The job interview is misnamed.  Too many candidates think about the job interview in those terms—ie., the person with the job is going to ask me a bunch of questions and if I answer the questions correctly I may get the job.

What is really happening in the interview is actually quite simple. There are only two questions in the mind of the interviewer:

1. Do I like this candidate?

2. How can this person impact my department, company– can he/she do the job?

Most of the interviewer’s questions are designed to help them find out the answers to these questions.  Smart candidates, on the other hand, will use every tool at their disposal to serve up the answers at every opportunity.

For example, if every job candidate would find out more about the company and what they do, they could be better prepared.   They should bring a HERE IS EXACTLY HOW I CAN HELP YOUR COMPANY plan, documented with ideas and action steps. All it takes is a bit of work, and some presentation skills.

Same idea with the bigger question of DO I LIKE THIS CANDIDATE?  But, even this is in the control of the candidate.  I am not suggesting undertaking a personality transplant, but I am suggesting that you think a bit about how to come across in a more likeable manner during the interview.  Here is one of my posts on making yourself MORE LIKEABLE.

Humans tell stories.  We have since the first caveman told Thor where all the bears were hiding and how to make fire (again).  What is your story?

I suggest you prepare a short elevator pitch on several topics that are sure to come up during the interview.  When the interviewer asks a question, then, you are prepared with a story to tell that answers the question, but you are going to tell it in a compelling, interesting manner.

Let’s say the interviewer asks you “Do you have any experience working with outside contractors?”

The aveage candidate says, “Yes, at my last company we worked with xyz company, and I was in daily meetings with them, presenting our changing issues.” Good enough.

Or the candidate, having done some research and knowing that this job does work with outside contractors, but mindful of the always present DO I LIKE THIS CANDIDATE question—prepares another answer:

“Yes, I have. (leaning in, because visual clues help) But, you know, I really have never thought of them as outside contractors, to me they have always been part of the company, they are that critical to most companies’ success. They are insiders, at least to me.  For example, we had a high level project due on Monday and on Friday, a key spec was changed. I don’t need to tell you what that can do to planning and scheduling.  I was able to call our outsiders-insiders– in over a weekend to help us get the job finished, on time.   Frankly, I think our work surprised everyone.  It wasn’t me, even though I got the credit, it was my outside team.”

Sure, the story is longer.  It might take you more work to prepare, but  prepare it you must.  So much of it has to do with not only the words, but your manners in telling it.

Some hints to make you more likeable as you prepare the story—see if you can find them in the above example.

Hint 1:  Make it more compelling by looking at the issue from a different angle. Maybe the interviewer has never thought of the issue in those terms.

Hint 2:  Relate it to a real world situation that the interviewer can relate to.  Make it real.  Be specific, not general.

Hint 3:  Be humble.

Hint 4.  Get engaged about your story. Practice it. Smile. Lean in.  How would an actor like Tom Cruise tell this story to make the audience believe it.

Lastly, if you find this job opportunity via LinkUp, one of the best job search engines around….you will be able to click around and find out more about the company because you are taken directly to the company’s own website, which contains countless clues for you to tell a  better story.

Ed. note:  You heard, didn’t you, that an Apple engineer left his prototype Apple IPhone–”It has multi-tasking!!”–at a bar in Redwood City.  Letterman even had the top ten excuses for the guy.  Here are ten more.

by GL Hoffman

Ten More Excuses for the IPhone Guy

10.  George Bush.

9.    I bet a guy ten grand I could get Steve to call me.

8.  I wasn’t going to pick it up after that skank Louise put it THERE.

7.  Hey, it was a brainstorming activity for new viral PR efforts.

6.  I’m taking the blame here for Woz, that cretin.

5.  Yeah, it’s like $10 million worth of free PR.  A new one IS coming. DROID does, my ass.

4.  Stopped all the awesomeness chatter about that I-Pad.  So they made it bigger, BFD.

3.  Shrek 17 still not done.

2.  FakeSteveJobs needed more material. Much funnier potentially that Steve buying the Toyota van in Atherton.

and the real number one excuse for the IPhone guy:

1.  This is way cheaper than another focus group.

Ed Note:  I try to help.  Which is why when I saw, again, this classic piece on HOW TO WRITE GOOD, I figured you may have missed it.  After all, it is from the 70′s when many of you were just a gleam in your daddy’s eye.  I think it ran initially in National Lampoon.  This guy was one of the original writers for Saturday Night Live.

How to Write Good

by Michael O’Donoghue

and other information about Michael O’Donoghue.

Note: Keep in mind that this article was written in the 1970’s. It’s still timely. As a matter of fact, I believe you’ll get some insight into what influencedDave Barry’s writing and probably the South Park creators, too. Read more about Michael O’Donoghue at the end of this article.

“If I could not earn a penny from my writing, I would earn my livelihood at something else and continue to write at night.”
- Irving Wallace

“Financial success is not the only reward of good writing. It brings to the writer rich inner satisfaction as well.”
- Eliot Foster, Director of Admissions, Famous Writers School

Introduction

A long time ago, when I was just starting out, I had the good fortune to meet the great Willa Cather. With all the audacity of youth, I asked her what advice she would give the would-be-writer and she replied:

“My advice to the would-be-writer is that he start slowly, writing short undemanding things, things such as telegrams, flip-books, crank letters, signature scarves, spot quizzes, capsule summaries, fortune cookies and errata. Then, when he feels he’s ready, move up to the more challenging items such as mandates, objective correlatives, passion plays, pointless diatribes, minor classics, manifestos, mezzotints, oxymora, exposes, broadsides, and papal bulls.

And above all, never forget that the pen is mightier than the plow-share. By this I mean that writing, all in all, is a hell of a lot more fun than farming. For one thing, writers seldom, if ever, have to get up at five o’clock in the morning and shovel manure. As far as I’m concerned, that gives them the edge right there.”

She went on to tell me many things, both wonderful and wise, probing the secrets of her craft, showing how to weave a net of words and capture the fleeting stuff of life. Unfortunately, I’ve forgotten every bit of it.

I do recall, however, her answer when I asked “If you could only give me one rule to follow, what would it be?” She paused, looked down for a moment and finally said, “Never wear brown shoes with a blue suit.”

There’s very little I could add to that except to say “Go to it and good luck!”

Lesson 1 – The Grabber

The “grabber” is the initial sentence of a novel or short story designed to jolt the reader out of his complacency and arouse his curiosity, forcing him to press onward. For example:

“It’s no good, Alex,” she rejoined, “Even if I did love you, my father would never let me marry an alligator.”

The reader is immediately bombarded with questions, questions such as “Why won’t her father let her marry an alligator?” “How come she doesn’t love him?” and “Can she learn to love him in time?” The reader’s interest has been “grabbed”!

Just so there’ll be no misunderstanding about grabbers, I’ve listed a few more below:

“I’m afraid you’re too late,” sneered Zoltan. “The fireplace has already flown south for the winter!”

Sylvia lay sick among the silverware…

Chinese vegetables mean more to me than you do, my dear,” Charles remarked to his wife, adding injury to insult by lodging a grapefruit knife in her neck.

“I have in my hands,” Professor Willobee exclaimed, clutching a sheaf of papers in his trembling fingers and pacing in circles about the carpet while I stood at the window, barely able to make out the Capitol dome through the thick, churning for that rolled in off the Potomac, wondering to myself what matter could possibly be so urgent as to bring the distinguished historian bursting into my State Department office at the unseemly hour, “definitive proof that Abraham Lincoln was a homo!”

These are just a handful of the possible grabbers. Needless to say, there are thousands of others, but if you fail to think of them, feel free to use any or all of these.

Lesson 2 – The Ending

All too often, the budding author finds that his tale has run its course and yet he sees no way to satisfactorily end it, or, in literary parlance, “wrap it up.” Observe how easily I resolve this problem:

Suddenly, everyone was run over by a truck.
-the end-

If the story happens to be set in England, use the same ending, slightly modified:

Suddenly, everyone was run over by a lorry.
-the end-

If set in France:

Soudaincment, tout le monde etait ecrass par un camion.
-finis-

You’ll be surprised at how many different settings and situations this ending applies to. For instance, if you were writing a story about ants, it would end “Suddenly, everyone was run over by a centipede.” In fact, this is the only ending you ever need use.*

*Warning – if you are writing a story about trucks, do not have the trucks run over by a truck. Have the trucks run over by a mammoth truck.

Lesson 3 – Choosing A Title

A friend of mine recently had a bunch of articles rejected by the Reader’s Digest and, unable to understand why, he turned to me for advice. I spotted the problem at a glance. His titles were all wrong. By calling his pieces such things as “Unwed Mothers – A Head Start on Life,” “Cancer – The Incurable Disease,” “A Leading Psychologist Explains Why There Should Be More Violence on Television,” “Dognappers I Have Known and Loved,” “My Baby Was Born Dead and I Couldn’t Care Less,” and “Pleasantville – Last of the Wide-Open Towns,” he had seriously misjudged his market. To steer him straight, I drew up this list of all-purpose surefire titles:

________ at the Crossroads
The Case for ________
The Role of ________
Coping with Changing ________
A Realistic Look at ________
The ________ Experience
Bridging the ________ Gap
A ________ for All Seasons

Simply fill in the blanks with the topic of your choice and, if that doesn’t work you can always resort to the one title that never fails:

South America, the Sleeping Giant on our Doorstep

Lesson 4 – Exposition

Perhaps the most difficult technique for the fledgling writer to master is proper treatment of exposition. Yet watch the sly, subtle way I “set the scene” of my smash play, The Last to Know, with a minimum of words and effort.

(The curtain opens on a tastefully appointed dining room, the table ringed by men in tuxedos and women in costly gowns. There is a knock at the door.)

LORD OVERBROOKE: Oh, come in, Lydia. Allow me to introduce my dinner guests to you. This is Cheryl Heatherton, the madcap soybean heiress whose zany antics actually mask a heart broken by her inability to meaningfully communicate with her father, E. J. Heatherton, seated to her left, who is too caught up in the heady world of high finance to sit down and have a quiet chat with his own daughter, unwanted to begin with, disposing of his paternal obligations by giving her everything, everything but love, that is.

Next to them sits Geoffrey Drake, a seemingly successful merchant banker trapped in an unfortunate marriage with a woman half his age, who wistfully looks back upon his days as the raffish Group Captain of an R.A.F. bomber squadron that flew eighty-one missions over Berlin, his tortured psyche refusing to admit, despite frequent nightmares in which, dripping with sweat, he wakes screaming, “Pull it up! Pull it up, I say! I can’t hold her any longer! We’re losing altitude! We’re going down! Jerry at three o’clock Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaagggh!”, that his cowardice and his cowardice alone was responsible for the loss of his crew and “Digger,” the little Manchester terrier who was their mascot.

The empty chair to his right was vacated just five minutes ago by Geoffrey’s stunning wife, twenty-three- year-old, golden-tressed Edwina Drake, who, claiming a severe migraine, begged to be excused that she might return home and rest, whereas, in reality, she is, at this moment, speeding to the arms of another man, convinced that if she can steal a little happiness now, it doesn’t matter who she hurts later on.

The elderly servant preparing the Caviar en Socle is Andrew who’s been with my family for over forty years although he hasn’t received a salary for the last two, even going on so far as to loan me his life’s savings to cover my spiraling gambling debts but it’s only a matter of time before I am exposed as a penniless fraud and high society turns its back on me.

The dark woman opposite me is Yvonne de Zenobia, the fading Mexican film star, who speaks of her last movie as though it was shot only yesterday, unwilling to face the fact that she hasn’t been before the cameras in nearly fifteen years; unwilling to confess that her life has been little more than a tarnished dream.

As for her companion, Desmond Trelawney, he is an unmitigated scoundrel about whom the less said, the better.

And, of course, you know your father, the ruthless war profiteer, and your hopelessly alcoholic mother, who never quite escaped her checkered past, realizing, all too late, that despite her jewels and limousines, she was still just a taxi-dancer who belonged to any man for a drink and a few cigarettes.

Please take a seat. We were just talking about you.

This example demonstrates everything you’ll ever need to know about exposition. Study it carefully.

Lesson 5 – Finding the Raw Material

As any professional writer will tell you, the richest source of material is one’s relatives, one’s neighbors and, more often than not, total strangers. A day doesn’t go by without at least one person, upon learning that I’m a professional writer, offering me some terrific idea for a story. And I’m sure it will come as no shock when I say that most of the ideas are pretty damn good!

Only last week, a pipe-fitter of my acquaintance came up with a surprise ending guaranteed to unnerve the most jaded reader. What you do is tell this really weird story that keeps on getting weirder and weirder until, just when the reader is muttering, “How in the heck is he going to get himself out of this one? He’s really painted himself into a corner!” you spring the “mind- blower”: “But then he woke up. It had all been a dream!” (which I, professional writer that I am, honed down to: “But then the alarm clock rang. It had all been a dream!”). And this came from a common, run-of-the-mill pipe-fitter! For free!

Cabdrivers, another great wealth of material, will often remark, “Boy, lemme tell ya! Some of the characters I get in this cab would fill a book! Real kooks, ya know what I mean?” And then, without my having to coax even the slightest, they tell me about them, and they would fill a book. Perhaps two or three books. In addition, if you’re at all interested in social science, cabdrivers are able to provide countless examples of the failures of the welfare state.

To illustrate just how valid these unsolicited suggestions can be, I shall print a few lines from a newly completed play inspired by my aunt, who had the idea as far back as when she was attending grade school. It’s called If an Old House Could Talk, What Tales It Would Tell:

The Floor: Do you remember the time the middle-aged lady who always wore the stilletto heels tripped over an extension cord while running to answer the phone and spilled the Ovaltine all over me and they spent the next 20 minutes mopping it up?

The Wall: No.

Of course, I can’t print too much here because I don’t want to spoil the ending (although I will give you a “hint”: it involves a truck…). I just wanted to show you how much the world would have missed had I rejected my aunt’s suggestion out of hand simply because she is not a professional writer like myself.

Lesson 6 – Quoting Other Authors

If placed in a situation where you must quote another author, always write “[sic]” after any word that may be misspelled or looks the least bit questionable in any way. If there are no misspellings or curious words, toss in a few “[sic]“s just to break up the flow. By doing this, you will appear to be knowledgeable and “on your toes,” while the one quoted will seem suspect and vaguely discredited. Two examples will suffice:

“O Sleepless as the river under thee,
Vaulting the sea, the prairies’ dreaming sod,
Unto us lowiest sometime sweep, descend
And of the curveship [sic], lend a myth to God”
- Hart Crane

“Beauty is but a flowre [sic],
Which wrinckles [sic] will devoure [sic]
Brightnesse [sic] falls from the ayre [sic]
Queenes [sic] have died yong [sic] and faire [sic]
Dust hath closde [sic] Helens [sic] eye [sic]
I am sick [sic], I must dye [sic]: Lord, have mercy on us.”
- Thomas Nashe

Note how only one small “[sic]” makes Crane’s entire stanza trivial and worthless, which, in his case, takes less doing that Nashe, on the other hand, has been rendered virtually unreadable. Anyone having to choose between you and Nashe would pick you every time! And, when it’s all said and done, isn’t that the name of the game?

Lesson 7 – Making The Reader Feel Inadequate

Without question, the surest way to make a reader feel inadequate is through casual erudition, and there is no better way to achieve casual erudition than by putting the punchline of an anecdote in a little foreign language. Here’s a sample:

One crisp October morning, while taking my usual stroll down the Kurfurstenstrasse, I spied my old friend Casimir Malevitch, the renowned Suprematist painter, sitting on a bench. Noting that he had a banana in his ear, I said to him, “Excuse me, Casimir, but I believe you have a banana in your ear.”
“What?” he asked.
Moving closer and speaking quite distinctly, I repeated my previous observation, saying, “I said ‘You have a banana in your ear!’ ”
“What’s that you say?” came the reply.
By now I was a trifle piqued at this awkward situation and, seeking to make myself plain, once and for all, I fairly screamed, “I SAID THAT YOU HAVE A BANANA IN YOUR EAR, YOU DOLT!!!”
Imagine my chagrin when Casimir looked at me blankly and quipped,
“Meh soon kahi sakta – meree kaan meh kayla heh!”
Oh, what a laugh we had over that one.

With one stroke, the reader has been made to feel not only that his education was second-rate, but that you are getting far more out of life than he. This is precisely why this device is best used in memoirs, whose sole purpose is to make the reader feel that you have lived life to the fullest, while his existence, in comparison, has been meaningless and shabby….

Lesson 8 – Covering The News

Have you ever wondered how reporters are able to turn out a dozen or so news articles day after day, year after year, and still keep their copy so fresh, so vital, so alive? It’s because they know The Ten Magic Phrases of Journalism, key constructions with which one can express every known human emotion! As one might suppose, The Phrases, discovered only after centuries of trial and error, are a closely guarded secret, available to no one but accredited members of the press. However, at the risk of being cashiered from the Newspaper Guild, I am now going to reveal them to you:

The Ten Magic Phrases of Journalism

1. “violence flared”
2. “limped into port”
3. “according to informed sources”
4. “wholesale destruction”
5. “no immediate comment”
6. “student unrest”
7. “riot-torn”
8. “flatly denied”
9. “gutted by fire”
10. “roving bands of Negro youths”

Let’s try putting The Phrases to work in a sample news story:

NEWARK, NJ, Aug. 22 (UPI) – Violence flared yesterday when roving bands of Negro youths broke windows and looted shops in riot-torn Newark. Mayor Kenneth Gibson had no immediate comment but, according to informed sources, he flatly denied saying that student unrest was behind the wholesale destruction that resulted in scores of buildings being gutted by fire, and added, “If this city were a Liberian freighter,* we just may have limped into port.”

*Whenever needed, “Norwegian Tanker” can always be substituted for “Liberian freighter.” Consider them interchangeable.

Proof positive that The Ten Magic Phrases of Journalism can express every known human emotion and then some!

Lesson 9 – Tricks Of The Trade

Just as homemakers have their hints (e.g. a ball of cotton, dipped in vanilla extract and placed in the refrigerator, will absorb food odors), writers have their own bag of tricks, a bag of tricks, I might hasten to point out, you won’t learn at any Bread Loaf Conference. Most writers, ivory tower idealists that they are, prefer to play up the mystique of their “art” (visitations from the Muse, l’ecriture automatique, talking in tongues, et cetera, et cetera), and sweep the hard-nosed practicalities under the rug. Keeping in mind, however, that a good workman doesn’t curse his tools, I am now going to make public these long suppressed tricks of the trade.

Suppose you’ve written a dreadful chapter (we’ll dub it Chapter Six for our purposes here), utterly without merit, tedious and boring beyond belief, and you just can’t find the energy to re-write it. Since it’s obvious that the reader, once he realizes how dull and shoddy Chapter Six really is, will refuse to read any further, you must provide some strong ulterior motive for completing the chapter. I’ve always found lust effective:

Artfully concealed within the next chapter is the astounding secret of an ancient Bhutanese love cult that will increase your sexual satisfaction by at least 60% and possibly more–

(Print Chapter Six.)

Pretty wild, huh? Bet you can hardly wait to try it! And don’t show your appreciation by reading Chapter Seven!*

*This insures that the reader reads Chapter Six not once but several times. Possibly, he may even read Chapter Seven.

Fear also works:

Dear Reader,
This message is printed on Chinese poison paper which is made from deadly herbs that are instantly absorbed by the fingertips so it won’t do any good to wash your hands because you will die a horrible and lingering death in about an hour unless you take the special antidote which is revealed in Chapter Six and you’ll be saved.
Sincerely,
(Your name)

Or even:

Dear Reader,
You are obviously one of those rare people who are immune to Chinese paper so this message is printed on Bavarian poison paper which is about a thousand times more powerful and even if you’re wearing gloves you’re dead for sure unless you readChapter Six very carefully and find the special antidote.
Sincerely,
(Your name)

Appealing to vanity, greed, sloth and whatever, you can keep this up, chapter by chapter, until they finish the book. In fact, the number of appeals is limited only by human frailty itself…

LESSON 10 – MORE WRITING HINTS

There are many more writing hints I could share with you, but suddenly I am run over by a truck.

-the end-

Copyright © Michael O’Donoghue
All Rights Reserved

Related:

The Improve Your Writing Humor Resource

Author bio:

From: www.evergreenreview.com/102/contrib/mod.html
Michael O’Donoghue was a frequent contributor to Evergreen Review. He was an author, playwright and filmmaker. He was a major writer at National Lampoon as well as one of the original writers at Saturday Night Live and creator of some of its funniest black comedy sketches. He also occasionally appeared on camera, on sketches like Mr. Mike’s Least Loved Bedtime Stories. His 1979 television special Mr. Mike’s Mondo Video was dropped because of censorship concerns and became a theatrical film instead. Michael O’Donoghue died in 1994.

###

Editor’s additional notes: I figure anyone who “hated Al Franken and once threw a script Franken had written out a 17-story window” has to be one of my heroes! [source of quote: Laughing in the Shadows by Patricia Wynn Brown]

You know what the elevator pitch is…it is the little talk you give about your career or new product or new company, all condensed into the time it takes you to ride up in the elevator.  So not much time.

Done well, every word matters and there’s no wasted you-know’s and um’s.

High level friends, venture capitalists and others who have A-D-D love elevator speeches.  Concentration being what it is today, the shorter the better.  Hey, what about those Minnesota Twins!!

I have a new idea.  I am calling it the Visual Elevator Speech, copyrighted by GLH.

Every business leader I know has a constant issue with his team not being able to communicate what it is they do.  Staff management types recite the company mission, (maybe), but leave out important parts.  Sales people do a feature dump on prospects…”No, YOU LISTEN, here is what I am selling!!”

Every once in a while a top leader will get his team together to “get back to basics.”  These meetings typically take four hours or, if moderated by an outside consultant type person, four days.  At the end we all sing Kum-Bay-Yah.

Instead try this.

Design ten 4 by 6 postcards, only the art side.  You must have a picture and at least three sentences+your company’s logo, your kicker text.  Use Google images and find the picture you want…then come up with the copy.

These postcards are going to your prospects or other audience.  Imagine sending them a postcard each week for ten weeks straight.  Do they get what you do?

Can you condense your message down to the postcard?  Can you find their hot button, or pain, or need, or whatever it is you call it now in your own sales training program?

Three sentences and a picture.  Show me what you got.

Here are two examples for you.  At Linkup, the coolest of the job search engines, we index company websites and present those jobs to job seekers.  By showing job seekers only these jobs and taking them directly to the company’s own website, they are better prepared, more likely to understand the company and so forth.  Here are two postcards that condense those thoughts.  My tenth one is a LOT better and so will yours.

Listen the hell up.

Most of the time, I hate the condescending tone of the career pundits.  It’s always “Sally, you idiot, here is how you should do your resume.”  Or, “Billy Bob, here is how to answer these typical interview questions.”

But I thought you knew better.  Come to find out there are a lot…I mean a LOT…of job seekers who are clueless about the basics, of how a business operates and recruits.  This is Interviewing 101: The Class Everyone Thought You Took, But You Didn’t.  It is a lecture.

Please pardon my bluntness, but some of your friends, NOT YOU, need this direct approach.

1. When you send out a resume, send a cover letter too. Make both perfect.

2. Keep track of what company and to whom you send your resume and cover letter.  You do this so when you are called by the company’s recruiter, you don’t say things like “how did you get my resume,” or “who are you and why are you calling me?”

3. Google each company. Read and remember just a little bit about the company.  This is so when you are called for the initial interview you are NOT completely in the dark about the company.  You want to avoid comments like “mmmm, I have never heard about your company, what do you do?”

4. Before the interview, study more about the company; granted, this is a lot like homework.  Find out as much as you can about the company and industry.  What do they do?  What else can you find out about them?

5. Arrive early for the interview.  If necessary, scout it out beforehand.  Dress appropriately.  The easy rule is to dress one level up from the normal workplace attire for the business.  If you are a guy and you have found it is business casual during the workday, wear a tie.  Simple.

6. Everyone you meet is important.  Quick story: I know a young guy who was being interviewed by a large health care company here in Minneapolis.  The woman who took him back to the interview area was like Hilda the Hun, came across almost mean-spirited.  The young guy treated her nicely and made small talk.  She then went out of her way to make sure he was interviewed first, and even gave him a tip on how to handle the interviewer, her boss.

7. Make eye contact and have a bounce in your step.  I can’t tell you how many people shuffle, eyes-down on the way to and from the interview, and the small talk is a series of near-grunts, “yep, nope, ummm.” Act interested, engaged and a bit vibrant.   Attitude trumps most skills in this first setting.

8. Use your manners. Take notes during the interview.  Ask questions.  Be nice.

9.  After the interview, send a note to the interviewer.  We have interviewed over 200 recent graduates for some sales positions.  Guess how many sent a follow up note? One. 1. No kidding.

10.  After about a week, make contact again, via email and with a call.  If you are smart, you will have sent a note to the person who took you back to the interview, too.  Remember the young guy who met Hilda the Hun.  Well, he even sent her a note.  On his subsequent interview, he met her again.  Here is what he said, “she was so happy to see me, I thought she was going to kiss me in the recetion area.   As we walked past her desk, I noticed that she had a picture of her kids, her dogs and my note was propped up against one of them.”  Is there any wonder he got the offer?

Class dismissed.

A great place for research is LINKUP.com, it is one of the job search engines, but it is somewhat different because it only gets jobs off company websites.  Just looked there are over 416,000 jobs up on it right this moment.  And most are never advertised.  So, you will have the inside track on these jobs.

Students all over will be looking for that perfect summer job.  Or, not.  Most simply find a job close by, or that pays enough, or is easy to get.  If, on the other hand, you want a summer job that is fun, exciting and interesting, here are five things you can do today that will help.

1.  Don’t worry about your resume so much.  Today, resumes are basically de-valued.  And, your resume will not get you the job of your dreams.  It is harder than that.

2.  Make a list that starts with this: “If I could, I would love to do {fill in the blank} this summer.” Make this fill-in-the-blank exercise fun, yet thoughtful.  Stretch yourself…and make the list at least 20 items long.  One young woman I know made her list… she wrote that she wanted to work on a TV show in New York City.  She had NO experience, training, schooling, nothing…she just had this dream.  She landed herself an internship at a big network news show in NYC, and now, three years later, books guests for one of the nation’s top political commentators.  Once again proving the point that what you think  about matters.  Here is a fool proof way to tell if you are thinking big enough.  Share this list with your parents and friends.  If they smile, or even laugh out loud at your list, this is a good sign.  Big goals do that.

3. Now work hard at finding how to find your big, laugh-out-loud job.  Remember how you worked hard on that tough, three week long school project  This perfect job search will take just as much time and effort.  I was amazed at how my own kids would kill themselves over some school project, yet only want to spend about an hour finding a summer job.

4.  Don’t forget to ask your parents and their friends for help, first.  We want to help you find this cool job.  A job flipping burgers?, not so much.

5.  Be persistent, creative, unique, friendly, positive and-and-and-and, wait for it: Act like you deserve the summer job of your dreams. Why shouldn’t you get this job?  Someone will, it may as well be you.

PS. Browse over to one of the best job search engines around to find even these summer jobs.  From LINKUP.com, there are over 3,500 summer jobs right there, right now. (Most are never advertised.)

While I rarely golf, I do insist on taking mulligans. A mulligan is what they call taking another shot cuz your first one went ‘thataway.’  The term was invented by Abner Mulligan* who said to his wife one day,

“Yes, Honey, your ass does kinda look big in those jeans.”

Like Abner, I need do-overs about once a day. I would love to have a second chance on a lot of things, particularly at work. It would be fair if you could store them up, like unused vacation days.

It might be  in our future.   After all, we now have–drum roll–TIVO. This is the ultimate do-over machine. Not since sliced bread and $4 lattes has anything meant so much to so many. Some actor mumbling during the movie ala Johnny Depp?  No worries, back ‘er up.  Want to watch SportsCenter and Jon Stewart?…no problem. You CAN WATCH TWO PROGRAMS AT ONCE.

If I owned TIVO, I would increase the price by 10% every six months.

**You didn’t really think Abner Mulligan was real, did you?  Got you.

Ok, Here he is, Abner.

Not again.

One of Peter Drucker’s best quotes is:

“The greatest resource of potential demand lies in the area of non-customers.”

Each one of us can apply this simple truth in our job search or in our current jobs.  Said another way, this quote could easily be:

“The fastest way to a remarkable career lies in becoming bigger than the job itself.”

I am not sure how to measure this…but I am convinced that most jobs are, frankly, bigger than the people who are now in them. You just have to browse through one of the best job search engines now on the net, LINKUP.com, to see what I mean.

Any job you hold deserves your best.  Ask some of the 10% who are craving your job.