So, how do you go about asking for a job once you use connections to get a sit down?

In My Humble Opinion
1

I have got to get out of the job I’m in. It’s awful, admin is driving the place into the ground, and it’s breaking my heart. I’m seriously considering leaving the profession altogether.

The thing is, my husband is seriously underpaid and we have a little tiny baby in the house. So I cannot afford a pay cut now, not when I have a job. But it’s not fair to come home to that baby mad all the time, not if I can avoid it.

So, I did what I never in my life thought I’d do - I asked my dad if he could score me a job at his old company. God. My whole life has been essentially spent trying to make sure I never turned into my dad, and now I’m begging for the opportunity! Obviously I feel kinda conflicted about it. (Not to mention kind of conflicted at abusing my privelege and asking my daddy to get me a job at age 34.)

Before he retired, my dad was the part owner of a company which has now, through retirements and deaths, fallen to the last remaining owner. I’ve known this guy pretty much my whole life; worked at the office one summer as a teenager, went to his wedding, etc. The last time I saw him was probably at my wedding, two years ago. So the kind of family friend who if I ran into him at Target I’d hug him, but then not see him again for a couple years.

I’m sure Dad’ll get me a chance to sit across a table from Big Boss. And I was very specific about what I’d need to make, so I think he’ll prep the guy with that information. So for all I know this is just a courtesy interview - he may be politely listening to me and then regretfully telling me he doesn’t have anything for me. On the other hand, he does know a lot of people, and maybe he can help me get something somewhere else. This is absolutely Old Boy Network territory; when I was a kid they even all smoked cigars. Very much a Who You Know sort of network. So there might be a place for me after all.

So, um, how do you do this? I don’t even know what to wear. Twenty years ago when I worked there it was a very formal office environment - the big guys all wore ties and sportcoats at the very least, and usually suits. I don’t know what it’s like now, and although Dad is out there a lot I know he isn’t noticing what the women are wearing. Is a suit too… amateur hour? Should I be walking in there like a peer? Because a suit, I wonder if that’s a little… needy? This is not a “job interview” per se, where you’ve been called in on the strength of your resume to interview for a specific position. This is a sit down with a specific guy to… I don’t know what. Pencil skirt and sharp blouse? What if it’s cold? Are boots out? I think boots are out. Surely I shouldn’t wear hose. (I haven’t owned hose in a decade, maybe more.) My gut says tailored pencil skirt and a sharp blouse. Am I on base?

And how on earth can I sell myself in a situation where I don’t know what I’m selling? This is not my industry. Obviously I’m going to tell them all the skills librarianship has given me - research, training, computers, office skills, leadership, customer service, etc. But what I really want is something that will give me a start in the industry, or at least an industry. Certifications, that sort of thing. Please don’t make me be an office manager! (Although I will be, understand. Especially if it’s a raise.) What on earth do I say? How do I present myself?

I guess the thing that’s freaking me out is, I’ve never really worked in the private sector. In public libraries, you know exactly where you stand because it’s all, uh, public. You know what the salary is, with maybe just a smidge of negotiation. You know what the job is. You apply for a job when a job is advertised. If a job isn’t advertised, there isn’t a job. So I really have no idea how to walk into a room and say “you need to acquire me because I have a lot of skills you need” when I’m not looking at a job description that explains the skills needed. Also, I’m afraid I’ll neglect to sell myself sufficiently because I obviously know what’s required to be a great librarian, and here this guy is completely outside the profession and has no idea what any of my skills are or what they can translate to.

Ugh. Somebody talk me down. I’ve been up nights worrying about this.

2

The boss is going to assume you are there to beg for a job (he’ll know that, right?) Surprise him. Don’t make it “I need a job and I need this much” make it “I understand what you guys do and here is how I can help make you more profitable through my experience and skills.” You’ve got a great advantage in having your father to give you the inside scoop.

I’m sure your resume doesn’t say this, but I see tons of resumes where the goal something like “to grow my basket weaving skills.” Nope. I don’t care about her basket weaving skills. I’d rather see “my goal is to use my skills to help the company grow and prosper.” You might want to be more subtle than this, but you see the difference in mindset.

Nick at Ask the Headhunter proposes that you turn the interview into showing how you can do the job. I don’t think that this works in most cases (not in mine) but you have insider knowledge, so it might work for you.
Good luck.

3

Before you go, you need to:

–Know exactly how women dress in that environment for the job you want, and dress that way. Even if it means wearing pantyhose.
–Know what job you want. People won’t be impressed by you saying, “Uh, I’ll be an office manager if I really have to.”
–Know how to sell yourself for that job. Don’t say, “I need to make more money so I’ll do anything.” Say, “I would be great at doing X because Y and Z.”

My best friend, who was in your same position family-wise, pursued a job search exactly the way you are proposing to go about it. All she cared about was “more money.” Any job would do. She alienated a lot of networking contacts and did not get a job from any of them because she couldn’t explain why she would be valuable to them. She just put her qualifications and salary demands out there, and wondered if they had any positions. No one was impressed, and no offers were forthcoming. Getting a job today means putting forth effort and showing enthusiasm and initiative.

4

I’d just say something like “I’m not sure what [my father’s name] told you about my situation, but I’m looking to move on from my current position at [fill in the blank]. He thought it was possible you might be able to help me out with finding a new position.”
ETA: I agree with the other comments about bringing something to the table. I was just addressing how to broach the topic.

Oh, and lots of skills are pretty translatable (depending on the business). “I have great research and writing skills,” for example. Research and writing are valuable at lots of places, though obviously not all.

5

From the owners perspective, it’s not about giving you a job. It’s about you adding to the company.

If you want to even have a chance at the job, you have to have it straight in your mind that

A) you want to work there at all.

B) that this isn’t just an easy answer. You want the right answer for you, your family, and your career. Otherwise you’ll be unhappy in another year.

C) how does hiring you solve a problem they have?

I’ve learned the hard way when hiring people is that I want someone who really wants to work for me and can concretely and concisely tell me why it’s a benefit to hire them. I don’t want someone who is just desperate for a different job that pays a certain amount.

He knows you want a job, and probably have salary requirements. What he doesn’t know is why he should hire you.

Show him.

ETA what is the general profession? What position are you thinking of? If you don’t know any open positions, then you are relying on him to give you a busy work job for charity. Most companies don’t do that anymore. And probably not for the money you want.

6

I don’t want to be too specific, but it’s a company that provides various services for manufacturing plants, schools, large buildings, etc. They have a large and important safety department, and that’s where I’m thinking I could bring a lot to the table - I have a ton of experience in training people of all types, from deaf elderly homeless guys to fellow professionals, to do all sorts of things. I’ve also got a lot of writing experience, and I’m a hell of a quick study - send me to a class and I can pass whatever test you want. That also seems like an area where experience and connections could take me somewhere.

I mean, I know I’ve got the skills for the secretarial end. It’s not like I’m going in there saying “yeah I guess if I have to I’d take one of those jobs.” But my thinking is that the way to approach this is to go for the area I want, right?

It’s not the kind of place where they post vacancies - they fill from the inside or you know somebody. I’m hoping that my dad will hear specifically where they might have a need that needs filling, but if not, I do know something about the way the place is structured. I ain’t got nothin’ in accounting or insurance. They’d laugh me out of the warehouse. My best bet is in safety, general office stuff, or possibly HR.

7

Go for the job you want, the interest will be more genuine. Research the industry. Your dad hasn’t been in it for a while, things change, a lot. Get excited, this could be a great opportunity, as opposed to a place holder.

Look up employees on linked in. What do they do, what are their qualifications? Which one of their jobs do you want? How are you going to get there?

Research, research., research. What are new laws and compliance issues? How can you incorporate new technology? What are they missing? A new sector, expanding sectors with existing clients, a new market?

Who is actually going to be hiring you? Is it the owner, or a manager?

If you decide that you truly want the job, make him want to hire you. Not the old partners daughter, YOU. But you can’t fake it. Oh, maybe for a while, but not long term. If you look at this as an opportunity and a good fit, it’ll come across in the interview.

Worst case scenario, you will now have private sector interview experience for the next time.

8

It’s the owner and it’s a private company. So the plus is that if he wants to hire me, he can hire me.

9

He will be sounding you out to see if you are a good fit for the business, you need to show him that you want to work for the company and not just after a job. A big failing I see with job seekers is that they often look for a job and what a company wants is someone who is going to help the company grow etc unless of course you are just going for a McJob and then it’s about lowest cost labour.

So go conservative but not flashy, listen to the man. This business is the most important thing in the world to him and if you let him talk and don’t feel compelled to fill the silences he may well talk himself into offering you something.

Do some research into the company but also the industry, what are the emerging changes happening?

The one that comes to mind is in regards to safety training, I would think that this area would be undergoing legislative changes. If this is the case then showing you understand what these are and the potential impacts on HIS business would be very well received as long as you don’t come across as a smartarse of course.

10

Be very professional, do your homework, dress correctly and give not a whiff of even thinking you have an inside track. Your connections got you the interview, you have a private connection with the boss, but this is the time to show that boss you’re all grown up, have real experience, would be a great asset to his company, etc. Let him know by your professionalism that you would be a great employee and not skating through the interview and by extension nor would you skate through work if you were hired.

You’ve known the boss pretty much your whole life, so figure out how to sell him. And role play some scenarios in advance. Such as how to respond if he says “you don’t need to sell me, I’ve known you since you were knee high to a gopher.” In this case, you need to have a professional response but avoid sounding like a used car salesman or go off on a 20 minute monologue. And maybe he says “convince me to hire you” or “how would you approach this” or “you done some good stuff but what we really need is a great admin right now”, etc.

You’ll probably feel less conflicted by really doing your homework on this one. Best of luck

11

Let me tell you a simple story that may help you. I was once in that situation. Through ex-family circumstances, I was at a party when I had less money to my name than most homeless people. A CEO and major owner of of large company, a close friend of my ex-wife’s family, promised me that he would get me interviews with his managers but he would be completely outside of the process and I was on my own after that.

I went through four bumbling interviews because I didn’t understand anything about business at the time or what managers wanted so I didn’t get those jobs. I finally got called in on short notice one morning and was told they had an emergency situation on their hands because an essential employee just quit and asked what I could do about that. The VP handed me a piece of paper and asked me to write down 4 of my best skills and all of them also apply to you.

IIRC correctly, my 4 were:

  1. The ability to solve complex problems efficiently and effectively
  2. Effectiveness at working with people at all levels from the lowest to highest skills levels.
  3. Excellent writing skills
  4. Willingness to teach others about new skills.

That sounds really vague but few people are competent in all of those areas in the business world believe it or not so they are valuable. You are definitely hirable to private companies and will probably thrive in the right one in short order. However, you have one big weakness. That is that you don’t have a good idea of what job you actually want. Many people are under the delusion that all people with office type jobs do roughly the same thing when nothing could be further from the truth. Office worker’s jobs are as different from each other as any other jobs are. There is not a market for private librarians so you may need to figure out how you can translate your skills into something else. You may or may not like sales but there are tons of in demand back-end type jobs that depend on the skills that people like you have ranging from professional training to office management positions plus many more. If you are really strong on any particular (rare; not MS Office) computer skills, that opens up even more.

12

Go there yourself, and check out what people are wearing. Drive slowly past the building at 5 minutes after closing, as they walk out to their cars.
Or better yet, ask your Dad to pay attention to the women’s clothes. Some men are capable of doing that. :slight_smile:
And tell you father that yes, you need help. Even if you are 34 years old. Ask him for details,details,details about the company, and every type of position they might have. Get some insider info so you can use a couple of specific technical terms about the business and its clients,…something that will impress the boss that you can specifically help him with.

13

You have a library science background. Sell him on the need for a corporate taxonomy. Come armed with white papers about this. And additionally focus on the training and writing pieces.

Disclosure: I’m currently working as a corporate taxonomist for a company of 30k people. Happy to answer questions if you’ve got them. And good luck.

14

Shagnasty, I could write that same list. That’s helpful. (I do have a lot of skill in a rare computer program or two but, you know, library stuff.)

MsWhatsit, by corporate taxonomy do you mean essentially a controlled vocabulary for corporate knowledge with a document management system, or more than that? (I read the Wikipedia entry but it’s very general.) I suspect corporate librarianship is a lot different now from what it was when I was in liberry school.

15

You’ve had lot of good advice already, but I’d just like to add that being concerned about using your connections is a middle-class hang-up that only ends up holding us back. I can assure you that wealthy well-connected people have no qualms about it whatsoever.

16

I would lead off right off the bat with "Hi, I’m <name>. I have <two or three top qualifications>. I would like to <job description> with you, and I think I would be very valuable because <reasons>.

In my specific case, this would be “I have a Master’s degree in physics, and 15 years experience teaching physics at the college level and substitute-teaching at the high school level. I would like to teach physics at your school, and I think I would be very valuable because a teacher knowledgeable about the subject matter is essential in the hard sciences, especially for honors or AP courses.” Of course, the details will differ, but that’s the basic template.

17

Yes to both. Different companies approach this in different ways. At mine, we’re working on a controlled vocabulary, standardized across the enterprise, which will ultimately serve as the foundation for document metadata tagging and data lineage tracking. (That last bit is kind of far off, but it’s the end goal.) Some places just want a business glossary. Or any combination thereof. Here’s a couple of links. The whitepaper is one that I’ve found helpful. I’d also suggest Heather Hedden’s book “The Accidental Taxonomist.”

http://www.kmworld.com/Articles/Editorial/What-Is-.../Taxonomy-101-The-Basics-and-Getting-Started-with-Taxonomies-98787.aspx

http://www.delphigroup.com/whitepapers/pdf/20040601-taxonomy-WP.pdf

18

Thanks, that’s very interesting! I will definitely go in armed with that. The hilarious thing is that I work for a large public library and our information structure sucks all the balls. I was looking a few months ago for a super simple piece of information - how much is the per diem allowance when we travel for conferences? I looked for half an hour before I gave up and called somebody. I know that piece of information is somewhere in Sharepoint, but finding it proved absolutely impossible for an information professional.

So my dad had a chat with Mr. Bossman and evidently he seemed quite enthusiastic about adding me to the team! Dad seems to think he’s really looking for a “right hand man”, which could be anything from a coffee pourer to a lieutenant. He asked for a resume, which of course I have to rewrite because my carefully tuned library resume might as well be written in hieroglyphics to this guy.

So if that’s the job that’s available, I guess it’s up to me to convince him that I’m more lieutenant material than secretarial pool paddler.

19

Well, IMHO, this sounds like could be one of a couple kinds of interview.
It could be that he has some specific position he needs filled that he is going to to a job interview with you for. In which case, obviously, you want to be able to say what you bring to the table for that particular job with that company, and how you will be able to improve the business.
But it could just be a networking thing, where you’re just letting him know that you’re looking for a job. If he knows of anything, you’d appreciate it if he lets you know or passes on your info to them.
It could also be an informational interview where you’re just trying to find out about his industry and the kinds of jobs in it, so you can figure out where to look, what you’re suited for, and how to effectively sell yourself.

It’s not clear where you’re at in your job search, whether the informational interview is what you’re really aiming at or not.

It’s probably best to kind of assume you’re going in there for an informational/networking type interview (but be as ready as possible to do a real job interview). If he does want to interview you for a particular job, he will, regardless, but either way, you’ll come across much more polite and ego-free if you come in just looking for advice. But again, be ready to shift gears if necessary (happened to me: I thought I was just doing a general info/networking hello. About 30 seconds in, the person started describing a particular position in their organization and I had to move from information gathering mode to selling myself mode ASAP. I did so successfully, by the way).

20

This is going to kill me. I sent him my resume and a cover letter and now all I do all day is check my e-mail.