Stack the Deck in Your Favor

When you send a resume in for a new job with a medium to large company, what do you think the HR department does with it?

Do you think they read it carefully, meticulously study the depth of your suitability and levels of experience? Compare carefully your career path against other applicants before deciding on whom to interview?

I suppose some may do that, but no HR department I have ever dealt with actually does.

As the ranks of the unemployed have swollen, applicants are out stripping vacancies at an alarming rate. To a certain extent this has always been the case, even when the word downsize had people staring blankly at you before asking you what the hell you're talking about? But now the stories of 5,000 people and sometimes many more applying for a single job are becoming commonplace.

So what do HR departments do to deal with such a deluge?

They do the same as judges on American Idol do. They do the same as people do when first looking at a menu. And they do the same as people buying a new home do.

They rule stuff out first

They look at the pile of applicants and try to make it manageable by deciding who isn't suitable. This is not necessarily a method designed to get the best person for the job. It's a method intended to lighten the load and reduce the risk of employing the wrong person for the job.

That is the nightmare scenario for them. Employing somebody that looked like a high risk or reward candidate and then seeing the former coming to realization. It's a surefire recipe for being on the other end of the equation very quickly for an HR manager.

Shortly after moving to the US I had a crisis of confidence. Starting a coaching business from scratch is tough enough and I'd already been through that process in the UK. Starting from scratch in a new country with no support network was a lot tougher.

I was even pondering going back into sales. Whilst trawling Monster one day I stumbled across a job description that I presumed had been written exclusively for me. The position was as a sales manager working for Expedia the Internet based Travel Company.

Here are some of the prerequisites for the job:


Documented sales experience at a B2B level and preferably within blue chip companies. - Chec
Well-traveled and good knowledge of Europe - Check
Live in central Florida - Check
Prepared to think outside the box - Check
Good team player - Check
Able to coach and mentor others - Check
Good communication skills - Check
Permanent resident green card - Check

This job was a gimme; it was in the bag if I wanted it. However, I still wasn't at all sure that I wanted to move out of coaching, even if only temporarily. Furthermore it didn't feel right selling out on my dreams. But what the hell, it was surely worth checking out, right? After all, I could turn it down if I didn't want it.

I never even got an interview.

I honestly don't know the reason why, but I can take a good guess. The fact is I didn't meet one of the criteria off a list of about 25.

I don't have a degree.

The person (or more likely computer) sifting the applications would have noted that and I was on the 'Send nice letter wishing best of luck' pile in the blink of an over-worked eye.

I'm not sure in that instance if there was anything I could have done other than told a pack of lies. Most of the time however, there is stuff people can do to stack the deck in their favor and I'm not just talking about job seekers.

This post was inspired after somebody recently suggested to me that training isn't necessary to become a life coach, but having a great general knowledge is.

Leaving aside the fact that contrary to popular opinion coaching isn't about imposing what you know on clients. I'm unsure of the value of knowing what the capital of Kazakhstan is, the collective noun for squirrels or the name of the only man to hop solo across the Sahara desert dressed only in a Kimono. Especially if you're trying to understand a clients value set or do some form of intervention.

On the other hand, knowing how to shift somebody's state in a split second, understanding the difference between the Meta Model and the Milton Model of language and realizing that a particular client won't respond to rah-rah tactics, can come in handy from time to time.

Would you prefer to go to the dentist that qualified 25 years ago and hasn't done any further training, or the one that regularly updates his or her knowledge by attending refreshers?

Would you take your vehicle to the mechanic that thinks diagnostic tools are a waste of money, or the one that can drop a computer onto your car and know instantly what's wrong with it?

Would you hire an SEO company to promote your website that has an Alexa ranking 5 million places lower than your own, or the one that has cracked the top 50,000?

There are plenty of people, businesses and organizations that don't stack the deck in their favor and do ok when times are good. How many Realtors relied on business coming to them 2 or 3 years ago and neglected looking for clients, building up a referral network and working on their sales skills? Where are they now?

I remember reading an interview with Will Smith and he was talking about working with a marriage counselor. "What? The perfect Mr. Smith navigating a rocky phase in his marriage?" You may be thinking.

No, not at all, he was trying to avoid a rocky phase. He was being pro-active by stacking the deck in his favor.

For me ongoing training is stacking the deck. Leaving aside the obvious benefits of making me a better coach, it is one less reason for a potential client to rule me out because they'll always have plenty of alternatives.

I have no idea what stacking the deck is for you. It may be hiring a job coach if you are out of work. It may mean not buying that new car on credit. It may mean reading a book that will give you an edge somewhere down the road. It may be making a few more sales calls. It may even mean just chilling and disengaging from the world for a while so your mind can recover.

I do know many of us seldom stop and ask ourselves what can we do to move the odds of success more in our favor? We get so wrapped up in firefighting and just coping with life we barely have time to look up and see where it is we're going and even if we're moving in the right direction..

Take time out at least once a week to sit and think.

It doesn't have to be for longer than 20 or 30 minutes. Think about what you can do over the next 7 days to stack the deck in your favor and then do it because it may be the difference that makes the difference for you at some point in the futures.