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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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

The Benefits Of Good Career Management

Careers advice is what you get at school or university  after someone has given you a questionnaire test, chatted to you and then they tell you what job you should do. Or something similar.

But career management? What is that? In this rapidly changing world with organisations and sectors making huge changes and adjustments.. how can you mange a career? And  why should you bother?

I work in the field of career management and coaching so obviously I do believe that people can manage their careers but sadly not enough people do that. They drift, they hop, they jump in what they perceive to be an upwards direction. Sometimes they are pulled by the attractiveness of a new opportunity, sometimes they are pushed by unhappiness in the role or organisation they are in. Few people plan strategically.

Career management is a process by which individuals develop, implement and monitor career goals and strategies. It may be art or it may be a science;  in my book it needs to be a bit of both. Whichever, it delivers huge benefits.  Research shows

·         Having career goals means people outperform those  who do not have goals or who only have a weak commitment to their goals.

·         Those with goals are more optimistic, they are more resilient,

·         Those with goals are more focused , they work harder at job search, are engaged and are more successful at finding new roles.

·         People who engage in career management generate more job interviews and more offers.

·         They obtain higher salary offers and are more realistic about their job expectations.

·         They are more effective in job interviews.

In other words their careers are more successful.

The cornerstone of good career management  is research: research about yourself and research about the world of work. That’s the science part. It is making the decision once you have got the information that leads into the world of art and metaphysics.

Career management is not a one off activity; it is on going throughout life. It is an adaptive process. But it is particularly important to engage in active carer management when you are at career crossroads, when facing the decision on whether to move from a technical to general management role, when your family circumstances change, if you are facing job loss, when you face a set back in your career , when you are offered a dramatic job move, when you feel the dissatisfaction of boredom or frustration with a difficult boss. These are critical time to make the right decision rather jumping into something because of the expectations of others, the opportunity is there or because  you feel  you have no choice.

What does it take to be good at career management?

1. There a six key elements of this iterative, messy process:
2. ·         Know thyself
3. ·         Understand the environment
4. ·         Develop realistic goals
5. ·         Adopt strategies that can deliver your goals
6. ·         Be prepared to adjust those strategies when new information comes to light
7. ·         Learn the skills of finding opportunities and of succeeding in selection exercises

Are you doing all you need to in order to manage your career well?

For a reality check on your approach to career management visit (www.topcareerstrategies.info)

Mary Hope supports people to manage their careers more effectively and get paid more, promoted faster and feel more satisfied. She has over 30 years of experience in business, teaching, HR, headhunting and coaching. She believes passionately that people need to understand their own drivers and needs to find fulfilling careers.

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!