What I Learned in Get a Job School

(Sorry for any spelling or grammatical errors.) Most hiring is due to inside knowledge. The 1st person to know a position is opening is quitting the job, the 2nd is the supervisor. The supervisor asks acquaintances if they know anyone. Those are the people you want to be in contact with. Unfocused "networking" can be as useless as resume carpetbombing. You have to be quick on your feet asking acquaintances & even strangers, not "for just anything", but for a focused set of positions for which your're qualified.

What is that? It's based on your master life resume, not only what jobs you've done, education & training you have, but everything you're good at and, completely separately, everything you like to do--often they're completely separate--your hobbies, crafts, early job experiences, what you were good at & liked in school. It is much more comprehensive than you're initially prepared to do--it's a job in itself, it has to be done, but once the work is done, it's in the can & can be used over & over. You can get help by discussing it in detail with people who know you & can remind you of things you've forgotten about. Often the difference between you & other interviewees is how you present yourself, you have to come off as knowledgable, not only about the general position but about the company at which you're applying, a plus is knowing the names & positions of the people doing the interviewing--it's public info on LinkedIn, in itself an increasingly preferred hiring tool. A special fact-finding task is important here, the informational interview at which you only get pure information from HR directors & analysts and hiring managers, STRICTLY without trying to sell yourself (or it's over), it's for long range planning, to help you be the most qualified candidate, so they'd be crazy to hire anyone else. Once you know about the company, your main interview focus is telling how you fit into their operation, how you are going to make them money & be a quick, easy fit, how you are the solution to their problems and will help them with the unpleasant task of finding the new employee.

Resumes are unavoidable. The 1st fact is that their main purpose is to exclude unqualified candidates. Computer programs are used to screen out most resumes, into the trash. This is where your comprehensive life resume, 15 pages where a specialized resume is 2, is essential. You start with a copy of 1) the job announcement and 2) the job specification--sometimes there's something on the job spec they forgot on the announcement. You highlight key phrases very specific to the job, reach into your master resume, see how you can describe real qualities, education and experience you have strictly in terms of the phrases in the job announcement and job specification. It may come off very clunky, but you're talking to a computer program that only rates the percentage of your resume that matches up with the most important specific phrases in the job announcement. This is just to get past the first gate.

Study interviewing on the internet. There are plenty of articles centering on questions you'll be asked in the interview. The more difficult they are to answer, the better for you, because you are prepared whereas other candidates don't know what to say or how to give an intelligent answer. There are only so many of these tough questions, if you practice with up to 25 of them, you'll be warmed up to answer any unexpected ones. The toughest ones will be ones in which there was some adverse situation you had to work through, perhaps even when you were fired. What did you learn, how have you grown and developed, what would you do different now. (However, you don't have to admit to being fired; but they're smart, if there was some deficiency in your performance, they'll be able to tell, so you really have to have cleaned up your act and become a better candidate.) Even if you weren't fired, you have to respond realistically about how you handled a difficult supervisor or situation, without coming off as overly critical or blaming others, but definitely showing how you did well, excelled, learned & grew from it. They want to know how you will fit in when things aren't particularly nice, how you will be a team player that can fit in, how you will work hard & smart when the hump comes.

You go into your interview realizing that they will form their impression of you in the first 5 seconds. You are friendly, relaxed, confident but not arrogant, certainly clean, well-groomed, not quirky, be likeable, the person you'd like to hire, and especially, you answer questions satisfactorily but then you SHUT UP until you have something else to say that works to your advantage. Let them squirm through the silence while you sit & smile confidently. Find some way to put them at their ease, ask them something about themselves if you can work it in, more importantly, ask a few intelligent questions about the job & position that highlight how prepared you are, and realize that you have to negotiate in the interview and what you say you'll be held to later, so don't sell yourself short. Finally, always work in how you volunteered, how you are an enthusiastic friend of humanity. Best of luck, you can do it, be optimistic.

3 posted on 08/14/2015 8:04:22 PM PDT by Sergio (An object at rest cannot be stopped! - The Evil Midnight Bomber What Bombs at Midnight)

Large companies ethics rules mitigate against inside routes...

if someone inside the company wants to refer a friend, they must submit the friends resume thru a certain department set up just for that purpose.

My own experiences:

1. Most jobs are just a matter of pure dumb luck or in my experiences almost Divine intervention.
2. My best job offers always came when I was already working or not actively looking.

5 posted on 08/14/2015 8:08:35 PM PDT by Kartographer ("We mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor.")

1. I attribute to getting into my company 15 years ago as being in the right place at the right time.
2. I got my current position (which I LOVE and is a really good fit) while I was interviewing for a different division. I now work for my former boss’s boss in another area. I will never forget the day my former boss handed me the soon to be posted job description and asked if I wanted first crack at it. I was lucky enough to have a boss who recognized that it probably was time for me to move on and helped me go for a position that best met my strengths.

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