For you, the only thing you want is to get a job. For the hiring manager, making the hire is a priority competing with many others at the same time. So what is going on in the hiring manager’s mind? Most hiring managers take no pleasure in the hiring process. It’s just one more thing they have to take care of, and they often feel insecure in making that final decision, since some of their previous hires proved disappointing.
A hiring manager also knows that making a hiring mistake could potentially ruin his reputation and credibility. While reviewing resumes he is asking himself three questions: Why should he interview you? What can you do for him? And if hired, would you be effective in filling the job duties?
Now, provided that you get invited for an interview, the hiring manager has three more qualifying questions to answer before deciding to hire you: (1) Are you particularly good at what he needs done? He is not hiring just average people. This is your opportunity to recite your accomplishments eloquently and succinctly. Do not repeat what you said in the past. Highlight only your accomplishments and the results. (2) Do you fit into his organization? This is the primary area in which you have to be convincing. You may have all the qualifications, but if the hiring manager cannot see you as part of his organization, then nothing will help you. (3) Are you committed? The hiring manager sees in you an investment—hopefully, a long-term investment. And he wants to make sure it’s a good one. He also wants to make sure you are promotable and have the potential to grow within the organization.
As you can see, the hiring process is complex for both the hiring manager and the candidate. Both sides will share in the potential rewards as well as the associated risks. The question for the candidate remains: how to increase chances of getting hired by outshining the competition? The theoretical answer is to network to the max, because statistics have proved that 60 to 80% of people found their jobs via networking. The practical answer is to mock-practice your interviewing skills. You can do that with friends or your spouse or—best of all—with a qualified career coach. The reason that interviewing skills are vital to acquire is simply that hiring managers make their decisions based on how well you interview and not on your job skills.
Alex Freund is the founder of Landing Expert–Career Coaching. His Web site includes a current and comprehensive list of job search networking groups in New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Connecticut, and the city of New York, and the site is visited by thousands of people every month. Landing Expert is a premier career-coaching service with the objective of preparing job seekers for interviews. Alex’s clients are gaining knowledge, receiving marketing material, and acquiring the know-how to beat the competition.
Alex can be reached at:
609-333-8866
We may not recognize or admit it, but each of us is driven by our own personal psychology–and so is the interviewer. Therefore, the better we understand the decision maker the better we can answer his questions thus improving the chances for getting the job. This sounds logical doesn’t it? So let’s talk about the types of interviewers one may face.
There are a number of systems that are used to label people; DISC is one of them and there are others as well. While working for a major pharmaceutical company, I was introduced to another system, called MBS, Management By Strengths (www.strengths.com). MBS is very simple to use and could prove extremely helpful. As a job candidate, if you can quickly identify what type of person the interviewer is and adapt to his style and needs, you’ve already achieved at least 50 percent success.
MBS recognizes four types of people, and to make the system memorable, the people are identified by colors as follows.
- RED stands for directness. Red types focus on the result, on being in control, and on solving problems. They have strong egos and are hard-driving and decisive. Most of the time reds are calm, but occasionally they erupt like volcanoes, letting you have it. And then everything goes back to normal. Being interviewed by a red requires that you be direct and to the point. Red will want you to explain WHAT. Focus on results, and talk about actions.
- GREEN stands for extroversion. Here the focus is on people. Green types are outgoing, cheerful, mostly positive, enthusiastic, and pleasant. They like teamwork–working with people. Greens are talkative: Have you had an interview where the interviewer did the lion’s share of the talking? How frustrating! During an interview with a green, you should show enthusiasm, be interactive, and explain WHO. Elaborate on your involvement with teams, act friendly, and be open.
- BLUE stands for pace. Blue types value timing, harmony, and cooperation. They seem cool under pressure. They hate being rushed and are therefore excellent planners. Schedules and deadlines are very important to blues. They seem relaxed and easygoing. When interviewing with a blue, show that you’re calm and in control. Explain WHEN. Focus on timing and harmony. Show how you kept everything under control and on time.
- YELLOW stands for structure. Yellow types are constantly taking notes. They believe that if it’s in writing, then it’s a fact. In their lives, everything is filed away for future use. In their offices there are papers, files, books everywhere. Yellows are naturally good organizers. They love to be right and hate to be criticized. Therefore they gather all the facts and are very careful and slow in making decisions. Yellows don’t take change well. They appreciate knowing the rules, expectations, and instructions. When interviewing with a yellow, explain WHY. Be as detailed as possible. Focus on doing the right things. Talk about documented facts. Act organized and specific.
So, now that you know the basics about these four types of people, your job is to quickly decide what color your interviewer is. If you’re able to align with the interviewer’s traits, your chances for a successful interview are immensely increased.
Alex Freund is the founder of Landing Expert–Career Coaching. His Web site includes a current and comprehensive list of job search networking groups in New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Connecticut, and the city of New York, and the site is visited by thousands of people every month. Landing Expert is a premier career-coaching service with the objective of preparing job seekers for interviews. Alex’s clients are gaining knowledge, receiving marketing material, and acquiring the know-how to beat the competition.
Alex can be reached at:
609-333-8866
We all know how important it is to ensure the final résumé product is perfect. This is one area that cannot afford to be overlooked. Oftentimes, you review the document so many times it starts to blur and you can miss something glaring. Having someone else check your résumé and cover for you is a great way to make sure everything is perfect. Before you do that though, here is a checklist for you to follow on your own:
Spelling and Grammar: Perhaps the most egregious mistakes are made in these two areas. The following is some guidelines to make sure you are delivering a error free document:
- Use a dictionary / thesaurus when you write. If you are not certain of how something is spelled, look it up. I also recommend getting a copy of the Little Blue Book of Grammar.
- Be careful of tenses on your résumé. Your current experience should be in the present tense. If you are using a combination paragraph / bullet format the paragraph portion of the current role should be in the present tense; make all of your bullets in the past tense.
- Be sure to capitalize all proper nouns.
- Make sure you write numbers and dates in a consistent manner. Numbers one through nine should be spelled out. 10 and above should be written in numeric format.
- If you start a bullet with a number, that number should be spelled out.
Punctuation: Punctuation is another area where people seem to make a lot of errors. All punctuation should be consistent throughout the document.
- Whether or not you choose to use periods at the ends of the bullets in the résumé is not the issue. The issue is that if you use them, they need to be present throughout the document. CONSISTENCY IS KING.
- When writing quotes the punctuation goes inside the quote – not outside.
Consistency: Whatever you decide to do on your résumé you must present it in a consistent format.
- If you bold a title, all of the job titles should be in bold. If you write a date in the following manner: November 2007-December 2009, all dates should be written the same way.
- Make sure that the spacing of your document is the same throughout. Font size and style should also be the same to avoid the résumé looking scattered and disorganized.
- When using acronyms, first spell out the words and put the acronym in (parentheses). You can then use the acronym going forward.
Design and Layout: If you think that the design and layout of your document is not that important – you are wrong.
- Do not use a tiny font that people cannot read except with a magnifying glass.
- If you have enough compelling and relevant content to fill two pages, go for it. There is no law on the books dictating how long your résumé should be. My old college professor said a written document should be like a bikini – long enough to cover the topic, but short enough to remain interesting.
- Do not over use italics, underline, bold or other features that will make your résumé distracting.
- Put your name, phone, email and address at the top of the page. On page two your name, phone and email should appear. If the two pages are separated, the reader will know that the second page is yours.
- For physical copies you should use a high quality linen or bond paper in cream or white. The cover and résumé should be printed on the same paper.
Debra Wheatman, CPRW, CPCC is the founder and Chief Career Strategist of CareersDoneWrite, a premier career services provider focused on developing highly personalized career roadmaps for senior leaders and executives across all verticals and industries.
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DWheatman@ResumesDoneWrite.com
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Eighty percent of all submitted résumés (and 100 percent of résumés sent to Fortune 1000 companies) get scanned by software commonly known as an applicant-tracking system (ATS), and such scanned résumés are stored on a server in a digitized format. Humans are seeing your résumé only if it resurfaces based on a query. That’s why most job applicants don’t receive responses from companies after submitting résumés. Therefore, in order to increase your résumé’s chances of being at least viewed by a human–even if it’s not thereafter considered suitable–you have to understand the process and beat them at their own game.
Human resources departments that use ATSs base their queries on keywords they lift from job descriptions or receive verbally from hiring managers. Based on that information, the ATS extracts appropriate résumés from the ones on file. The human resources employee’s query may result in just a few résumés or a vast number. The ATS also scores those résumés and sorts and prioritizes them. Then the employee reviews, say, 20 and submits 5 to be interviewed.
Your job is to ensure that you embed sufficient keywords in your résumé. So, what’s the best way to find those magical keywords? It’s a simple, albeit somewhat tedious, exercise.
1. Search the Internet via job boards such as Monster and The Ladders.com to find 5 to 20 job descriptions of jobs advertised in the field you’re interested in.
2. Cut and paste all of the descriptions one after another into a new Word document.
3. Review the document, resetting in boldface what you consider the keywords throughout.
4. Delete everything except the boldface words.
5. Alphabetize the words, and delete duplicates.
6. Copy your résumé into a new Word document, and repeat steps 3, 4, and 5 on that copy.
The two resulting lists will display which keywords from the descriptions are missing from your résumé. And now comes the creative part: you incorporate the missing keywords into your résumé so it seems seamless and a perfect match for the context in which the words are mentioned in the job descriptions.
By doing this admittedly laborious task, you increase manyfold your chances of being picked out from the crowd.
Alex Freund is the founder of Landing Expert–Career Coaching. His Web site includes a current and comprehensive list of job search networking groups in New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Connecticut, and the city of New York, and the site is visited by thousands of people every month. Landing Expert is a premier career-coaching service with the objective of preparing job seekers for interviews. Alex’s clients are gaining knowledge, receiving marketing material, and acquiring the know-how to beat the competition.
Alex can be reached at:
609-333-8866
The formula expressed in the title sounds so simple yet for some is difficult to achieve. So let’s together demystify the two elements for getting a job offer.
The Résumé
Because of the enormously large pool of job applicants nowadays, even a very good résumé may not get singled out when compared with the many outstanding résumés. It’s a competition for sure, and only, say, five résumés might be considered for invitations to face-to-face interviews. So, how does one put together an excellent résumé? That depends: if you have good writing skills, you can draft a résumé and then have some people whose proficiency and judgment you trust review and edit it for you until it becomes excellent. Consult career coaches, human resources professionals, or recruiters. Hopefully, you’ve developed good relationships with such people, who will agree to help by expressing their opinions.
If you are not skilled with language, I suggest you seek a professional résumé writer who has performed work for others and brought them success. This is a good investment, since otherwise, you’re merely spreading around a noncompetitive résumé that brings no action–and you will never find out why. Many people fall into that trap, and they therefore lose time and of course the opportunity to make money. So, how does one know whether one’s résumé is excellent? The answer is very simple: Excellent résumés get action. The rest don’t–or do only very rarely.
The Interview
Congratulations! Your résumé was attractive and intriguing enough to persuade a hiring manager to want a conversation with you in order to explore your candidacy for an opening, competitively with a few others. Now the real competition starts. All of those who have been invited to interview stood out too and could potentially take the job, meaning that they have the skills for it. But the hiring manager has another need to satisfy–and that is whether you fit and will be committed to the company. Ascertaining whether you fit is very much psychological on the part of the hiring manager, who is asking himself whether your future peers would accept you, whether you and he are aligned ideologically, whether his own boss would consider you a good hire, and whether you represent a promising investment. And there are other, similar questions, whose answers can be rather subjective.
The hiring manager’s final area of vital interest has to do with whether you seem committed to the job. He wants to ensure (1) that you have potential for growth within the company, (2) that you won’t move to a competitor if the company goes through some difficult times and someone else is offering you a fraction more compensation, and (3) that you deliberately targeted this company as an employer.
If you can convince the hiring manager that you’re the right choice, if you answer questions properly, and if you project positivity and energy, your chances for getting an offer are good. Good luck on your next job. Feel good about yourself. You deserve it.
Alex Freund is the founder of Landing Expert–Career Coaching. His Web site includes a current and comprehensive list of job search networking groups in New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Connecticut, and the city of New York, and the site is visited by thousands of people every month. Landing Expert is a premier career-coaching service with the objective of preparing job seekers for interviews. Alex’s clients are gaining knowledge, receiving marketing material, and acquiring the know-how to beat the competition.
Alex can be reached at:
609-333-8866
