Job Search: To land your dream job be prepared to take the total approach demanded by employers.

What they didn't teach you in school : Life long learning tips to land a job straight out of school

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During the duration of the interview candidates lie and their resumes can also lie and depict many people to be the perfect prospective employees with the potential sought after by hiring managers. While interviews are a tool to assess how well candidates manage stress and complex communication and whether there is a fit between the candidate and the company, the truth about interviews is that they have limitations – they are essentially a flawed assessment tool. Hiring managers always indicate the skills and traits required by the post advertised, unfortunately many of these traits can be faked during the interview, which makes recruitment expensive and a waste of time. Employees who succeed in landing a job under these circumstances are soon discovered through the quality of their work and fired to join the lines of the unemployed.
Many companies have taken this behaviour of candidates seriously and they now insist that for all candidates applying for senior and executive positions must undergo psychometric and other tests to assess trustworthiness. These tests are done only on the final candidates as it is a costly and time-intensive process. There are a range of different tests and assessments, though they have the same type of results, there are shorter assessments available but the depth of the data or output are significantly not as comprehensive to provide the employers with a total picture of the prospective employees strengths and weaknesses. The type of assessment may depend on the level of the post and the sensitiveness of the position advertised, for instance, if the position requires a person who understands the key drivers of the company and who would work on and have access to sensitive company information a comprehensive type of assessment test may be vital. The primary assessment tool in this regard would be the competency-based assessment which would identify thought management, influence, adaptability and delivery. The second process is an assessment centre which is developed to assess the same competencies within a working context. Detailed competency linkages are made to assess the personal fit of the candidate against the competencies found in the specific job. The assessments are quite comprehensive and deal not only with competencies around the specific job but about individual traits and behaviours. This gives the employer a comprehensive picture of the candidate which complements the interview reference and engagement process. These tests not only disqualify people, they can also be used to indicate how a candidate’s skills can be strengthened once they are employed. The weaknesses that are identified do not necessarily rule out candidates but rather help the employer to form guidelines for support structures such as mentoring, job shadowing, training and development when the candidate is hired.

Justice Mandhla is the author of What they did not teach you in school: Life Long Learning Tips to land a job straight out of school and he spends a great deal of his full-time writing day researching and writing about job search strategies.
See more at http://www.mystudent4life.com/

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Job Search : Different Interview Types for Different Resume Types

What they didn't teach you in school: Life Long Learning Tips to Land a Job Straight out of School : Buy This Book From


If you are a student or graduate just finishing school and you are about to enter the workplace for the first time, when you imagine sitting in a room and being interviewed for a position, you are most likely thinking of a structured interview. This is where the interviewer asks a prescribed set of questions and you give brief answers.

In an unstructured interview, the questions are more open-ended. The interviewer asks questions specifically designed to get you to reveal more about yourself than you would if you were asked the same old standard questions. The interviewer will try to find out more about you, your character, your skills, your background, and the interviewer may also let the interview proceedings to flow more freely than in a structured interview.

There are mainly two types of resumes; the chronological resume which reveals too much for the Hiring Manager. A functional resume, on the other hand, pays more attention to your skills than length of employment.

Hiring Managers are trained to scan and spot the different types of resumes and to design questions based specifically on the information and type of resume that you have submitted. The questions will be designed to specifically address issues that could not be found from the resumes. For instance, in the case of a chronological resume the Hiring Manager may choose to use a more structured type of interview because the resume would have provided most of the answers to the Hiring Manager such as, last place of employment, tenure and reasons for leaving. The Hiring Manager will not waste his/her time asking questions around education and experience as these would have been provided already in the candidates resume. Therefore the most appropriate type of interview in this instance would be a structured interview. The Hiring Manager would want to get to the core of the position advertised and ask more job related questions.

Common job-related questions include the following:

With all the experiences you have acquired: “Describe the contribution you will make to our company and how your contribution will benefit our organization”
Describe an improvement you personally initiated in your last employment.
What would you say is your most significant fault in your last employment?
Tell me about two or three aspects of your last job that you never want to repeat and why?
Why have you changed jobs so frequently?

In the case of a functional resume, the Hiring Manager may choose to use an unstructured interview. In an unstructured interview, the questions are more open-ended. The Hiring Manager asks questions specifically designed to get you to reveal more about yourself than you would if you had submitted a chronological resume.

Hiring Managers do not necessarily limit themselves to one style. In fact, it is common practice for the hiring professional to start out with some basic objective questions and finish the interview with the more open-ended questions.

Common open-ended questions include the following:

Tell me something about yourself.
What skills have you acquired that make you ideal for this post?
Tell me about a time when you came up with a new idea to solve long-term problem.
Sell me this pen.
If you were to choose an animal, which animal would you like to be, and why?

As it can be seen from the two traditional interview formats interviewers can create and adopt their own interview composite aimed at eliciting solid evidence of a candidate’s abilities. The results can be quite telling.


Justice Mandhla is the author of What they did not teach you in school: Life Long Learning Tips to land a job straight out of school and he spends a great deal of his full-time writing day researching and writing about job search strategies.
See more at www.mystudent4life.com



The book is also available through online retailers and can be found at
http://www.amazon.com/What-They-Didnt-Teach-School/dp/0620430591/ref=sr_11_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1238761678&sr=11-1
http://search.barnesandnoble.com/What-They-DidnT-Teach-You-In-School/Justice-Mandhla/e/9780620430593/?itm=1

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Job Search : Have an Effective Resume and be Prepared

What they didn't teach you in school: Life long tips to land a job straight out of school

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The keys to making an impact at any interview are researching and preparing yourself mentally, as well as anticipating the questions you are likely to be asked, and working out the best possible answers to these questions. All what Hiring Managers want to know about is you, they want to know what kind of a person you are and whether you will fit into the job for which you are applying. Interviewers often focus their questions on trying to discover the real you by asking ‘tailor- made’ questions that will reveal whether what you have got will link smoothly and effectively with the work, culture and philosophy of the organization.

In order to improve your chances of success at interviews and of landing that job there are secrets that you should know. These include:

• Never lie in your resume
• Ensure your contact details on your CV are correct
• Keep your resume to about three to four pages
• Make sure the format is in a font that is legible, make it easy for Hiring Managers to read the text quickly and get an immediate idea of your background
• Use bullets and create spaces in your CV for the reader’s eye
• Spell-check your resume
• Mention your achievements in point form per company
• Put reasons for leaving include your present employment
• Indicate whether a job was contract/temporary or permanent
• Include references (and not friends) and keep them updated
• If you have been promoted in a specific job - point this out on your resume
• Keep details of your most recent jobs and responsibilities easy to read and factual.
• Keep old work experience and responsibilities down to a minimum
• Put your highest educational marks for all your courses
• Never use humour in your resume
• Be well groomed for the interview
• Don’t be late
• Be prepared for the interview
• Take a copy of your resume with you
• Have a sincere smile
• Look the interviewer in the eye
• Be open, honest and frank with your replies to questions
• Believe you are worthy for the position
• Be present – concentrate on what is going on during the interview

Always remember that Hiring Managers are actually trained to spot the negatives and positives when reading your resume. This is a sort of a filtering mechanism they use taking into account some of the factors tabulated above. Hiring Managers have to identify negatives because most people hide their poor work experiences very carefully and lie in their interviews about their strength and weaknesses. This has led to Hiring Managers to become very careful when hiring, as dismissing someone is now harder than ever.

Is job – hopping a negative? Are ‘Gaps’ on your resume negatives?
To answer these questions I would like to briefly discuss two types of resumes. The chronological resume and the functional resume. The chronological resume reveals too much for the Hiring Manager. If you have a habit of job hopping, are a fresh graduate, or transitioning from a different field, then a chronological resume might not be a good fit. A chronological resume is built so it highlights excellent credentials or a solid work experience, something which you might lack if you have never worked or have a habit of leaving after only a few months. While everyone has their own reason for why their resume may be a bit sparse or contain gaps in history, you want to be able to explain this yourself, which may not happen if they see an almost empty sheet of paper.

A functional resume, on the other hand, pays more attention to your skills than time. Rather than highlighting where you worked and for how long, it places more emphasis on your qualifications and achievements by writing them in categories on top of the page. While company names and length of employment are not omitted, it is given less importance by simply summarizing them on the bottom, or last page. The beauty of a functional resume is that it can draw attention to important skills and achievements, while hiding flaws such as a lack of experience or gaps in employment.

Contrary to most people’s beliefs, you do not need to reveal everything in your resume. Some things are better explained yourself. While unstable job histories or gaps in employment may look bad on paper, some are backed up by reasonable explanations. Most potential employers are aware that functional resumes are crafted to hide certain pitfalls, and get suspicious as to what you are hiding. Even if you do have a good enough reason, if you do not maximize writing your strengths, their wariness from seeing you might not give you an opportunity to give an explanation.

Most people who are new to writing resumes rely too much on the resume templates found in their word processing programs. While helpful, using a template can be limiting, since most people do not bother to customize or expand beyond a template’s borders. It can also be detrimental, as a number of other applicants might be using the same template, allowing your resume to simply fade into the crowd.

The book is already available
through online retailers and can be found at
http://www.amazon.com/What-They-Didnt-Teach-School/dp/0620430591/ref=sr_11_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1238761678&sr=11-1
http://search.barnesandnoble.com/What-They-DidnT-Teach-You-In-School/Justice-Mandhla/e/9780620430593/?itm=1

See more at www.mystudent4life.com