you to figure out on your own than in a lot of other situations where a goal is, you know, is still hard, but you have data and measuring points to where you can actually look and say, okay, I can specifically do this differently. It's a lot of guessing. So for those of you who don't know me or you're here, you're new to me, I'll let you know that I went from receptionist to HR manager in 4 years, and I've helped clients land 99+ job offers in the last 12 months, more than that now since this slide was created. And I did it by using the principles that I'm teaching you today. So showing up, using the principles, like everything that I tell you to do, I have done. I have done multiple times. So I was featured in CNBC for that and they fact-checked everything that I told them. So, so this can play out in a few different ways, the whole, you know, getting— you're going to get stuck at a certain point. So this is where I want you to tell me in the chat if you are at stuck point number 1, number 2, or number 3. This is what I'm usually seeing. So stuck point number 1 is where you're applying, maybe you're applying daily or as much as you can. You're working hard at getting these opportunities moving for yourself. You're putting yourself out there. You're applying. You might be networking even when you don't feel like it. You're showing up, but it doesn't seem to work, and you don't get those interviews, and the job offers just feel really far away. So put stuck point number 1 if that feels like you, and if it doesn't, just wait for the next one. So stuck point number 2 is you are getting interviews. You are— you have figured out how to get interviews. And it seems to be going well. You're excited and you're feeling confident about these interviews, but then they don't call you back, or they tell you they went with someone else for some reason, and they don't make any— the reason doesn't make any tangible sense, and you're just left questioning everything. Tell me if that's you. Put stuck point number 2. Or stuck point number 3: you're landing offers, but then they're not quite the right offers, but nothing, nothing is really sticking. So I've had several clients who lately who have had like they've got an offer and then it didn't work out for some reason. And so they got either laid off or dismissed shortly after being hired, maybe in 90 days. And, or some people, they just think this environment isn't for me and I can't handle it anymore and I'm gonna make that decision to move. So attracting the wrong environments, just getting into the wrong environments in the first place. So is it number 1, 2, or 3? Oh, interesting. A lot of, a lot of the answers are 2 and 3 or 2. Okay, so you, you No, you're Mary. You're at number one. Okay. So here's what most people do when facing one of these stuck points, and this is the human brain and just kind of how the brain works. So if you're doing any of what I'm saying, it's just because you're totally normal and your brain is just acting how it's supposed to act. But our brain is working against us a lot of the time. So if you're if you when you face a stuck point, because in any goal we're gonna face a A point where, you know, there's an obstacle, and you're gonna tell yourself likely that it wasn't meant to be, or now you're just, you're just not cut out for the job you really wanted. It shouldn't be this difficult. And you basically just want the whole thing to stop. So you do something easier or change directions altogether or just choose a different path because going through the same repetitive rejections is just too difficult. So this is what it's like to have a human brain when it feels like something isn't working, or several things in a row haven't been working. It feels awful and it feels personal. And the farther you get in the process, the worse it feels to fall off at the end or closer to the finish line. So it's, it's even more painful to be like, okay, I made it to this, I made it, I got the interview, I made it to the first round, I made it to the second round, I made it through all the rounds, and then I didn't get the offer at the end, is almost more painful. And then your brain actually starts saying, well, is it even worth it to go through all that? To just fail again? Like, it's not— it starts making a rational calculation as to why even continue to do that, right? And it makes sense. So what this experience looks like for the majority of people: you feel the rejections deeply, sometimes for several days, weeks, or months. You start thinking you should change your entire career path. You decide that the reason is that you don't have enough schooling, education, or that you must be missing something. And this can be because you get feedback. Like, people will tell me, they're like, oh no, they told me I didn't have enough this experience. They told me I didn't have this degree. They told me I didn't have this. And there's thoughts I have on that. It's usually not the case because if you are getting interviews, then you, you had an opportunity to— and I'll share with you what it is you need to do. But if you had the interview and you got the opportunity in the first place, and then they tell you, oh, it's not— it's because you didn't have this much experience or you didn't have this education, that's usually not true because they already knew that going in, right? So it doesn't actually make logical sense that that would be the reason. It's just the reason they gave afterwards. To give a reason, right? But it wasn't the reason because otherwise they never would have interviewed you in the first place. And then the other way that we can tell is who is who are you taking the advice from? Who said that? But another thing that people experience is that they go through, they keep going through the interviews, and none of them turn into that ideal offer. And you may even be getting to the final rounds, and at some point you decide that it's just not happening for you. And through this. You start accepting that someone like you can't land the job you want at the pay you want. The rejections and the string of unwanted results just confirm this in your brain. It says, yep, see, I told you this was going to be too hard. We weren't going to be able to do this. And you start seeing yourself as someone who isn't able to land the job rather than someone who's getting closer to the job you want. Or what I see happening is people will start blaming external circumstances, which there's truth to. It is difficult. It is hard. But when you blame the external circumstance, there's nothing in your control that you can actually do. So there's— you, you end up at a standstill. So when you blame that economy, the market, you, you blame things outside of your control, then you can't actually control your success at all. And then there really is no point according to you. So why would you take action, right? And I get it, I have been there. But what is— what if I told you that your problem isn't that you got rejected or that you didn't get the offer come through or that it didn't work out, that the problem is that you're only focusing on the end point? That being your ideal position. And when that's the only measure of achievement, then it's not gonna be very easy to go on. It's gonna make it very difficult. So usually what we do is we're ignoring everything along the way that is built up to and supports that ideal position. It like the endpoint that we're going for. There's a lot that builds up to and supports that. And when we're not paying attention to that, we're not looking at that at all. We're just like, okay, well we didn't get the offer yet. We didn't get the offer yet. Therefore we're failing. It's very black and white. And white thinking. And as a result, the outcome is going to be a million steps towards it. Now I say a million, I say a thousand, I say hundreds. It's going to be a few— like, it's going to be a lot of steps towards it. And if you make a mistake along the way, that doesn't mean you're not capable of retracing your steps and starting again. And the next time you do it, you're starting from experience, so you're starting from a different ceiling than you did— you were before. Like, your floor is now your ceiling. And we're not able to see this when we're only focusing on the end point and saying, oh, but I didn't get it yet. Oh, but it didn't work. Oh, but I tried and that didn't work out, right? So when you make a wrong turn with the GPS, for example— this isn't— this is kind of a metaphor to show you how misplaced this thinking can be— is the, the metaphor— the GPS doesn't just say, okay, well, I guess you live here. At Exit 10A because you got off the highway a kilometer too early. But that's what our brain wants to do. It will say, okay, well, I guess I didn't make it through those rounds of interviews, so I guess I better take something easier. I better change direction. I better go back to school. I better do this or that. And if it does keep going, it will keep going, and then it'll be like, okay, but that's it. Like, this is just what I see with my clients. They're willing to put up with a certain amount. Of failure, but not beyond a certain point where it becomes too uncomfortable. And so what people will end up doing is they will end up going back to school for even like a 2-year degree, and then it's just prolonging the problem because when they come back, they're going to have to interview again, and they're going to have to look at what went wrong in their interviews and why they didn't get through the interview. So they think that that's solving the problem, but it's really just a very strategic procrastination tactic to avoid the problem that wasn't being faced before. Or people will take a lower paying job, or they'll in some in some cases just take a position that is you know feels wrong and there's red flags, but they ignore them because we made those past attempts mean that we weren't going to be successful and couldn't do it. So women are socialized to be perfectionists. We're falling short of a result or an outcome or a goal doesn't just feel disappointing, but it feels threatening, and it feels like proof that we're fundamentally not good enough. Now I have lots of men that are clients as well, and they've they have felt the same way. But this is mostly socialization for women. But if you, if you are a human and you have felt that way, it is making this even more difficult, right? So this means that when you get close to what you get close to your goal, so say you got to final rounds, you don't see or feel that progress at all. And it feels worse to get close because now it's like you tried and maybe you let yourself get excited and it still didn't work. And your brain treats this as proof that you you were right, you're not good enough. Hence the behavior that makes you want to overcompensate and go and get more skills and more education and more shiny things to put on your resume. And then you'll finally be able to be good enough and validated to employers, and you'll be able to say, hey, look, look, I have this now, I did this now, right? And this simply delays your attempts at the goal and feels like it's responsible or necessary, but it's really just a tricky delay tactic. And Sometimes people will just give up and fall into whatever it is they fall into because of this line of thinking. So it's paired with the fixation on the— like, that paired with the fixation on the destination being the only acceptable win, it creates a terrible experience of the whole way through and usually leads to giving up, changing directions, going back to school, etc. So because When all we care about is you either got the result or you didn't. So it's like I either got the job or I didn't get the job. It's very difficult to keep going long enough like that to get the exact thing that we want, because those failures hit so much harder than when when you're not looking at all the things that you have already brought to the process and the things that you have already figured out. So here's the problem with the logic because it's not even. Factually true. If the only evidence your brain will accept as proof that you're capable is getting the exact final outcome that you wanted, then you've set up a system where you either always win completely or you always fail completely. And there's no such thing as useful information, no such thing as progress, no such thing as 2 steps forward, one step back even. There's just, I got it or I didn't get it. And that is an extraordinarily expensive way to move through life because it means every attempt that doesn't land perfectly is just more proof that your brain has been arguing all along. That is that you're not quite enough to get the job and the pay that you want. And beyond that, this way of thinking completely blinds you to everything you're actually learning because when the destination is the only thing that matters to you, you can't see the growth that's happening right in front of you, and you can't build on what is already working because you're. Too busy declaring and paying attention to the failures and really feeling those failures as personal. So I want to give you a metaphor for how misplaced this all-or-nothing thinking is about goals, particularly in the job hunt process. And what we're going to talk about is how to make it really easy for you to see that the alternative way of thinking is much more beneficial for you. So let's say you're a competitive ice skater training for years, sacrificing, showing up every day even when you don't feel like it or you're tired. And the first couple of times you try, you don't make it to the national competition. And so that's like the next step before the Olympics. But listen, you keep going. You're not going to be one of those people who just gives up. So you then, you finally make it to nationals. So for the first time, and like in a movie, it would be the time where you finally win at nationals and then you win, you win the whole thing. In the job hunt, it's the time where you're like, okay, maybe you've been struggling to get interviews for a while and then you get an interview and it's for a really exciting, like, dream role and then you don't get the offer. And imagine that, like, you've been training for years and you go, you're like, okay, I'm so close, I'm so close, and then You don't make it, you don't get the medal, and you don't get— then you don't get the offer. This is my metaphor parallel side by side. So in that moment, this is really, really important. You have two choices about how to interpret this. So you can tell yourself that none of the training was worth it. You're clearly not cut out for it. You're never going to succeed. You should just stop because you were willing to fail not getting to nationals and still keep going. But you were willing—you were willing to be persistent for some amount of. time. But now that you got there and you still didn't win, you obviously just weren't cut out for it. The other failures were correct, and you got there this time by fluke, but you didn't win because you're not good enough, or whatever it is you tell yourself. Now, this might not be exactly what you tell yourself, but it's like on par with what a lot of my clients are usually thinking. So in the job hunt, it can sound like this: none of the prep I did for that interview was worth it. I went through all that prep and I did all this stuff, and it was just a waste of time. I'm clear clearly not what they're looking for. And the reasons can just be very long, so I've just listed a few, a few here. It's like, I'm too old, I'm too young, I don't have enough experience, I don't have the right credentials, I'm never going to get a job like this, I should just go back to what I can easily do or what I've done before, or something completely different. Because you were willing to fail at a few interviews and keep going still, you were willing to be persistent for some amount of time, but now that you've got through this many interviews and you're not getting the offer, obviously those previous failures were objectively correct. You don't deserve to there, and the interviews just proved that they were flukes anyway, and you're not going to get the job because you're not good enough. And that'll just be— there'll always be something you're missing. It'll never be enough, and that's it, right? So I'm exaggerating a little bit. In some cases I'm not, but this is the narrative that is going to stop people from actually getting to that dream job. Or there's a second option. You can tell yourself this. You can say, well, I never used to make— get to nationals at all. Now I do. Now I did get to nationals, so I obviously improved something. I obviously learned something and did something different. I changed something that got me to the, to the place where I could win at the next level. And now I need to change the thing that's going to allow me to win. So any serious athlete, any Olympic winner has to think this way, because if they didn't, they would have all quit before the Olympics could have ever been held. And it's not just one perfect attempt followed by the arrival at the destination. That's not how achieving goals works. And it's not even just the minimal acceptable amount of failure you've decided to allow and then winning before you can actually get close. I think for people it's who are already high achieving, they're willing to allow a certain amount of failure, but as long as it's not too uncomfortable. But then once it gets uncomfortable, that's when we start to question ourselves, question everything, and do those things that I mentioned, like go back to school, change directions, decide you're going to take something easier. And it's not like you give up. You just— so you don't see it as giving up. You just see it as like, I'm changing what I'm doing, and that these are really, really good reasons why I need to change what I'm doing. But it's really because you got uncomfortable and didn't problem solve through the process long enough to get there. Is this making sense? Give me a yes in the chat if you're still with me. Awesome. Thank you. So to get to the goal, you have to get a little bit further every time. Okay. So in this metaphor, it means refusing to not let winning at nationals by the end of your attempts be the end of your attempts, right? It has to mean not let, not letting, not getting to that final interview and not securing the offer be the end of your attempts. So if you don't win at nationals, what do you do instead of giving up? Here's what you actually need to do is you need to sit down and think about the diagnosis of what actually happened. And the problem is people don't know how to diagnose this. And if you don't know how to diagnose it, then there will be nothing to learn, right? And like I mentioned in the beginning, the job hunt is extra hard because you don't have that information. So the answer can't be— this is the caveat— the answer cannot be, I'm just not good enough. It wasn't meant to be. I just don't know what I'm doing wrong. And the answer also can't be, I needed this many years of experience, I needed this many certifications, or anything that's outside of your control. Like, it can't be because I'm too old, or because I'm too young, or because I have an accent, or because I look like this, or because— it can't be anything that you can't fundamentally change, because then you're out of luck. You can't control that, so there's really no point. You see what I'm saying, right? So what diagnosing this can look like for the Olympic athlete You—they could be asking themselves, and there's this is just like a very brief overview of what that diagnostic could look like. Did you lose because you fell on a jump and you need to work on landing that one jump? Did you lose because you don't have enough artistic moves and you need to hire a choreographer who can specialize in training you for that? Did you lose because your competitors were doing more difficult spins and you needed to master them? Did you lose because you had an off night because you partied too much the week before, and next time you need to try going to bed earlier? It could be any of those things, but you look at it and you look. Look at the data and you see what actually needs to change. Now the problem is with the job hunt is like, it— we have no idea. So here's what it could look like on the surface for the job hunt. Did you lose because you were too nervous and had too much riding on this opportunity and they felt your needy, desperate vibes coming through? That's like— and one area of the categories that I teach, energetic doubt, that could be one of the reasons. Did you lose because you didn't address some or most of their concerns, or maybe their most important concern? Did you lose because you didn't tell memorable stories enough that made them feel anything different about you than the other candidate? Did you lose because you didn't present your value clearly enough, the return on your value? Did you lose the offer because you didn't ask enough questions upfront at the right times, so you never really knew what they needed from you, or you didn't precisely position yourself enough for it because you didn't know what they actually needed to hear? Did you lose because a question threw you off and you didn't know how to respond to the curveball and And it didn't. And after that, you lost confidence because you felt like you did a bad job of answering that question. Now, it could be anything. Those are a few of the things, and that's what I've basically dedicated my whole life to, is figuring out, okay, these are all the things that could have gone wrong so we can pinpoint them and you can actually get the job. So the problem with the job hunt is you don't have much to go on for your diagnostic. Not like the Olympics. In the Olympics, you have a coach who's watching every move and they're taking notes. On like what improvements you need to make. You don't have judges' scores broken down into category. You don't have winning competitors that you can study their video. All you have is a bogus rejection reason, or worse, nothing. And that's why this process is so much harder. That's why I've spent 12 years distilling down what does land offers to figure out what is going wrong. So to figure out what is going wrong is going to be your next step. So whatever stuck point you're at, if you're stuck at not getting the interviews, we need to troubleshoot for that. If we're stuck at getting the interviews but not getting the to the second rounds or the third rounds, we need to troubleshoot for that. If you're stuck at getting the final rounds but not getting the offer, we need to troubleshoot for that. And the troubleshooting and the diagnostic is different at each step of the way. So that is what I can help you do on a personalized level. So there's two things you can do to move forward right now. In order to move to the next step. And one of them is you can watch my 3-day series where I've given— where I've broken down 4 of the main reasons and kind of gone in depth about why people are not landing offers, what has been landing offers recently, like just this week, 2 days ago, like offers just are coming in. And it's because of the ability to troubleshoot and keep going. It's not because You didn't have enough certifications or you needed more experience. And the second thing you can do is you can book a call with me and we can actually talk about what is going wrong with you. I can give you a read on what is going on based on what you tell me, and we can see what next steps you would want to take from there to actually break that down. So let me know in the chat if you have— if this landed for you, if you have any questions, or if, if a, if a takeaway has come up for you, I'd love to know what that is. Um, Diamond says my battery's on 6%. Hopefully we get a replay. Yes, I'm going to send a replay. Yeah, our brains think we're being realistic. Exactly. And it's, it's all protection mechanism, right? It's like, I want to protect you from having to fail again. I want to protect you from having to feel uncomfortable. I want to protect you from having to go through that again. And by doing that, then you just don't, you don't end up seeing what you're capable of in the end. Right? And you don't end up becoming that person you want to become and doing the things that you are fully, fully capable of doing. And that is why I feel so strongly about this, why I had to jump on and share this, because this is the thing that stops people in their tracks. Even when they are capable, they are able, they, they are put in a, in a position where they can do something, they will do it, but they're just not willing to go through enough of the troubleshooting. And when you get really skilled at the troubleshooting, when you get really good at identifying what you're doing wrong, so to speak, or what's not working, and you can go back with a different approach, you're starting from a different ceiling— a different floor. Like, the ceiling that you had before is now your floor, and you get better. So your best gets better, but not if you just keep saying, oh, I just need to keep going, I just need to go again, I just need to go on more, which is also a very flawed way of thinking because we're We're not actually harvesting or taking the learnings because we don't know how to do that, right? So if you'd like help doing that, I can help you to do that. So I'm going to put a couple of links here in the chat, one for the training and one to book a call. And I'd love to hear your takeaways in the chat. Okay. Yeah. So many of you said you're at 2 to 3 stuck, the 2 to 3 stuck points. So 2 was you're getting to the last part, but not the offer, or you're getting an offer, but it's not in the right environment. Or not knowing it's a matter of step-by-step troubleshooting to diagnose, triage what we've done wrong, and then we get stuck because we think we're at an impasse. Exactly. That's exactly it. But the impasse is just simply not having the skill of troubleshooting or knowing what to look at, right? So in my program, I actually have a checklist for like, these are the things that we need to look at. And you'll have a sense, right? You'll have a sense like, okay, it wasn't that, it wasn't that, it could be this. I need to zero in and look at this. Right? Like one of my clients we had, she would like the thing she was doing wrong was she was not addressing a concern. They had this concern about her because of her and her background and her like the way that she was presenting her background. And the way that she found out what the concern was was to because she asked a question and the and the HR person who was interviewing her in the beginning told her about this. And so she she went to town on addressing this concern. She got the offer. That was Mandy. So it's going to be something different for everybody, and it might be a combination of things. But the key thing I want you to take away from it is you need to be able to figure that out. And if you don't know how to learn from the experience because you have no data points, then it's essential that you that you get some support or something, or you because it's going to be very difficult to just keep doing it on your own. That's why people are struggling so much. It's like they're just guessing, right? And we can guess to a point, and. And like, you can always get lucky, but in the job hunt, it's really helpful to have someone who's been on the other side of the table and who can actually tell you, these are the things, with your brain, of course. So it's like your brain, my brain together, figuring out what it is that's going on. Game over. Awesome. Okay. Okay. Thank you so much. That's it for today, unless you have something else. Bye-bye. Bye.