Questions you can ask at a Job Interview

I think this post is really straightforward and good though I think I'd ask the questions a little less formally:

http://www.linkedin.com/today/post/article/20130815094409-32175171-the-3-questions-people-always-forget-to-ask-in-an-interview?trk=mp-details-rc.

Products that can help you look for a job

Since I've recently started my own business, I've had the pleasure of deciding what kinds of products work for me. I've recommended a bunch of them in the amazon sidebar--I am currently using them all and think they are all good.

In addition, I decided to set up a skype phone number to use as my incoming call number. It allows me to receive calls while making another call on another number (mostly a landline). The call quality has been great and I have a USB headset attached to my computer for use with this. So far so good.

I also had some issues with my computer and needed them to be resolved quickly. I needed my own tech support. I did a bit of research (including Consumer Reports) who highly recommended the Geek Squad (Best Buy) who fixed my computer remotely in about 1 hour. Now I can have tech support one phone call away--and I can have two other computers repaired as well. I signed up for a two year contract--very reasonably priced.

Make a New College Grad Employable

Great article in the NYTimes on Saturday: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/29/your-money/a-quest-to-make-college-graduates-employable.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0.

Colleges haven’t changed that much in the past 40 years: they never prepared students for the skills discussed in this article: collaboration, interpersonal relations, dealing with ambiguity, flexibility and professionalism. They were also never very good on the job hunt front: how to search for a job, how to present yourself in interviews or how to write a powerful resume that gets noticed (and very important now, how to navigate the world of internet and social media in the job search process).

Let’s assume the job of a college is to educate, not help with the “soft” skills mentioned. One would then ask where this development of really important social and personal skills should develop. (and I’m not saying that I believe colleges shouldn’t do a better job in this area….)

I’m a firm believer that people grow these skills over time—mostly starting in high school, after puberty when some rational thought about what the future holds can develop. Some kids know innately what to do; others not so much or not at all.  Parents can help by getting kids involved in long-term volunteer internships as soon as possible. Working on an election is a great idea. Colleges and universities also need to look again at work experience for credit, and how to get students involved in meaningful long term projects. 

There are many success stories of adaptation by colleges. For example: the Charlotte N.C. area is a hot bed of Insurance companies—many of whom recruit local students because of the wealth of young people going to college in the area. UNC Charlotte adapted by offering specific coursework in different types of insurance. What if Microsoft and IBM (who also maintain huge operations in that area) got together with the local Universities and said we need students who can graduate knowing drupal, unica, HTML or be able to navigate from a creative and strategic perspective the new landscape of social media? And then provide them with internships during the school year or summer doing that work? Or direct the University in types of in-depth skill building projects that can be developed.

The NY Times article is well written and thought out, a good job Alina Tugend who wrote it. I’d like to see more like this with information from colleges/universities and corporations in need of talent.

What skills do you need to get you your first job in digital marketing (or expand your opportuniites if you've been around for a while).

If you can get solid experience using any of these digital marketing or data tools, (even through paid or unpaid internships), you can find a job.
SEO
SEM
Webtrends and all other new web analytic tools
Teamsite
Google Analytics
Email tools to send out complicated blasts
Omniture
HTML
CMS
UX
JAVA
Website design tools
Data/statistical analytic tools: SAS, Unica, Eloqua, Salesforce.com.

Please feel free to email me with more and I'll add them to the list.

As a recent college grad, be careful about categorizing yourself in one of these areas. It's okay to start your career focusing on one of these things, but if you want to do more--you have to look at the career progression and opportunity after you master this.

Company Career Websites and responding to Linked In ads: Should you bother?

I just finished a contract position at a major insurance company. They, similar to most major companies these days, post every new job on their career website.  When someone applies for a position directly to the site, they end up in the applicant tracking system which is monitored by talent acquisition people assigned to that job.

In addition, many companies pay for Linked In ads to post jobs that are more difficult to fill. Linked In has an algorithm that matches your profile to a job and an ad pops up on the side of your page telling you that this is a match for you. If you respond to those ads, you will end up in an inbox of the talent acquisition person who is monitoring and evaluating what is coming in for that job.

So how can do you break through the clutter of masses of resumes and get seen? First, in my experience, there are not masses of resumes—mostly there are resumes of people who do not meet the qualifications of the position. The few “on target” resumes get reviewed carefully because they are an “easy” candidate. They came to you (you didn’t have to go find them and convince them of your opportunity), they are already motivated (they applied), and they’ll make time to interview. Passive candidates are more difficult to arrange interviews.

Here are some of the things I observed that may help you target how you position yourself when you are sending your resume in to a corporate ATS or answering a Linked in ad:

1.     If your background and resume looks like a close fit for the position, the likelihood of you getting contacted for a phone interview are very good—this goes for both the career website or Linked In.

2.     If the position is in a very difficult to fill category—you might get contacted if you are 60-70% match.

3.     What that means from a candidate perspective is this: if you target your resume appropriately so you match close enough, you will get an interview.

4.     Candidates really need to understand that talent acquisition people are looking for a skill set and cannot send to the hiring manager someone who doesn’t have the skill set required.  However, there are degrees of flexibility that you can learn to use to your advantage.

-        Write your resume with the appropriate key words in mind. Every one of the posted jobs has a job description. Write your resume to reflect the company’s terminology. For example, your company uses the term lead generation for finding interested people, but xyz calls it demand marketing—use what they use.

-        If you have a blended background and the position is for a specific job function which is one of the things that you’ve done, focus on that—do not keep your resume generalized.  For example, you are an experienced ux, website design, code in HTML and use Java. The position is to be a content manager that requires Java and other tools—focus the resume on that. Make it easy for the recruiter, not difficult.

-        If you have only a few years’ experience but know that you can do the job and have a basic skill set, position your resume in that way. Many hiring managers are open to training young people who exhibit intelligence and work ethic and are a bargain—saving them money on salaries (or allowing them to use the salary savings on another  position).

5.     Find someone who works at the company who can recommend you. You’ll get a closer look especially if your skill set is not close to a perfect match (also the talent acquisition person can use that recommendation to get your resume in front of the hiring manager: blah in accounting knows this guy and says he’s great—he doesn’t have an exact match skill set but you might want to take a look….)

6.     Only do this is you truly believe you are a good match for the position: find the internal talent acquisition person and send an email to them and let them know you’ve applied and why they should talk to you. You can also see if you can find the hiring manager and do the same—they will likely send it back to the talent acquisition person and ask them to speak to you. At that point, the Talent Acquisition person will talk to you because they’ll need to let the hiring manager know what happened. But again, don’t waste anyone’s time unless you have the skills.

Five Months as a Corporate Internal Recruiter

I just finished 5 months working in-house for a global insurance company. I worked on filling their open marketing positions which included digital marketing, branding, analytics, corporate communications and product marketing.

It was an enlightening experience in many ways but the reason I'm writing about it here at Collegegradjobsearch, is to say to you: there are jobs available with only a limited amount of experience--if it's the right experience. And even more to the point, this is experience that you could get during internships, working on campus, or just stuff you help people with over the summer.

The skills I'm specifically talking about are: SEO, CSS, JAVA, webtrends among others. The group that I supported did hire (and would have hired more if I could have found them), recent college grads that had these skill sets.

How could you have found them?
1. do you check corporate career sites? do you check ads on Linked In? What you should be looking for is either "Entry Level" (obviously) or 2-3 years experience.
2. have the ability to relocate for these jobs. We posted an entry level marketing position in our offices in CT and got very few applicants. How can this be when there are tons of unemployed job seekers and an open entry level marketing position? Figure out how to move for a year or two so you can be the one to get this valuable experience.

So what can you learn from this? If you have the right skill set and it says 2 years, apply for it. It means that the company is open to very junior people and they hire someone junior and  good if they can get the salary low enough that makes sense financially. And don't just apply. Find someone who knows someone and get someone to give you a positive word. Dig in and see if an ad is posted for the position. Is the internal recruiter listed? I always had my email address posted with ads but I didn't get any direct inquiries. Show me you're aggressive.

Can you move for that great entry level job? The CT office isn't in a high rent area. Could you move so you could get the experience?

I'll be coming back to my blog progression soon, but I wanted to write about these few things before I forgot about them.

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.