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.

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• 10 Questions NOT to Ask in an Interview

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)