By JOE LIGHT

LinkedIn Corp.’s splashy initial public offering of stock earlier this month underscored the company’s status as a major professional network. But several start-ups are banking that the future of career networking is actually on Facebook Inc.

These start-ups point to Facebook’s much broader user base: With 500 million users, Facebook is five times larger than LinkedIn.

But changing users’ mindsets might be a challenge. Some Facebook users are loathe to mix their personal and professional networks, fearing some private information might damage their work reputation.

Recruiters, meanwhile, say that LinkedIn has already established itself as the most robust source for job-candidate information.

This month, BranchOut Inc., which makes a professional-networking Facebook application, said it raised $18 million in venture capital, bringing its total to $24 million. On the day of LinkedIn’s IPO, Jibe Inc., which lets people use Facebook connections to bolster job applications, announced that it had raised $6 million.

Since January, BranchOut has gained more than 500,000 active users, Chief Executive Rick Marini said. The app helps users find Facebook friends at companies where they want to work.

Jibe CEO Joe Essenfeld said that its 200,000 active users have landed hundreds of jobs by sending applications through its service.

Mr. Essenfeld added that 26 large employers, including Amazon.com Inc. and MTV Networks, as well as 20 small businesses, accept résumés sent through the application, which lets users import connections from both Facebook and LinkedIn.

“Most people do not want to mix their professional lives with their personal lives,” said a LinkedIn spokesman, Hani Durzy, in an email.

Even though the apps are gaining in popularity among Facebook users, right now LinkedIn is still the go-to site for recruiters trying to find suitable candidates, said Debra Feldman, a job-search consultant.

“They’re using it over and above any other résumé databases, including their own,” she said. That means that if someone isn’t looking for a job but wants to field offers from headhunters, he needs a LinkedIn profile, she said.

Other job-related Facebook apps have been slow to catch on. Talentag, which lets users earn job-related “badges” and recommendations from Facebook users, had a strong debut last August, but its average number of monthly users has dwindled to 189 after peaking at 1,502, according to AppData, a market-research group.

Talentag couldn’t be immediately reached for comment on Friday.

The Future Of Selling: It’s Social
Brian Fetherstonhaugh, 12.03.10, 11:18 AM ET

 In the era of Facebook, Google, Twitter and Yelp, buyers have as much control over the flow of information as salespeople. Buying, once a one-way interaction between an informed seller and a curious buyer, has become a conversation between equals, and the revolution in buying behavior is still ongoing.

To find out just what was changing, and why, OgilvyOne did research among 1,000 sales professionals in the U.S., U.K., Brazil and China.

What we learned: Social media has had an enormous impact on buying behavior with 49% of sellers seeing social media as important to their success. In fact, among the most successful salespeople, over two-thirds believe social media is integral to their sales success.

But companies are not adapting fast enough. Sixty-eight percent of sales professionals say they believed that the selling process is changing faster than their own organizations are adapting to it. Companies are not providing solid training to sales professionals in social media. In fact, many are actively discouraging the use of social media despite the fact that customers are buying that way. Nearly half of sales professionals surveyed believe their companies are afraid of letting employees use social media.

Many U.S. companies claim to have a social media strategy, but only 9% of U.S. salespeople say their company trains or educates them on the use of social media for sales. This stands in stark contrast to Brazil where 25% of salespeople surveyed receive training on social media usage. Thirty-eight percent of the salespeople we surveyed in China use personal blogs in their selling process while only 3% of U.S. salespeople do the same.

If salespeople are to continue providing solutions to their customers, selling must evolve in lockstep with buying. There are several significant initiatives that salespeople can adopt in order to remain the ideal partner to an interested customer. The one thing that unites all of these new ideas is the centrality of the customer. This new world of distributed information doesn’t loosen the focus on the buyer. If anything, it sharpens it.

1. New Buyer Journeys
Customers create their own buyer journeys. They take many steps without the seller’s involvement, and they may not always start at step one. A tremendous amount of action happens after the sale, especially when customers experience the brand and then share their experiences with others. Sometimes they talk with a few friends and family, or perhaps they will self-cast their thoughts to hundreds, thousands or millions of others through social media. Salespeople need to find out exactly where their customers are in their journey right now and advise them on the best way to get there.

2. A New Role for Content: Digital Bait
In a disintermediated media world, customers are eager for professionally produced content, and we can use that desire to draw customers to our messages by creating digital bait. There are three main kinds:

–Beliefs and Points of View - Put out what your company believes and what it stands for. Not everybody will like it, but it will attract the kind of prospects already aligned with what you have to sell.

–Expertise – Customers and prospects are hungry for high-quality expert information. They want to be smart shoppers and be informed. They appreciate factual expert opinions about the category and about you. They will generate this information regardless, and you would be well served by having a hand in creating their narrative.

–Invitations and Offers – You need to extend appealing invitations and offers to make it easy for people to engage.

3. New Listening Skills: Digital Footprints
Customers and prospects are throwing off billions of digital buying indications every day. They signal their intentions through the search keywords they use, the blogs they read, the whitepapers they download, and the shopping baskets they fill.

They are leaving digital footprints for the savvy hunter to observe and act upon. IBM, for example, used digital traces to create sales leads for their software group. They studied the exact language that IT buyers used in their searches about software topics and then custom designed a whole raft of inexpensive “how to” videos around these topics. IBM posted them on YouTube and tagged them with exactly the same words that buyers use when they search.

4. New Marketing Skills: Behavioral Economics
Behavioral economics studies why and how consumers make choices as well as the economic impact those choices have. It combines the rational and the emotional side of buying decisions into one view and can produce some surprising insights:

–Creating a default option is one of the most effective ways to make a sale. With out one, human inertia stands in the way of selling.
–Sometimes, increasing the price will increase volume, not reduce it.
–And in another counterintuitive example, adding more choices will often result in fewer yeses, not more.

5. A New Way to Sell: Social Selling
Selling is, now more than ever, a social enterprise. Great salespeople use all their allies to propel customers along the new buyer journeys to close a sale.

To launch the new 2010 Explorer, Ford created a community of advocates and enthusiasts on line. They shared their plans for the new model, previewed the car, and gave their fans first dibs on seeing and test driving the new model. They looped in dealers in 11 major cities, getting them excited about the new vehicle and ready to take pre-orders. Ford can boast of 10,000 pre-orders, eclipsing expectations.

6. A New Partnership: Selling is a Team Sport
Just as sellers are collaborating with buyers in new ways, sales and marketing need a new arrangement. But who should lead and who should follow? Should marketing join sales in having a quota? Regardless of the uncertainties, one thing is clear: Successful selling requires new and deeper collaboration.

Your 30-Day Plan
Now, let us leave you with five things you can do in the next 30 days.

1. Walk in the Buyers footprints.
–Write down the exact journey you followed to make the last three big purchases in your personal life.
–What role did a live salesperson play?
–What role did the media play, including search and social media?
–Do the same for your business. Talk to the last three people who bought from you. Exactly how did they buy? –Write it down. Draw the journey.
–Do you have an arsenal of great offers and a systematic way to personalize them?

2. Use digital bait.
–Can you do a compelling 2-minute you Tube video?
–Do you tell people what you stand for?
–Are you providing true expertise and category insights for your buyers and helping them make good choices?

3. Sell something using social media. Maybe it’s something simple like an upcoming event or more complicated like a new product. The important thing is to try it and then to measure it.

4. Get Marketing and Sales in the same room. Take half a day and share a heart to heart session.
–Are you on the same page?
–What more can marketing do for sales?
–What more can sales do for Marketing?
–How can you turn the tennis opponents into a winning basketball team?

5. Join the new selling conversation.
This is the most important time in the history of marketing and sales. Buying has changed dramatically, and we as sellers have fallen behind so far. But our customers want us to catch up. They depend on us, especially as they try to navigate a confusing new world awash in more information than they can handle.

Brian Fetherstonhaugh is chairman and CEO of OgilvyOne Worldwide.

How to deal with an invisible promotion

By Elaine Pofeldt

In this economy, employers won’t be handing out new titles left and right, “but the great news is you can still earn a promotion by demonstrably moving your company toward strategic and financial wins,” says Stefanie Smith, principal of New York executive coaching firm Stratex Consulting.

The higher you are on the ladder, the more responsibility you have to take for your progression. This plan can help you prove yourself promotion-worthy within the next six months.

Arrange a meeting with your boss to make sure he or she is aware of your ambition. “If you don’t tell people you want to take on more responsibility, how are they going to know?” notes New York City career coach Roy Cohen, author of “The Wall Street Professional’s Survival Guide.”

But “rather than focus on your aspirations, frame everything in terms of what your boss wants to accomplish,” advises Smith.

Ask what his or her key goals for the year are, and make it clear you want to help achieve them. And, of course, find out if there are any gaps in your résumé. End the meeting by requesting performance feedback every month or two.

Over the next few months, step up to lead existing projects –or present new ideas — relating to the objectives your supervisor laid out. Initiatives that lead to revenue generation or cost savings present the best promise for promotion in any economy, advises Cohen.

But also capitalize on your unique knowledge: If your industry faces potential regulatory challenges, for example, and you know that area inside out, be the first to devise a plan to help the company succeed in a changed environment.

Meanwhile, cultivate relationships in other departments — and collaborate with your new contacts — as it will expand your sphere of influence, advises Caroline Ceniza-Levine, a partner in N.Y.C. career coaching firm SixFigureStart.

Send periodic reports to your manager highlighting how you’re moving the needle. “When it’s time for your review,” says Smith, “your boss will look through those updates.”

Also, publicize the victories of your direct reports, as this publicizes your own victories, adds Paul Copcutt of Square Peg Solution, an Ontario personal-branding firm. One of his clients created a local-server blog so that her group could report progress to higher-ups, for example.

Finally, ask colleagues who are happy with your work to e-mail your manager, says Ceniza-Levine. That way your boss will feel even better about giving you a boost.  

By Eve Tahmincioglu

As a result, Lerner added, “Sloppy dress in the workplace is gone. Businesses can’t afford sloppy dress, sloppy work, sloppy attitude.”

Indeed, some firms are ratcheting up the fashion police.

UBS got a lot of negative publicity when its 43-page dress-and-grooming edict got out. The over-the-top rules included restrictions on the length of male employees’ nails; when female employees are supposed to put on perfume and how much; and they even mandated the color of worker underwear and said the undergarments should be “of superior quality textiles,” according to a report in the Christian Science Monitor last week.

(UBS officials declined to comment for this column.)

While the bank’s policies may seem outrageous, many legal experts say the UBS rules and similarly tough guidelines at many other U.S. companies probably don’t run afoul of labor laws.

When it comes to federal regulations, “employers have a lot of discretion with grooming and dress code policies,” said Beth Schroeder, a labor lawyer for Silver & Freedman in Los Angeles.

But, she added, states may differ when it comes to what’s permissible. She pointed to California as one of the only states where you can’t require women to wear a dress unless it’s part of a uniform.

If it’s a uniform, then employers may have to pay for the cost. It’s considered a uniform when an employer requires workers to wear a particular outfit that’s not something an employee would readily or easily buy on their own, she maintained.

So, in the case of UBS requiring a certain type of underwear fabric the case could be made that it is part of a uniform, Schroder said.

Express Employment Professionals, which has long had a dress code policy, provides “employees an additional monthly stipend, recognizing the cost of maintaining a professional image,” said Jennifer Anderson, a spokeswoman for the firm.

As for making women at the firm wear lipstick, as Sparks contended, Anderson said:

As for UBS’ dress code, Sarah Pierce Wimberly, a partner at Ford & Harrison in Atlanta, thought the length of the bank’s work attire policy seemed excessive because most employee dress guidelines are typically two pages and fairly basic. But, she explained, detailed rules governing appearance have long been a workplace mainstay in certain industries, such as food service and aviation. 

“The airlines are a good example of employers that have detailed dress and grooming requirements,” she said. “They dictate that you can’t wear garish makeup, hair should be of a certain length, or gathered up, and hands should be well groomed, no long nails, and some are specific on how long, and the nail polish colors.”

And many firms across industries require men to be clean-shaven, she added.

Worker rights issues arise, Wimberly continued, when rules on appearance impact a certain group more than another.

For example, policies that call for men to be clean-shaven can adversely impact some African-American men who may have a condition called pseudofolliculitis barbae that can cause infections and acne after shaving.

Since introducing the dress code, he added, attendance and performance have improved and employees “act more professionally with each other.”

 Even if your company doesn’t have spelled-out criteria on what you should wear, your boss may still be watching you.

Gail Warner, a wardrobe consultant and president of GKW Communications, was recently called in to work with a female employee for a Fortune 500 company in Ohio who was a rising star but considered a shabby dresser by her manager.

The non-fashionista had lost 140 pounds over 14 months and was wearing clothing that was four sizes too big for her.

“Her boss thought the clothes she was wearing were doing her a disservice,” Warner said. After working with the employee, going through her closet and helping her purchase appropriate attire, “there was a change in her posture and attitude,” she said.

While getting employees to dress better at work, or mandating fashion rules, may seem like good solutions to some, Michelle Randall, the principal of Enriching Leadership International, a global consulting and executive coaching firm, sees these actions as signs of lazy management.

“Employee dress codes are an attempt to stamp out individuality and a physical reflection of management’s inability to lead an agile organization,” she explained. “Dress codes send a message to employees that they should abandon their personality and individuality for the job. This neuters the workplace and makes it pretty shallow.”

Eve Tahmincioglu writes the weekly “Your Career” column for msnbc.com and chronicles workplace issues in her blog, CareerDiva.net.

Looking for a job in 2011? Here’s how to stand out
Strategies to compete in what will continue to be a tough job market
By Eve Tahmincioglu
msnbc.com contributor msnbc.com contributor
Many of you continue to use the same job-search strategies even though they reap few results hoping that you’ll land a gig when the job market gets better in the New Year. Well, 2011 is here and it’s not going to be much better than 2010 when it comes to employment opportunities.

While economists project there will be a gradual pick up in hiring this year, it won’t be enough to put a dent in the high number of jobless Americans. “We’re projecting it will be 2012 before the unemployment rate comes down,” said Marisa Di Natale, an economist with Moody’s Analytics. “Right now, our baseline forecast is for a fairly weak job market. We have the rate rising to above 10 percent.”
But where do you begin? Here’s a list of six questions to ask yourself, and advice to get you started on rejiggering your job-hunting approach in the New Year:

1. Am I disorganized?:
A common problem I hear from job-seekers is they become overwhelmed with the process and many don’t even remember how many resumes they’ve sent out, let alone which companies they’ve sent them to.

It’s hard to be strategic when your arsenal is in disarray, and forget about figuring out which tactics have worked and which ones are duds. You need to know what you’re actually doing folks. You need to get organized.

“It’s hard to run a good search if your home office is a mess and you don’t have a system for keeping things straight,” Jean Baur, a career counselor and author of “Eliminated! Now What? Finding Your Way from Job-Loss Crisis to Career Resilience.”

She suggested creating two spreadsheets, one including a list of your networking contacts, and another with job-search activity including the job ads you answered, the resumes you sent, the responses you got back, and all the pertinent dates. For those employers where you’ve gotten phone or in-person interviews, she added, you should create color coded files with all the information and interactions you’ve had with a particular company, and have them handy on your desk so you’re ready if a hiring manager calls back.

2. Does my resume stink?:
One of the biggest mistakes job seekers make is not tailoring their resumes to a particular job opening. That’s always been important but it’s even more so with computers scouring resumes for certain key words.

Tina Chen, director of operations at Carlisle Staffing, suggested you “take the job description and incorporate it into your resume. By adding key phrases from the job description to your resume you will increase your exposure in database searches and you will also catch the recruiter’s interest.” And, she added, “when recruiters review resumes they tend to scan quickly and look for key words to qualify the candidate.”

Holly Paul, PwC US Recruiting Leader, likes one page resumes, no grammatical errors, and she even wants to see the unpaid experience you’ve had. (See sidebar for a full list on Paul’s resume likes and dislikes.)

Another big issue is boring resumes. There are ways to make it interesting so hiring managers don’t just glaze over when they read yours. Bob Wilson, managing partner, OI Partners in Chicago, advised job seekers to include interesting things about themselves in a resume, beyond education and work experience.

“One of the best ones we have seen was ‘compiling & singing Romanian folk songs.’ Who knew?” he quipped.

3. Have I been a networker, or an avoider?:
Just posting stuff on Facebook is not serious networking. Sorry. If you want to find a gig you have to put yourself out there and meet people face to face.

Stefanie Smith, an executive consultant-coach, suggested you commit to inviting five people out to lunch or dinner this year. “Seek out those who can mentor you, colleague with whom you can exchange ideas, and former subordinates who have now gone on to new and higher roles,” she said.

You have to find out about a job before it’s posted and the best way to do that is through networking, said Jobvite’s Finnigan. Most people get jobs via personal contacts so you have to put yourself out there, he said, and that means attending conferences and going to community events, for example.

The way to find the people you need to know is to research companies via their own sites or in the news if they’re big enough. You should also follow employers you’re interested in on Facebook, Twitter and any blogs about the company, Finnigan added.
“You want to be the first to hear about new jobs and new opportunities,” he stressed. “The early bird gets the worm.”

4. What do I want to be when I grow up?:
For workers who lost a long-time career and see no hope of reentering that field, it’s natural to be ambivalent about what to do next. That’s why you need to figure out what you want to do, for the long term or just for the next few months.

No matter how hard you try, if you are not motivated or passionate about a certain job hiring managers are going to take you out of the running.

Paula Loop, PwC Global Recruiting Leader, said you have to be open to change, and convince employers that you really want it. “Understand how to answer ‘Where do you see yourself in five years?’ It’s crucial to acing a job interview,” she said.

5. Am I a Jack-of-all-trades?:
Once upon a time, it was a good thing to claim you could be all things to all employers. Unfortunately, today it’s all about specialization.

“Companies hire specialists, not generalists,” said Kathryn Ullrich, Silicon Valley-based executive search consultant and author of “Getting to the Top: Strategies for Career Success”. “Still, most job hunters don’t get that.”

It makes sense that job seekers resist the specialist label. “They don’t want to risk losing out on opportunities, so they play it safe and position themselves as generalists,” she continued.

But you have to resist if you want to land a job. “Know your specialty — your unique brand and offerings.”

Your resume, cover letter, your elevator pitch, and interview answers all have to reflect that specialty.

6. Does anyone know I’m here?:
When you’re in the troughs of job searching it’s easy to think no one knows you exist. That’s what’s so great about the Internet and social networking sites. While they shouldn’t replace contact with real people, these sites are a great way to raise your profile when you’re unemployed.

“Find a blog that is relevant to your career goal and become a frequent commenter on it,” said Laurence Shatkin, author of “2011 Career Plan.” “This assumes you have something worthwhile to contribute.”

Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook, among other more targeted social networking sites, also offer visibility.

“With either of these, you have to establish an account that’s only for professional purposes—that is, it informs readers only about things relevant to your job function,” he said. “If you want to post your vacation photos or tweet about your kid’s birthday party, use a personal account.”

Eve Tahmincioglu writes the weekly “Your Career” column for msnbc.com and chronicles workplace issues in her blog, CareerDiva.net.

The November unemployment rate for people 55 and older is lower than for any younger age group, welcome news for a group that often worries about being shut out of jobs by age bias.

By Anne Fisher, contributor

Scratch the surface of November’s disappointing unemployment statistics, and you find yet more evidence that, while joblessness plagues almost every stratum of society, not everyone is affected in quite the same way.

With unemployment hovering around 5% for people with college degrees, about half the rate for the population as a whole, education is clearly a big factor.

Age is another. Consider: The November unemployment rate for people 55 and older, at 7.3%, is lower than for any younger age group. About 276,000 more Americans under 55 reported being out of work in November than in October. Yet during that same month, employers added 123,000 age-55-and-over workers to their payrolls.

What’s more, the number of “discouraged workers” — unemployed people who have given up looking for jobs — who are 55 or older fell by an eye-catching 16% in November, from 335,000 to 280,000. This means that “people are starting to see opportunities, and they believe it’s time to get back in the game,” says Deborah Russell, director of workforce issues at AARP.

That’s all welcome news for a group that often worries about being shut out of jobs by age bias, or by what some call “the O word” (for “overqualified”).

Still, Russell points out, not all the numbers are cause for celebration. The average job hunter over 55, for instance, is still out of work for about 45 weeks, or three white-knuckle months longer than the average for those under 55.

Older people may take longer to find work for a variety of reasons, says Jason Levin, a senior account executive at career site Vault.com. “Bear in mind that these tend to be more experienced and more sophisticated candidates” than their wet-behind-the-ears counterparts, he notes, so “negotiations over salary and benefits may take longer. They may also have more savings to rely on while they look for exactly the right opportunity.”

Levin, for one, isn’t surprised that overall employment is rising for this group. “Companies that cut way back all through the recession are starting to realize that they need highly qualified people to get the work done,” he observes. “Older managers understand nuance and hierarchies. They have accumulated a lot of wisdom, and they know how to run projects.” He adds: “Experience matters. It will always matter.”

Maybe so, but the AARP’s Russell says that, in and of itself, long experience isn’t enough. “People 55 and older belong to a generation that was raised not to ‘blow your own horn,’” she says. “So a lot of the career counseling that we do is centered on showing people how to promote themselves and create a personal brand that will help them stand out.”

To help the 47% of its 38 million members who are either working or looking for work, AARP has built an array of online resources, including a new job-search portal with 1.3 million job listings.

Russell and Levin agree on at least one thing: Chemistry counts. “The person who gets hired, at any age, is the one who makes an individual connection with a potential employer, and who understands how to bring value,” says Levin. “I know 28-year-olds who are good at this. I know 58-year-olds who are good at it, too.”

One subtle advantage that more mature job seekers have, adds Levin: “They know how to craft a well-thought-out handwritten note. At this time of year, that means holiday cards with actual stamps on them. If you want to make an impression, that’s worth 100 emails. The personal touch never gets old.”

Happy about getting laid off? Don’t tell FacebookBy Athima Chansanchai

Sometimes, oversharing on Facebook can lead to some serious consequences — like getting fired.

UK bank worker Kate Furlong found out firsthand after bragging about the severance check she was going to get for being laid off.

Lessons to be learned here, perhaps: Think before you write anything on Facebook. Don’t post on Facebook expecting it to be to “a chat with my mates outside of work.” Companies expecting CIA-level lockdowns on information might have to either become more vigilant, accept the social network’s role as a place for private venting, or make business policies very clear on what they expect workers to do or not to do on social networking sites. The lines between private and business blur constantly and it’s not going to get any less complicated.

Furlong, 23, is the latest victim, although it could be argued she should have known better.

She’d worked at the bank for three-and-a-half years, according to the Daily Mail, and made about $28,000 a year. So, for her, staying at the job until 2012 would have ensured a $9,300 severance check, and it would have been a windfall. When the debt officer’s employer, the Royal Bank of Scotland, announced September 2 plans to cut 3,500 jobs, she received a call from her manager that day that she was one of those 3,500, unless she wanted to relocate 26 miles to another office.

She had called in sick that day, but the news seemed to lift her spirits, rather than make her feel worse.

The UK Parents Lounge, which gave a bevy of examples of other jobs lost because of Facebook indiscretions, posted what she then put on Facebook as a status update:

“I speak for myself when I say WoOOOOooooOooooHOoooOooOoo’ it was pretty damn obvious something like this was coming. I’m neither stupid nor naive … and quite honestly it is the best news ever as far as I am concerned!”

She was unstoppable after that with more comments:

“They will give us the option to take early retirement (for those eligible obviously), transfer to Birmingham and if so, the possibility of a travel allowance, or redundancies. Either way, SCORE!!!.”

And here’s what probably sealed her fate:

“I’ve just hung on by my fingertips to stick around long enough for a nice payout when they could’ve had me out long ago without a penny! More fool them! Haha! Xx.”

These comments caught the eye of a tattle-taling colleague who snitched on her to her boss, who suspended Furlong when she returned September 13. While she was “sacked” (love the Brit-speak!) in October, Furlong announced her counter-move Friday.

In the UK, workers who feel unfairly treated by their employers can take them to an employment tribunal, which is what Furlong told the Daily Mail she’s going to do. She told them, “The information was already out there and all I was doing was having a chat with mates. I don’t feel I should have been sacked. They got rid of me so they didn’t have to pay any redundancy.”

Others in our country have also felt the wrath of Facebook backlash.

In August, a Massachusetts high school teacher was forced to resign after posting some derogatory comments about her students, reported ABC News.

In May, a Charlotte waitress lost her job after complaining about a cheap tip, according to the Charlotte Observer.

And last year, a stadium worker lost his job of six-plus years with the Philadelphia Eagles for posting on Facebook about a player being let go, reported ESPN. Yes, this was the same team that gave a dogfighting former convict — albeit an incredibly gifted athlete — a two-year contract worth almost $10 million.

So if you’re on Facebook, even with privacy settings, just assume you’re being watched.

Employers’ wacky interview questions

By Anne Fisher, contributorAugust 9, 2010: 1:08 PM ET

FORTUNE — Dear Annie: I’ve been lucky enough to get several job interviews in the past couple of months, and I’ve noticed something strange about all of them, which is that the hiring managers have posed what I would call trick questions.

Yesterday an interviewer asked me, “If you were an animal, what animal would you be?” I was so surprised that it took me a few minutes to come up with an answer. I said I was like a dog, “loyal to a fault” — which made sense, since I stayed with my last employer for 17 years, despite having had other offers — but I couldn’t really tell from his reaction if that was a good response or not.

Other questions I have struggled with: The overly general “Tell me about yourself” (where do I start?) and “How long would you stay with our company?” (how do I know that when I don’t even work here yet?). What’s the deal with these weird questions, and how are people supposed to answer them? –Dumbfounded

Dear Dumbfounded: J.P. Hansen, president of Omaha-based Hansen Executive Search, was once asked the Barbara Walters-esque what-animal-would-you-be question in a job interview. His answer: A jaguar. Why? Hansen explained that “the jaguar is very versatile, able to patiently wait for its prey for hours on end, then pounce with lightning speed and grace. Plus, it’s a cool car!” The hiring manager who was quizzing him smiled, reached into her purse, and pulled out her car keys — with a Jaguar emblem on the key chain. Hansen got the job.

Of course, that kind of serendipity is rare. Usually, job candidates confronted with the what-animal question (or popular variations like what tree, or what color) are, like you, dumbfounded. Don’t feel bad: According to Hansen, that’s what interviewers expect.

“The job market is so tight right now, with so many candidates available whose backgrounds and qualifications are so similar to one another, that some hiring managers try to find an ‘aha!’ moment where they can trip you up, or get you to reveal something you didn’t plan to say,” he says.

Great. Since there is no way to predict what you might be asked, how do you prepare? Hansen, who was an executive at ConAgra Foods (CAG, Fortune 500), Bristol-Myers Squibb (BMY, Fortune 500), and Carnation/Nestle before launching his recruiting firm in 1994, says job seekers need to go into interviews with enough confidence to handle any wacky question that might come up. The only way to get that confidence: Prepare, prepare, prepare.

“The people who are getting hired are those who have really learned the company and the industry inside out. You have to wow the interviewer with your knowledge,” Hansen says. “If you can be very specific and detailed about what’s going on — what competitive challenges the company faces, what changes are happening in the industry — then stumbling for a moment over the what-animal question isn’t going to matter.”

In his book The Bliss List (Career Bliss Publications, $19.95), Hansen lists 38 tricky interview questions, with suggestions for how to formulate winning answers. In reply to the second question you mention, “Tell me about yourself,” first ask a qualifying question: “Are you interested in my work experience, my personal experiences, or both?” Notes Hansen: “Often, they want a mix of both — work, plus whatever else may have shaped you and influenced your thinking.”

Obviously, this covers an awful lot of ground. “It’s really smart to practice answering this question before you go in to an interview,” Hansen says. “Practice summing up your whole life in a concise way. If you ramble, you’ll probably be disqualified.” Ouch.

As for the third question that bugs you, “How long would you stay with our company?” cheer up: “This is a ‘buy’ signal, indicating that the interviewer is thinking of making you an offer,” Hansen writes. The best response: “Put the hot potato back in the interviewer’s lap” by saying something like, “I would expect to have a great career with this company. I’m always looking to learn, and I define success as being ready when an opportunity arises. How long do you think I’d be challenged here?” With any luck, you’ll get a chance to find out for yourself.

Let’s suppose you’re knowledgeable, enthusiastic, and can describe your unique attributes and skills (and how they match up with the job) in a compelling way. How can you go wrong? A surefire way is by badmouthing a current or former employer, yet Hansen says he is surprised by how many candidates do it. “When interviewers ask about your last job, or your present one, they are really hoping you don’t step on a landmine and say something negative,” he observes.

Ironically, he has noticed that, the more smoothly the conversation is going, the greater the likelihood that a candidate will blurt out a damaging comment about a tyrannical old boss or a wrongheaded restructuring. “It’s possible to ‘click’ with an interviewer and get too comfortable for your own good,” he says. “There is such a thing as too candid. It’s often the kiss of death.” So, when it comes to describing your former employers, remember that the animal you most want to resemble is a soft, fuzzy bunny.