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

Assessment Centres -10 tips for group exercises/discussions

Group exercises can vary enormously from:

1. A single sentence or question:'Discuss how you would increase sales in a new area'. This can be thrown into the group and then them left to debate the topic. Assessors are looking at the level of debate and the interaction between people.

2. Exercises where you are all given information that needs to be discussed eg 'Read the following and then discuss, as a group, which depot should be closed to maximise savings but maintain efficiency' . Same as above: who conributes?, what sorts of things do they say? who listens? who has ideas? who is positive?

3. You might get that sort of question where you have actually been given different sorts of information!

4. You might get information but be asked to play a particular role, so in the one above one person might be asked to be the FD and another the HR manager. Each will have some info about their role's priorities. In this scenario you are expected to argue your corner.

5. The observers might want someone to win this task or they may just want to see how you react with others. 

6. Think carefully about volunteering to be the Chair of the group, you would have great power but if you don't have authority it can highlight your lack of influence. Leadership is not necessarily shown in that way.  It's the same with being a 'scribe', that can give you power but it can also marginalise you if you are standing at a flip chart.  

7.Get talking early, research shows that if you don’t contribute in the first few minutes of a meeting you can become invisible. So be present from the start and get a contribution in early. It does not have to be earth shattering, just ask a question, ask someone to repeat something, seek clarification or repeat an idea. 

8. People will generally be quite polite to each other, on their best behaviour and interrupting is not good manners. Wait for a space and then deliver well thought out constructive comments.  

9.  Laugh at other people's jokes, disagree politely and only after saying something like 'that is really interesting but had you thought of....'

10. Be the person they would want to work with.. that's what selection exercises are about, finding out if they can work with you.

For more information, support and advice on being successful in your career

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)

Ensure fairness in your restructuring processes

I was interested to see in an article in the Housing press, that there is a thought that BME middle managers lose out in restructuring.  If they can get into middle management in the first place, what is happening in the internal competitions?  The implication of the article is that the sector is not giving these candidates fair treatment. The article then goes on to talk about the lack of BME representation in the top 50 most influential people in housing.

 As the top 50 was dominated by politicians the two issues should surely not be conflated. The politicians and civil servants (David Cameron, Mervyn King, Eric Pickles, Iain Duncan Smith, Fiona Reynolds) in the list are actually in housing more by chance than choice and owe the sector nothing for their elevation to senior levels of influence in policy making.

I am not disputing the veracity of either piece of research but suggest that the two issues should be tackled separately. In the case of internal re-structures, I really believe that organisations need to do much more to take ‘the luck of the day’ out of their re-organisation procedures. Just because Tribunals accept interview processes as fair does not mean they are the best way to choose managers. We all know that interviews favour the extroverts and the articulate. They favour those that are well versed in the art of being interviewed. For that reason I deliver ‘selection preparation’  training sessions for staff, either in groups or one to one. I advocate objective testing and line manager’s references. And I advocate that all these sources are given equal weighting in the selection decision by an independent panel.

And if the sector is concerned that BME candidates are failing in these processes, use the powers of positive action to make sure that those candidates are given additional training and coaching to get through the selection process. If they can improve their interview skills we may see more people get through the selection process to be an MP and onto that list of influencers in housing.  

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)

If you like me repeat what i say! being effective in meetings

Getting your message across in a meeting can be a real challenge. Often it is hard to get into the conversation and then your idea may not be picked up. Skillful influencers can have a few tricks up their sleeves.

• Firstly you might want to warm the attendees up a little before the meeting. Make sure that whoever is chairing it is clear that you will be presenting an idea. Get them to give you the platform to speak. If the person in charge gives you the space people will be more likely to listen to you.
• Have your arguments ready. Know what it is that you want to say and be clear and direct
• Anticipate the objections.. this is easier if you knw the people around the table, but even if you don't you can guess at what others might think of your idea and you can pre-empt their arguments before they voice them.
• Find allies in advance, win people over before the meeting
• Take a friend with you! what can the friend do? they can repeat your idea back to the group.
• Researchers have found that hearing the same thing twice is sufficient for participants to alter recall the idea as the main agenda or theme for the meeting, regardless of who brought it up. 
• So if at first no-one picks up your idea; say it again.. get someone else to repeat it and you could be in for making a powerful impact!
  
  for more help, expertise and advice on developing your career success visit: www.maryhopecareersuccess.com

Five Reasons why this is the most important interview question.

Five Reasons why it is the most important interview  question.

There are lots of questions that can been seen as ‘killer’ questions in an interview. Employers interview in order to assess your skills, your knowledge, your experience and your ‘fit’, but there is one question that can kill you before your have even get going. And that is the motivation question. Why is it so critical, why can one small question, used as a warm up, be so important?

For many years and in many organisations the influence of equal opportunities policies meant no one asked it; what does it matter why they are here? The fact that they applied and  have turned up to the interview means they want the job. You don’t need to ask them, it is not competence related etc etc. However there is a real curiosity in the employers mind abut why people want to work for them and they want people who are keen. So agree or disagree the ‘why do you want the job’ question is on the agenda  and you need to be ready to answer it because a duff answer is just not acceptable. So why is it so important?

1.       It usually comes first; as the saying goes you only get one opportunity to make a first impression. And if this is the first time you open your mouth you need to impress. If you score 2 out of 10 on that first question it is a very steep climb back up the hill to be appointable. If you score 9, you are in a strong position for the rest of the interview.

2.       This is your sales pitch. Most jobs involve selling and persuading, influencing others, convincing people. So this is an ‘on the job test’; you need to influence and persuade. This is a test of your selling skills and your communication skills.

3.       You should have been expecting it.  If there is one question that you can reliably anticipate it is this one. It may not be phrased as ‘why do you want the job?’, it may be ‘what has attracted you to apply?’ ‘what will you bring to the job?’ ‘where does this fit in your career?’  however the question is framed the meaning is clear, why do you want to come here and you should know that it is coming, so you should be prepared to answer it. An employer will expect that you know the answer, that you know your own mind and can express it.

4.       Not to have an answer well prepared shows a lack of planning and preparation. You should be able to demonstrate your understanding of the role and why the organisation is attractive and one you want to work for. Preparation and planning.. two more qualities that every  employer will be looking for.

5.       Your answer sets out your stall and gives you an opportunity to ‘deal with’ any unspoken objections that the panel may have but not want to ask about. If the big question mark about you is why you are looking for a side ways move, or geographical move or even a down step: they may not directly ask but in your answer to the motivation question you can get rid of that question as a problem. It may be the only chance you get.

So that first question performs a number of functions and doing well at that point may create a rosy glow that can last to the end of the interview. So get prepared to deliver your pitch really strongly, serve an ace and win the game, the set and the match.