How to Pitch Yourself and Improve Your Job Prospects

How to Pitch Yourself and Improve Your Job Prospects Jobs are in exceptionally high demand at the moment. Last year, eight jobs at a coffee shop in Nottingham attracted a staggering 1,700 applicants. Considering this, how can you make sure that your CV gets a look-in among all the other work-hungry applicants snapping at your heels? One of the biggest mistakes that job seekers make is that they fire off their CV to whichever job site or recruitment company they saw the position posted on, and just leave it at that. Sure, your application might be so great that you get the call anyway, but showing some initiative can really increase your chances. Here are three things you can do beyond the standard CV and cover letter to better pitch yourself for a job at the application stage. Discover the company Companies often don’t want to widely broadcast that they’re hiring, as it can upset competitive advantage. That’s why you often see job ads posted by recruitment agencies where the name of the company isn’t disclosed. Unfortunately for the applicant, this means the only information you have to work with is in the description, which makes it harder to write your cover letter. Luckily, the internet offers a quick and easy investigation tool for you to discover the company name, and even your would-be manager. Job descriptions are usually copied across all sites where the job is advertised often including the company’s own careers page. Simply copy a section of the description and paste it into Google, and go through the results until you find the company. If you can’t find the careers page, look through the other job postings, as the company name might be included in other places. Once you’ve discovered the name, you can research the company and tailor your application. You can also find out exactly who will be responsible for hiring you, and apply directly to them. Apply to people By: Emporia State University If you’re applying through a job site or recruiter, this adds another pair of eyes to get past before the person responsible for hiring you even gets handed your CV. This is not an ideal situation and you’ll stand a much better chance if you cut out the middle man. If you know the name of the company, apply straight to them. In fact, apply straight to the HR department, or find out who your line manager would be and apply to them. Don’t settle for a generic “careers@company.com” address that’s a surefire way to go unnoticed. LinkedIn and Twitter are excellent tools for finding this information. On LinkedIn you can search for employees of a certain company using the advanced search feature. If you only have a free account, you might not be able to see surnames, but you can find this out by Googling their first name, second initial and company name, as the full profile names appear on Google search results. Management will often engage with their company’s Twitter, so if you can’t find out the information you need on LinkedIn, just take a look at the company’s Twitter feed. People will often put their job titles in their Twitter bios. Once you have a name, you can use any number of free email verification tools to guess the email address. Most companies use a predictable format for email addresses. Try: firstname@comany.com firstname.surname@company.com firstinitialsurname@company.com firstnamesecondinitial@company.com firstinitial.surname@company.com Of course, once you have a name, you could always just call the company up and find out email addresses this way. Engage! Twitter is a great place to engage with the people you hope to work with. If you start a conversation with them, they’re much more likely to pay attention to your application. You can even use it to casually send over work that might compliment your application, such as projects you’ve worked on, or your portfolio. This shows that you’re really interested in the position and that you’ve gone the extra mile to get noticed. After you’ve sent your application, try kicking things off by sending a Tweet like this: Hi @employer sent off my CV today for the @company ‘x position’. Would love to work with you think I’m a great fit. Hope to hear back. If you are going to to do this, you should make sure that your profile is “safe for work”. Make sure you have a well-presented profile picture and that your recent Tweets are all above board. You could even be tactical about it and tweet around topics relating to the position you’re applying for in the days before your application. Hopefully, the employer will see the tweet you sent them after applying, will look through your Twitter profile, and be impressed. Author: Nick Chowdrey is a business writer specialising in finance, technology and marketing. He is currently staff writer at Crunch, a UK top-100 accounting firm.

The Art Of Interviewing Finding The Perfect New Hire

The Art Of Interviewing Finding The Perfect New Hire How on earth do you conduct an interview?! This is a common question for many career girls faced with finding their companys next perfect new hire. Becoming adept at interviewing and hiring new employees is not a process you become an expert at overnight. It is much more a process of trial and error, an art that you learn over time. As you interview and hire new employees along the course of your career, your interviewing style will evolve along with your professional identity. Like anything else, the more practice you get with interviewing, the better you will become. Hiring a new employee is a fine balance of asking the right questions, listening to your intuition, and practiced analytical skill. Here’s how you do it: Here’s how you do it: 1. Picking out candidates to interview: Interview as many people as possible that you feel may fit the role after the initial resume look-over. The more people you interview, the more confident you will be in your final decision. Also, this way you have multiple options to go back to if your first choice in hire does not pan out. More data points to draw from in finding a good fit is always better! This article on How to Interview and Hire Top People Each and Every Time is a great resource on the importance of the selection process. 2. Flow of interview: Begin by going over their resume. Clarify the reason behind any gaps in their employment history. If they are still currently employed, ask them why they are looking to move on. Go over each position on their resume to see how their experience may or may not contribute skills pertinent to your open position. Explain the position and the role they will play. Give them a good idea of the company they may soon be a part of. 3. Red Flags to watch out for: Gaps in employment. Short employment periods (qualified as anything less than 6 months to a year). Speaking poorly about former employers. 4. Sample Interview Questions What type of work environment do you function optimally in? For example, team based vs. individual. This allows you to see if their personality will be a good fit for your company. What are your future goals? The answer to this question will tell you about the drive of your potential new hire, and also gives you an idea for how the role they are applying for will fit in with their future career plans and their potential long-term fit. You want to help them succeed, and in doing so your department will succeed. A happy employee is one who is able to realize their own goals in parallel with the ones you will be setting for them as a manager. How long do you see yourself remaining in this position? This question will allow you to determine if they are looking to stay for only a little while or if they desire a long-term fit. Turn over is not desirable for any hiring manager, so you want somebody who plans on sticking around and dedicating themselves to their role. This is another way to gauge their desire to move up within the company. Are they ambitious and looking to get promoted immediately? Will they be happy in this role for a year or more? These are important questions to answer before bringing them on. What about this role excites you the most? This allows their passion and personality to shine through. It’s a great way to encourage them to tell you what drives them, because you definitely want to hire someone who is passionate about the role rather than just settling because they need a job. 5. Qualities to look for This is dependent on the role you are interviewing to fill, but some individual qualities will serve a company well no matter the function of the employee. Qualities of a strong candidate would be: driven, team-oriented, dedicated, goal-oriented, passionate, sharp problem-solver, ability to perform under pressure. These qualities indicate a well-balanced individual who will be able to excel in a dynamic work environment. Read 15 Traits Of The Ideal Employee  to learn more. You’ll be an interviewing pro in no time! Good luck, Career Girls! Tweet me your interview tips @sncueto or @mscareergirl!

How to Apply for a New Job when you are Over 50

How to Apply for a New Job when you are Over 50 How to Apply for a New Job when you are Over 50 Job searching is often a challenging task regardless of what age you are. However, there is often a common misconception amongst employers when it comes to older job applicants.Many employers see mature candidates as possibly being too overqualified for the job on offer to even be considered. A lot of employers also feel uncomfortable about the job package being offered not being rewarding or well-paid enough to be able to hold on to a very experienced mature candidate, especially one that may have been used to a higher salary or being rewarded with greater job benefits in their previous role. Demonstrate your skills and experienceFor a mature job seeker over the age of 50, you need to overcome these common stereotypes and present yourself as the perfect candidate because of your knowledge and experience in a similar role. You should also demonstrate that you are tech savvy and able to keep up with modern technology in the workplace. Make sure your profile is up to date and active on LinkedIn. These days many recruiters will look at potential candidates LinkedIn pages to get a little more background information.Changing mindsetsWhen you are job searching as a mature candidate, you need to define exactly why you want a new job.   It could be that you feel your current job has become a bit stale and you want to find a new challenge. Or you are looking for a new job with fewer responsibilities that may be a small step down from where you are, but offers you more flexibility, free time and less work-related stress. Whatever the reasons for your decision to change jobs, never worry that you are too old to do this! You need to change your mindset towards appreciating and valuing all of the relevant skills and knowledge you have built up over the years. These are very valuable assets that you can take with you into your new role.You may need to change the mindset of your potential new employer too by boiling everything down to a basic level for them. Help them t o understand that by taking you on, they will be greatly benefiting from a very knowledgeable and experienced worker that can deliver proven results. There is no gamble with them taking you on, so they should disregard any concerns over your age and simply hire the best candidate based on their knowledge and experience â€" which of course is going to be you!Setting out your resumeOf course, to make any issues surrounding your age completely irrelevant, you may want to skip adding your age or birthdate to your resume. By doing this, you are forcing the employer to judge your resume by your listed skills and experience that make you a good fit for the job. This can help greatly to win an interview where you can go on to further impress them with your professionalism and warm personality.Also, where most people may set up their resume and list their work experience in chronological order, it will pay you to lay out your resume to showcase your skills and experience in the best possible way instead of a long list of dates going back into the past. You can do this easily by choosing a modern resume template with fully customizable fields.These days employers get so many resumes from job applicants that they dont spend an awful lot of time reading through all of the information that has been supplied. They will simply skim over each resume to pick out the keywords and skills that are relevant to the job. This is why you should focus more on listing your relevant skills and knowledge that suit this job rather than simply listing every single employment detail, job and employer that you have ever had, especially if you have had any employment in the past that is not directly related to the role being offered here.Longevity issuesAnother potential issue that a mature job seeker may also face is where an employer may be reluctant to take you on because they are worried about how long you plan to stay in the role. They may be looking for a candidate that will be happy to stick around for a long while with their company and will only want to invest their time into someone with a long career ahead of them.You need to reassure the employer right from the beginning that you are not simply looking for a job to fill your time until you take early retirement. You need to convince them that you are in this for the long haul. With research released by the Transamerica Center for Retirement showing that 66% of mature workers expect to work past the age of 65, or have no plans to retire at all, you can explain that you are not planning on leaving them high and dry in a couple of years time. previous article The Modern Clean Resume Template Freebie next article Free Upside Down Resume Template Design you might also likeThe Best Way to Explain Your Sabbatical To a New Employer

The sign of a great career is having great opportunities, and saying no

The sign of a great career is having great opportunities, and saying no This is about the farmer. The guy I met last year, and I drove through tornados, twice, to see. He dumped me. But I kept his toothbrush in my bathroom for five months while other men paraded through. And the way you can gauge if you love someone is if you keep the toothbrush even after the toothpaste gets so crusty that it makes a mess on the sink. So it was a big day in May when he sent me an email inviting me to Burgers and Brew. It took only one email for me to let myself be obsessed with him again. (The great thing about a Blackberry is that if you spend the day at the office reading a romantic email fifty-five times, you dont look obsessed; you look like a hard worker.) The festival is a big deal. Restaurants here in Madison, WI understand the draw of the grown local movement, and the Farmers pork is the meat of choice for the most picky chefs in the city and also the best pizza places. Last year, when I had not met the farmer, his first invitation to me was for Burgers and Brew, and I declined. It struck me as one of the moronic, provincial invitations I get for Wisconsin stuff every day. But somehow, somewhere, I became a Wisconsin girl. Im not sure when it happened. But I remember last year, when the farmer introduced me in his town of 500 people, hed say, Shes from Madison. And I thought it was ridiculous, because I felt like I was from New York. I dont even know what from Madison means, because it seems to me that everyone from Madison is not actually from Madison but from a farm and thinking they just moved into a big city. When I came out of my giddy stupor from his email, I realized that Burgers and Brew was the same weekend as maybe the biggest schmoozing event of my life: Guy Kawasaki invited me to spend a weekend on the USS Nimitz with Michael Arrington, Robert Scoble and others. I said yes to the weekend, of course. Because how can hanging out with these guys not be great for me? Its probably what Ive been working up to my whole career: a weekend like that. People always talk about how you need to give stuff up in order to have a fulfilling career and a fulfilling personal life. What people dont realize is that the better you get at your career, the more amazing are the opportunities that you give up. But this is a hard reality to swallow. So I said yes to the farmer and yes to Guy and lived in an alternate reality where there are no hard choices in life and I was doing both events. Until finally I told Guy that I couldnt go on the trip. Right after that, I was besieged by the greatness of the people going on the trip. For example, Charlene Li ended up being the source for a quarter of the statistics in my investor pitch. And someone asked, Do you know her personally? And I thought, well, I could. If I hadnt fallen for the farmer. Again. And then I went to the airport for one last trip before Burgers and Brew. And I saw Pam Slims book there. And first I thought, Shes amazing to have gotten her book such good placement. And then I thought, Shes amazing to have such passionate views on the workplace. And then I started to think that my career is going totally downhill, when I could have spent a weekend with her and Im not. But you know what? Burgers and Brew was great. And there does not seem to be fallout from my decision to pass up the USS Nimitz. And, in maybe a little message from God that the farmer is more important than my career, Michael Arrington cancelled as well. And then I felt like I had this great self-knowledge about myself, that somehow I know how to balance a boyfriend and a career. Like, one good decision begets many more. So for our second date this time around, I cut out of work early, and we go to a state park. I dont say, This is ridiculous. I can go to a state park with a city guy and I want to be on your farm. I dont say that because I want him to know that Im the new, agreeable me. And I know its going to be hard to be agreeable on the tough stuff, so the state park seems like a nonnegotiable. I have to say yes. I am nervous. I knew I would have to change in the car from my work clothes to hiking clothes, but it was a rushed morning and I couldnt make important decisions, so I brought every bra I own. I have to make the decision if I should wear a padded, looks-great-under-a-t-shirt bra, or a soft, lacy, your-hands-will-feel-good-here bra. I go with the second one, but I tell myself not to be too optimistic. I tell myself that the key to keeping him is to let him do things at his own pace, and I need to not just say Im okay with that. Hell see through it. I need to really truly be okay with it. He doesnt watch me change in the car, which is funny since weve been together for seven months before. And its not funny because I think to myself, Where are we now? What are we doing? We are not at the beginning but where is the middle and are we there? Im not sure. We start hiking and I am nervous. I just want things to go well. I am not sure if he knows what Ive been up to. He doesnt have an internet connection at his house, and he always has to be careful what he reads at his parents house, but somehow he always managed to read my posts anyway. Now I wonder, did he read my post about the 25-year-old? It turns out he did because he says, Why do you need to write about oral sex in every post? I say, I dont put it in every post. But it seems to just come up. I think you force it. I am quiet. I think there is no right answer. Then he says,Whats your goal with all that? Why do people need to know how much oral sex youre getting? I am quiet. And he says, What do you want to be known for? I can tell that this is his real question. So I had better have a good answer for him. I pause. Then I say, I want to be known for being honest in my pursuit of a good life. Then we are quiet, while we hike through the forest. Then we get to some rocks, but they are uneven, and I end up being taller than the farmer. Not by a lot. Maybe an inch or two. In this case, most guys would subtly move me over to the spot that is a little shorter and then go over to the spot that is a little taller. But he doesnt care. And he kisses me. We hike to the end of the rocky part and he tells me he doesnt think I should write about our relationship because maybe it wont last. I tell him if it doesnt last then I will write about being sad. I tell him that I have to write to make sense of everything. But, to be honest, its not making that much sense to me now why I was so critical of him before, yet Im not now. Heres an example: Hes really erratic about touching me in public. Sometimes he will and sometimes he wont. Initially I told him he was totally immature and that this is the problem when a guy has almost no girlfriend experience and spends all his time eating meals with his parents. This time around, though, I am more observant. For example, we went to the county fair, and I reached for his hand and he said, We cant hold hands here. Ill look whipped. I laughed. I told him thats hilarious, but he didnt think it was funny. He told me to look around and see who else was holding hands. And honestly, he was right. It was dark, people were drinking, most people were with a date, and no one was touching. Really, I did not see one couple touching each other. And then, in the dark, he put his hand on my back. Me: Are you happy? Him: Yes. Cant you tell? Me: No. Him: Well, I have a nice tone of voice to you. And Im touching you in a nice way. Me: Oh. Yeah.