How To Make a Hiring Manager’s Time Count

by | Feb 19, 2022 | Daily Job Hunt

This post originally appeared as a 2-19 Weekend Issue of the Daily Job Hunt email. Sign up for kick-butt career hype in your inbox each morning.

Mindsets for Success

One thing per day
Too busy to job hunt? Do 1 thing a day to make progress. This also known as “Non-Zero Days.”

Write down what you did every night (even if it’s just 5 minutes of research) because it reminds your subconscious that you’re moving forward by 1% a day.

Eventually, the compound effect will take place, and you’ll bust down the door of your next job.

The only two things you need to grow your career
To grow a career, you need:

1. The ability to create value
2. The ability to prove it

That’s it.

Everything that doesn’t relate to this is distraction.

Quote of the Week

“There’s power in looking silly and not caring that you do.”

― Amy Poehler

How to make 7 seconds count

Imagine you had seven seconds to talk to the hiring manager of your dream company. Just seven seconds that would determine whether you won a full-length interview or not.

What would you say?

Whatever you’d think of saying, you’d most likely realize that there is no time for fluff. Seven seconds is such an impossibly short amount of time, you’d only be able to get one or maybe two points across.

So it’s hard to determine what you would say.
But it’s not hard to know what you would definitely not say.

You would never just start reciting your resume.
In fact, I bet the thought wouldn’t even cross your mind.

Why?

Because you intuitively know that it’s boring.

Resumes are always boring. They’re full of wordy, filler stuff. Your name, your address, your contact information, the companies you used to work at, your previous job titles, your degrees, where you went to school. Bla bla bla.

It’s all fluff.
Boring, generic, uninteresting.

Not something you’d want to waste seven seconds on.

At this point you may be wondering why I keep talking about seven seconds. Why this odd number? Well, that’s because seven seconds is exactly the average amount of time a hiring manager looks at a job application.

Seven short seconds.

It goes without saying that every second that hiring manager spends looking at fluff is one less second you have to wow them.

So you want to make sure that the first thing they see is none of that. You want to make sure that the first thing they see is impressive and interesting enough to pique their interest. Because if you manage to do that, and they want to know more, then you win.

So ask yourself: what is the most interesting thing about you?
What is the coolest thing you’ve built, or the most impressive thing you have achieved?

Tell them that.

Don’t worry if you don’t have work experience yet, because this doesn’t even have to be related to the job. It just has to be interesting. Impressive. Something that speaks to your character, and who you are as a person.

“I can deadlift 2.5 times my body weight.”

“I started a lawn mowing business at 14 and made $5000 in my first year.”

“I’ve been running social media for my local church group and managed to double the audience and triple engagement on IG.”

It may seem silly at first, but even these things are ten times more interesting than most of the stuff that you typically find on a resume. They’re certainly better conversation starters than job titles and bachelor’s degrees.

Now, maybe this whole seven seconds thing annoys you.
Maybe it even makes you mad.
Why can’t these hiring managers just spend a little more time to get to know you?

If that’s you, consider this: there are 7 billion people in the world. And most of us will have less than 3 billion seconds to live over our entire lifetime. Simple math will tell you that there’s no time to waste on randos.

So don’t be a rando.
Be interesting.

Take those seven seconds and make them count.

Corné
and the DJH team.