5 Essential Job Hunting Tips

5 Essential job-hunting tips

Welcome to my blog, it s great to have your company. I thought today I d share a few tips for job hunters. Here s the thing about tips, most of us have come across some version of them before. There s nothing new under the sun after all. But what amazes me is how we often ignore what we know, and in doing so shoot ourselves in the proverbial. Who hasn t sent off a hasty e-mail and regretted it? We know we shouldn t do it, but we do. So even if you are a seasoned pro, I encourage you to read on, because maybe you to have been shooting yourself while job hunting.

Tip 1: Bin your current CV

Most of us have a CV on file. Probably the one we used for our current job. So, if it worked then, why won`t it now? The answer is: you`re not applying for your current job.

With so much job selection done online, CVs can be sent off for dozens of jobs at the touch of a button. The result is that most of us fail to put the work needed into customising and polishing our CV. Remember, there is no way we can present who we are and everything we have to offer on a couple of sheets of paper. The only answer is customisation. We need to do it with the minimum amount of words, not by adding custom content to a standard document. Less is more with CVs.

Our CV, followed by our covering letter, is our most valuable piece of personal marketing when looking to make a career move. Most importantly, it needs to get us past the gatekeepers that exist between the hiring manager and us. We need to know what criteria HR and other gatekeepers use and how to get past them. We need to know how best to deal with gaps in our CV, we need to know how to overcome seemingly insurmountable obstacles (e.g. we don`t meet one of the `essential criteria` listed on the job spec) and maybe we need to overcome that `previous applicants need not apply` put-down.

CVs need to be tailored to get interviews, not jobs. The hiring manager may never see your CV if he does, he may not read it, and he almost certainly won`t study it.

The gatekeepers between the hiring manager and us may have no working knowledge of the role. What they do have is checklists. Checklists that will decide whether our application goes in with the possibles , the probables or the bin. So if we want to avoid the misery of repeated rejections, we need a customised CV that s fit for purpose every time.

Tip 2: Prep like a pro

Preparation improves performance. Ask any celebrity chat show host! Take two of my current favourites, Graham Norton and James Corden. Both undeniably talented. But chat shows work because they are like a choreographed dance. Graham and James know the answers and the celebrity knows the questions. If only job interviewers were so considerate!

To the candidate it seems like the interviewer has hundreds of questions to choose from. That`s why you can search out books and sites that will, literally, list hundreds of possible interview questions. To the candidate it seems they might need to access their whole life story to find an answer to fit the question: "Tell me of a time you were in a high risk situation and how you managed your way out of it". (One of those sneaky multiple questions).

We need to be ready, and we do that best through preparation. But the good news is that there is no need to worry about hundreds of questions or to rehearse hundreds of answers. If we do that, we`re likely to disengage essential eye contact and deliver wooden replies as we scroll through our mental "answer file".

There is a better way and I call it the `question beater` formula. A proven model that will allow you to answer hundreds of different interview questions by drawing on a maximum of three life experiences. And that will be the subject of a future blog. Now, I think I m ready for some more of that Carpool Karaoke.

Tip 3 Rehearse like a rock star!If you ve seen the recent movie Bohemian Rhapsody you will know about the iconic performance of Freddie Mercury and his band, Queen, at the Live Aid charity concert. Amongst a host of the world s greatest stage performers, it is generally acknowledged that Freddie and Queen stole the show , as no less than Elton John put it at the time. And they did it because they spent 3 weeks rehearsing their set, where others just shambled onto the stage and did their thing.

So, now we have our pitch prepared and our question beater formula primed, what s next? You got it. Rehearse. Research suggests that job interviewers make their judgment on the suitability of a candidate within the first few minutes of an interview. After that, their subconscious filters look for evidence only to support their initial view. Unfortunately, we can all blow our chances at any point, but the adage that "well begun is half done" really does seem to apply to interviews. So never feel that you can just wing an interview. You might get lucky, but by the time you get into your rhythm, it will often be too late.

Tip 4: Feed their needs, not your own!

Interviews by their nature give us licence for self-praise and to hold court. But while showing off our wares and demonstrating our brilliance, we need to remember that the person on the other side of the table has specific needs to be met. What I tell my clients is that professional job interviewers each have their preferred methods and styles, and they can throw all sorts of seemingly random questions our way (how many tennis balls can you fit into a Rolls-Royce comes to mind) so we need to be sensitive to how they want to conduct the dance. But they are mostly only interested in three things:

A) Can you do the job?

B) Will you do the job?

C) Do you fit in?

Everything we say and do in a job interview needs to be targeted at one or more of these three interviewer needs.

Tip 5 Be nice to people

This sounds so obvious and simple you might be surprised candidates would need to be reminded of it. But most of us under-estimate the importance of the human side of interviews.

Let s think again about the first few minutes of an interview, and what is going on in the mind of the interviewer?

Firstly, he or she is struggling to process all the sensory data that is incoming: how we look, sound, move and smell. In all this barrage of sensory overload, the words we say may be lost. This is one of the reasons we often forget names immediately after being introduced.

In those critical early minutes there is only one question going through the interviewer s head: he is trying to decide whether he likes us. It`s that simple. Fundamentally, people hire people they like, and they don`t hire people they don`t like.

Now, who wouldn t want to be nice at an interview? Well, in my experience, some people are easier to like than others. And in an interview we are under stress. Our nerves can get in the way. In trying to remember our lines, in trying to show off our excellence, we may come across as less likeable than we actually are. We may forget that the closest distance between two people is often humour. So be on your mettle and do your stuff, but remember to smile!

So that s my 5 job hunting tips for today. I hope you ve found these words of interest and that the tips will serve you well. Check back in here again for more coaching tips.

This resource was uploaded by: Matt

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