Dont Be the Fruitcake of the Interview this Holiday Season

Don’t Be the Fruitcake of the Interview this Holiday Season The holidays are a fantastic time to revitalize your career search. As the year comes to a close, businesses are evaluating what their needs are, and with a surplus of charitable events and parties being hosted prospective applicants have new opportunities to network with their dream employers. When attending these festive functions and getting to meet the president or manager of X, Y, Z business, be careful not to be the fruitcake of this informal interview. The definition of a Fruitcake is a cake made with chopped candied fruit and/or dried fruit, nuts, and spices; sometimes soaked in spirits. The cultural understanding of a fruitcake, though, is a very different dessert. Johnny Carson, one time popular host of The Tonight Show, originated the joke that “there really is only one fruitcake in the world, passed from family to family,” due to its unsavoriness. Don’t fall into the career trap of being passed along by your potential employers by attending to these simple lessons learned from America’s most disdained dessert. 1) Don’t be cut from the same cloth be original and interesting: The number one problem with being given a fruitcake as a gift is the communicated lack of thought behind the action. It’s been a holiday tradition for over a century and now it is a cliché as dry as the cake itself. As a prospective employee don’t waste the opportunity to make an impression on your employer by being generic. How many times have you heard someone in an interview listing such skills as “team player”, “self starter”, or “multitasker”? These words are stale and fail to express the passion and expertise you can bring to a company. Success is taking a traditional idea or common practice and improving upon it, showing it in a new light. How about fruitcake mini-muffins? How about telling your prospective employer that instead of simply being a “team player” you are cognizant of the value of collaboration to build creativity and enforce positive office culture, then back it up with an example from your experiences. 2) Dress to impress the party: This advice feels like it should go without saying, but 53% of employers polled by CareerBuilder during the holiday season in 2013, said that job applicants failed to dress appropriately for the interview. That means that more than half of all applicants are showing up to interviews, even informal interviews like a professional party, covered in the fruitcake crumbs. Your appearance is your first message to the world that reveals time management skills, attention to detail, maturity, and responsibility. Humans are visually-fixated creatures, if your appearance is in disarray your employer is going to be distracted and may even be embarrassed to be seen speaking with you. Cue the fruitcake pass along. 3) Know your audience and atmosphere: If your dream is to work for a modern and innovative company like Apple, your potential employer is going to expect you to know everything possible about Apple’s history, products, brand, and corporate executives. When discussing your experiences, make reference to specifics about the company that are in line with your goals and knowledge. For example, Apple projects are all peer-vetted, meaning that their employees present every assignment they are working on to their coworkers for critique before moving forward.  As the prospective employee, knowing this would give you a tip off to emphasize a group pioneering mentality, rather than marking yourself as strictly a soloist. Every company is going to have at least a handful of culture identifiers you should be able to research online, and this will prepare you for the moment when its your turn during the interview to begin asking questions. Without having done your research first you will inevitably put your foot in your mouth, lik e giving a big slice of fruitcake to that potential employer who’s allergic to nuts… Happy holiday hunting to all; may your efforts be fruitful (just not fruitcake)! Author: John Giaimo is President of Software Resources, Inc. an IT Staffing Solutions firm. Founded in 1992, Software Resources is a privately held women-owned business enterprise (WBE).  

The Experts Guide to Influence and Persuasion

The Experts Guide to Influence and Persuasion How do you define marketing?  The dictionary says its: the action or business of promoting and selling products or services, including market research and advertising. A successful marketer goes beyond that; influencing, persuading and gently nudging people  to digest something  in a certain way. Let me introduce you to Dr. Robert Cialdini (if you havent already heard of him). He is the author of  Influence,  which focusses on what to put inside a message to move people in our direction. He also authored a follow-up book called Pre-Suasion, which is about the process of arranging your audience to be sympathetic to your message before they encounter it.  To help me learn the science behind it, I caught up with him to discuss his incredible insights on the power of persuasion and influence. Read on for a summary of our interview and make sure you subscribe to the Employer Branding Podcast. First of all, what are privileged moments? Privileged moments are the moments that we create immediately before we present an idea or proposal or recommendation so that people are attuned to that idea, recommendation, or proposal before they ever encounter it. And we do that by creating a mindset in them that is consistent with the goal of our message. How can marketers take full advantage of these? Here was a study that I like to talk about. It was done by some marketing researchers who walked up to individuals and asked them to participate in a marketing survey for no compensation, only 29% of them agreed to participate under those circumstances. But if the researcher first asked a pre-suasive question, Do you consider yourself a helpful person?, people thought for a moment and almost all of them said yes. Then the research said, Well, could you help us with our marketing survey? And now 77% agreed. So you can go from 29% to 77% assent, right? By changing the state of mind that people were in before you asked the question. Put them in mind of their helpfulness and they want to be helpful as a consequence, they want to be consistent with that view of themselves that youve now raised to consciousness. Should your USP be the first thing to read when people visit  your website? It should be.  Because weve just detailed in that clouds or coins study that that then channels their attention in a way subsequent that allows the rest of the site, right? To present its strongest elements. So you can focus people on a particular idea that may be your strength. Is your strength comfort? Is your strength cost? You can focus people on that material in a way that will make them recognize and process that information more quickly more deeply. Why would  online photographs of fluffy clouds help to sell furniture? This has to do with the way that weve moved recently into digital marketing, e-commerce, and so on. Of course someone who wants to use a pre-suasive moment to move people in a direction of their yet to be delivered message, right? Should recognize that the first thing a visitor sees to a website is the landing page, and probably the background images on that landing page. There was a study done in which an online furniture store sent half of its visitors, just as a test, to a landing page with the background wallpaper depicting fluffy clouds. They sent the other half to a landing page with background wallpaper depicting coins, money.  Those who saw the fluffy clouds in the background then rated comfort as the most important feature in selecting a piece of furniture, a sofa for example, right? They then searched the site for comfort-related features and ultimately preferred to purchase comfortable furniture. Those who were sent to the landing site with coins rated price as the most important feature, searched for cost-related aspects of the furniture, and preferred to purchase inexpensive furniture. So what occurred first before they were ever even introduced to the material and the details of the offerings themselves was that people were put in a mindset either for comfort or for cost that directed them subsequently into the material, caused them to search in a biased way through it, and become more inclined toward that initial concept that was installed in their mind pre-suasively at the very beginning of their contact with the site. Now theres one other thing thats interesting about that. No one recognized that they were influenced by the coins or the clouds. They said, Of course not, I decide based on my own preferences. Why can our perception of whats important be so easily shifted? So let me just say generally what this process is suggesting is if a communicator shifts a persons attention to a particular factor, that person sees that factor as more important than before because they are paying attention to it. Heres the logic. Normally what we do is to direct our attention to the most important factors, the most important features in our environment. Thats what we typically do. So when we see ourselves paying attention to a factor, we assume that it must warrant that attention, it must deserve that attention. Because normally when we attend to something, its to an important feature. We make the mistake of assuming that thats always the case. Because the communicator can send us to a particular factor and focus our attention there for reasons that have nothing to do with the merits of that thing. They can do it by illuminating some aspect of that factor that draws our attention. Distinctive colors, for example, will do that. Placement on a shelf can do that. Theres a study that shows that if you walk into a supermarket and there are three brands arrayed on the shelf, you will pay attention to the one in the center, and as a consequence be more likely to purchase the brand thats in the center. Thats why brands spend so much money to secure particular shelf space in supermarkets. They know that particular placement directs attention, and attention implies importance, and people then buy in a way thats congruent with the perceived importance of that brand. Can job hunters use pre-suasive techniques? Yeah. Well, when we go into a job interview, frequently theres an evaluator sitting across the table. Sometimes its a small team of evaluators, a panel. And we typically are trained to say, Well, thank you for bringing me here today, I want to answer all of your questions. Im going to recommend that before we launch into the interview we say one more thing, But Im curious, why did you invite me here today? What was it about my candidacy that attracted you to my application? And what you will find is they will then put themselves in a mindset of describing your strengths, what were the reasons that you were brought in, that your candidacy was seen to be attractive to this organization. Now when they go through the interview it will be with that mindset. I have an acquaintance who claims hes gotten three straight better jobs using that tactic. This applies to  sales meetings, too, where youre in competition with rivals and theyre coming in making presentations. You should ask ahead of time, Why did you select us to come in today? Follow Robert on Twitter @robertcialdini  make sure you subscribe to the Employer Branding Podcast.

The truth about good listening skills

The truth about good listening skills Powerful people do not have good listening skills. They hate to listen. They succeed by getting good at faking it. Heres how I know. There are sixteen Myers Briggs personality types. Only 4% of people are ENTJs, but almost all Fortune 500 CEOs are ENTJs. Each type has an Achilles heel. The ESFP  cant stand being alone. The INTP cant get their head out of the clouds. The ENTJ cant listen. Which means that listening skills must not be essential for major success in the corporate world. So maybe instead of building your listening skills, you should buy the book How to Talk so People Listen. If youre an extrovert, you think while youre talking. And its impossible to listen to someone if you are thinking of the next thing you want to say. As an ENTJ I get bored with the idea of becoming a better listener. Why would I do that when interrupting people is so much faster? And anyway, there is great advice on how to deal with the people who wont listen. Forbes magazine says that if you want people to listen to you, you should  cut to the chase. Thats great advice. If you could just get your idea out faster, I would listen to it. Ask Men has some advice on how to practice listening. We talk about practice a lot in my house because learning an instrument is about practicing an instrument.  You play like you practice. Even baseball stars like A-Rod. It doesnt matter if youre gifted if you dont have good practice skills because you wont be able to leverage your gifts. This seems true enough that I am sure I cant handle this level of conscious practice for good listening. So instead Im going to have to become the maven of the world of bad listeners. It is no coincidence that I married someone who is an ISTP, which is the personality type that speaks the fewest words each day. At first I found that frustrating, because how could I know if he is being persuaded by all my great ideas if he is always silent while Im talking? I realized, though, that he is great at figuring out whats going on by way of silence. I have tried silence, by the way. Ive started gardening. At first it was just some garden beds around the house. Then it was lots of garden beds. With a bulldozer. Then, when it got cold, I planted some bulbs, and then I planted about 500 bulbs a day. For months. I ordered bulbs online, in wholesale quantities, every other day so I always had some to plant. And when I was shopping locally, buying 500 more bulbs because I was scared Id run out,  someone said to me, Wow. Youll have an amazing garden next year.   I smiled and thought: If she only knew As it got cold, in the snow, the dirt was still soft. You can plant until the dirt freezes. Global warming is on my side. As the days got shorter  I planted bulbs in the dark until the night I was tearing apart grass to make my bed wider and I accidentally tore apart the carcass of a dead rabbit. I threw out my clothes and kept planting, but only in daylight after that. I started to worry that my artistry was gone. After all, its hard to not dig up bulbs when you are planting 15,000 bulbs. Which is about how many I have planted. In layers: early spring, mid spring, late spring. I told the Farmer I planted too many bulbs and people will think I have no talent for garden design. I told him that if it looks stupid and unplanned then I will tell people its a pick-your-own bouquet farm and Ill let the kids run it as a business in the spring. The Farmer said, This is not a garden; this is a monument to maintaining sanity. I was so surprised by his insight, but hes right. We never talked about it, I never even told him what I was doing day to day. But he sees that Im planting bulbs for some other reason than the spring fireworks. Its beyond that. Something else is driving me. We didnt need to talk. Which I guess is good because he doesnt really talk. I did a webinar last week where I taught people how to write about themselves, and then the last night the Farmer fielded live questions from the chat room about what its like to have someone write about you on a blog. I was nervous about the night he did the webinar with me. I was completely in control the other nights. Its my sweet spot, because we are sort of having a conversation because the chat room is always full of people saying stuff that I respond to. But also, people cant really talk to me because I really am lecturing, and I really just like to hear myself talk. Because its how I think. And we all need thinking time, right? So I worried that if the Farmer is taking the questions, then how will I control the conversation? My first line of attack was quizzing him. What would you say, I asked him, if someone said, doesnt it bother you that you are the Farmer instead of a real name? Thats so disrepectful. I actually get a reprimanding email once a month saying that. Which I do not listen to, of course, because Im a bad listener. So he said, Its fine that she calls me the Farmer but I cant believe it took her three years to use a capital F. The Ex got a capital right away. That was a good answer. I relaxed. Until the night it was scheduled. But you know what happened? I listened. He was so sweet and earnest and even when someone asked him What are the benefits of having someone blog about your relationship? He said None. There are no benefits. But I still kept quiet and listened. And heres what I discovered: its very intimate to listen to someone. Its intimate to calm down your head from ideas and just receive their ideas. You have to be really in tune with that person to keep your mind from going somewhere else. And its so intimate to wait to hear what the person says next. People were shocked to hear me so quiet. Me too. Because I wasnt thinking. I was listening. I was feeling what it feels like to have the Farmer reveal all our secrets. Thats usually my job. But this time I listened and it was like we were having date night. Live. I loved hearing what hes thinking, and I dont think hed have bothered talking if I hadnt shut up. Thats why intimacy requires listening. And thats why its so hard.

Top 3 Hiring Mistakes to Avoid

Top 3 Hiring Mistakes to Avoid As a recruiter, I speak so often to candidates about the importance of being clear about their personal brand statement. It is critical to know your strengths, the sweet spot of your skillset, and how to explain your background to a potential employer. Without this clarity, you may be overlooked in the screening process. I am also seeing companies that are not clear on what they want. Thousands of jobs are going unfilled and hiring processes are going on for so long that companies are losing perfect candidates simply due to a lack of clarity around what they want and need. Clearly, hiring managers want to ensure that they are thorough and hiring the right person. But the answer is not a job description that reads like an engine part specs sheetâ€" packed with a litany of skills, obtuse requirements like “hit the ground running”, and culminating with a subpar salary. Rather than continue with an approach that keeps employers with vacant positions and qualified candidates out of work, here are three hiring mistakes we’re seeing and our suggestions for rectifying them: 1) Overwhelming and unrealistic job description: At our creative staffing firm we require our account managers to collect in-depth, detailed job descriptions. At first, there can be pushback, especially if there is already a formal job description in place. The first mistake is to take the “everything but the kitchen sink” job description at face value and not ask questions. Our job is to decipher, analyze, and probe deeper to uncover the most important aspects of the job the better job order we can take, the better candidate we can provide. Hiring managers need to think about what they cannot live without. Those are the requirements that should be the first bullets of a job spec. It should describe a day in the life of what this person would be doing. It should consider where the ideal candidate comes from. It should include a salary range and “nice to haves.” The clearer and more honest you are in the description, the more likely you will be to attract the best candidate, whether it is on your own or through an agency like ours. 2) The never-ending interview process: I recently heard of a candidate going in for a seven-hour interview. Seven. Hours. In the end, she did not get the job and what an absolute waste of time for both parties. If you bring the village to meet a potential candidate, you are making a big mistake. Limiting the interview process to two to four people should be plenty. I had a creative director tell me he interviewed at a company where the interview process went on for three months. During this time, he interviewed at another company where the interview process was a couple of weeks. Both companies offered him a job, and the one with the drawn-out process offered nearly 30K more. Ultimately, he chose the lesser-paying role at the company where the process moved quickly. He said he was so turned off by the decision-making of the slower moving firm and how they treated him along the way, that he felt like this was a precursor to how they did business in general. A candidate’s time is just as valuable as the client looking to hire. It doesn’t matter if you are hiring an 80K copywriter or a 200k VP of Creative. A company’s hiring process can affect their brand and street cred with other executives and recruiters. 3) Not taking a risk: In this post-recession climate, we’re finding that many companies simply refuse to pull the trigger and make a hire, blaming the “shortage of good talent” and “poor candidate pool” for their inability to fill an open requirement. Some would rather continue to burden existing staff versus hire someone who has 90% of what they are looking for. The remedy for this is for employers to move beyond a recession mentality. Keeping staff flat and never taking the plunge with a new hire might sustain your business, but it certainly won’t help it grow. Conclusions: By all indications, we are seeing the signs of economic recovery, and employers ready to hire would be wise to become more realistic in their approach and expectations. A longer description won’t produce a miracle and a six-month interview process won’t uncover a superhero. However, clear, concise job descriptions, an efficient interview process, and realistic expectations of the job market will put you in the best position to uncover the person you need. Author: Joyce Bethoney is the Director of Recruiting for Communications Collaborative, the marketing and creative staffing division of  pileandcompany.com.

Havent found the right grad scheme Consider a gap year after graduation

Haven’t found the right grad scheme Consider a gap year after graduation When everyone around you is frantically applying for top graduate schemes in banking or consulting, it is very easy to also get carried away and do the same. It can give you a distorted perception that the corporate world is your only option, when there is actually a wealth of things you can do and not everyone has to follow the same path. Why not consider a gap year? When it is taken after university, there tends to be a stigma attached to it. This is because gap years are often associated with a break between secondary school and higher education to either work part-time, volunteer, or travel. Gap years are, nevertheless, essentially a period of time spent doing something that you don’t plan on doing forever. Perhaps its for personal fulfillment or maybe its just to take a breather (and there is absolutely nothing wrong with that). They end up giving you a lot of transferable skills as well as the much needed time to think carefully about what you want to do in the future. Transferable Skills Priyanka Kumar, a PPE graduate from the University of Warwick, although not taking a gap year in the conventional sense, is pursuing a role that she only intends to do for a year or two before switching to a different career path.   She will be undertaking the Japan Exchange and Teaching Program (the JET Program), a Japanese government initiative that brings together university graduates to Japan as assistant English language teachers and cultural ambassadors. “I don’t plan on being a teacher forever- although it’s hard to say, as I haven’t yet taught”, Priyanka tells me. “I was, however, attracted to this program because I really wanted a career with an international focus moving abroad, learning a new language, and getting to promote internationalisation at the grassroots levels”. She continues that the JET program, due to the exposure one will get from taking it, is a great precursor to life as a diplomat. Even if one doesn’t end up in the foreign service, these language and intercultural skills can be very transferable and used to, say, work for a Japanese firm in the UK in the future. Similar programs include: British Council Generation UK- China Scholarship   International Citizen Service   AISEC   Keeping your options open While Priyanka secured her role before graduation and will start almost immediately after, she reassures that it is perfectly okay to take your time to find something that’s right for you. It may be tempting to apply to the high-paying graduate schemes but if your heart is not really in it then you are not going to be happy.   Bushra Kherallah, a Politics with International Studies graduate from the University of Warwick, likewise said that she applied to a few graduate schemes but was not really sure if she wanted one. “Now that Ive decided to take a gap year, I see it as a great opportunity to think properly about what I want to do”, she tells me, “As this is a start of a new chapter in my life, I think it’s good to not rush into things” She says that her plan is to get a part time job for now, as its important to have financial stability while keeping options open. In the long run, she would like to go into secondary school teaching. Both Priyanka and Bushra prove that it’s not the end of the world if you don’t secure a conventional graduate scheme that will land you the ‘perfect job’ right after university. It is perfectly okay to think outside the box, do something unconventional, and see where things go. These experiences and roles you take may enrich you in ways you didn’t think it could. Connect with Debut on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn for more careers insights.

Whos Got Your Job - CareerAlley

Whos Got Your Job - CareerAlley We may receive compensation when you click on links to products from our partners. I look to the future because thats where Im going to spend the rest of my life. George Burns Somewhere out there your job is waiting, trust me. You just havent found it yet (but you will). It doesnt matter if youve just started the job hunt or if youve been looking for a long time. Most of job hunting is being in the right place at the right time, but you can create more action by ensuring as many people as possible know you are looking. While many jobs have been lost over the last few years, many have been created as well. There are hundreds of thousands of jobs out there. Sure, not every job is for you, but there is certainly at least one waiting for you. Todays post focuses on Job Search Boards. LinkUp.com Leveraging company career sites (which means you are going right to the source), LinkUp pulls jobs directly from company websites. The main page (when I checked) claims to pull jobs from over 20,500 company career sites. The main page is simple, just type in a keyword and location and it immediately returns quite a few jobs (direct from companies). Below the search button is an advanced search link which allows you to create additional filters. If you click search without criteria you will see a link that says browse. Click this and you will see a list of locations and categories. more Other Job Search Resources Exec2exec.com This site specializes in executive recruiting in the UK and Europe. Their main page has tabs at the top for Sectors, Profile, Candidates and News. There is a basic search box at the top of the page, followed by Sector Links and Location links. The right hand side of the page has featured jobs. Womensjoblist.com As you may have guessed from the name, this site specializes in jobs for women. There are tabs at the top of the main page for Jobs, Resumes, Career Advice and more. There is a simple search bar below the tabs, followed by job sections (jobs by category), featured jobs and featured employers. CGSociety.org Games, Graphics and Animation is the name of the game for this job site. There are tabs at the top for Jobs, Workshops and more. Left hand side of the page is a link for Find Jobs, or use the Quick Job Search on the right hand side of the page. You can register on the site, or check out the featured jobs towards the bottom of the page. Network and Systems Professionals Association (NaSPA) That is a mouthful, but a great place to search for a job is you are a network professional. The main page allows sign-on, or click one of the job search related links (Post a Resume, View Jobs, Job Alert, and Jobseeker account). The View Jobs link leads to a search engine where you can search by keyword and state. more Job Search Boards We are always eager to hear from our readers. Please feel free to contact us if you have any questions or suggestions regarding CareerAlley content. Good luck in your search,Joey Google+ Visit Joeys profile on Pinterest. Job Search job title, keywords, company, location jobs by What's next? Ready to take action? Choose the right tools to help you build your career. Looking for related topics? Find out how to identify and land your dream job. Subscribe and make meaningful progress on your career. It’s about time you focused on your career. Get Educated Contact Us Advertise Copyright 2020 CareerAlley. All Rights Reserved. Privacy Policy + Disclosure home popular resources subscribe search

Getting Resume Writing Services in Collierville

Getting Resume Writing Services in ColliervilleIf you are in need of a new job, then perhaps you may want to consider looking into getting professional resume writing services in Collierville, TN. This city is located in the state of Tennessee, and its primary business is a medical center that provides care for the patients from across the country. Therefore, it is a very popular destination for those who are in need of healthcare, and a large number of employers are choosing to have their potential employees to come to this town.However, this does not mean that all employment opportunities in Collierville are of the same standards. There are a large number of jobs that require a lot of preparation before being sent in for consideration. Since there are a number of areas where resume writing is necessary, you will want to consider the pros and cons before deciding upon which service to hire.One of the things you will want to do before even considering anything that is needed in the s pecific job is to get some personal experience. This means that you will want to take some time off, and in this case you will want to take some time off from the job. In other words, this will help you understand what will be expected of you and how long it will take to put together the proper documentation to be accepted.It also helps you to know what sort of person you are, and what sort of work will be required of you in the job. This will make you aware of the specific set of skills that are needed to help with your job duties. This is something that you will want to take the time to do before choosing a company to hire.The next thing you will want to do is to compare different companies to find the one that will work well for you. There are some things you will want to consider such as the cost of their services, the quality of their services, and the time they take to help you with your resume. These are all important things to consider, because of the fact that if you do not choose a company that is good to work with, it could be very difficult to find a new job when the time comes.You will also want to consider what services they offer, and these services can range from printing resumes to editing them, to everything in between. There are a number of different services you can choose from, and you will need to take a look at all of them before making a decision. Since you are in a certain job category, it is very important that you look into all of the different options that are available to you.After you have chosen a few companies, it is also important that you pay attention to the kind of feedback you receive from the company. This is very important, because the company you are working with may have a reputation for great service, but this is just not always the case. This is why it is important to make sure that you read through all of the reviews that are available, and to make sure that the feedback you get is positive.When you have decided on t he best company for your resume writing needs, it is time to sign up for services. Many people choose to wait a few weeks for a response before applying for a job in this city, but you will want to make sure that you apply immediately. If you have applied to one company and received a response after waiting several weeks, it could mean that you have missed out on a great opportunity, so you will want to make sure that you apply immediately.