What a 19 Pound Dog Can Teach You About Job Interviews
Deciding to make a move and start looking for a new job is a real task, isn’t it? Maybe a job event has occurred, such as a downsizing or corporate takeover. You feel the need to move before your position is “right-sized”! Maybe a new opportunity has caught your attention and you make the decision to find employment elsewhere. This is a daunting task and will take a large dose of both persistence and resilience!
Most people find the interview process to be drudgery and often times frustrating. The phone screening from recruiters as well as the waiting for the interview calls that never seem to materialize. Searching for positions to find that they are already filled. It takes real patience!
Allow me to share a personal story of my dog, Helix-Monster. Not that you are a dog, but Helix-Monster is a master of persistence and resilience.
Our sweet dog is the king of dog-toy destruction. Helix-Monster is a 19 pound dachshund-beagle mix who is all muscle and rides low to the ground. He has large beagle paws in the front and smaller dachshund paws in the back. They don’t exactly match! He has a history of squeaky toy destruction. He can usually destroy a toy in a matter of 3 - 5 minutes.
Helix-monster has a very sophisticated method of destruction as he first seeks to find and remove the squeak mechanism contained within the toy, proudly spitting it out on the floor, declaring victory over the squeaker. Then, he moves on to ripping and biting the rest of the toy tearing it into small pieces that he litters all over the floor. Depending on the size of the toy, it may take a few days to totally annihilate the toy into bite-sized bits, but “killing” the squeaker is what it is all about!
We have spent lots of money keeping him in toys that will occupy him longer than a few minutes. We never buy the stuffed toys as the fluff is scattered in mere moments. We go to the sporting department of stores and purchase bags of tennis balls. We are always on the look-out for a toy that will last and not be a total waste of money.
On August 28th, 2016, we decided to buy him a Kong dog toy. It was shaped like a large bone and made of heavy rubber. It was about a foot long and was made for a very large dog, like a great dane, not small Helix-Monster. He looked so funny with it in his mouth because it was so large he had a hard time carrying it.
The best thing about this huge toy was that the squeaker was hidden within the long portion of the bone, directly in the middle and coated with rubber. It appeared this toy may actually last. This special Kong dog toy was the beginning of a long odyssey for little Helix-Monster. It became a lesson in persistence and resilience that inspired his human parents.
This dog toy was definitely different. Helix-Monster proudly pranced about with the huge bone in his mouth and then set out to complete his mission. Destroy the squeaker! Much to Helix-Monster’s surprise, this was not a typical toy. On day one, he played with this toy for a long time, working feverishly after his squeaker prey. The very loud squeaking was awful for us humans to have to endure. That evening, as Helix-monster put his exhausted head down for sleep, the big blue bone was very much still intact, without a blemish. Squeaker fully functional!
Upon waking the next morning, Helix-Monster resumed his mission with the fully-intact blue bone working the impossibly loud squeaker. Day after day after day, his goal of squeaker destruction seemed more and more illusive. Poor little guy couldn’t even get a good tooth-hold on the ends of the bone, much less the long middle portion containing the squeaker.
Each day, he would pursue his quest with no satisfaction. He had never faced this level of adversity with any squeaker toy. With the odds stacked against him, he persisted and would not give up. There were times when we would have to hide the big blue bone due to the annoyance factor of that darned squeaker! We even started an Instagram account of his attempts.
August 2016 became September and before we knew it, 2017 had rolled around. The big blue bone remained intact but now revealed some dents from full-toothed canine murder attempts. Helix-Monster was a definition in action of what resilience looks like. He would end a day totally defeated by the bone only to wake up the next day and try again.
He began changing his attack methods. We observed him trying different tactics. Helix-monster would chew on an area at a different angle or try holding the toy with 2 paws instead of 1 paw over the shaft of the bone. With these different approaches, he actually began to make progress!
Finally around March 2017, the sound of the squeaker mechanism had changed and Helix-Monster sensed that a small victory had taken place. (Don’t get me wrong, that thing still squeaked, it just sounded different. More of a high-pitched, dying duck sound.) He had displaced the squeaker within the long portion of the bone. His months of persistence had provided him a win and now he was fueled for total big-blue-bone-squeaker-domination. Armed with a new confidence, Helix-Monster would not be deterred.
Helix-Monster had a dogged (pun intended) gift of grit. March became May. Summer of 2017 came and went. The dying duck sound persisted but the bone was seeing signs of finally being chewed in half! There were now days where he would not touch it but he always had it near him. He wasn’t interested in other toys either. Poor pup needed a break. Who knows what a dog thinks, but I like to think he was creating new ways to assault the squeaker.
In November 2017, Helix-Monster was thankful for some major progress. The squeaker had stopped squeaking!!! (And the humans said, AMEN!) The long portion of the bone now had a nice-sized crack in it. Although closer to success, the squeaker was still contained inside the bone and Helix-Monster knew it was there.
Over the next month, Helix-Monster intensified his efforts. He was now observed holding the toy with all paws and chewing, pulling, and gnawing with a stamina we had not seen before. As he would lick and gnaw his adversary, he would stop and look at the growing crack as if he was analyzing angles at which to strike. He would get so excited as the little crack grew bigger and bigger that he would actually bark at the bone! The scent of ultimate success was present in his sensitive beagle nose.
The moxie of this small dog was rewarded by a true Christmas miracle. On Christmas 2017, Helix-Monster was finally able to rip that damned squeaker out of the bone and proudly spit it on the floor for us to witness. A 485 day testimony of pure persistence assisted by a daily dose of resilient canine spirit.
To watch a video of Helix-Monster on Day 2, click here. To watch his Christmas miracle on Day 485, click here.
Making the decision to change jobs requires massive amounts of resilience and persistence - much like Helix-Monster had with his blue bone! Let’s look at the definitions of these two words:
Resilience: The capacity to recover quickly from difficulties; toughness
Persistence: Firm or obstinate continuance in a course of action in spite of difficulty or opposition
The process of a job hunt requires persistence in that the actual job hunt now becomes your job, especially if you have lost your job by “right-sizing” or a firing. If you are looking for new employment and are currently employed, the job hunt is now your job.
Just like Helix-Monster getting up each day to attack his big blue bone that was bigger than he was, you have to search the internet or work your network each day or do something involved in the job hunt, no matter how difficult it seems! You must be obstinate, unyielding, and downright stubborn in your continuation of the job hunt process. It may be a long road to that new position, but you must have the endurance to run the race each day to achieve your goal.
Resilience goes hand in hand with persistence in the search for a new job. Each day of the hunt, you need to wake up and find the intestinal fortitude to get up and start the process again even when you have been unsuccessful in previous days. Just like Helix-Monster’s innate characteristic to destroy the squeaker, resilience requires an irrepressible toughness to quickly recover for the “downs”.
Resilience is that intrinsic, rubbery coating that we each possess that helps us to bounce back after being slammed down.
Resilience is the emotional factor that supports the actions of persistence. Resilience gets you up in the morning and supplies the coffee to persistence so it can continue the hunt, searching through your network, locating job opportunities, or preparing for an actual job interview.
Looking for a job is tough, sometimes disappointing work. It may take longer than you thought it would to find the perfect job. Allowing persistence and resilience to become your best friends will assist daily in reaching your new employment goals or any other goals you may have in life. It worked great for sweet Helix-Monster and it can work for you too!
I offer a free ½ hour introductory job interview coaching session. Contact me today to prepare for your tomorrow!