10 Mistakes To Avoid When Job Seeking
Applying for jobs is often a difficult and demoralising process, but it’s important to stay positive and learn from your mistakes. Here are ten common mistakes you should try to avoid:
1. Passing on responsibility for your job hunt
It’s important that you don’t try and blame others for your job hunting difficulties. Focus on positive action rather than negative thoughts. Brush pessimism to one side and look to the future. What’s happened has happened, but by taking control of the current situation and letting your personality shine through, you will overcome this.
2. Make your job search your sole focus in life
Enjoy family time, eat well and exercise. Leave the house each day, volunteer, learn new skills, meet people and maintain a balance in your life. We all need interaction and variety: often the harder you chase something, the more it eludes you.
3. Take rejection personally
Unfortunately it’s rare to be offered the first job you apply for — it’s just not that easy. So, accept rejection as part of the process and always ask for, and even more importantly learn from, feedback. The job you don’t get helps you next time so always push for feedback and act on it.
4. Search in the same place as others
Surfing the online job boards is an important first port of call in finding a job, but there are also lots of other places you can explore. For example, you could look at recommendations, referrals and professional networks as this market can be less competitive.
5. Fail to deliver a clear message
Employers are interested in where you have added value, not everything you’ve ever done. Make sure they can see the wood from the trees. Think of yourself as a movie trailer and not the whole film – what is it about you that generates enough excitement and interest for an employer to buy a ticket to the main feature?
6. Hide it from the people in your life
Although searching for your next job is a personal experience, don’t try and do it all alone. Share the experience with your loved ones and you’ll be far stronger and more effective in your quest.
7. Apply for every job you come across
This makes you look desperate and you’ll lose focus. Try to take more time on fewer applications and don’t adopt the scatter gun approach. Throwing more mud at the wall won’t lead to more success, just more mess. Nothing puts an employer off more than you not knowing anything about their business or what the role entails and, if you have multiple applications out in the field, keeping track of them all becomes an impossible task.
8. Be afraid to push yourself forward
This is no time to lurk in the shadows. Don’t be afraid to shine, blow your own trumpet and tell people how good you are and what value you can bring to their business. Confidence, not arrogance, is the key here – don’t let your skills and experience be the best kept secret.
9. Forget that times change
If you’ve not been in the job market for a few years, you might have expectations that are unrealistic. It’s easy to think that it’s exactly the same as when you last looked for a position, but times have changed. Take a more enlightened approach and try to gain more understanding of the modern job market and how best to place yourself in it.
10. Take your eye off the competition
Make sure you differentiate yourself from other jobseekers. Instantly falling in line with what the competition is doing will put you at a distinct disadvantage.
Think not only about your skills and experience but also your key achievements. These should be things where you have made a difference and done something out of the ordinary. Your competition is likely to have similar responsibilities but achievements are unique to you. Think about a particular situation, what you did and quantify the outcome or result where possible. This way of thinking and presentation on your CV falls in line with the competency-based interview style of questioning and will help you make an even better impression once you get to interview. Knowledge is power and the more you know about yourself and what makes you different, the better placed you are to attack the job market and find your next position.
Originally published at https://jobs.theguardian.com/article/10-mistakes-to-avoid-when-job-hunting/
CV Tips: What Recruiters Are Looking For
When pursuing a dream job, your CV will need to impress recruiters and show them that you are a strong suitable candidate. But what exactly do recruiters like us want to see in a CV and how do we need the information presented?
The first hurdle
Firstly, you must persuade recruiters to open your CV. Even the best CV in the world is useless if it sits unopened in a recruiter’s inbox. To ensure that recruiters open your CV in the first place, you must include a powerful cover note to tempt them in. Keep your cover note short and sharp to save the reader time and provide a summary of how your skills and experience match the job advert requirements. Remember to address the recruiter by name and write in a friendly tone to create a good impression and start to build a rapport with them.
Recruiters scan your CV for relevant content
Once a recruiter has opened your CV, the first thing they will do, is spend an initial 6-10 seconds scanning the CV for the essential skills and knowledge. This is initial scan is just to ensure that your CV has enough of the role’s candidate requirements, before they invest the time read your CV in full. If your CV doesn’t pass this quick scan, then it’s likely that the recruiter will close your CV down and move on to the next one. To ensure that your CV makes an instant impact when opened, make it easy to read and highlight the skills that are relevant to your target roles. Use a clear simple font, break text up, structure the pages well and make your relevant talents prominent.
Recruiters focus on your current role
Your current or most recent role is by far the biggest indicator of what you are capable of at this stage of your career; so recruiters will spend a lot of time studying this section of your CV. They want to know things like:
- Your position within the organisation
- Overall goal of your role
- People you interact with (managers, suppliers, customers etc.)
- Tools/software used (IT packages, machinery, hardware etc.)
- Work produced (reports, websites, physical products etc.)
- Targets and achievements
Write about your current role in great detail to give recruiters lots of information and show exactly what you have contributed to your employer. Older roles can be shortened down and summarised to save space on your CV.
Recruiters look for numbers
Facts and figures are excellent indicators of value for recruiters because they give an idea of the scale of impact you have created. So recruiters love to see numbers on your CV that quantify the results you have achieved for yourself, employers and clients. When writing your CV, try to add some measurable achievements such as:
- Generated 150 unit sales in 3 months
- Resolved 95% of complaints in 24 hours
- Cut department spending by 15%
Recruiters are very cautious
Recruiters work hard to maintain good relationships with hiring managers and providing bad candidates can seriously damage those relationships. For this reason, recruiters are very careful about which CVs they recommend for positions. Things like gaps in employment and sloppy formatting can be enough to worry recruiters into leaving out of the shortlist. Don’t give recruiters any chance to doubt you; ensure that your CV looks professional and has no deal-breaking mistakes.
Originally published at: http://theundercoverrecruiter.com/recruiters-read-cv/
How to Make Your Own Luck at Networking Events
No matter how experienced you are professionally, networking events can be overwhelming. You’re thrown into a room with dozens and dozens of people you don’t know, and you have a limited of time to make an impression. While it’s tempting to stand in the corner and sip your drink nervously, here are some tips on making the most of your time at these types of professional events:
Head into the Event with a Goal in Mind
Do you want to talk to a specific person who you know will be there? Do you want to exchange cards with three people? Perhaps you want to talk with someone who has a management role in your field. Setting goals for yourself ahead of time makes it easier to track your success.
Don’t Bombard People with Requests
Networking events are a great way to get to know other professionals, but they’re not the time to start hounding people with requests. Get to know the other person and focus on building a relationship first. If you introduce yourself and immediately start inundating the individual with requests, you’ll position yourself as someone who’s just there to use others, even if this isn’t really the case.
Listen More Than You Talk
No one wants to get caught listening to someone give a monologue. To be a desirable conversation partner at a networking event, make it a point to ask questions about the other person. What do they like about their job? What are their hobbies? Do they have children? What brought them to the area? Offer up relevant details about yourself as they come up, but don’t spend the whole time going on and on about your own accomplishments.
Listen Closely
The best way to have a conversation with someone you just met is by listening carefully. When they provide an answer to a question, actually listen to what they’re saying and ask follow-up questions based on their response. When you sit there and pepper someone with questions without listening to what they’ve just told you, don’t be shocked when they start looking for a way to politely exit the discussion.
Keep in Contact After the Event
You can have dozens of productive conversations at the event, but if you fall off the face of the planet once you walk out the door then you’ve just wasted your time. In order to build a strong network, stay in touch afterwards. Connect on LinkedIn or Twitter, send an e-mail telling the person it was nice to meet them, and make it a point to meet up again at a later date.
Originally published at: http://blog.sparkhire.com/2016/01/10/how-to-make-your-own-luck-at-networking-events/
Where do you see yourself in five years? Avoiding interview cliches
“Where do you see yourself in five years time?” is one of the most infamous interview questions, yet it’s difficult to answer without resorting to dreaded cliches like “I just want to be doing something I enjoy”, or “I’m not really sure”.
Why are employers so keen on asking this? Probably because it’s one of those sneaky interview questions to which your answer can reveal much more than you might imagine: from whether you’ve got a solid career plan and know what you want to do, to how well you understand the position you’re applying for and how you define success.
For all these reasons, this question has a tendency of throwing interviewees into panic mode. Here are some pointers on what interviewers really want to hear:
Be ambitious, but realistic
Employers will always be attracted to ambitious candidates – after all, nobody wants an employee who feels apathetic about their job. That said, you need to be realistic in terms of how quickly you can rise through the ranks. For instance, if you say that you want to be leading a team of 20 within three years’ time, and this would only usually happen within a 10-year period in the company you’re talking to, you risk being perceived as a little arrogant and unprepared.
To avoid voicing wildly unrealistic aspirations, do your research. Search the company website and the LinkedIn profiles of current employees before your interview to look for any hints about how long members of staff have taken to progress.
Talk in terms of achievements and responsibilities
Another common mistake candidates make when answering this question is to talk about money or company perks. For example, “I want to be earning £50,000 or more, have a company car and a life-insurance policy.” In the vast majority of careers, perhaps with the exception of recruitment or sales, motivation to make large amounts of money or get company perks isn’t always going to be seen as an attractive quality. It will make an employer think you’re more interested in the things that come with the career they can offer, rather than the career itself.
Instead, your answer should focus on your professional development. Speak in terms of skills you’d like to acquire or ones you’d like to be using, qualifications you’d like to have completed or responsibilities you’d like to have.
Be specific, but flexible
Giving a vague answer to is another familiar faux pas. For example, “I’m not sure, five years is such a long time away. I could see myself working my way up in marketing, but I’m also interested in finance.”
Employers want to know that you know what you want. After all, hiring, training and developing people is an expensive business – if you’re going to leave in six months, your employer will have lost both time and money.
While you certainly shouldn’t lie about your plans, you can be less than candid if you’re considering several career options – only ever speak about your interest in the industry in which the company you’re interviewing with operates.
Although specific aspirations will be well received, rigidity in your ambitions won’t be, so choose your phrasing carefully. Rather than saying, “I need to have been promoted within a maximum of three years and I’ll be really disappointed if I’m not working with high profile clients in five years’ time”, you could say, “I’d like to have more responsibility in the next three to five years, ideally I’d be working on some of this company’s fantastic high profile accounts.” The first answer implies that if the company can’t fulfil your ambitions, you’ll be dissatisfied, while the second answer suggests a little more compliance on your part.
Talk about your professional, rather personal, ambitions
Unless an interviewer specifically asks you to comment on your personal ambitions, the safest option is to avoid mentioning them altogether. Saying that you want to be captain of your local tennis team, to have visited Japan or that you hope to be married with two children may not be well received. Employers want to hear about where you see your work self in five years’ time, anything else is irrelevant and can make you seem unprofessional and ill-prepared.
Emphasise the value you can bring to the organisation
While at first glance the five years question seems like it is probing your ambitions and wants, you should never miss an opportunity in an interview to subtly emphasise what you can do for your potential employer. It can be shrewd to end your answer with something like: “Overall I want to be making a marked difference to X of your company, helping to secure and add to its current reputation as a leader within Y and contributing to the company’s overall growth and success.”
Originally published at: https://jobs.theguardian.com/article/where-do-you-see-yourself-in-five-years-avoiding-interview-cliches/
5 Silent Habits That Are Affecting Your Success
If you don’t believe in yourself, why should anyone else?
You’ve no doubt heard motivational messages like this one before, maybe from your manager; perhaps a parent. When you’re clearly in need of some kind of motivational boost and someone rattles off a line like this, it’s easy to shrug it off as a corny, slightly patronising gesture. Thanks, but no thanks!
The thing is, we do need to believe in ourselves if we want others to. We are our own harshest critics; the first to call ourselves stupid or beat ourselves up about missing an opportunity. We put immense pressure on ourselves to achieve the unachievable, and when we don’t; stress about how we could have done things better. These thought patterns are poisonous and slowly sabotage our chances at success. As much as we’d hate to admit it, often we are actually to blame for bringing ourselves down.
The good news is it’s never too late to pep ourselves back up. Sometimes all it takes is a little self-reflection and resistance. If you want to start achieving great things, these are the toxic habits you’ll need to break first:
1. Comparing yourself to others
If you look around your office or scroll through your Facebook news feed, it’s easy to convince yourself everyone’s more successful than you. When you start to feel like you’re lagging behind your peers, friends or family members, you need to stop right there. Everyone is leading totally unique lives, full of different challenges and successes. Nobody likes to broadcast their troubles; so you’re probably comparing your bloopers to their highlight reel anyway (as the saying goes). Stop focussing on everyone else, and start concentrating on reaching your own potential.
2. Taking too much on
Living life on the verge of a major panic attack from being overworked is incredibly unhealthy; both physically and mentally. Stop saying ‘yes’ to everything, and learn how to say ‘no’. Taking on an unrealistic workload and over-committing yourself will leave you feeling exhausted all the time, and will strip the enjoyment out of everything you do. You’ll start resenting everything that eats into your precious energy stores and things you used to enjoy will likely become burdens. Recognising your tendency to burn yourself out is the first step in breaking this habit. Stop letting guilt pressure you into spreading yourself thin.
3. Failing to switch off
Mastering the art of relaxing outside of work hours is difficult to do, but imperative to your success. If you want to start each day feeling refreshed and motivated, you need to learn how to switch off when you leave the office. Stop checking your work emails at 10:30pm before you go to bed; stop taking client calls at dinner time. Remember, you work to live; not the other way around. The sooner you prioritise ‘switching off’ when you’re not on duty, the sooner you’ll start to feel your energy levels and drive at work increase.
4. Holding onto your mistakes
Everyone makes mistakes; no one is perfect. Holding onto past slip-ups and misfortunes will only prevent you from moving forward. If you keep referencing your failures and obsessing over how and why you let it happen, you’ll only feel lower about yourself and hold yourself back form accepting new challenges, for fear of failing.
5. Making self-deprecating comments
This one’s not really a silent habit, as it involves talking, but the quiet mental fallout that occurs after you’ve brought yourself down is where the real damage manifests. Stop selling yourself short and making jokes at your own expense. A cheap laugh like this will cut into your confidence. The moment you start taking yourself seriously and supporting your own goals is the moment others will follow suit.
Originally published here: http://theundercoverrecruiter.com/silent-habits-sabotaging-success/