Hiring for IT audit, IT GRC and information security roles appears to be in full-tilt boogie mode. Posts from hiring leaders promoting their openings are appearing frequently on LinkedIn. My global network is reporting a big ramp up in the number of calls from recruiters. For those of you who are thinking about a job search, this is a great time to dip your toes in the water.
Once you decide to kick off a job search, there are decisions and more decisions to be made. What jobs? Which employers? And critically, how many roles should one apply to?
Let’s address that last question because it leads to the heart of today’s article, which is how to manage a job search when you are applying for a number of jobs.
The project management in a job search takes finesse and skill. It is a complex process, and each person’s search will have its own nuances. I am not attempting to address every element here, but I want to get you started on the right foot and offer some practical tips that will help you manage your job search effectively, addressing a couple of thorny topics along the way.
Job search is a numbers game. To find the right role, you need data points. Those data points include information about the specifics of certain kinds of roles and more detailed intel on target companies. Additionally, interactions with hiring leaders and teams will give you clues about management styles, team dynamics and corporate culture. All that data helps you refine your search and your career objective.
It’s kind of like dating. I like this analogy because there is such a strong parallel. A few dates with different people typically provide a good deal of insight into what kind of person is a good fit for you. And similar to online dating where you have the opportunity to connect with a number of people, you have to know how to handle the process in a gracious and professional way.
A quick note about being gracious and professional during a job search: Our professional spheres and geographies (if one is still working locally) are really quite small. I recruited in Chicago for more than two decades, and it was incredible how small the IT audit, IT GRC and cybersecurity realms really were in a city of that size. Thus, handling some element of a job search poorly can have negative repercussions that impact your reputation. Word gets around. I can’t stress enough how critical it is to demonstrate your professionalism and poise to hiring managers, interviewers, corporate recruiters and HR throughout the interview, offer and onboarding processes.
Back to the numbers game of job search. Unless you know that there are just a couple of companies you want to work for, or only a small number of suitable roles (due to expertise, seniority or other factors), you’ll typically want to cast a wide net, and apply for “a number” of jobs that sound promising. That number is highly variable; I can’t give you an exact range, but here’s how you might think about that.
Thought exercise: If you were to apply for 10 roles at 10 different companies in one flurry of applying, and say, you were quite lucky and five of those companies decided to interview you within a one-to-two-week period, would you have time to adequately prepare for and conduct those interviews while still doing your current job well – not just skating by, but well? (Because your current job is still “Job One.” Who knows, you may find it to be better than the stuff out there. And you certainly don’t want to jeopardize your current role before you have firmly secured another.)
And that’s just first interviews, which are typically the initial 30 minutes to an hour with someone from the company. The preparation and headspace required to prepare for second- and third-round interviews with panels, presentations and senior leadership are much more intense – and critical if you want to win the next round of interviews or win an offer.
You can play around with those numbers and that concept, but get a handle on your time and stress level, and determine what would be realistic and manageable with respect to interviewing—and, thus, the number of jobs you want to apply to in a given time period and how you might spread out your applications.
Do this exercise before you start hitting the “Submit” button on applications. Tip: Keep a spreadsheet of your applications with date, how you submitted (online, recruiter, friend referral), and ensuing activity – interviews, declines, and so forth.
You also have to factor in the high variability in the hiring processes and timelines of the potential employers themselves. If all goes “according to plan,” your job interviews will hit a cadence where they are marching along and relatively well-aligned. This is a best-case scenario. It rarely happens. One company may be off like a shot, first one out of the gate, and then…radio silence. Another may lie dormant and then suddenly appear, requesting a first interview after other companies have progressed to second, third or even final rounds.
This is par for the course. You have to expect this kind of herky-jerky, less than well-coordinated progress in your job search. Realizing that this is part of the normal progression of a search and arming yourself with some ways to reduce stress (exercise is a good one) will put you ahead of the game.
Along the way there will no doubt be some awkward moments. A senior IT audit manager was just relating how, during a recent job search, a company called after no contact for a couple of weeks and wanted him to have a second interview with senior leadership – the very next day.
He was on a tight schedule working on a big project. The job at the company that was calling for the interview was very interesting. He was torn. Do the interview on short notice, with little time to prepare? Lose at least an hour of work on his project?
He felt a bit resentful that the company called with the seeming expectation that he would drop everything for their interview. Was that a red flag about how they operated – wanting what they wanted, when they wanted it, without much advance communication or consideration of the candidate’s current work commitments?
After deliberating, he called the interview scheduler. First, he explained his keen interest in the opportunity and then his tight timeline with his current work. Could they find another day for the interview?
That call communicated to the prospective hiring company that he was a dedicated employee who took his work seriously. It also afforded the senior manager the time he needed to adequately prepare for the interview. Finally, the dialog and the company’s response provided another data point: the company was willing to listen and work with him on rescheduling.
The way in which this senior manager handled the reschedule is important. In his call to reschedule, he was careful to express his sincere interest in the interview and also his time crunch at work: all communicated without any tone of resentment or negative judgment. He provided several options of dates and times that would work for him, and said that if these didn’t work for their team, he was certain they could find a mutually convenient time. This approach demonstrated professionalism and grace under pressure.
For hiring leaders reading this piece, a critical takeaway is that as much as you are assessing a job candidate through the interview process, candidates are assessing you, your team and your company.
One of the best things a company can do is to clearly outline what its interview process looks like right at the very start of the conversations with a candidate. Communicating the expected timeline for the steps in the process is important. And, if the process is lagging, reach out and let candidates know that they are still in the running. Radio silence after interviews is a major candidate complaint – across all levels of seniority – and is often a root cause for the loss of candidates. They decide you aren’t interested and make other choices. Building in a series of candidate touchpoints during the interview process can be a useful mechanism to counteract this.
More grace under pressure: The awkward interview question, “Are you considering other opportunities?” This question (in some form) will come up in your interviews, as will a related question: “Do you have any offers on the table?”
I often hear from my coaching clients that these questions feel intrusive –is it really any of their business? These questions do feel awkward because we tend to think that our job search is a private matter.
Look at it this way: you are CEO of your own company, Me Inc., and you are looking to merge with another company. It’s a business proposition. They are interested to know what their competition looks like and the timing around this deal.
It is true that the company is often asking more of you than they are likely to share about the overall number of candidates they are considering, their current front-runners, potential internal hires and so forth. But here’s how to think about that. In the power dynamic between you, the job seeker and the hiring company, they hold the power – until they make an offer – because they have the job you think you want. Once they make an offer, the power flows into your hands. But for now, they hold the power.
With the above in mind, it is important that you answer these questions. So, approach them simply as business questions. Once you take that position, they become much easier to answer with professional ease.
With regards to the first question – Are you considering other opportunities? – you might say, “Yes, there are several other opportunities I am evaluating at this point. It is a critical juncture in my career, and I want to make the right choice.”
To the second question, “Are you holding any offers?”, tell the truth.
If you have no offers at this time, say so. If you are expecting an offer to come in soon, you can say something like, “I have no firm offers on the table right now, but I have been told to expect an offer soon.”
If you are holding an offer, especially one where the clock is ticking, you should let the company you are speaking with know.
How you frame that will depend on the situation. Let’s say you are super excited about the company you are now speaking with. Tell them that: “I am very excited about this opportunity with your company because … (here you succinctly restate the value you bring). I am in a situation where I do need to provide an answer on an offer by Monday. If there are next steps in your process, I hope that there is enough time to move forward before I need to reply.”
It may or may not be possible for a company to accelerate its interviewing and decision-making to accommodate your offer timeline. That’s often one of the toughest decision points in a job search. Do I take the offer in hand, or do I wait to see if I am a finalist for the other role – and if they make an offer I am happy with?
Only you know the answer to that question. You’ll need to dig deep to see where you land. I can tell you that accepting an offer and then reneging is a truly dicey proposition. There is no hard and fast rule there that I can offer you. I have sat with many candidates as they have deliberated in this situation. Your own code of honor, your sense of what is fair play, the Golden Rule, your assessment of what bridges might be burned and what the hit to your reputation might be all need to be considered carefully and then reconsidered before making a final decision about what to do.
Conducting a job search is a labor-intensive project if you want to do it well. It is also an emotional roller-coaster. Being prepared for the time involved, the project management and the stress, is critical. Approaching job search as a business proposition—a merger if you will—helps keeps the focus on the objective of finding the right match. Adopting an attitude of graciousness and professionalism throughout will pave the way to offers and maintain your sterling reputation. Finally, knowing how to approach those awkward-seeming questions and practicing your answers will build your confidence and absolutely enhance your professional brand as you move through your search.