And one thing the world could use less of is hungry people.

In my experience the most common reason a candidate bombs an interview is because they never answered the questions! Most interviews you will come across are behavior style interviews. This means we want to know how you have behaved in the past, since the best predictor of future behavior is past behavior.

This means I need you to tell me about specific instances in your past not generalities or processes.

Not providing this information leaves the interviewers (hiring manager) hungry for more information and you are the only one who can provide that sustenance.

One way to set your self up for success in this type of interview is to know and practice the S.T.A.R. Method

Situation: give an example of a situation you were involved in that resulted in a positive outcome

Task: describe the tasks involved in that situation

Action: talk about the various actions involved in the situation’s task

Results: what results directly followed because of your actions

If you follow this structure when answering behavioral interview questions not only will you be answering the questions but you are more likely to be clear and concise in your response.

Make your answers just as beefy

Answer – Probably not with a voice mail greeting that announces how busy you are or with an email address that proclaims your sexiness/witt.

This will be a quick post because there isn’t much more to say than be self-aware.

When I was living with my parents my dad would always say to me:
“Be aware of the world around you.”
I had no idea how important this — at the time annoying phrase — would be to my life.

If I call you and your voice mail greeting says “I’m very busy and may be spending my time feeding hungry children, dining with the queen of England or learning to ballroom dance with my grandma” then I am throwing up a big red flag and imagining how pompous you may possibly act around people you know well.

Or better yet, telling me that you know about the company I work for, then proceeding to tell me that you have made the most money this past year than you will ever be able to make at your current employer (why you are looking for a new job) and then wrapping up with the fact that you don’t know much about my company’s business… I’m left confused and contemplating your lack of communication skills.

Please stop sending me your resume from hottiegotattie@sass.com

Be self-aware, know your audience and keep your hubris in check

Keep it in check

The myth it is true;
HR staff is cozy too;
tame kittens love us.

Muse for Haiku

This event was a huge success and received some press time that gave me a topic I wanted to post about!
(first time in 4 months…)

During our morning news coverage by Grand Rapids’ Fox 17 Morning Show I was asked, based on my experience, to give some tips on how to turn an internship into a full time job.

You can check out my news clip here

Now for the tips:

1. Turn around the economy (ok.. no that is not really a tip … but it would probably help)

Let’s try this again:

1. Make good use of social networking
- Get your name out there and brand yourself – there are so many opportunities
for this and it really does stand out.

2. Keep in contact
- Just because your internship is over doesn’t mean you should cut off all ties
with your previous employer! It is the opposite – you need to work harder to
keep yourself fresh in the minds of your supervisor and the Staffing Department.

3. Make your goals known to people at your company and your network
- If you don’t tell someone they will not know. Just because they should know doesn’t
mean they do.

4. Your internship is your interview
- If you do not put all your energy and enthusiasm into your internship then kiss that
offer letter goodbye. You cannot make up 3 months of awful in a 30 minute interview.

Love your Internship!

I would love to hear what other tips have worked for people in their internship to full time job experience!

However, I used college and “being too busy” as an excuse to neglect this and let my endurance wither away. Very very pathetic and I could kick myself for it. . . but that wouldn’t be productive.

So here I am with my low running IQ (new subscription to Runners World), new shoes (I love Asics) and concrete sidewalks (I miss the dirt roads from Onsted and Allendale!)

Let’s hope I can keep up with my reslove to not care if it is raining or snowing and keep running consistently.

On My Way

Now don’t get me wrong I don’t want to be boxed up in my cube all day without any human interaction, but please do not follow up your 3 emails from this morning with 2 afternoon trips to my desk only to ask how the job you applied for is progressing.

As desperate as you may feel about your need to get a new job, the hiring manager does not feel the same way. They are going to do things at their speed (whether I like it or not). Often it is the HM’s decision on who to interview anyways, so maybe the more productive thing to do is to make friends with the decision makers in that department.

After all, it is really about who you know.

Three years ago I walked into a career fair and two weeks later had an internship lined up for the summer, but now when you walk in no one even wants to touch your paper resume. . . so  what is the point of going?

For most people the benefit of a career fair probably is not going to be what they really want; a job. The trip to the local university or convention center prepared with your freshly ironed suit and crisp resumes at this point is not to seal the deal on a new career, but really to network and beef up your interviewing skills.

To maximize your time at a career fair:

1. Before you go: research the companies you are interested in and prepare some talking points and questions
2. When you arrive: go up to a company booth that you don’t think you would want to work for and strike up a conversation about their industry- get your nerves out of the way
3. While you are there: visit the booths of the companies you are interested in and spark up a small conversation with a rep — preferably asking questions to learn more about the company – things you can’t get off Google or their website.  (This is where you get to practice active listening and interviewing skills)
4. If you are lucky: get a business card or email address to send a message asking about opportunities and the chance to pass along your digital resume

Even though recruiters don’t want your paper resume and you won’t be offered a job on the spot there is still a reason to go to career fairs — at least to practice talking to the HR/company reps – we are not that bad.. really…

Hi My Name Is. . .

Whose responsibility is it really?

Your parents? – no they probably haven’t written a resume in 20 or 30 years…
Professors? – maybe – however it depends on how long they have been in academia…
Friends? – perhaps if one is an HR Major (?)
University Career Center? - partly- should be a resource and provide opportunities to learn about resumes
Yourself? - Yes because typically no one has (or takes) the time to swoop you up and write it for you

There are plenty of articles that rant about “college the scam” — how students graduate ill prepared for the real world.
Well school is not there to hold your hand from scared freshman to savvy business person.

As ridiculous as it may feel  you should write/update your resume every semester of school and go to your Career Services department – do a mock interview and have your resume reviewed. This won’t make a difference until you apply for that first internship or job – but once you are at that point you will be surprisingly grateful you ever cared.

Tip: put your resume into PDF format — that way you know it will always look good — there are open source programs to do this if you work on a PC – or your Mac conveniently has this functionality already built in

This could be your Worst Case Scenario

These Plans are awesome – even if you’re not working

This ‘planning’ forces people to stop their daily work  and worries for a moment and truly reflect on where they are going with their career. It is so easy to get swept in the day-to-day without realizing that you never created a plan at all, and you have just been drifting. Work towards a goal — not only towards 5pm — this will improve your effort and the results of your work – you will find yourself taking the time to do things right because everything you do is leading you to that next level. Who wants to have a resume full of mediocre work with no real accomplishments?

So even if you don’t work for a company that sits you down every 6 months to ask you if you want to start going to grad school, what other departments you want to know more about or what type of projects you want to work on you can and need do this for yourself.

Working towards a goal puts you in a position to invest more of yourself into your work and life. If I want to get to that next level I first need to understand (and believe) that the work I am doing today matters because it is my active resume – everything I am doing could potentially be the perfect answer to an interview question for that great job.

So just because you may be working in a grocery store or collecting unemployment checks – it doesn’t mean that what you are doing doesn’t matter to what you will do next – write that IDP and create a plan on how to leverage your current position.

A forward thinking person will see that designing and building the Easter Candy Display shows creativity and vision. And it is impossible to job hunt from 8am – 5pm (it just does not happen). Volunteer in your community in any way you can – it will take you out of those doldrums and introduce you to people in your community who will help you make that next career move.

Whatever it is you do – do it well.

Catering to your Future

First, how fortunate – my mom grew up, in a 3rd world Latin American country, poor and dreaming of working in a bank (probably with a preference of “in the US”) . . . She made it to the US with her new Peace Corp husband, learned English, completed a GED, completed an Associates degree and got that dream job.

24 years later we are in the last moments of 2008 – and in a strange turn of events she finds herself without that steady employment, the job she loved, the customers she served and the security to which she had grown accustom. – what that isn’t fortunate? — because of that job she learned so much about investing and how to work all those little perks that banks hand out and great rates and is in a position to retire at 50 (don’t tell her I disclosed her age!).

What could be unfortunate when you are financially secure? My dad works at a newspaper… is there a more depressing industry? well ok .. yes there is the Auto Industry but next in line would be the stoic and noble Newspaper

It has been almost 4 months and my mom cannot find employment and my dad is in a dieing cannibalizing industry .. sigh — they will be fine but how do you accept that the job you have been working your entire life is gone and there is no getting it back?

So in the footsteps of my mother I find myself saving more than a quarter of my salary and hoping for the best.

How do you avoid this?