Appropriate Behavior for College Job Fairs and on-campus interviews!

Part 7

Appropriate Behavior for College Job Fairs and on-campus interviews!

I’m deviating from the natural progression of this self-help blog based on a recent conversation I had with someone who works as a company HR representative to college fairs and on-campus recruitment interviews.

He mentioned to me how horrified he was about the lack of training on college campuses to help students really know how to navigate the interview process and really importantly, appropriate behavior from during these interviews or fair encounters.  Some of the students came across as cocky, belligerent, entitled and completely not knowledgeable how who they were talking to and the company the person represented.

Since this is such an important point and really goes to the heart of any interaction for a job,  I thought I should write about it now.

What I’m about to say applies to college students who are going to fairs or applying to interview with individual companies who are visiting their campus. It also applies to recent college grads that are going out on first interview and/or attending fairs.

1.       Do not go on an on-campus interview if you:

A. Have no interest in the company (for example, working at Apple is not appealing to you because you hate their products and the way they dominate the marketplace)

B. Do not have the qualification to work at that company (if Apple only hires MBAs or engineers and I am not either and do not intend on becoming either, don’t waste people’s time).

C. Know that the types of positions that this company hires for would not be something you’d like to do (I don’t want to work at Apple because they don’t have any creative marketing positions).

D. Is not in a geographic area that you’d move to (I’d never move to Cupertino, CA).

2.      Know all the above because you’ve already researched the company before you decided to pursue. You’ve looked at their website and open positions—and looked at what is currently in the news regarding the company.

3.      The same thing goes for job fairs—know what companies will be attending and then research who you’d like to talk to based on the above criteria.

4.      Treat these fairs and interviews as if you’d actually like to work for these companies, meaning take do everything possible to try to “get the job.”

5.      That means dress appropriately (Business casual is always a safe bet—I’ll write about this is future posts but look it up if you don’t understand).

6.      That means be prepared with resumes and any other appropriate samples (writers bring writing samples; artist art; etc).

7.      Treat each encounter as a job interview—you are there to impress. Let the company take the lead in the interview. You should have questions prepared and the interviewer will most likely give you time to ask them. Most of the company reps are internal HR people and they are looking to fill entry level or management trainee positions. Some will be there to recruit for specific things such as engineers.

8.     Never, ever take the position of  “what can you do for me” or “what do you have.” They are there to sell their company; you are there to sell yourself.  If you are so valuable that a bidding war will happen, good for you. But handle yourself with maturity and appropriate behavior. The days of the entitled are over. Finding a job is tough stuff—personality and attitude do matter. If getting the position falls between two people who are almost equal in qualifications, the person who is liked will get the job (frankly, even if qualifications fall closer to 60/40 and the 40% person is much better liked, they will get the job).

9.      Follow up.  Get business cards and e-contact info for the people you’ve met. Send a thank your for time note, re-send your resume, and let them know why they should hire you. If you’ve not had all your questions answered, ask them now.

Coming up with some additional questions to show that you’ve thought about the company should also help.

10.   If you have already created a Linked In network, see if you know anyone at that company. If you do, evaluate if you think they can help you. What I mean by that is: is this someone you know directly? Can you contact them and ask them to put in a good word? If it is a secondary contact, can you ask your contact to do that for you? See if there is any in-direct link to the company person that you can use. If someone already works in the company sends a “this kid is great” note, the HR will take note. You have been approved and validated in their mind. HR is also judged by the type of person brought in and if someone can vouch for you, they will be more likely to choose  you over someone else.

How Recent College Grads can use Linked In

Part 6

How to turn your resume into a Linked In Profile

Linked In has become an unbelievable resource for job seekers, corporations looking to fill positions, people who want to network and an online database of millions of people who let the world know who they are and what they do. Never before has so much professional information available to anyone and everyone.

If you are applying for a job, having you profile in order is as important as your resume. And the profile should closely follow the resume but with Linked In you actually have more opportunity on your profile to creatively highlight features of who you are and what you can do. Where there are “strict” rules about how to put a resume together, Linked in really allows for much more creativity—even just putting a nice professional, friendly picture of yourself on your profile.

Note: I’ve decided not to discuss about me pages because I don’t know enough about them and don’t really know anyone at a professional level who used them).

The best strategy to start using Linked In is simple: sign up, create a profile--then see who you know that you will connect to you, and start building your network. Join Groups that interest you—you can get connections that way. Ask family and their friends if they can connect. There are people who will link to anyone and everyone—find them and connect. If you send me a connection and refer to my blog or Infobarrel, I’ll connect with you—that will give you thousands of connections to start with.

Then start doing searches and find people who are just like you—similar background, similar career goals. Find  people who have the job you want—see what they have to say about themselves—look at how they entered the job market. See how they positioned themselves. See what words they’ve used to describe themselves. Words are free and can’t be owned or plagiarized. All resumes are compilations of what other people have said, perhaps organized or displayed differently. Note: you can also use this stuff in your profile and resume so go back and revise it after you’ve done this research.

After you’ve gotten something decent together, start playing. See who went to your college and graduated with your major—what are they doing now? I bet they’d link to you if you sent a personal note (Hi Joe, I just graduated from blah university with a degree in journalism and I’m looking to build my professional network…).  If you can’t link to them because they aren’t a connection, consider purchasing “inmails” and see how well they work.

Your Linked In profile is a work in progress that can be changed and improved whenever you want or acquire a new skill. You can use it in many ways as a business tool to market yourself. In terms of finding your first job, here are some specific ideas:

1.       Use the slideshow tool to showcase something that you’ve written that might be impressive—even if it’s spec work.

2.      If you have a blog, link it to your profile so people can see it.

3.      Participate in groups by asking good questions and providing insights.

4.      Ask people if they’d be willing to have a brief phone conversation with you about entering a specific job marketing—what skills are needed, etc. Have specific questions in mind.

5.      Be careful with this but asking people within certain companies if they’d introduce you to an HR person because you know that the has a position open that you are qualified to do.

Never before have so many people become so accessible. Use this tool well and wisely.

Why I have a Blogger Account

Having recently found Smartpassiveincome.com, I decided to really start to write the content I been only talking about writing. I want to help college students and soon be grads navigate the job search process. SP (short for Smartpassiveincome....) suggests that an easy way for people to overcome inertia is to start with creating an infobarrel account and accumulate content there. I thought it was a brilliant idea--it would get me going and I could write in small amounts when I felt like it and/or had time. I gave myself a goal of one article a week that more or less I've stuck to.

My true intent, in addition to truly wanting to help students, was to see how much passive google adsense income I could generate, thinking I could really become an amazon affiliate if I got more popular (I certainly could do links to appropriate clothing sites...). I first tried to link an adsense account to what I consider my professional blog (ellenweber. wordpress.com) and I didn't get anywhere, but really what I wanted was to link to Infobarrel but didn't have any content when I started so I tried to get everything going with my wordpress blog.  I went into the Infobarrell website for instructions on linking and followed them. I didn't end up linking and found that google didn't approve many infobarrel people anyway.

I then realized, that google in all it's dominance, makes it easy only if you have one of their blog accounts. So, I cut and paste my infobarrel content to this site google Blogger site that you are on now. The content comes from: http://www.infobarrel.com/Users/LNWebr. I had planned to set up a wordpress site for this specifically (I already had started one before...), but figured that Blogger was fine and if it made it easier to do what I wanted, so be it.

Let's see how this works.

Resume Writing

Part 5 Resume Writing

Think of your resume as a continuous work in progress that can and should be changed when you: 1. Add skills, education, etc  2. Think of a better way to say something that you said before 3. Forgot something you didn’t say before 4. Didn’t realize that something you did would be pertinent to a job you are now applying for.

We started with the address and moved to the title in my last post—talked about how no one cares about your objective. Now we’ve gotten to the next part of the resume.

Many young people will put their education next.  Unless you have no work experience at all, or you went to Harvard, education should be at the end (and if you went to Harvard—good for you—but since most people didn’t, they might find it offensive or bragging. So almost always, put it last).

The top part of your resume is really important. It’s the opportunity to bullet point skills, highlight accomplishment and generally tell people why you’re good, not just where you have worked. It also may be the only area that someone looks at and if it doesn’t have some skill or experience they are looking for, they will likely move on to the next one.

A standard format after name and title is a brief summary followed by bullet pointed skill set and then some specific highlights of accomplishments.

So it would look something like this;

Senior Level Digital Strategy Exectuive

Accomplished and seasoned Strategy and implementation specialist with an eye on the bottom line and conversion to sales. Adept at writing long boring copy that may or may not interest anyone reading this resume but need to put something of value so they’ll consider me for this spot.

·         Expert level omniture, site-catalyst, google adwords

·         Advanced analytic capability using SAS and other like software

·         Excellent presenter and communicator of difficult to understand concepts

·         Data expert with….

·         Strong ability to get along with others and play in the sandbox

(this generally looks good in two columns but my word processing skills aren’t good enough for this).

After this bullet pointed skill portion of the resume, you might have (or be able to legitimately make-up) specific accomplishment you can highlight in at this time. For example:

·         Help xyz company increase leads 120% in my time running the strategy group

·         Increased sales by 200% over a two year period

·         Able to grow account 120% with in my tenure in this position

·         Responsible for a data migration to a new system in a six month period

·         Financial analysis was able to save my company $100million dollars

Since you’re new to the job market, it’s obvious that your skill set and accomplishments will be more humble. But you can still use the format to show your skills and accomplishments. For example,

-was able in a six month internship to research and evaluate market competitors that lead to companywide savings, etc.

The next part of the resume should be a clean chronology with company, title, location, dates—followed by job description and more accomplishments if you’ve not listed them in the above section. For example:

The Best Advertising Agency, New York, NY                                     Summer 2012

Associate Account Executive (internship)

Responsible for day to day operation of the Blah Bank business. Specific duties included: competitive analysis using SAS, review of strategy and creative, writing in-depth recommendations to increase sales.

·         Was able to help client increase sales 35% while working on the business

·         Streamlined internal process to help make more efficient and move faster

Do this for all related jobs you’ve had. Education and specific qualifications should follow at the end.

There are lots of templates out there including Microsoft word. There is no reason not to use them, especially if you are “bullet and column challenged” as I am.

Next we’ll get into how to convert this to Linked In and About Me.

Starting to Get Your Resume together

Part 4

Starting to get your Resume/Linked In profile/About Me together

Hopefully by this point you have started to amass some job skills, whether it’s specific software skills or more loosey goosey type skills such as “good with people.” Depending on what you want to do, you’ll likely need a combo of both. If you are IT or Analytical and can’t have a conversation with someone and can’t present to a group in a cohesive way, a management position in that area is not going to be for you. You’ll be considered a back-room player—which is fine, but your progression will stop at a certain point. (that doesn’t mean that the money will stop—think about how much back room actuaries earn…)  And if you are a good manager and people person, you’ll need a skill set behind you to be able to move to the next step.

What I want to do now is to help you formulate your skill set into something that is easy to read, looks good and will help explain who are you are to people who will be looking at a sheet of paper.

1.       The top of your resume. The only reason I bring this up is because many of you will be applying for jobs while you are in college and may not apply in the area that your family lives (ie you want to work in NYC for the summer or permanently—your family lives in Ohio—you are in school in Florida). In this case, you need to put only your name, phone number and email address (and a professional blog address if you have one).

 If you’re trying for that NYC job, the company will want to know that you’ve figured out where to live so if you have a local address put it as part of the top. Putting one in Ohio will be turn-off some people (“I don’t want to deal with an intern/new hire who now has to figure out where to live….”). You want people to think that working with you is easy, not difficult—that you’ve figured out how to get where you want to work and how to live. If you don’t have an address, then talk about your situation in a cover letter.  Even if it’s a full-time job, you want the company to know that you’ve figured out your living situation or can figure it before you start.  You can do that by saying I can start with two week’s notice—and then figure out how to sleep on someone’s couch or get a quick temporary apartment share.

The next part of your resume should basically be a short summary preceded by a title. Your resume will be looked at quickly so you want to make the most impact as fast as possible.  Generally HR people and recruiters look at the top of a resume first to see where you live, then go to the end to see where and when you went to college, and then will go back again to the beginning to see if it says anything related to what they are looking for.

So if you give yourself a title, you are capturing a moment where you are best able to position yourself in the readers mind. Your level and experience will define the title. My title is Senior Level Executive Recruiter and Talent Acquisition Specialist. When I worked in advertising it would have been Seasoned Advertising Account Executive, if I was in IT I would say Senior IT Professional with Financial services Experience. You can say something like Junior Copywriter or Social Media Strategist—as long as you have something to back it up and you’re not lying, it’s okay.

So look at this:

Brandon H. Quillian

646-822-2678

Brandonh@gmal.com

Copyblog.wordpress.com

Social Media Strategist

The next part of your resume can be a short summary and then some bullet pointed skills that highlight what you can do. The one thing that you don’t want to put on your resume is an objective. A “I’m looking to work….” Portion is not going to help you get a job. Companies don’t really want to know what you want to do, they want to know how you are going to help them achieve their goals. At some point in your career they will pay more attention to what you want, but not until you become a valued employee and a company wants to make you happy and not leave.

My next post will be the skill section and the rest of the resume.