I think the hardest part about the job search is interviewing and not being selected. You keep saying “why” with rarely a good answer. It’s not fun to be rejected. I don’t think I can change that with any spin, but it helps if you understand that there are a lot of factors at work and your technical skills are just one small part of them. To show this, let’s imagine that you have decided to hire a lawn service. We start with a job description:

“cut the grass!”

You’d think that anyone could do that, but in truth what you want is probably a little more complex than that. For me, I want:

• Sidewalks and beds edged
• Driveway and sidewalks blown clear
• Don’t blow debris under the front door
• Bag or stack debris that needs to go for garbage/recycling
• Make sure any gates that were opened get closed
• Tell me if there are things I need to look at – sprinkler not working, weeds in one area, tree that needs to be trimmed
• Reliable – I don’t want to look out and see the grass a foot tall and have to track someone down

I’d like to think all of that is fairly reasonable! I also expect to pay somewhere in a range of x to y dollars. Above Y and I might give up something to keep the price where I wanted it.

Then I post the job to Craiglist or the local paper or bulletin board, and I get five applicants. I schedule interviews, and here are the results:

• 1st candidate – large commercial company, lots of references, interviewed the sales guy, price is right at Y
• 2nd candidate – teenager from down the block, neighbor as a reference, price is X
• 3rd candidate – owner operated company, does the interview and is the guy that cuts the grass, can see all his equipment on the trailer behind his truck, price is Y
• 4th candidate – another large commercial company, has references, price is Y + 10 but includes fertilizer/weed control
• 5th candidate – independent guy trying to start a business, hasn’t purchased equipment yet, price is X -5

Now to be fair you might list different attributes about them, but the goal is to show you that the decision is pretty arbitrary. Who would you pick and why?

• Was it just price?
• Did you like the large companies knowing they have insurance and redundancy, can provide one stop shopping if needed
• Or do you support the neighborhood kid, recalling fond days of pushing a lawn mower yourself?
• Or do you go with the entrepreneur (along with low cost)?

If you think about how you arrived at the decision, you could go back and amend the job description. Here’s mine:

• Sidewalks and beds edged
• Driveway and sidewalks blown clear
• Don’t blow debris under the front door
• Bag or stack debris that needs to go for garbage/recycling
• Make sure any gates that were opened get closed
• Tell me if there are things I need to look at – sprinkler not working, weeds in one area, tree that needs to be trimmed
• Reliable – I don’t want to look out and see the grass a foot tall and have to track someone down
• Must have liability insurance
• Price for services cannot exceed $Y
• Prefer smaller company or individual owned

Now imagine that I had posted that to start with. If you were the commercial companies, would you still apply? What about the teenager who can’t get/afford insurance? I might get one interview, or I might get all five, but odds are that I get less than five. As a consumer I want some choice, do I really want to just have one interview?

That’s how it works. Job descriptions rarely include everything, and sometimes they discover more as they go from the very people they interview. All you can do is show them that you have the ability and willingness to solve their problem, and how your skills would help them. Looking back at the above, what if:

• 3rd candidate said that he tries to offset his carbon footprint by setting up a compost bin (which he manages) for each client
• 2nd candidate states in his opening email that he does not have insurance (being a teenager) but has a contract that releases you from any liability and that it was written by a local attorney

Would those change your mind? For some of us they would, for others it wouldn’t. See how damned arbitrary it is? None of the 5 candidates lacked the core skill, and maybe they even interviewed equally well. One or two things tipped the balance, and it might have been something you would never see or guess. Now stack on how my might feel if you got follow up emails from some – but not all. Maybe one person offered a slightly different price, or a free pressure wash – would that alter your decision? Maybe?

None of them is going to win by telling you how great they cut the grass, or how long they’ve been cutting it – for our purposes they are all equal. We need to validate skills, but we assume that whoever we hire has the skills – it’s the other stuff that matters!

I’ll be curious what you think about my scenario. I can see places where I might improve it, and it might make a heck of a good training video! But hopefully what you see is that it’s skills + presentation + follow through + luck that lead to a job. You do the things you can do.