ACE YOUR INTERVIEW LIKE A PORN STAR

Every Saturday morning, after teaching my fitness class at West Point Grey, I listen to a radio show called “The Age of Persuasion” (http://www.cbc.ca/ageofpersuasion/index.html.)  presented by Terry O’Reilly. The show popularizes advertising and marketing and branding. Last week the show was all about personal branding. Eventually the topic of resumes came up and, being a professional resume writer, I listened intently. I agreed with everything that was said, and I might actually incorporate photos on resumes as the show suggested.

“That,” I thought, “Would be an excellent way to write off the hot camera I bought last year.”

My problem is one of marketing. Summer is traditionally a bad time of year for resumes. People drift off into holiday mode, and network at barbecues without the benefit of an updated resume.

This week’s show was all about pornography, and how the regular porn sites are losing money because most of the porn is available for free on all the Youtube sites. It turns out they are hungry for advertisers. They also boast large audiences with 60 million viewers per day.

If I could persuade 1% of that market that they need to make significant changes in their lives and get jobs, I could hire and train 10 writers to do my spin doctoring for me, plus have enough money left over to mend the damage to my personal brand that would happen if I join all the fast food marketers that lurk there for clients. So be it!

This could be you!

That would be my first ad on the porn site. If you had a job, you could afford to go out on dates and stop living vicariously through the adventures of other on the Internet. Let us help you organize your life and develop your brand.

What are you doing with your life?

This ad will use guilt to motivate people to participate in life rather than sitting back with your mouse in your hand clicking on the “enlarge screen” button to see who is coming up next and imagining what they are about to do for you.

Ace your interview like a porn star

Most of my clients aren’t porn stars, and it would be hard to pull off being one at an interview without making an employer nervous. That would be akin to lying at your interview. Never lie on your interview. It’s better to cheat at your interview. To show the difference,   and by request, I am republishing an old article on cheating on your interview:

One of my clients had an interview scheduled on Monday. I asked her what kind of help she thought she might need to come out a winner and get the job. “I don’t know,” she said. “I know all the questions and all the answers you gave me on the Monster.ca website, and I’ve had a few interviews – but no success.” (She was referring to http://www.wisebread.com/how-to-answer-23-of-the-most-common-interview-questions  – a particularly good resource.

“Who are you when you have an interview?” I asked.

“What  do you mean, ‘Who am I’” she echoed. “I’m me, that’s who.”

“Maybe you should think of being someone else, “ I said. “Maybe you could think of someone you admire and would do a good job on an interview, then answer the questions the way that person would.”

“You mean a role model?”  she asked.

“Exactly,” I said, and I went on to give a couple of examples.

The first one harkens back from my days as an archaeologist. One of my colleagues was planning to go into the field that week to do some survey work for a couple of engineering companies. He needed a loan to get the project off the ground, and I was asked to co-sign.  He and the banker met first, and within five minutes the floor began to rumble and shake.

“Why don’t you just stomp on my nuts while you’re at it?” my friend roared. I heard that he was charging him 3 extra points above the last time. He got the loan, paid the extra, and the banker told me I should get my friend to , “Keep his nose to the grindstone.”

My friend is the role model I used for an interview.  I had good off season. I gave two papers at two conferences and a demonstration at a meeting. I thought that I was in the governmental good books as I barged into the provincial archaeologist’s office, sat in his guest’s  chair, put my feet on his desk, and said,  “Well, you old squid-faced son of a bitch, how are you doin’?” He took a couple of draws off his pipe and said, “Get your feet off my desk.”

I couldn’t get a job for a month. (Although to my favour, the fellow was nicknamed “The Squid.” That moniker stuck with him for the rest of his career.

The second example comes some years later from my career as an employment counsellor working for the Vancouver School Board. I always had a suspicion about the belief that marijuana was a harmless drug. I noted that amongst my younger clients there was a high incidence of spousal abuse, and I believed that resulted from smoking dope. It wasn’t from the ‘high’ so much as the irritability from being ‘down.”

I dragged in a drug and alcohol counsellor from one of the drug abuse teams to speak to my team about a pot abuser’s group he was working with.

There was something professional about this person. He was working on a program that went against the grain of pot experts, and he seemed to be doing a good job, but the important thing was he was pretty good at getting jobs for me. The best part about my relationship with him was that he never knew that he was my role model.

Choose your role models wisely. It is entirely possible that you have a better person than a porn star – depending on the job description.

I’m suddenly having second thoughts about advertising on porn sites. I doubt that the costs of advertising would be as cheap for me as it would for a fashion or take-out food company. I would be diminishing their viewership as, rather than watching porn, they would be working 9:00 – 5:00

Mike Broderick , a one- time archaeologist, is a Vocational Rehabilitation Counsellor with the Fraser Health Authority in Port Coquitlam where he helps people with mental health disabilities find and keep full or part time employment .

He WAS the Employment Specialist for the Neil Squire Society in Burnaby where he found employment for people with physical disabilities, A Supported Employment Coordinator at THEO BC (now the Open Door Group), and a case manager at Community Fisheries Development Centre where he helped people move from the fishing industry to something else because there, “Ain’t no fish.” This means he is VERY familiar with how a modern day resume should look.

He is a newly retired ambassador with the Vancouver Board of Trade and a former member of the Labour Task Force of the Burnaby Board of Trade He does some work as a field Archaeologist, is a fitness instructor and frequent contributor of fitness humour articles to Alive Magazine. He is always saying, “If you can’t be fit, you can at least be funny.”

He lives in Port Coquitlam with his spouse Cecelia. You can reach him at home at michael_broderick@telus.net  or at 604-464-4105. If you’re looking for a career change, he is the Spin Doctor and can give you a resume makeover at competitive rates