Ask The Career Coach - May 2020 Edition

I am currently out of work and have been offered a contract position with a possible hire to full-time. I really wanted a full-time job. Should I do this?

I think there are a few factors to consider before deciding whether to take this position. Currently, as of early May 2020, the unemployment rate in the US is 14.7%. Those are numbers not seen since the Great Depression. Depending on your type of work and industry, it could be easy, somewhat hard, or near impossible to find similar work in the near term. Therefore, you should take several things into account when making your decision.

Financial

Your emergency fund and capability to go without paying work will play large in your decision. If you have little or no financial resources to tide you through a job search, you may want to take this contract position to be able to pay bills. Even if it is not your dream job, it is crucial to be able to pay your rent and put food on the table. If you have little to no savings, and the contract work will pay your bills, I think it might be wise to take it.

Career

Is this work in line with what you want to do in your career? Would you learn something in the role? Is it a company that you have an interest in working with as an employee? These are all critical questions to ask yourself. Contract work allows you to test drive a role, boss, and company. If the job plays to your strengths and interests, it could be an excellent opportunity. If instead, you would be doing work that is not of interest and would take you away from your career path, and financially you are in a good place, you might want to pass on it.

Psychological

Are you okay with being an outsider? Can you deal with the stress of not knowing whether you will be hired full time, have the contract extended, or asked to move on? Being a contractor is different than being a full-time employee in many ways. You will be treated differently, just by the nature of the arrangement. If you can deal with the uncertainty of the agreement and not being treated as a core team member, the experience may be a good one. 

Conversion Fee

If you came to the company through an agency, the company might need to pay a conversion fee at the end of the contract to hire you. Be aware of this. Some clients are happy to pay the fee if they feel you have provided value during your tenure, while others will balk at it. You may be prohibited from being hired for several months to over a year if the company does not want to pay the fee. A conversion fee will not be relevant if you came to the company independently from an agency.

Give all these factors some consideration when you make your decision. One last thing is that a contract position is temporary by nature. You cannot consider it a permanent situation. You should always continue to explore other options. Do not stop your job search.

What is one thing that you think sabotages people in interviews?

I have seen time-and-time again that people talk in generalities and do not give specifics. I would do behavioral interviews, and often they started with, “Tell me about a time when…” What I would get is an answer not about a specific time but about how, in general, they would approach a situation. It always irritated me. One, because I specifically asked for an example and wasn’t given one, and secondly, because the answer given did not provide me the information to determine if the person had the skill or experience in question.

As an example, when I would ask the question, “Tell me about a time when you had a challenging staff problem.” I would often hear how the applicant would go and talk to the person, listen to what the person said, and come up with a resolution. I can’t tell if that is what they have done, or they are giving me an answer that they think I want to hear. 

Instead, what I wanted to hear was something like this:

“I had an issue that Joanne was a gossiper, and it was causing issues on the team, as staff members felt they could not trust her. I asked Joanne to come and see me. I told her that I was concerned because several staff members had expressed to me that they did not want to work with her because she was telling others outside of the team about issues within our team. I wanted to hear Joanne’s view of what was happening. We talked about the situation, and Joanne was quite upset that people on her team felt that way. I asked Joanne if she could do anything differently going forward, and she said that when people asked her about the team, she would say that the team agreed not to talk about team issues outside of the team. At the next team meeting, she apologized to the team without prompting from me. It was a brave thing for her to do. Afterward, I saw that the team became more cohesive.”

With a specific example, especially one that had a positive result, I would get a better sense of the person’s skills. That made the risk of hiring less.

On a resume, which accomplishments should I showcase?

The ones that are relevant to the job you want. Let me explain. Your goal with a resume is to tell a story that intrigues the reader into wanting to know more about you. What will intrigue a reader is a person who appears to have knowledge, skills, and abilities (KSAs) to do the open position, but more importantly, could do it well. How is the hiring team to judge this? They have information about the job based upon the job description. A job description has two parts, a description of the role duties and the requirements needed to be successful in the role. Your job is to match the role responsibilities of the job to your present or previous experience and demonstrate your KSAs match those needed for the position.

When you think of accomplishments to include on your resume, show those that are related to the job duties and KSAs. If a critical job duty is to analyze data, you want to show an accomplishment that demonstrates that you know how to analyze data and have had success doing so. If strong problem-solving skills are needed in the role, then you should have an accomplishment that demonstrates a time when you had to problem solve, and it resulted in great success. You want the reader to be able to check, after reading your resume, that you are someone that could be a fit for the position and a person that it is essential to talk with further.