Your Salary: “What’s your expectation?” Answered Here

The problem:

What is your expected salary? Coming into my master’s program from a startup, I didn’t have one, but if I did, I can guarantee you it wasn’t very high.  

So how to handle this question when it comes up? The short answer is this: expect at least the “market rate”.

Mrs. Market (the job market) is not kind to people who feel like asking for less than they are worth.

The job market rewards winners.

When does this question come up?

It might occur right there on your application. It could come in an interview. 

How to respond to this question?

This is a very clever question posed as a test of your “street smarts”, a test of your maturity in negotiating professional or business topics. 

In traditional negotiation strategy, there is a saying: “the first person who says a number loses”.

Here’s how to apply that: answer this...

No experience? Are you screwed?

Let's cover that in this video today. So I had one of my VIP students write in and ask as follows:

“Hey, Stuart I have an interview coming up with the CFO of the company. And they're asking me for 2-4 years of experience in the job description. What should I do? Because I don't have full-time experience.”

This is that classic “how do I get experience if I don’t have it” situation. And in this video, I am going to solve that for you. 

Invited to interview - and feeling you lack experience

So this individual in our program got invited to interview. First of all, what does that mean? It means this: 

“If granted a chance to interview, you already have what it takes to get the job.”

You already have what it takes. So if you're sitting there with that interview coming up and you're concerned about your experience, recognize that that is not a factor here. They already granted you an interview - They...

Should I Tell Them I Sent A Thank You Letter or Not?

This is an interesting question about etiquette I just got from a student in my 12-week job offer intensive and thought to share it as well as my response. As you take this in, you can also assess what feels right for you. If you like this approach, I welcome you to use this. 

The question is, “do I need to tell the interviewer that I'm sending them a thank you letter?” Do you need to “tell” the interviewer you’ll send such a note?

First, you have step one: you have the interview. Step two is to thank the interviewer. So, how do you want to thank them? Send the thank you letter, right? Or some sort of thank you. So the question is, “how should I execute my thank you? And do I need to tell them to expect the thank you?”

Let's just talk about “thank yous” for a minute, and then I'll answer the specific question. 

When you leave the interview room, the interview is not...

“Stuart, When an interviewer asks me, Do I need sponsorship? How should I respond? 

Great question! 

How You Answer vs Who Is Asking The Question

How many times are you gonna get that question?

With one group: always. With a second group, rarely. 

Never:  With executives looking to solve a problem, they care if you can help solve a problem. HR policy changes if they need you. 

Always: With HR and recruiters. They get paid to enforce HR policy.

Knowing how most job hunters hunt, you get asked this probably every single time you speak to somebody about your job hunt. 

I was an international student working on work visas for almost 10 years of my life. So I know a little bit about how we can handle this in addition to helping so many others achieve their dream jobs. 

How To Answer This Question

 So how should you answer? Well, first of all, recognize this one thing: It depends on who is asking the question.

There are two kinds of people in...

Every Conversation Is An Interview

 Welcome to 2022!

We're going to open up the blog in 2022 by teaching how never to miss an opportunity again. There are two things you need to absorb here and it's going to be short and sweet and when you adopt these two concepts, you are never going to miss an interview again. 

The two things that you need to know/do in order to get those interviews are:

1) Make interviewing your priority in 2022

2) Realize that every conversation is an interview

Make Interviews Your Priority

If trying to get a job, it's most likely the case that you are trying to send applications out and you are hoping that some sort of conversation ensues.

In 2022, instead, look beyond the application step and get into conversation and develop relationships with the people to whom you are sending the applications.

There are ways to do that and that's the details and implementation is going to be beyond the scope of this short post.

So, change your mind about what...

How To Job Hunt During Christmas Like A Pro

There can be a lot of confusion about how to job hunt over the holidays so I'm going to clarify that for you here and thereafter, let you not be confused about what you can and can't do when you should and should not message people over the December holidays into January.

Today, we're gonna talk about holiday do's and don'ts, and this is going to be a super good level setting exercise for you so that you can step away from a lot of the assumptions and the thoughts that are kind of spinning in your head.

I know that I can get into these little, um, thought, uh, bubbles at times and get separated from what is the situation that I'm dealing with. And for so many of us job hunting around the holidays, we have all these thoughts and ideas about how it's probably not convenient for example, to do this or that, or maybe I shouldn't do this or that and it's all generally incorrect being in business for decades.

The business world has its...

How To Get Your Dream Offer With “Minimum Viable” Effort

I'm excited to share something that I call the minimum viable job hunt (MVJ) with you.

There is a really good book that you might wanna check out called The Lean Startup, addressing how companies in Silicon Valley scale and grow so quickly. I thought we should take the key piece out of that teaching and apply it here into our own job hunts. 

If you're with me on this, I think you’ll really enjoy this, and definitely sit down, grab a piece of paper, grab a pen, take some notes, and let's kind of map this out together as we go through this. 

In the book, The Lean Startup, the concept is of the minimum viable product (MVP). What does that mean? There are three letters there, so let’s go through them one by one.

Product (P)

Let's first start with the P (product) that seeks to “launch” and become the next billion-dollar company. It has a P because it stands for “product”....

Networking: Tool to get interviews easily

Today, I wanted to peel out a small section of my four-day live training for you here because I thought this particular part on “interview explosion” is powerful, and I want you to make the progress that you wanna make in your life and in your career. 

Let’s start with, how do people systematically or at all get interviews with their dream firms? How do they do it? Are they just applying online? Are they doing some sort of social media trick? 

“Hiring comes down to this: decision-makers, meeting with you one-on-one.”

With that in mind, Interview explosion is possible: it's possible to generate interviews on-demand and in great numbers. 

Why? Let’s start with the basics: 

If you look at an interview, what is an interview? An interview is a process of getting someone to know you, like you, and then support you, simple, right? 

The support step is meant to be the “nod”...

Why you shouldn’t be afraid of meeting people on the job hunt

The excitement of meeting new people has got to be probably the thing that makes work-life interesting.

Finding new friends and colleagues should be easy, so what is it about reaching out to new people that is so scary when we know that's what we want to do anyway? 

You need to change your mind from: 

“Hey, no one would reach out to me or be willing to contact me.”

>>> TOWARDS >>> 

“Now I'm going to change my mind and try something new.”

It’s time to change your mind on this! 

One of the aspects of the StuartSystem is that all of my courses are focused on us generating our own job hunt data -  not being so quick to believe this or that negative thought which data won’t support. 

Let's go out and collect some data that really matters - like having a sequence of messages that you can depend on to start networking or following...

If you “love data”, start by loving your own job hunt data

Are you interested in data and data analytics or doing investments and crunching numbers? If you are, you're interested in data, but one thing that people don't ever consider is the data that supports their own opinions and their own ideas about things. 

Just take a moment the next time you have a stressful thought about your job hunt and ask yourself: “do I have data that supports that opinion?” 

I’m going to be that you don’t. 

Let me give you a really simple example. 

There is a person who I think wouldn't want to talk to me. I reached out once to that person over LinkedIn and they never responded. I conclude, “people must not wanna talk to me”. 

This is one data point. How often does one data point reflect a population? (and how often do people get busy, miss messages, or prefer you to follow up over email?)

It’s interesting in the job hunt:...