Pick Up the That Outdated Old Phone & Get a Job

by Duncan Mathison

In the last couple of weeks I have had conversations with several  twenty-somethings about professional communications and the job search. I was shocked but should not have been surprised when they told me how uncomfortable they are talking on the phone.

Why? Because this group rarely uses the phone to communicate verbally to one another. They text. They use Facebook. And if they are feeling nostalgic they might even send an email but they tend not use the phone for verbal conversations.

For example, one young woman told me that phone conversations feel awkward to her. “Sometimes” she said, “It’s hard to tell when the other person has stopped talking and I should start which creates awkward gaps and crosstalk.”  

Another one told me he found the phone to be unreliable because when you call you may get voicemail and “no one uses voicemail anymore”.

They might be right about phone conversations when it comes to their generation. Communication is different today and it is evolving at a fierce pace.  Yet there are two issues that make it important to embrace the old and pick up the phone for a conversation to move the job search and your career forward.

First, when communicating, always use the communications media most comfortable to the audience you are targeting. In a job search, you need your message to be heard and taken seriously. Hiring managers are from previous generations. They have the power to hire, they have the budgets. Use the media they use, no matter how dated it might seem to you to get your message across. What the heck, go retro and write a letter.

Secondly, the best part about phone only conversations is that they teach how to listen really well without the distracting visual and environmental cues.  My first counseling job was the graveyard shift of a 24-hour crisis hot-line. This was a powerful experience to learn how to close my eyes and focus on what was said, how it was said and environmental cues such as shuffling of papers to deeply and quickly understand what was important and what was not. Emails and texting leave too much guesswork to pick up critical nuances in hiring decisions.

People who are good on the phone are also able to package their message in a way that gets heard. This is why creating scripts and anticipating objections is so essential to a quality introductory call to a hiring manager.   In our book, “Unlock the Hidden Job Market; 6 Steps to a Successful Search When Times Are Tough”, Martha Finney and I dedicated a whole chapter on what to say after they say “Hello”.

Think about the media you are going to use in your search based on the audience you are targeting. A more dated technology could be a faster way to a new job.

Tags: Age, Duncan Mathison, Gettingn in the Door, hidden job market, interviewing, job search, Martha I. Finney, self improvement, Unlock the Hidden Job Market

This entry was posted on Monday, March 29th, 2010 at 4:18 pm and is filed under Blog, interviewing, job search, networking. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.