Secret Job Requirement: Your Coachability Score
May 31st, 2011 @ 08:05am
Employers look for something that they don't list as a requirement in job descriptions.
Job descriptions are notoriously bad: For one, they often don't tell the reader what the person will really be doing, nor what the company's real needs and expectations are. Too often they go unexamined and unrevised year after year. But this is a topic for another time.
The point is, there's an unwritten requirement.
What is this major thing that you need to have, that sometimes even those doing the hiring can't articulate? Coachability.
"Can we bring this person along?", they ask. Even someone moving into executive ranks for the first time has to be someone to whom the CEO can impart the finer points of management at that level, at that company.
New grads and younger job candidates come loaded with malleability, mold-ability, shape-ability, teachability, coachability.They are new to everything. They are open to everything. They try things, they follow trends and styles -- it shows an awareness of what's around them.
Those candidates over 50, or even over 40, aren't so easily impressed. They have been seasoned by life and their careers so far. But they, too, have to show that they're coachable.
What are indications of coachability in older candidates? Some are: Trying something new, taking cues from more senior managers, taking cues from junior managers, coming up with a new idea, exploring an idea that you didn't come up with but someone else did (and giving them credit), looking up to date, taking a risk, not being stuck in the past, not being a know-it-all, being aware of what's going on around them even if it doesn't have anything to do with them directly.
So be sure to emphasize those aspects of your workstyle, in an interview or while networking. It's either that, or the perception of alow coachability quotient, which can sabotage an otherwise promising future.
Posted by Joanne Meehl | in Job Search, | No Comments »