How to alienate a recruiter..

Recruiters should be a candidate’s friend? After all there are no fees if they can’t fill the jobs. So they should treasure you and be delighted to hear from you on any occasion.  And what a recruiter thinks of you can make a significant difference to your career prospects, so why do candidates fail to build successful relationships with recruiters? What are the pitfalls of building a positive relationship with recruiters. How do candidates alientate  recruiters?

1. 1.       Don’t read the information provided. Many adverts include weblinks to further details.  Just calling up the recruiter without reading those details first makes you look idle.. you are soaking up the recruiters time when you could have answered the questions without bothering them.
2. 2.       Talk more than you listen. When you do speak to a recruiter about a vacancy, ask questions and listen to the answers. Yes,  you want to impress them but when candidates get onto ‘broadcast news’ and don’t listen, it can just suggest your ego is rather larger than you emotional intelligence.
3. 3.       Send a previously constructed CV and supporting material. Sometimes people send the wrong version and their paperwork has the name of the wrong organisation on it. This makes you look sloppy.  Or they send the same paperwork for every job they apply for.   This makes you look like a serial applicant and desperate rather than a ‘hot property’. Read any instructions about how to apply, follow them and tailor your application, carefully.
4. 4.       Applying for everything. Well clearly you are desperate if you do that and you are not thinking realistically about your  marketability in this current climate. It is fine to be ambitious but being overly ambitious is being foolhardy.
5. 5.       Fail to turn up for the interview. Well just failing to show needs no further comment.  But ringing the office on the morning of the interview and saying you are too busy is also a poor show.  Try at least to re-arrange.
6. 6.       Not doing your preparation. The job market is a generally still crowded. In the private sector there are skills shortages but in the public sector senior roles are over subscribed and there are lots of well experienced candidates, so showing up at an interview without having really done your preparation and researching the organisation will put you at a disadvantage and let your recruiter – who ahs recommended you be seen – down.
7. 7.       Being critical of the client/employer. However badly the employer has treated you, which you don’t deserve, the recruiter will want to have an enduring relationship  with that client. So sounding off, sending letters of complaints or claims for the ‘time wasted’ on the interview may make you feel better it will not improve the relationship between the client and the recruiter. And that will knock on to you.
8. 8.       Turning down an offer. Whilst I often say to coachees ‘you don’t have to accept it’ (and you don’t) turning down an offer will not endear you to the recruiter. Their job is to present a great short list, part of their ‘due diligence’ is to make sure you are a solid and firm candidate. So rejecting an offer for no good reason (and the only good ones are another offer or failing to agree terms with them) you will upset your recruiter.
9. 9.       Pester the recruiter to find you a job. Executive search consultants  make their money from the clients and to make more money they need to get more clients not candidates. Once you are in their database and their brain then let them get on with finding more clients to put you in front of rather than making weekly calls to ‘catch up’.

No doubt when you have been reading thinking… I would never do this… great.. build great rapport with your recruiters and be a fabulous candidate! And have  a great career!

Top 10 irritating things on a cv

Let’s face it, Recruiters and HR Managers get a hard time.  The industry battles with bad press and a perception that it’s all about fees for recruiters or handing out tissues for the HR teams. Not exactly! It’s more like a plate-spinning marathon, especially when you’re juggling a deluge of candidate applications against a vacancy wish list.  Some of these candidate CVs and applications can range from entertaining to frustrating to downright baffling.

ISV Software asked the Recruitment and HR industry to share the most irritating things you see on CVs. Here are the Top 10 responses:

1.       Spelling and Grammar Errors – this shows lack of attention and time spent on the document. Favourites include a candidate who had worked at ‘Goldman Sucks’ and another who interacted well with ‘steakholders’. Although it’s worth mentioning that a few spelling errors crept into the responses. Whether intentionally or not we should perhaps check ourselves before pointing the finger.

 2.       Clichéd phrases that add nothing of value – how many candidates have “excellent interpersonal skills”, are “people-friendly” or “work well on their own and as part of a team”? Righty-ho, them and everyone else I’m afraid.

 3.       Too much personal information – Views on the inclusion of date of birth, marital status, religious beliefs etc. varied across cultures. Certainly in the UK, Canada and the US it is illegal to ask for this information. Candidates however, may be unaware of the legislation and it is the norm in some countries to include personal information, even detailing their height and weight. It’s worth bearing in mind that the candidate’s cultural background will influence what they do and don’t include  on their CV. From a recruitment consultant’s point of view though, it’s all information that needs deleting before the CV can be submitted to the client.

Keeping personal information in mind, another big bug-bear is the weird and wonderful email addresses that candidates think it’s appropriate to include!

 4.       Obscure formatting – different fonts, large blocks of text, varied line spacing… Not only does this make the CV look like a ‘cut and paste’ job, it makes it difficult to extract the relevant information.

 5.       Irrelevant information or experience – an engineer applying for a procurement role, a graduate applying to be Head of Department… why? If there are relevant skills, the CV should be tailored to highlight these. Instead you’re often left searching for the information.

 6.       Dear Sir - or Mr when you’re a woman and vice versa. This was even more contentious when the candidate has access to your name. Even worse when the application mentions the wrong role or incorrect company name.

 7.       Photos – again, this varied depending on global location but photos are a definite no-no for UK recruiters. Particularly candidate’s holiday snaps, provocative pictures or group photos including the family pet!

 8.       Churn out that job spec - candidates who solely list their duties without adding quantifiable achievements or their contribution make the job so much harder.

 9.       Generic cover notes – a template cover letter or email taken from the internet. You’ve seen them before and they get pretty tiresome. Plus they sometimes make you wonder if the candidate has read the job spec at all!

 10.   Keep it short – lengthy CVs are a real turn off especially since there is so much guidance outlining that  2 pages is ideal. The extreme mentioned was a 7 page CV followed by a series of voicemails and social media requests. There’s persistent and then there’s stalking!

Honourable mention should also go to hobbies that are irrelevant (reading, socialising, watching their child’s football team) and personal statements that incorporate much of the above especially from the candidate that is ‘perfect for the job’. If only it were that simple!

Thanks to Amanda Davies at ISV for compiling the list!

If you want help to make sure that your CV avoids these errors and hits the correct spot, makes the right impression and communicates your achievements and skills contact Mary Hope.. www.maryhopecareersuccess.com

Lessons for your next interview from Dragon’s Den, can you do the interview numbers?

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Watching Dragons Den, there are a number of points when you can see that the Dragons lose interest. One of the critical ones is when they start exploring the numbers. Sometimes the reason they don’t invest is that the numbers just don’t stack up. There is no profit to be had. Another reason they don’t invest is that people don’t know their numbers. Or are confused about the numbers and what they mean. Over and over, under the pressure of the interview, people lose the plot about their costs, revenues and profits.

When you think about it, that makes perfect sense, the Dragons are putting their personal money into someone elses’s business. If that person does not know the difference between, turnover, profit, and margin then why would anyone have confidence in the individual’s ability to increase margin, build turnover and deliver profit? Knowing the numbers is critical to success in the Den, and critical in giving the Dragons confidence in the entrepreneur.

Can you see where I am going with this? All senior roles have budgets, some of them very big budgets; interviewers need to be sure that the candidates can handle those  budgets and that they will be good with the money. The challenge for the interviewer is how to assess that.  It is one of the most difficult areas of skill to really test. Numerical reasoning tests can test arithmetic, but that is not the whole answer. Commercial reasoning tests can test the ability of a candidate to think commercially (understand turnover, margin and profit but not deliver it). Questions in interview tend to be bland and relate to ‘how do you ensure you don’t  overspend?’, ‘how do you deliver increased productivity?’, ‘ tell us what you have done to deliver savings/reduce costs?’. Ok those questions will get you some information about whether the person understands processes.

How can you, as a candidate, give the interviewers confidence that you are good with money?

It starts in the Cv and application: if you don’t talk the language of numbers then you are missing a trick. You need to shown in your Cv that you know the cost and value of everything. You need to demonstrate that you know and understand the metrics of performance.

In your interview you should not wait for the interviewer to ask about money, budgets or revenues, you should be talking naturally about your income, your expenditure and your costs. By knowing and talking confidently about those things you are demonstrating that you think about the financial implications of all your activity. Once you do that, you give the interviewers confidence that you will pay attention to those things.

What is it that makes the difference between someone who is a good financial manager and someone who is not? Being able to see the patterns in the numbers, being able to project. to identify and spot trends all make someone good at managing the money. But, I think one of the absolute key things is that good financial managers pay close attention to the numbers.

 If you talk about the money and know your numbers you can convince the interviews that you are one of those people who pay attention to money, and that you can do all those things you need to do to balance the books or turn the profit. If you think money, talk money and build confidence that you are good with money.

For more career advice and interview support go to www.maryhopecareersuccess.com

Mary Hope is an experienced senior recruiter and career coach.

budget (Photo credit: The Survival Woman)

How to be interviewed.. 8 different types of interview

In the rich and varied  tapestry that is my life,  as well as career coaching, I do recruitment interviewing and experience what it is like to interview job applicants. And often what I experience is a real mismatch between what people appear to have done (on their CV etc) and how they perform in interview.

I wonder how they prepare for their interview and what they actually think the purpose of the exchange is.

First you need to understand what kind of interview you are having. Ask if it is not clear from the invitation. this is a guide to the main interview types you might encounter. They may be one on one, they may have two or three people interviewing at the same time. 

If it is a competence based interview or a behavioural interview you need to be able to describe your achievements and the way that you have overcome challenges and difficulties in detail. You will be asked to 'tell me about a time when...' The interviewer wants to hear about what you do, about how you achieve things. They want to hear about the way you operate. So your preparation needs to focus on unpicking the things  you do, making those things you 'just do' explicit. You need to understand how you influence others, manage your team and achieve results.

If you are having a technical interview then the emphasis is less about style and more about knowledge. The interviewer wants to know what you know and what you are able to do. You are likely to get asked about your opinions of 'hot topics', you will be asked 'how you would ensure...'. You will be asked about what you would do. The interviewer may well ask you to substantiate your opinion or the theoretical answer by an example. You need to know your stuff, you need to be able to evidence that you really understand what is happening in your trade and what is coming over the horizon. The difficulty of answering these questions orally means that some organisations, such as Judicial Appointments Commission,  will set written tests to see which candidates have the best knowledge. At a more practical level you may be asked to complete a relevant task or exercise which mimics the job. 

The critical incident interview is a mix of both of the above, you will be given a scenario and asked how you would respond. If the incident is relevant to the job, then your technical knowledge and behaviours are being tested at the same time. So in an HR interview your might be asked what you would do if a manager phoned you and said they had sacked someone they had caught stealing. Your ability to understand the legalities of this and your style in dealing with the manager are being tested. 

The bio-data or biographical  interview is one where the interviewer will take you through your biography and seek to understand your motivations and drivers. they will ask you what you learned, felt and what motivated you to do what you did. Whilst this interview is exploring your experience and precisely what you did, how much responsibility you had, it is seeking to understand what makes you tick.

The stress interview. Another way of testing you out is to deliberately put you under pressure in a stress test. This rather contrived and manipulative way of relating to candidates seeks to see how you will re-act under pressure. 

The phone interview. Phone interviews can be brief or they can be the substitute for a face to face interview. the short version could be a quick interview to see if you meet some key criteria. They may want to check out your ability to travel to the location, your salary expectations and your motivations. Often these interviews are used to screen out candidates who don't have the required interpersonal skills, diction, verbal ability etc. It is so easy to apply for jobs online that employers use this device to check out that you are really interested in the role and do have the relevant experience.

The video interview. This is a recent innovation and is growing in popularity, especially in high volume recruitment where interpersonal skills/appearance matter. You will be invited to submit your videoed response to either standard questions that the computer will give you, or in some cases you may be asked to submit a 60 second video saying why you want the job. You will usually be given an opportunity to practice answering and employers can watch your answers when they choose to. 

The lunch interview or as I call it, trial by knife and fork. An employer may want to give you an opportunity to meet key stakeholders of the role, or the team you will manage or the colleagues you will work with. It is probably not possible to know whether this is part of the formal selection process or not. I have been involved where all participants have had to talk to all guests and then the guests score the candidate or asked for an opinion. On other occasions the guests go away without having an influence on the process. Never do anything but take this sort of occasion as an opportunity to launch the charm offensive. And you do that best by listening.

Whatever type of interview you are having you must prepare and you must, must, must think about what your audience want to hear you talk about. Which experiences, which opinions and what key stories you need to tell them. What will impress? What is most relevant to the audience? the answer to my question, what is the purpose of the exchange is - to convince and persuade the interviewers that you can do their job. So think about what they will want you to do and tell them about similar things that you have already done.. that is what will win you the role.

For more interview tips and techniques visit www.maryhopecareersuccess.com  and discover how to turbo-charge your interview confidence!

Keep on checking your profile

Everyone who is job searching and looking to find a new role or more work needs to have current and up to date public profile. We all know that and I tell people that all the time! But had a real shock today when a friend drew my attention to some of the information on my Linked In profile.

All of these sites change their format from time to time and so you need to keep checking that what you have written on there is what you need people to know about you, now. Not stuff from two years ago.

I discovered that they had a link to a website I don't service....
I had a description of my business activity that no longer applies....
I had no phone number...

All of these are fundamental to my success. All of these were correct and in place at one time but some things like the website I have changed others things they have altered.

There has been a lot of chatter about Linked In porfiles being out of date - I connected with him and saw his email was from a previous job, if you want to network and be found, make sure your information is correct.

So yes, I have changed and updated the profile and so should you.

For more advice and support on furthering your career go to www.maryhopecareersuccess.com

LinkedIn may not be the death of the CV? and tips to maximise your use of it

Nederlands: Linked In icon (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

HR professionals and recruitment consultants using LinkedIn to research potential candidates are right to use caution. New research from ICM reveals that two thirds of those who have ever been on LinkedIn do not update their information.
ICM’s research into the user habits of those who are ‘active’ on LinkedIn (i.e. those with an up-to-date profile) indicates that recruiters face challenges beyond identifying potential candidates with an up-to-date record.

The research suggests that the number of connections an individual has isn’t necessarily indicative of how well connected they are. 30% of active LinkedIn users have accepted a connection request from someone they don’t know, and 16% have requested to Linkin with unknown ‘contacts’.
With almost one in 10 (9%) admitting to exaggerating their career achievements on their profile, it also begs the question how much credence can recruiters give to the skills and experiences recorded by LinkedIn users?

The research also looks at the use of personal recommendations, one of the capabilities of the LinkedIn system. 10% of active users have secured a recommendation by offering to write one in return. 8% have written a “flattering” recommendation for someone by way of a “favour”, but also because they felt obliged to do so.

Maurice Fyles, Research Director at ICM, says: “From our interviews with professional recruiters it is evident that they find LinkedIn a useful way of identifying and engaging potential candidates who might previously have remained unknown to them. It also seems that they aware of some of the ways it is being used and misused and approach the information on LinkedIn with a healthy amount of skepticism. Our research confirms they are right to be cautious.”

[Thanks to the HR Review for this research report]

So what is the learning for those who are job searching?

1. Well keep your profile up to date
2. Be alive in Linked in, that will increase your chances of a recruiter choosing to phone you
3. Don't ask for loads of recommendations and avoid doing 'tit for tat' ones
4. Be careful about who you link with, can a recruiter see a community in your contacts or just miscellaneous contacts
5. It is OK to ask to link with people you don't know.. if you have a genuine reason to link with them
6. Make sure that what you say on LI is the same info as on your CV, if you have two different versions it will set hares running.

For more top tips to build your career: www.maryhopecareersuccess.com

Fast changing job search world

Our world is changing faster than we can realise it is. No sooner have we learned new skills and new ways of doing things than some new idea comes along.
I spent a lot of time last year learning about social media and starting to use it.. twelve months later I find that things have moved on.. and not always in a way that is helpful! Google keep altering their algorithms, Linked In have stopped putting my Twitter feeds through to their site  ... And the challenge is that the recruitment market is changing all the time too. Employers and recruitment agencies are constantly looking for new and more cost effective ways of attracting the candidates they need. And whilst lots of that effort is targeted at attracting passive job hunters, it also means that those who are actively job hunting need to shift how you do it.
Major employers, including those in the public sector no longer spend their recruitment budgets on print but on social media. In 2005 UPS spent 90% of their budget on print and now they spend 97% on social media. Deloittes have a dedicated career website which is populated with blogs from their staff and has three distinct sections targeted at graduates, young professions and professionals. The site is content rich and attract traffic through well managed twitter streams, facebook pages, and Linked In company pages. Employers seek to build long term relationships with people who have common interests with them rather  than waiting until they have a specific job to advertise. They want to hook your interest before they recruit you by building communities of interest, what is known as 'crowdsourcing' (I think!)
The recruiters placing a single advert in a magazine or newspaper are in the minority and nowadays on line advertising is much more common. So if you are looking for a job you need to be on line as well. NB yesterday's Telegraph had a single page of jobs! But where to start?
To make life easy there is a brilliant tool called 'indeed.co.uk' This is a web crawler, you set your search parameters and then let it do the work. By 'crawling the web' it will bring you the jobs that you have specified by salary, location and title.
You need to sign up to major jobs boards and post your CV, CV Library, Monster, Total Jobs, JobsGoPublic. And whatever professional Boards apply to your work. Again set your parameters, search, press email alerts and wait for the vacancies to drop into your in box. Job Boards are the second largest source of hires.  And don't forget Linked In. For professionals it is the 'go to' source of candidates for head hunters. It is also increasingly a place where vacancies are advertsied. get into the Groups and see what is happening and what openings you can spot.  At least 90% of recruiters are already using social media to find, source and connect with talented candidates.

English: Infographic on how Social Media are being used, and how everything is changed by them. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

What you do need to do is to ensure that you have your target list of employers and that you have a routine of checking their job sites and if you can register for alerts from them. See if you can register your CV. Follow them on Twitter and on Linked In.
Sadly, the public sector seems to be lagging behind the other sectors in embracing all this technology. When I checked half a dozen County Council's in the South East, only one was posting vacancies on Linked In. However there are new products around that are designed to catch your attention even when you are not job hunting. JGP have developed 'smart search' which uses digital marketing to place a vacancy in front of  people who are looking for information and not just for jobs.
I can remember laughing when they told me that people would use their phones to job search,  (well I also laughed at the idea of mobile phones back in the 1980s) but there are now Apps which will help you search and bring alerts to your door. eg  Jobs.ac.uk,   this free international jobs board has launched on the Android and iPhone platforms with more than 3,500 employment opportunities in universities, research institutions and commercial organisations.
It s not all bad news for the job hunter.. as long as you are looking where today's vacancies are to be found and not using the tricks from twenty years ago.

The rise of social recruiting

• 66% of recruiters have used Facebook to find new talent
• 54% of recruiters use Twitter
• 93% use LinkedIn
• 71% of HR and recruiting professionals consider themselves moderate to exceptional social recruiters

Source:2012 Social Recruiting Survey, Jobvite (base: 1,000 HR professionals)

CV Keyword Savvy

When it comes to putting together your CV, you need  (as with all communication) to think about who will receive and read it. Of course in this day and  age the 'reader' may well be a machine!

When you send your Cv to an agency or potential employer, they will likely put it into a database (Applicant tracking system). If you are applying for a specific role they should look at it and screen it for suitability. Then it will sit in the data base... you need your name to come up the next time there is a similar role. Your name will come up if you have the right keywords.

You need to understand which keywords are most sought by people hiring for the positions you want, ensuring that your CV uses them effectively.Think as they would think. If you were looking for someone like you, how would you search. If you have had generic job titles then this is really important.(sales director.....you would not search on that too broad)  If you are trying to get back into something you worked in a awhile back, this is really important.(when did induction become  'onboarding')  If you are trying to change sectors (outturn and year end???)
Do think about the keywords and get found more easily.

Here are some tips to help you get started:

• Make a list of keywords that commonly appear in adverts and job descriptions for the kinds of roles you are seeking. Look beyond only roles you are actively applying for – the aim is simply to gather relevant terms.
  
  


• Look at the websites of companies and associations related to your target industry to identify other ‘buzzwords’.
  
  


• Identify industry experts, via professional associations for example, and check out the language they use to represent themselves in online profiles.
  
  


• Subscribe to industry publications and find relevant recent articles online to keep up to date with what that people are talking about in your sector.
  
  


• Keep in mind that keywords can cover many areas such as position titles, industries, skills, name-brand companies, conferences, software, certifications and training, products, technologies and affiliations.
• Make sure you use all the relevant synonyms, people in HR can also be in personnel or people management or talent management or human capital. Try to use each one once in your CV in case the searcher does not use the same one as you.

You obviously want your CV to stand out, but it's also important that it shows your reader how you fit in. Deploying the right keywords can allow you to do this, showing employers that you are speaking their language. 

For more tips and techniques get your FREE book  from www.topcareerstrategies.info and to understand more about my coaching products and services www.maryhopecareersuccess.com

Thanks to 'The Ladders' for additional info. 

How good are you at deciding whether to make a job application?

When we are looking for a job or looking for a promotion it is usual to look at the  person specifications and considering whether  we meet it. Often coachees will ask me: should I apply for this? Others will come with a vacancy and go: I am going to apply for this, what do you think?

Being realistic about your own prospects of success is quite difficult. People who are out of work may consider that they have nothing to lose in casting their net widely and having a punt. (This rather ignores the depression that can set in with the law of diminishing returns) So if they fancy the role they will have a go. When I’m coaching people my work is to support them and not to poor cold water on their ambition: although there will be times when I do counsel and more focussed or targeted approach.

So I was really interested to read about the Kruger-Dunning effect, in 1999 they hypothesized that the more people know the less confident they are , whereas the less people know the more they overestimate their abilities.

 For a given skill, incompetent people will:

1. tend to overestimate their own level of skill;
2. fail to recognize genuine skill in others;
3. fail to recognize the extremity of their inadequacy;
4. recognize and acknowledge their own previous lack of skill, if they can be trained to substantially improve.

Having gone on studying this cognitive bias they have deduced (2008) that poor performers do not learn from feedback suggesting a need to improve. They lack the skill and experience to enable them to know what they don’t know.

The caveat of this is that they were testing humour, grammar and logic rather than the ability to solve complex problems or lead organisations. But it is an interesting principle: we don’t know what we don’t know.

So how can people make sensible decisions about whether to apply for a role?

There is a lot of subjective judgement about your own abilities, but you can reduce your margin of error. What is that Dunning and Kruger say: you can’t know what you don’t know, and the people who over-estimate their abilities don’t listen to feedback. So get on with your research, find out what this job is really about, what skills it really needs and then ask the following questions.

Well clearly the first test is to look at the objective criteria: do I have the right qualifications, right experience?

Secondly look at the person specification and ask yourself ‘if I were recruiting for this role what would my ideal candidate be doing now?’ Does this describe you?

Thirdly, ask ‘if I were recruiting for this role and could not have my ideal candidate, which of these criteria would I be willing to give up?’

Fourthly, given that you now know what the ideal person looks like and what they are doing now, does such a person exist? Are there lots of them? What have I got that would be really useful that this ideal person may not have?

Fifthly, am I 80% of the way there towards meeting this specification? If the answer to that is yes then it may be worth the punt…This is somewhere that the real subjectivity kicks in: but pay attention to the numbers in the job description and the significance of the expereince they are asking for. If it is a fundraising job, running a Race for Life may not be want they want... yes you worked hard but just how much will they be expecting you to raise? that will give you some clues.

 And finally, treat the writing of the application as a test. If it flows easily and you are finding that you have the right examples and it is easy to feel confident then you are probably in the right area. If you are struggling and not sure that your examples are of the same depth and breadth as the tasks in the job... then that struggle is an indication to you.  

Find out what you don’t know about the job and then find out what you don’t know about yourself. Ask for feedback… maybe your coach will give it to you!.

Interview questions that spell danger.....

Interview questions that spell danger.....

When you apply for a job you fill out a form or maybe prepare a CV, you do a covering letter  or sometimes a longer ‘supporting statement’. You send it off and if you’ve been persuasive enough on paper you get to an interview. So you set off in best suit and shiny shoes and someone; maybe an employer or maybe a recruitment consultant sits you down and says:

So give me a quick trot through your career... or tell me about your career, or give us an overview of your career, what have your career highs and lows been.

And this is a dangerous question because your answer can say more about you than you realise.

Now the sharp and alert candidate may just be tempted to say ‘you’ve got my Cv, need i say more?’ But interviews are very disempowering to  individuals (all the power seems to be on that other side of the desk) and I’ve rarely come across someone who responded in that fashion.

But why do the interviewers ask that? May be they have not read the paperwork. It does happen that the person who screens the applications is different from the one that is interviewing.  I did once go to see a recruitment agency/consultancy and discovered that actually they had not read the Cv properly and seemed to have started reading at page 2 and thought I was working in a job I’d left 10 years before!  So help them out with a précis.

The way you answer can, just as your CV and letter does, reveal a lot about you that you may not have intended to reveal. My heart always sinks when a candidate starts with job number one and then takes me through their life history brick by brick. Dry, tedious and full of information that i already have infront of me. (and I do read the paperwork) It often takes forever. So top tip number one, clarify with the interviewer if you can, is this a bio-data interview or a warm up question.  And the best way to do this maybe to ask ‘where would you like me to start?’ If they say at the beginning it is more likely to be  the former and then they will be looking for a detailed analysis of what you did where, what you achieved and why you changed jobs. If it is a bio-data interview the interviewer should be probing and prompting, giving you a steer about the sort of detail they want.  If the latter they will be listening to what you select to mention and include.

So what can emerge from ‘the trot through the career ? patterns about why you moved on;

·         repeatedly being made redundant  (smokescreen for sacked?),

·         deciding to leave because of differences of policy, (awkward customer does not get on with people?),

·         looking for ‘new challenges’ when the moves have been between similar jobs (low boredom threshold?)

·         moving around very quickly for more money (no loyalty)

·         staying a long time in jobs (lacks appetite and drive)

There are numerous permutations and not all of those are negative indications. A thirst for variety is no bad thing in a job that offers considerable variety or an organisation that does not expect people to stay long.

But you also reveal how you look at the world. If you take a linear approach and describe  each job etc you are suggesting that that is your approach to life. It’s linear, it’s detailed, it’s prosaic. If you give chapter and verse on every employment when not specifically asked for it, you really do risk boring the interviewer to death!

So if you are grey hair/no hair, going for a senior role and someone asks that question, what is it that they really want to know?

Well they may be trying to understand your career drivers or motivators, what is it that makes you tick ? are you the sort of person they want on board? Do your motivators align with their values.

They may be looking to see if you can helicopter and identify themes and patterns. Well of course you can and you can ensure that they are the ones you want them to hear about!

If they are looking for someone with strategic thinking ability, give them a strategic answer.

Most interviewers have read your cv and don’t want to hear it all again they want to hear more and different so think about what you want them to hear.

The danger is that you take the interviewer too literally and ‘trot’ them through your career until all they want to do is put you out to grass. Take a thematic approach and you can be enthusiastic and energetic, succinct and enlightening whilst retaining their interest. If they want to probe they can do so but please, what ever you do: be interesting!