Many people find the assertive phone techniques I present in this section intimidating. Most people worry about making such phone calls, and they find all sorts of reasons to avoid making them. True, making phone calls to people you don't know is more difficult than sending the same people e-mails. Why? Because e-mails are far less likely to result in a direct and personal situation where you would feel foolish and rejected. But is avoiding more challenging situations worth it if doing so prolongs your job search? I think not. So try to face your fears and let the logical part of you help overcome your resistance to using the phone.
Making these calls does require you to overcome some shyness. But once you get used to it, making direct contacts by phone is quite easy, and it is often necessary to effectively follow up on an initial contact you had to make by e-mail.
Using the telephone in combination with e-mail is one of the most efficient ways of looking for work. You don't spend time traveling, and you can contact a large number of people in a very short time. Once you learn how, you can easily make personal contact with more than 20 employers in one morning. Most phone calls take only a minute or so. And most employers don't mind talking to a person they might be interested in hiring.
To get yourself accustomed to making this kind of phone call, I suggest that you start by making calls to your warm contacts. Then call the people they refer you to. This network of people is often happy to help you. Even people you pick from the Yellow Pages will usually treat you well. The experience of thousands of job seekers is that very few potential employers will be rude to you. And after all, if you do encounter somebody who is rude, you probably wouldn't want to work for that sort of person anyway. Job seekers get more interviews by using the phone than by any other method. For example, you can use the phone to
• Call people you already know to get interviews or referrals without
delay.
• Follow up by calling leads you initially get from want ads or the
Web, when the only initial contact provided is via e-mail.
• Stay in touch with prospective employers and with people in your
network who might hear of openings.
• Make cold calls to employers whose names you get from the Yellow
Pages and the Internet. The simple-to-use phone techniques I describe in this section can make a
big impact on how many job leads you get. Many people have used these
methods to get two or more job interviews in just a few hours of work
each day.
Creating an Effective Phone Script
Another use of your JIST Card is to use it as the basis for a phone script. You will learn more about how to do this in this section. Many job search programs use the phone script approach I present here, and the experience of the many thousands of job seekers who have used this approach has been that it takes from 10 to 15 cold-contact phone calls to get one interview. That may sound like a lot of rejection, but most people can easily make 10 to 15 calls in less than an hour. In two hours of making phone calls, most people in these programs get two or more interviews. How many job search methods are you aware of with that kind of a track record?
The phone script I have presented here assumes that you will contact a person who does not know you and who may or may not have a job opening. An example of this situation would be if you were making cold calls to organizations listed in the Yellow Pages or online.
As you gain experience making phone calls, you will adapt what you say to specific situations. (For example, you would want to adapt your phone script for use in calling people you know.) For learning purposes, I suggest you write and use your phone script in the specific way I outline below.
This effective approach has been carefully crafted based on years of experience. I have divided the phone script into five sections. As I review each section, complete the related section in the Phone Script Worksheet found later in this chapter.
1. Introduction. This one is easy. Just fill in your name on the Phone Script Worksheet. Write your name as if you were introducing yourself.
2. The position. Always begin your statement with "I am interested in a position as... ." It takes you only about 30 seconds to read your phone script, and you don't want to get rejected before you begin. So don't use the word job in your first sentence. If you say you are "looking for a job" or anything similar, you will often be interrupted. Then you will be told there are no openings. For example, if you say "Do you have any jobs?" the person you are talking to will often say "No." And then your presentation will come to a screeching halt in less than 10 seconds.
Remember that in the new definition of an interview, you are not looking for a job opening; you simply want to talk to people who have the ability to hire a person with your skills even if they don't have a job opening at the present moment.
Fill in your job objective on the Phone Script Worksheet to complete the Position statement. If the job objective from your JIST Card sounds good spoken out loud, add it as is to your worksheet. If it doesn't, change it around a bit until it does. For example, if your JIST Card says you want a "management/supervisory position in retail sales," your phone script might say "I am interested in a management or supervisory position in retail sales."
Tip: Make certain that you have a carefully written JIST Card for yourself to use as the basis for writing your phone script. There are no shortcuts here, so go back and write your JIST Card and use that content for what follows.