A To-Do List For Interviewing Candidates

DO check the company website- I almost have to laugh when people don’t do their research.  You are a professional person interviewing for a professional job of one sort or another.  Know your stuff!

Make sure you dress the part- You should not show up to an interview in jeans and a t-shirt.  Dress for the job you want, not the job you have.  People evaluate you based on a first impression.  If you don’t bring your “A” look to the interview you are fighting against that first impression for your whole entire interview.

Entry level college graduates- I am not sending you into this job hoping that you will be able to convince them to like you based on your personality alone.  You have some good experience.  You should be able to entice a potential interviewer based on projects that you worked on, class work that you did, a thesis. You still have things to talk about.

Be early to the interview- Some of my friends (you know who you are) are walking GPS transmitters.  You should still plan to be there at least 20 minutes+ ahead of any interview.  You are going to pay the price for not assuming that there will be extra traffic. 

Story telling = success- You can call it the “star” method.  You can call it in Lou Adler’s words the “SAFW” format.  Either way you need to be able to describe and succinctly give a tale about specific things you did at past jobs.  Gone are the days when people would give you a shot.  The same goes for internal interviews to get promoted at a job.  If you master the ability to communicate regarding successes that you have had at an interview, you will be 2 steps ahead of a majority of candidates.

Have a “big idea” that you hope to impart to an interviewer.  This could be similar to your objective statement, and how you foot the bill.  “I save companies time and money”.  “I find and solve problems”.  “I have excellent experience fixing cars”.  Once you find your big idea, you just need to share that creatively in an interview.  What do I get as an interviewer from your experience that would help me to hire you?

Last but not least, leave your cell phone in the car.  It is distracting, it could go off.  When I meet candidates, and the phone goes off in their pockets, its extremely distracting even on vibrate, and it counts against your overall impression with an employer.

EARN the job you want by imparting your “Big idea” and working with your partners to position yourself for success.  This could be the person who found you for the job, this could be the asking good questions to the interviewer, this could be a networking call you make to help you find where you want to be.

Resources-

http://www.linkedin.com/today/post/article/20121020150801-15454-use-solution-selling-to-ace-the-interview

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Situation,_Task,_Action,_Result

http://career-advice.monster.com/job-interview/interview-preparation/sell-yourself-job-interview-hot-jobs/article.aspx

A Recruiting Calculus

The Recruiting Calculus is a tricky picture. People fundamentally do not understand what they are getting when they pick up the phone to call a recruiter, and do not know how to make use of a recruiter in a "smart" fashion. I want to thank people like Lou Adler for some great words of wisdom. From Lou Adler- "For job-hunters, here's the first thing you must know about recruiters: recruiters find people for jobs, not jobs for people."

What does this mean?
1.) There are probably hoops to jump through. (A personal interview with a recruiter/References/etc)
2.) You are at the mercy of the recruiter for feedback.
3.) Recruiters for the most part don't create jobs.

Again from Lou Adler, "First find the job, then find the connection. This is what LinkedIn is all about. If you have a big enough network they show you how to get connected to the person who posted the job."

What does this mean?
1.) Social networking is great, but is only valuable when you have a sizeable network. 2.) You need to ask yourself if you are contributing, or withdrawing from your network. 3.) If you have a big enough network, you gain visibility into some HUGE network contacts.

My own personal tips for recruiting-
You work with quite a few connections, try to network to find a recruiter. Find a recruiter with tenure if you can, they typically have a better overall focus as opposed to a tunnel focus.
Most recruiters work on one job, then move on. Let the recruiter breathe before you call them four times in a week unless they submit you to a job.
If you get a feeling that they arent being honest with you, find someone else. Its SO easy to find recruiters who lie to people to get rid of them. If you aren't getting enough answers or feedback, find another recruiter.

MOST IMPORTANTLY
Stick with a recruiter who does a good job for you, look for contact with them over time, and build up that relationship. If they successfully found you a job, that's a great sign that that person is a career friend that you should keep around!

...So you want me to read your resume....?

Candidate,

I hope all is well with your job search.  Before you hit "submit" on sending me the email with your resume I wanted to make you aware of a few facts.

1.) The average job posting I get has over 350 views and 50 applicants.  Please consider that before sending me the same resume you sent to 100 other postings.  I know its frustrating not to get feedback.  I assure you it is equally frustrating to dig through 50 people that do not match my position.  If you have experience with "Inner-Moon Icy Astrophysics" please include that on your resume.  I do not always have time to call back 50 people, plus do the rest of my job.

2.) It can be tempting to think that applying to every job I have posted, and every job my partner has posted can be a good idea.  Don't do it!  We get emails for every posted applicant.  If I get three resumes from John Smith, I know you aren't really reading job postings.

3.) Please make your resume shine!  If you have a good resume, make sure it has bullet points.  If you have a narrative about your life, save it for an interview.  Dates are appreciated, anything that makes you stand out for the right reasons!

All of this is a general few tips to get a little bit of extra notice.  I believe that everyone out there has a job for them (which is why I do what I do), just help me do my job better.

My favorite to this date: A blacksmith applied for a job with me once.  It required a PHD in Mechanical Engineering, and 10+ years of Power Electronics experience.

Please stand out for the "RIGHT REASONS" in my inbox in order to get me to open up your resume.

Hope to see you soon!

-Me

LinkedIn Decisions- Are We Really Friends?

My favorite recruiting resource over the years has always been LinkedIn.  It offers a multitude and depth and breadth of candidates of all shapes and sizes for all sorts of weird quirky openings that I have had to fulfill.  LinkedIn also gives people a nice wow-factor when they are still in the "buy in" stage of advanced sourcing.

My favorite story about LinkedIn over all the years is my attempt to teach my partner Tony how to use LinkedIn.  We ran one search on Google with the Site command (To be covered later).  We found a list of twenty candidates, called the first two Engineering people on the list, left two messages.  Within 48 hours he had put one of the two to work for a really hard to fill spot.  The client was impressed, the contractor was impressed, Tony was impressed (and making more money) and even I admit to a little bit of surprise just how easy it was.

What I wanted to talk about today on LinkedIn though is the "Invite to connect" portion:

Assuming this is someone you DON'T know and have not spoken with, where do we go with an invitation?  Typically the rule of thumb is that sending out random invites to people is the quickest way to get banned, but lets go through the options on top.  Most people in my experience instantly click "We've done business together" by default.  This is sometimes true, but you are relying on either getting permission from them on a phone call, or just hoping that they do not click "I don't know" in a response and cause you to get red flagged.
Some people click friend.  This is my favorite ridiculous choice out of this whole list.  If you are really my friend that is fine, but if I have never met you, and you and I have never even exchanged a contact, please do not claim to be friends with me, and do not claim to be friends with other people.  I will say I don't know you, or archive your request unless your someone with a really big network!
Colleague or Classmate are nice and reliable if you went to school or worked with someone, and only in those choices should you select Colleague of Classmate.
Other is fine if you know their email address.
Ultimately, "We've done business together" is the only choice I would consider making without having permission to add someone from them directly.  At that point it is up to you to spruce up "I'd like to add you to my professional network on LinkedIn" into something respectable (To be talked about later)

_staff or die!

"And that was the strangest interview I ever had!"

Thinking about topics to post got me thinking about interviews that I have actually been on or listened to.  Two stand out more than others.  I had one for a candidate that I listened into.  The candidate literally said about four words during the interview.

"We need someone to do SolidWorks design at a high level of efficiency.  Can you handle that?"- Manager
"Yes" -Candidate

"Our project is under some pressure to get this done quickly, can you design quickly?"-Manager
"Yes" - Candidate

The end result of this bizarre interview was an offer surprisingly.  I would expect 99% of the time that this type of interview would lead to some pretty heavy backlash from the site manager, but in this case it worked.

I compiled a list of my favorite off the wall interview questions, and hardest interview questions:

• "Tell me about yourself?"

• "What's something you are not telling me that you should?"

• "Why are manholes round?"

• "If you are in a plane and you see a cow out the window, what happened?"

I pulled a few more from a recent post on Glassdoor.com-

• "Name 5 uses of a stapler without staple pins."

• "You're in a row boat which is in a large tank filled with water.  You have an anchor on board which you throw overboard (the chain is long enough so that the anchor rests completely on the bottom of the tank).  Does the water level in the tank rise or fall?"

• "Just entertain me for five minutes.  I'm not going to talk."

What is the strangest interview question you ever had?