It can be pretty exciting and downright
scary when you apply for your first professional role. You may have already
applied for vacation or part-time jobs to help pay your way through your
education, but now you are ready to take on your first career making role. So
what do you need to do when applying for that first role?
One of the first things you really need to
do is to ask yourself:
1. Why do you would want this
role?
It’s a good idea to ask yourself the
question: Why do you want this role? Before applying for any role. There is
absolutely no good in applying for roles that you don’t really want – some
graduates do this, applying for every role they see, in a scatter gun approach,
hoping that they will land at least one role. You are far better being selective
and only apply for those roles that will forge the way for the career you really
want to develop. Think about what you want and ask questions of people already
in these careers, do some investigation, regard the process as a project and do
some planning.
Next it is a good idea to find
out:
2. What people typically do in this
type of role?
It is one thing to think that you want to
be an astronaut, but for many jobs the reality is different to that of the
outsider’s expectation. So it really is a good idea to do some checking with
people who already working in the kind of role that you aspire to check that it
really is your thing. In addition the process of learning about a role will be
also beneficial when you come to a job interview you will know what it takes to
do the role.
Now that you know what the role is about,
the next thing to do is to:
3. Research the employer.
Employers vary greater in particular
organisational culture; it really is a good idea to get a handle on what an
organisation is like culturally as well as just knowing the nature of its
business. In addition knowing about your potential future employer will impress
your interviewer when you are interviewed.
Having researched your potential employer
and decided that they are people you could work for, it is time to put down on
paper:
4. What do you bring to the role? –
Put it down in a cover letter.
A good thing to do whenever you apply for
a role is to carefully craft a cover letter that introduces you to a potential
employer; it is also an opportunity for you to address the key criteria in a
role. It is good discipline to do a new cover letter for each new role that you
apply for. And the process of doing a cover letter and answering the key
criteria will also alert you to whether you are at all suitable for the
role.
Now that you have put together a great
cover letter, you need to back your application with a brief and to the point
resume that supports your contention that you are the ideal person for this
role. So you need to:
5. Put together a resume of 2 – 3
pages.
A resume should list:
• You name,
• Contact details,
• Education , (Academic)
• Training, (Vocational)
• Plus a list of your work experience and
should not extend to anymore than 3 pages if you are a recent graduate. Your
most recent experience should come first with earlier experience following in
order.
What vegetable would you be? Why are manholes round? Teach me something I
don’t know.
There are all kinds of tactics for getting to the heart of your
candidates knowledge, creativity and problem solving skills, but is asking
something that open-ended and high-pressure, especially in an interview setting,
really useful?
Financial Times columnist Lucy Kellaway says no – it just causes stress and
confusion. The question was asked at the Hay Festival of literature and
arts, and a panel of writers struggled,
with one saying they didn’t know anything other people didn’t know and whatever
he used to know he’d forgotten.
“Listening to this, I changed my mind,” Kellaway said. “Mr. Page’s (from Yahoo) question (Tell me something I don't know) isn’t great at
all. It is as hopeless as all the other things people ask applicants.”
The theory goes that by asking a question the applicant isn’t prepared for,
the answer will carry more meaning compared to things like “Tell me about a time
you showed courage.”
Kellaway lists some of the oddball offerings collected by Glassdoor.com,
including these gems:
- If you were shrunk to the size of a pencil and put in a blender how would
you get out? (Goldman Sachs)
- What do you think of garden gnomes? (Trader Joe’s)
- If you were a Microsoft Office program, which would it be? (an unnamed auto
repair shop)
As fun as these might be to ask – especially if you enjoy making interviewees
sweat – studies show the results are little better than picking people at
random.
The question “What is 37 times 37?” might show some useful information about
a candidate, Kellaway added, but she suggested interviewers ditch
the off-the-wall approach if they want to get more than a look of terror from
candidates.
It is not all uncommon nowadays for Skype
(or similar technologies) to be used to interview candidates who for whatever
reason are unable to attend an in person interview.
A Skype interview has a great number of
advantages in our busy world, it is economical and with the right equipment easy
to set up. Having said that, there are also a number of disadvantages too. These
disadvantages fall into two categories, firstly those that relate to technical
limitations such as bandwidth where you get poor picture quality, jerky images,
out of sync sound and so on and secondly those that relate to perception and
presentation.
Unfortunately a proportion of candidates
who allow them-selves to be interviewed via Skype, don’t prepare themselves as
well as they might for a regular in person interview. Please find below some
Do’s and Don’ts when preparing for a Skype interview.
Do:
1. Dress as well as you would expect for a
person to person interview. Just because the interview is taking place in an
environment that you may choose, is no excuse to wear your old
tracksuit.
2. Make sure that you are well groomed.
There is no excuse not to be well scrubbed.
3. Be ready at your computer, just as you
would turn up in time for an in person interview. Make sure that your computer
is up and running ready to receive the connection. Make sure your internet
connection is reliable. Take advantage of the "Test" feature to test both Video
and Sound before the interview. Be ready to go to Sound only if the Video is bad
or fails.
4. Prepare yourself for the interview. Do
exactly the kinds of preparation as you would for an in person interview. The
interviewer is going to ask the same questions and judge you on the same
standards as for an in person interview.
Don’t:
1. Set up the interview where distractions
come into play. You may think it is cool to conduct your end of the interview in
a café with your nice new iPad, but don’t forget that extraneous noise will be
picked up and people passing by may be an annoyance.
2. Think for one minute that a Skype
interview is a rehearsal for the real thing; it is just as serious and important
to your success in working your way through the recruitment process as any other
step.
3. Forget to look at your interview
position from the interviewer’s perspective, make sure that you are located in a
comfortable chair that allows you to sit with an erect and alert posture. Adopt
a posture that shows you are interested and keen for the role. Make sure that
the background behind you is uncluttered and non distracting. Specifically
ensure that the background is not too brightly lit, otherwise you will appear as
a dark silhouette against a glary background, likewise don’t set yourself up so
that you are staring into bright light, squinty is not a good look.
4. Forget to be as attentive as possible
to the interviewer, paying careful attention to the interviewer is perhaps more
important in a Skype interview because you don’t have the same benefit or
intensity of all the audio visual cues found in an in person
interview.
