A great opportunity


I re registered with some Headhunting firms last week including my old friend Mark at ExecuSearch. He was the one who got me into the CableShoppe oh so many years ago now.

Got a call almost immediately, as he remembered what I had gone through with the CS in the early days, as Ned was trying to not pay him. Anyway he said he had some candidates in a job interview situation and he would see if we could get me in the door as well.

So the call came this week, and I set the appointment for Friday at 2pm. Got there 15 min early and met with one of the owners. This company is a Network Services company providing B2B services from phone systems to Network building and monitoring.

They have been growing rapidly and the less technical owner has been doing the sales. He feels the need to grow the company and cannot do it without a "real" salesman. In addition they have tried out others in the past and not been successful so they went with Headhunters this time. A total of 12 "candidates" will be winnowed down to 3, to one.

So the interview took an hour. I was very nervous, sweaty palms the works, of course. Opportunities like this do not come along very often. I used every "trick" I knew such as rephrasing, copying seating position, the works to build rappour. We chatted about his needs and I gave him some good ideas I thought.

Problem was, I couldn't get him to show any "ownership". I bent and molded sentences that would let him say things like We or Us or You and the Company, just couldn't get it out of him. That and my one mistake during the interview regarding a discussion of women salespeople (ie I brought up how good they were on a staff and he mentioned that they had not tried a woman in that position yet .. oops) made me feel that I'd wasted an hour.

Well imagine my surprise when the Headhunter called that night to tell me I'd ACED the interview and that even though there was one candidate left to interview on Monday, the partner I'd interviewed with was going to recommend me for the final round. Apparently he had not called this Headhunter on the other candidates!

So before you all get all excited, the final person has to be interviewed in Monday, then I need to get a call actually telling me I have an appointment to see them again. But it feels better than when I left thats for sure. The job has a base, commissions and future vesting in the company. Room for growth as well.

Keep good thoughts.