Sometimes when I listen to job-seekers talk about their resumes and their job-search approaches, I think they believe that a machine will be hiring them, rather than a person.

The front of end of the typical corporate or institutional hiring process is automated. You know how I feel about those talent-repelling Applicant Tracking Systems if you read my columns. Still, that’s just the front of the process. The rest of the hiring pipeline is staffed by humans.

Humans don’t hire people just because those people have the formal qualifications listed in the job ad. Humans hire other people because they believe in their guts — the most important part of the body when it comes to making hiring decisions — that a particular job-seeker knows what they’re up against and can jump in to help them sort it out.

Job-seekers shoot themselves in the foot by forgetting why managers hire people in the first place. They hire people because they have to. Nobody ever hired a staff member just to spend money, or just to fill up an office that had some empty space in it. They hire people when that’s the best answer to a problem they’re experiencing.

Maybe Sally retired last August, and Sally’s manager decided to hold off on replacing Sally. The manager tried to make it through without anyone in Sally’s position to see whether he could save money. It was an experiment worth trying, but it failed.

It turns out that Sally’s job is essential to the department. As soon as Sally retired, everything started to fall apart. So now the manager is back out on the talent market. He’s placed a job ad and is waiting for responses from job-seekers.

What is the manager looking for? He listed a bunch of job requirements in the job ad. He listed a bunch of essential job qualifications that he pulled out of — well, he made them up on the spot. How much does Sally’s ex-manager really care about the ‘essential job qualifications’ he listed in the job ad?

He doesn’t care that much about any of them — he just needed some qualifications so that Robin, his HR person, would be able to screen resumes into a big pile of “no thanks” replies and a smaller pile of folks to interview.

See how bureaucracy works? The process itself rules the day and the people who might make amazing new team members have to bow to the process. We call that The Tail Wagging the Dog. It’s very foolish, but very popular!

The stack of incoming resumes will be screened in or out based on the qualifications listed in the job ad. After that, no one will talk about the formal requirements of the job anymore. When the manager starts conducting interviews, he’ll be looking for something more important than three years of this or a certification in that. He’ll be looking for the answer to his burning question “Who can come in here and fix what’s broken?”

Much more important than decidedly non-essential and often random requirements in the job ad are these three criteria:

• Does the job applicant understand what the job is? Can he or she read between the lines in the job ad, research the employer and through that research and his or her exposure to the working world, form an opinion about what the job might entail and how one might thrive in it? To use Human Workplace language, does the job-seeker understand the Business Pain this new person is being hired to alleviate?
• Secondly, does the job-seeker have stories to share – stories that demonstrate the job-seeker’s understanding of the problem(s) he or she is being hired to solve? Your stories are far more powerful than your job titles, statistics and years of experience. Can you explain how you’ll make a contribution in your new job, without waiting for a hiring manager to ask you “Why should we hire you?”
• Lastly, does the job-seeker have the confidence to see him- or herself as a person with choices — a person who doesn’t have to grovel and beg for a job, and wouldn’t do that even if someone wanted him or her to?

Managers hire people who have choices. No one wants to hire the most grovelly job-seeker in the bunch, the one who’s willing to crawl over multiple piles of broken glass to get a job. Just because a manager asks hard questions in a job interview or challenges the job-seeker on his or her knowledge doesn’t mean that the manager doesn’t like the applicant.

The manager may be asking hard questions because s/he’s seriously thinking about hiring you. They want to know if you’re up for the challenge. Often we think that the purpose of a job interview is to mewl and beg for a job, but no one respects a person who doesn’t respect himself.

If you know you can do the job, then you’ll be ready to ask tough questions about Business Pain and bring your whole self to a job interview.

Despite what you may think, Sheepie Job Seekers who tell managers “I can be anything you want me to be!” don’t get hired first. They get hired last, if at all.

When you have a problem — a dented fender or a leaky pipe, for instance — who do you call to fix it? Do you call the person who says “I’m a plumber and I need work! I’ll do anything you want! You name the price!” or a person you know can do the job well, either because you’ve used that plumber before or because of his or her great reputation? When you have a problem, you hire the person you trust to get the job done.

It’s the same in the talent marketplace. Managers hire people they trust to solve their problems — like the problem where Sally retired and it turned out that the company couldn’t run without her. That manager isn’t trying to hire the person who has no self-esteem, and who makes it clear that s/he’s willing to do anything, be anyone and work for peanuts.

The manager will hire the person who knows what he or she brings and can prove it.

We always have the choice to accept a job offer or reject it. Even if the rent is due, we have a choice. The only way you’ll grow your muscles as a job-seeker and as a working person is to use them, even when it’s scary, out on the edge. The faster you  learn to walk away from the wrong opportunities, the faster the right ones will come in.

In the meantime, ask yourself:

• Can I read between the lines in this job ad to see the pain my possible next boss is up against?
• Can I show through my Dragon-Slaying Stories that I’ve solved this type of pain before, even if it wasn’t in my job title? and
• Am I ready to walk away from this opportunity if these folks don’t get me?

This article was written by Liz Ryan from Forbes and was legally licensed through the NewsCred publisher network.

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