Applying to online job boards without networking is almost futile. This is just one of 5 tips I was able to share when I was interviewed yesterday by Desmond Brown of CBC Kitchener-Waterloo News
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/kitchener-waterloo/waterloo-region-job-losses-2020-1.5986016
Wednesday’s Career Aviators Job Search Engineer is a weekly blog post with quick questions and answers about job search
Melissa has written in because she has been to three interviews but not landed a second interview or a job and wants to know how to do better at answering questions.
Melissa, First of all congratulation on getting interviewed for 3 positions. That is an achievement
I am going to give you 1 suggestion in this blog post but keep watching for more ideas in future posts
You want to answer most of the questions in the interview using the STAR method
S for Situation:
“While working at the ABC Bank”
T for Task:
“I spent a summer helping clients to do financial plans so that they would not outlive their savings”
A for Action:
“I built such strong relationships with clients”
R for Result:
“that 70 % of these clients made new investments using our bank’s products.”
Your answer put together would be
While working at the ABC Bank, I spent a summer helping clients to do financial plans so that they would not outlive their savings. I built such strong relationships with clients that 70 % of these clients made new investments using our bank’s products.
You want to go into the interview with a STAR story for every possible qualification and core skill that you can identify
STAR lets you demonstrate your skills and that is so much more helpful to the interviewer than a text book style answer which anyone can do.
If you have a career question email me info@careeraviators.com . I answer all your emails and one might end up being a topic for a blog post.
Do you have important tasks or decisions in life that you just never get done?
Most people think its about improved goal setting.
They are right but its more than that… did you ever notice a pattern to the kinds of tasks or decisions where you get stuck?
What thoughts were running through your mind for each decision/task? Maybe it was “ I won’t be successful” or “It will never succeed” or “I am too old/young” or They won’t like me.….
It turns out that experts say that just noticing these thoughts is an important step in getting unstuck. Don’t spend a lot of time analyzing it but over the next week, notice what pattern of thoughts that run through your mind when you get stuck.
And…stay tuned for more steps each Monday
Are you considering a career transition? Wayne Greenway is the Chief Executive Officer for Career Aviators, a Certified B Corporation® that its directs profits to support programs to help vulnerable youth flourish in the face of highly stressful life situations. He is passionate about helping clients across Canada to find jobs in which they will excel, value highly and love to do.
Photo by Birgit Lengert on Unsplash
“It’s impossible to get better at hiring if you can’t tell whether the candidates you select become good employees. If you don’t know where you’re going, any road will take you there. You must have a way to measure which employees are the best ones.
Why is that not getting through to companies? Surveyed employers say the main reason they don’t examine whether their practices lead to better hires is that measuring employee performance is difficult. Surely this is a prime example of making the perfect the enemy of the good, ” Peter Cappelli states in his article, “Your Approach to Hiring Is All Wrong” In the May June 2019 issue of the Harvard Business Review
His article covers a lot of ground on both the recruitment and retention fronts, that I see from the “other side of the table”, as we help job seekers strive for positions in these roles in their job search.
Its not uncommon to see the poorly prepared job descriptions that Cappelli describes, are designed to get more people in the funnel. Yet, its clear that the tools to screen massive numbers of resume are not yet sophisticated enough to tease out the most talented candidates for interviews. “We don’t know whether any of these [new systems] actually lead to better hires, because few of them are validated against actual job performance.” Cappelli continues.
Cappelli states that there is more hiring at all levels than ever before and that “the root cause of most hiring, therefore, is drastically poor retention” He references LinkedIn data to support the notion “that the most common reason employees consider a position elsewhere is career advancement—which is surely related to employers’ not promoting to fill vacancies”.
From my side of the table, limited interest in existing employee career development, grand but empty values statements holding up an unhealthy work culture, poor management skills, and workplace bullying are also profound and common complementary drivers of poor retention. A culture of “great bosses” would go a long way to fostering retention.
John Rampton describe it well in an INC Newsletter, “As much work as you try make your company attractive to talented people, the truth is employees might be leaving because of their bosses. In fact, research has shown people tend to quit their bosses, not companies. If you can cultivate an environment where employees feel rewarded and gratified, you'll already be ahead of a great deal of other bosses out there.”
Just imagine the impact on retention, if every employee’s work meant: a sense of engagement in what they are doing; mutually determined ongoing professional development; supervision designed to the help the employee be successful in achieving goals aligned with both the company’s aspirations and the employees long tern career plans; genuine interest in the employees life and well being, a culture of connectedness, playfulness and humour without losing focus on the seriousness of the work that needs to be done… and along with a competitive salary and benefits.
Cappeli is right. We need to find better ways to mend our sometimes broken systems in recruiting and retaining top talent.
