Pester or Not? How to Follow Up Your Job Application

By Eleni Himaras

June 15, 2009

When it comes to follow-up phone calls after submitting a job application, tread carefully. You don’t want to cross the line between showing your enthusiasm and being a pain in the rear.

The Basics
The absolute minimum number of times you should call a company is three, says Robyn Feldberg, career coach and president of the National Resume Writers Association.

And always keep it friendly and brief, says Meredith Haberfeld, the New York-based co-founder of Institute for Coaching.

“Leave the person enjoying speaking with you.  While you want to be attuned to not taking up too much of their time,” she says, “create a nice, authentic connection.”

Know Your Audience
The rules of pestering are far more lax for those applying for a job in sales, marketing or any other field where blatant persistence is a job requirement.

“I’ve actually heard of people who are hiring a sales person intentionally not returning people’s calls or blowing them off because they only want the sales people who have the persistence to keep calling,” Feldberg says.

Feldberg says the best way to get a sense of how dogged to be is by getting an inside contact. Regardless of department, try to make a contact inside the company and find out what their application process was like.

“LinkedIn can be a great source for doing that but sometimes it just means calling up somebody in customer service, finding a vendor for the company, or a former employee,” she says.

Be Sneaky About It
When sending a follow-up phone call or e-mail, come up with a legit sounding reason.

“Sometimes if you could bring them some helpful information—something that their competitor is doing, forward them an article maybe that you’ve read online,” she says.

This can also be done through the bevy of social networking sites like Twitter or Facebook. Friend either the hiring manager or a company employee, then post articles they might be interested in or comment on things they’ve posted.

“You can find companies and start following them, and the person who Twitters for the company can be a source for that,” Feldberg says. When it comes to making those phone calls, however, the receptionist might block candidates from actually speaking to the hiring manager and refer them through the standard application process. This can often be avoided by calling early in the morning or after closing hours in hopes of connecting to a dial-by-name directory.

If the telephone and computer techniques have been unsuccessful, Feldberg says there is a low-tech solution that has a proven success rate.

“Send a resume and cover letter in the mail with a little sticky note that says, ‘Second submission. I’m really interested in this position.’ It’s doubled the interview rate and it’s not invasive. Nobody will be offended if you do that,” she says.

7 Tips for Navigating Maternity Leave

How to plan for your time off after you have your baby!

Learning you are pregnant can be an exciting and joyous time; however, for women in the workplace, navigating maternity leave can also cause stress. The Family and Medical Leave Act (1993) requires employers to allow for 12 unpaid weeks for maternity leave. Depending on your company, a portion of that might be paid, or your company may offer additional unpaid leave beyond that 12 weeks. Whatever the policy is, it’s important that you are familiar with your company’s conventions and that you are able to finesse the planning of your leave. We went to Meredith Haberfeld, an executive coach based out of New York, who went over the dos and don’ts of taking maternity leave.

When to Disclose Your Pregnancy

Let your company know when you can no longer hide it – for some women this is four months, for others this is six months. However, if you feel secure about it, earlier is totally appropriate. You need to be sensitive to the culture you are in. Follow expectations. If more senior women in your office have disclosed their pregnancies right away, then you should follow those guidelines. You’re far better off going off what is common for your work environment than going off of conventional advice.

Tell the Right Person First

Typically, if you work in a small organization, you go to your boss first, then human resources. And typically, if you work in a larger organization, you go to human resources first and then your manager. But if you have a good working relationship with your boss, your boss will always be happier if he or she knows first.

Have a Plan

Come to the table with your proposal for how you’ll transition out. Who will cover for you? How much contact will you have with this person and with the company as a whole? How much time will you be taking for maternity leave? When do you plan on returning?

Decide How Long You’ll Take

In this era, it is not uncommon for women to take full maternity leave with no contact with their company. But it’s also common to be available for phone calls and emails and maybe even the occasional meeting. Use friends who already have kids as a sounding board for what maternity leave was like before you set expectations with your employer.

Think Ahead About Childcare

If you are taking maternity for fewer than six weeks, make sure to set up your childcare plan before you have your baby. Also consider what option is best for you. If the childcare program you’re interested in has a waiting list, you’ll want get on that list as early as possible.

Prepare a Smooth Return

Expect that it will be emotional and that you may second guess yourself, even if you know that deep down you want to go back to work. Being a parent and a professional requires more planning than just being a professional. The more you plan how you’ll handle the balance, the better you’ll handle it. It’s good to over-plan in this instance. Think about things like:

-Meals for the week

-Alternative babysitters

-What to do when your child is sick

-Date nights

-What to do when you have to work late

Work Harder at Work

Whatever parameters you determine to be the appropriate work/life balance for you, it’s inevitable you’ll have fewer hours to work. So make sure you put in more than 100 percent to your job in the hours that you have designated for your job. Women who dive right back in are recognized for it – and that doesn’t mean you have to work crazy hours.

With over ten years of coaching and training experience, Meredith Haberfeld is co-founder and CEO of The Institute for Coaching. Meredith is sought out to work with entrepreneurs and senior executives at leading institutions such as Goldman Sachs, Forbes, Disney and the World Health Organization; and has advised in the development of the life coaching curriculum at MIT.

April 2010

By Brooke Eaton

5 Ways to Regain Motivation at Work

Lacking love for your work? Our experts tell you how to bounce back.

The alarm clock goes off and the last thing you want to do is get up and head into the office. You can’t remember the last time you enjoyed a project or felt inspired by the work you were doing and your company shows zero appreciation. But in this economy, few can afford to up and quit in hopes of finding their dream job. And in reality, the experts say that is no solution. Rather, work performance and deserved recognition begin with the way you look at your job. Look to yourself to regain the energy you once had, and most likely, everything else will begin to fall in line.

Solution 1: Give 110 Percent for 60 Days
Executive coach, Meredith Haberfeld, advises her clients to extend themselves at the office for two months, and see how they feel afterwards. She says:

Connect being motivated with going above and beyond at work. It’s like someone who wants to go to the gym but hates working out. Exercise five days a week for two months and after you’ll say to yourself, ‘now I feel like jogging today.’ At work, give 110 percent for 60 days and you’ll be shocked at the results. People lacking motivation often feel like it’s not the right job and the company does not value them. But give 110% for two months and the company will start to look different.

Thinking about how much you dislike your job and talking about it do nothing. You need to be on a parallel track of what you’re doing about it. So while you dedicate yourself for those 60 days, do the following in tandem:

A) Formulate an exit plan by erecting a vision of what you would love to do next.
B) Create a plan for what would impress you most at the job you have.

Solution 2: Work to Impress Yourself
“Usually we’ll do just enough to impress someone else, but if you do it to impress yourself a huge resource opens up,” Haberfeld says. She compares it to the type of feeling you have after running a mile when you’ve been a walker your whole life. “It might be uncomfortable while you’re doing it and we might try to talk ourselves out of it by thinking ‘nobody is recognizing me.’ But work to impress yourself without regard for what’s happening outside of everyone else.”

Solution 3: Lose the ‘Tude
The job will start looking up when you start thinking more positively. “If something goes wrong, people use it as an excuse to start doing a bad job.,” says Alan Fried, an executive career coach and founder of Career Intervention. “If we don’t get that raise we’re pissed off at the company and it’s a recipe for disaster. But we don’t have to change the job to change the situation. Look for what you like about your work.” Ask yourself the following questions:

-What do I like doing most and how do I spend most of my time at my job?
-What makes me come alive?
-What am I good at?
-What do my boss and colleagues do right?
-When I first came to the job, what was it like?

“Our thinking becomes habitual and we need to break that habit,” Fried says. “Ask yourself, ‘If I could create the perfect situation, what would it look like?’” He goes on to stress the importance of a positive attitude. “If there are two people up for a promotion and one is more qualified and the other is more enthusiastic, 85 percent of the time the more enthusiastic person will get the promotion,” he says. “Enthusiasm is energy you can’t buy. Anyone would rather have that than someone is merely showing up for a paycheck.”

Solution 4: Surround Yourself with Positivity
“It’s really hard to succeed if you spend most of your time with unhappy people,” says Fried. “We’ll adapt to what’s around us. Look at Madonna, she moves to England and gets an English accent.” In addition to relationships at the office, Fried says workspaces can impact your mood. He tells clients to observe the way certain people set up their environments, taking note of their screensavers, plants, colors and clutter. “Some people are wired to have stacks of clutter, but when you walk into an office and see that, how does that make you feel? Does that give you energy or take energy away? How can you make your office work for you? If someone has a cluttered desk, where else is that clutter showing up in their life?”

Solution 5: Exercise
Lastly, life outside of work can play a big role in your performance on the job. Haberfeld emphasizes the importance of staying active. She says:

Exercise and food have a lot more to do with happiness than we think. When you’re not exercising your mood, attitude and energy suffer. Exercise moderately for four days a week and you’ll be surprised to see the impact it has on your work performance and your work relationships.

Fried emphasizes the importance of a well-rounded lifestyle. “People get so stuck on ‘what do I do for a living’ and thinking that getting that job will solve all of their problems,” he says. “The truth is having relationships, fun and health is what will make you fulfilled. You see the top athletes like Phelps, Armstrong and Federer in interviews talking about their success and they usually talk about what happens off the field – the visualization, the attitude and the people around them.”

By Eleni Himaras

January 07, 2010

Mid-Career Internships: The Pros and Cons

“If you’re good at something, never do it for free.”

This sentiment didn’t work out for the joker in the latest Batman movie and it doesn’t hold true for workers wading through today’s job market, where many mid-career professionals can find success through unpaid internships.

According to career coach and co-founder of the Institute for Coaching, Meredith Haberfeld, these unpaid stints can be great for filling holes in both your resumé and your professional network.

“If you’re savvy and disciplined about cultivating genuine relationships within the company and more widely in the industry, among the most useful outcomes of mid-career internships are the contacts you develop,” Haberfeld says.

Also, interns can use those contacts to help in a future career search by getting a senior member of the company to review your resumé.

Beyond networking, the most important thing to do during an internship is to “accumulate specific, measurable results for the organization that you’re in.”

And it’s these accomplishments, she says, that should appear on your resumé.

“List it as the role that you’re performing, not unpaid internship,” Haberfeld says. “If asked, ‘What was your salary or was it a paid position?,’ obviously be honest. But I wouldn’t recommend highlighting that it was unpaid.”

While many companies may not advertise internships to mid-career professionals, she says it’s always possible for you to create an opportunity by creating a very specific articulation (two-sentence maximum) of what you want and why you could do it well.

A candidate then needs to send that to various contacts, followed by, “Who do you know that I could speak to about this?”

Haberfeld advises making three connections every weekday in this fashion. At 60 contacts a month, it’s bound to find someone who can help.