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!

Answering predictable interview questions - So why do you want this job?

Answering predictable interview questions - So why  do you want this job?

 Four key steps to winning interview performance 

 

Answering that question (why do you want the job) should be really easy! Often the answers we hear when recruiting are:  well I want a job..I need a job,  I want to work.. I want to pay the mortgage or the  rent….  Or I want a promotion, it’s a bigger job. Or I hate the job I’m in, I need to do something different. My family are moving so I need to change jobs. I got made redundant, I’m a bit bored,  I like the sound of it.. I could go on.

The difficulty with all of those answers is that they may well be true and they may well explain why you have applied for a new job but they do not tell the interviewer any good reason why you should have the job. When you are going for an interview or applying for a job you need to give the interview compelling reasons for giving you the job and that starts with the basic question…  why do you want it…

So how do you give them that compelling reason? By treating this question as an opportunity for your sales pitch. By thinking about what it is that the interviewer wants in a candidate and what it is that they need to hear.

Ever been turned down for a job because you did not sound very enthusiastic? Been told that they were not sure if you really wanted it…  It is actually a pathetic bit of feedback to give someone. Surely the correct logic is that they offer and if you don’t want it , you turn it down. If you are the best person for the job they should offer, but it happens so you need to make sure that it does not apply to you.  This is your chance to sound enthusiastic, if not actually passionate.. but how do you do that without sounding gushing and false?

Here are 4 key steps to selling yourself into that job!

When you are asked about why you have applied for this role, why you want it etc… start with:

Step 1.

‘This is a great company /organisation because…….’  Everyone likes to be flattered, so tell them why you think they are a good company, what it is you like about the company….

Step 2.

Describe the challenges of the role, even if it is a job that is pretty routine, what are the issues they face  in getting someone to do the role well….

Step 3.

Tell them that these are the things that float your boat, these are the things you have just been doing, these are the challenges  your really enjoy… give some brief examples…..

Step 4.

Think about why they might not want to hire you and refute their logic.

So if I was going for a job in my local Co-op shop I might say:

I think the co-op is a great organisation, I admire their ethical stance and I was very impressed when they had no issues over horse meat. That’s the sort of company I’d like to be in. I know you need staff who can work shifts, who are good with customers and who will make sure that the shelves are kept stocked and tidy. I really enjoy working with customers, helping them find things, explaining the difference between products and I hate untidy shops. It’s really important to me to be polite and friendly, when I worked in the garage I tried to get every customer to smile before they left!  It has been a while since I have done shop work but I don’t think you lose the passion to please the customer and make sure they always come back – I haven’t.

Remember this is your sales pitch and this is where you can bring together your knowledge of them and your enthusiasm. It is all about why they are great to work for not why you need the job.

Mary Hope Career Success supports people to get paid more, promoted faster and feel more satisfied at work. Go to  www.maryhopecareersuccess.com for more great resources and advice.

Related articles

• How to Answer the Top 35 Interview Questions [INFOGRAPHIC]
• 10 Questions NOT to Ask in an Interview

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 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

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Related articles

• The power and potential of networking
• How to Perfect Your Elevator Pitch For Your Business - 5 Tips
• How to network with the best-connected people at an event

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

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)

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!.

Jobs data shows modest increase in permanent appointments - hurray!

John Eccleston 08 February 2012 12:01 in Personnel Today

Jobs data published today points to a modest uplift in the number of permanent appointments, although figures relating to temporary placements and pay offerings suggest that the job market is still experiencing difficulties.
The Report on Jobs, published by the Recruitment and Employment Confederation (REC) and professional services firm KPMG, is compiled using data provided by recruitment consultancies. The latest edition, released today, found that permanent appointments rose for the first time in four months, albeit at a modest rate.
However, this small piece of good news was offset by data which highlighted temporary and contract billings falling for the second month in a row. According to the report, a number of respondents cited the introduction of the Agency Workers Regulations as a reason for this fall.
In addition, salaries for permanent positions rose only marginally in January and at a much slower pace than the long- term average. Hourly rates of pay for temporary/contract staff increased modestly following a slight decline in December.
Respondents also reported that the growth in overall demand for staff eased to its weakest level for 27 months. Data suggests that engineering and construction workers were the most sought after in the latest survey period, in contrast to declines in demand for hospitality and catering staff.
Kevin Green, chief executive of the REC, said: "This month's report highlights that there are glimmers of hope for the UK jobs market with permanent placements increasing for the first time in four months. This is the first positive indicator for some time that employers are looking to hire staff despite the ongoing weakness of the economy.
"It is particularly encouraging that six out of eight sectors surveyed show growth in demand, including engineering, IT and office professionals. The report also follows better than expected services data from the Purchasing Managers' Index last Friday, which suggests that confidence is growing among consumers as well as businesses.
"A major challenge in the jobs market is the disconnect between what employers are looking for and what jobseekers can offer. Better careers guidance is part of the solution, as is increased use of apprenticeships to get young people into employment with vocational skills development."

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