Top 10 Job Interview Tips and Tricks

Top 10 Job Interview Tips and Tricks Do you know how to sell yourself in interview? Have you found yourself freezing up? Have you ever had a question where you have not been able to work out what the interviewer was asking â€" or you could give an answer, but didn’t know if it was the right one? Here are my top 10 interview tips for this month. As someone said on Twitter, these are not rocket science, but really timely reminders of the basics: 1) Research the organization: Everyone gets nervous in interview. It’s a big occasion and you should be nervous. However if you start with some thorough research, you start to build a case in your own mind of why you should be sitting in that interview room or in front of a panel. Having some confidence is a solid first step to overcoming nerves. You can actually tell a lot about an employer from the employment pages of their website. Things such as the values they have, how easy it is to find out about potential jobs and their responses to you when you apply, can all tell you about the way they handle their recruitment. This in turn may be a reflection of what it’s like to work there. If it’s friendly and easy to apply for a job, then chances are they have given some thought to why you would want to work for them. The web is a such wealth of facts, but what you need to do, is turn this into information. You can look at annual reports, media releases and product and service information. Online directories have company information and Google indexes the latest media news and references from other sources. If a career page has an email contact for an employee, and invites contact, then do it. Often companies will use testimonials that way to attract new people. Use sites such as linked in to research companies. When you look for this information, you are not just looking for a set of unrelated facts. You should be looking for reasons that you want to work for that employer. You’ll really impress the interviewer if you find some simple yet compelling reasons as to why you want to work for the employer and what appeals to you about the role. 2) Research the role: One thing that constantly surprises me is that how few people really have any understanding of the role that they are applying for. Job advertisements are partly to blame for this. They are often misleading. The person writing the advert is often not the person that you’ll be reporting to. Things always sound different on paper compared to what you will actually be doing in the role. One of my clients recently applied for a job in the public sector. The position description said: Building effective communication strategies with a variety of stakeholders and colleagues to ensure information exchanges are timely, accurate and useful. This is what this statement meant: Providing advice to staff and students on the status of their research applications. If you see something like the above, try to talk to someone who knows about the role. A good question to ask is “what does a typical day/week look like?” Once you know what’s expected of you, preparing for the interview is instantly easier. Also important is a real insight into the role and the recruitment process. Dig deeper than the advertisement. Put a call through if a contact number is provided. You can find out which of the skills that the employer requires are actually the priority. You can determine what you can do without and importantly you can start to make yourself known (in a good way) to your future employer. Even if the advertisement doesn’t invite it, you can still contact the recruiter. If there are no contact details, be scrupulously polite, it usually means the employers are expecting a deluge of applications. Ask them questions about the recruitment process, what the steps are, how long each step takes, and whether they’ve had many applicants. You’d be surprised at the information you’ll receive if you sound polite and interested. 3) Research yourself: Employers want you to be self aware. Have a long hard look at what you have achieved, the way you have achieved that result and the skills you developed or demonstrated along the way. This type of reflection helps you understand your strengths. It gives you confidence and helps you overcome nerves. 4) Interviewer insight: No two interview processes are the same. Depending on the organization and the role, you could be interviewed by a recruitment consultant, the HR department, the line manager, all three individually, or any combination. Each will have a different agenda for the interview. This is important to remember as your approach with each should be slightly different. The recruitment consultant is always the first screener. Their role is to match you to the employer’s requirements and sell you as an applicant. The consultant establishes their credibility with each good candidate they put forward to the employer. Take time to woo them, even if you think they don’t know their stuff (as is a common criticism). Their role is essentially a sales one: to sell you the job and, if they believe you are right for the role, to sell you to their client. Make the consultant’s role easier by focussing on your strengths and achievements and point out why you are a good match. The HR consultant is usually the recruitment procedural expert. One of their jobs is to ensure the organization meets its legal requirements. They often set up the recruitment process and have a strong attachment to ensuring it is working. It’s a safe bet that you will face a more structured interview from them, than you will from a line manager. They are often the employer’s first screener and may need to sell you further, depending on their position and influence within the organisation. The line manager will be the person who is most concerned about finding someone for the role. They may be a person down or not meeting their organisation’s objectives by being understaffed. In the interview it will be the line manager who has the greatest sense of urgency about filling the role. Focus on your workplace achievements when fielding their questions. Work hard to build a rapport with them. They will be assessing your fit for their team. It may sound obvious but treat each interviewer as if they don’t talk to each other and know anything about you. You’d be amazed at how little communication sometimes goes on between each party. 5) Practice: Most organizations now use behavioural questions â€" which means they will be expecting you to provide specific examples of where you have demonstrated the skill they are seeking. I strongly suggest practicing for an interview and seeking professional help. A professional is skilled at drawing examples out of you and finessing the ones you already have. However never rote learn your lines as you can never predict all the recruiter will ask. Memorising answers will make you stressed in the interview if you can’t recall what you want to say. Worse still, you may even be not be answering the questions the interviewer asks. READ MORE: How to Answer ‘Why Do You Want This Job?’ in an Interview 6) Build rapport: Be friendly. People like that! One of the best ways to relax is to assume the interviewer is on your side. Good interviewers are not interested in tripping you up. In fact, most of them are on your side, or are at the very least they will be approaching the interview in a professional manner. It may even help to you to relax if you think of the interviewer as someone who wants you to do your best 7) Give yourself time: Leave plenty of time to get to the interview. Rushing breeds panic. No matter what excuse you have, lateness is noted. It creates a negative impression and it puts you behind immediately. Allowing waiting time for an interview gives you time to compose yourself, gather your thoughts and be mentally prepared. 8) Please be yourself: That is please be yourself. You will be doing yourself no favours if you try and suppress your personality, or pretend to be something that you aren’t. 9) Relax: While you think this may be the perfect job for you, it may be that it’s not. There are other jobs out there. If you keep this in mind then you’ll remove some pressure from yourself that this is your only chance to perform. If you think the interview is going badly, relax and use it as practice for the next one. You never know, you could even recover if you take this approach. 10) An insider’s tip: The interview is just the formal means of assessing your suitability as a candidate. However you are not just assessed there. Each interaction you have with your future employer feeds into the bigger picture of their impression of you. Use this knowledge. Be polite and friendly with whomever you meet in the process from the very first phone call to the last goodbye to the receptionist on your way out. Interviews can be daunting. Please contact me if you need some help putting it all into practice or just some extra advice. Here’s another blatant plug. When it comes to interview skills, practice with a professional does make perfect. Further reading at 10 Classic Interview Blunders to Avoid. [Image: Shutterstock]

3 tips to buying life insurance even with a pre-existing condition

3 tips to buying life insurance even with a pre-existing condition A lot of people think that you will most likely get denied a life insurance when you have a pre-existing condition. While that is true to some instances, having a pre-existing condition such as cancer, heart disease or diabetes does not necessarily mean that everyone will deny you of a life insurance. This can be bothersome to a lot of people because even at a younger age, pre-existing conditions can be present. However, the process could be a little slower, but if you work with the right agent who knows how to find the best insurance company for you that offers the types of policies that suits your needs. Here are three tips on buying a life insurance even with a pre-existing condition. Do your research and be upfront about your condition. It sounds very cliché but prior to doing anything life-changing, you should do an extensive research about it. Buying life insurance may not be the most fun thing to do, but it is important. If you have a pre-existing condition, be upfront about it to your agent so he or she can openly give out suggestions. Know what information you need and possible questions that would be asked about your health. You will also be asked some important documents such as diagnosis and letters explaining your health issues and prescription. Gather as much information as you can prior to contacting an agent,  When you  have one, the process will be much smoother and you already know what you need. Make sure to have all important paperwork come in handy so that when your agent already finds the perfect policy for you, the process will be faster. Look for the best policy by getting quotes from multiple providers. Do not limit your options to one or only a few insurance providers. Get a quote from multiple providers as you can and do your comparison. Find which ones offer the best policy that suits you. This is an important move especially for high-risk cases because these are reviewed differently by different insurance providers. Find the best provider that acknowledges your concern and answers all of your questions. This will allow you to compare each individual insurance provider through their service and not just with the prices. This way, you will know which is worth your money and time. Determine the right policy for you. With regards to pre-existing conditions especially on high-risk cases, you may have limited options on the kinds of life insurance policy you can apply for.  You may be required for a complete medical questionnaire, exams, and several prescription checks in order to qualify for a fully underwritten policy. However, a guaranteed policy doesn’t ask health questions or exams. That may sound great, but there would be a limit on the coverage you can buy and you will also pay higher. In such cases, these types of policies should be your last resort. Nevertheless, determine what is best for you so you will get the most out of the money you are investing it to.

Here Piggy, Piggy, Piggy - Personal Branding Blog - Stand Out In Your Career

Here Piggy, Piggy, Piggy - Personal Branding Blog - Stand Out In Your Career If you sit down with pigs, you will be served slop. Of course, this is easy to see if you’re a barnyard animal, harder to perceive as a businessperson.   In a world where Brad Pitt shows up looking pretty scruffy at the Beverly Hills Hotel and even big time wheeler-dealers don’t carry enough cash to buy you coffee at Starbucks, not knowing exactly whom you’re with is common and problematic. Whats served up? It’s not hygiene that’s at issue or even the menu. At issue are the intention, direction, and action you may be caught up in, given your environment and the people in it. We used to talk more about corporate culture, before simply having a job was the more pressing issue. But, as the economy improves and you have a chance to be choosier, it may be time to look at what’s served up. For me, the largest culture divide is between people who are relationship builders versus those who are transaction minded. If you are not in the right place with like-minded people, you are either going to be uncomfortably swept away by the relationship people â€" or whiplashed by the stop and start transaction people. If you are in the wrong culture, you are feeling confused, frustrated and slightly motion sick. The wrong role In one of the many business ventures I’m consulting with, I am currently miscast in a transaction company. That means as I continually add value, additional revenue, new opportunities for visibility â€" the CEO continually takes those and then negotiates money and terms with me as if he is doing a hostile takeover. His goal is to get as much as possible now from me. For him, it’s a win-lose. My goal was to build a long term, high trust relationship, which for me is turning out to be a lose-win. When it comes to the two mindsets: transaction versus relationship, the transaction approach will always prevail. The desire to make money right now and kill the potential for future earnings is by far the more powerful force in the short term. And, if you are truly a transaction minded person, it will not disturb you that you lose referrals, goodwill, and the highest quality work product. That doesn’t matter. You are checking our pockets and finding enough change to order a vente latte. If you are transaction minded, you don’t depend on your personal reputation and your ability to grow an organization to provide ongoing fuel for your business objectives. It is simply your ability to attack and command in short bursts that forms the basis of your approach to business. The thrill of each win is more compelling than the downside effects to your revenue model. Your income depends on each new deal living and then dying. You scavenge to find more deals to do and expire. All kinds of commodities are sold this way, but surprisingly so are many one-off projects. If you see clients, vendors, and employees as a commodity, youll treat them exactly that way. It’s why photocopying at a FedEx office store isn’t any more meaningful than doing the same at Staples.   I’m feeling that way about my dry cleaners now that the owners aren’t working the counter and a surly, lazy clerk makes each transaction a maybe I should take a photo of my clothes moment because as she said:   Look, read the sign: were not responsible. Its a new kind of Kodak moment for security, not memories. To relationship builders, transaction environments and leaders feel yucky. They seem greedy, small-minded, penny-wise and pound-foolish. But, that’s not at all how they see themselves. For them, their approach is practical, tactical, beneficial and right-minded. If you’re feeling that you’ve sat down with the wrong people and are consuming the wrong stuff, it’s a culture thing. You may have landed in a place where you a misfit. Keep your day job while you sniff out what might be more appealing. And, take a look at your social media profiles, specifically what you’ve been saying about yourself. When we see your updates about friends, family, and fun, what do we glean about who you are and where you belong? Author: Nance Rosen is the author of Speak Up! Succeed. She speaks to business audiences around the world and is a resource for press, including print, broadcast and online journalists and bloggers covering social media and careers. Read more at NanceRosenBlog. Twitter name: nancerosen

Life Emergency

Life Emergency “911” as we all know is the number that you call when you have an emergency â€" a fire, a medical problem, a burglary, etc.  Am I the only one who thinks that there should be a number you call when you have a “life emergency”?  What constitutes a life emergency? Well, it’s probably different for everyone. A life emergency is some sort of a crisis that requires us to act and to act, NOW. This could mean getting laid off from your only job (IN THIS ECONOMY!) or it could mean that you, for whatever reason, have 30 days to look for a new apartment A life emergency is anything that involves lifes unexpected turns, but one that is unpleasant and requires a solution FAST! Take a second and think about your last life emergency. How did you handle it? Well, I began mine by calling my mother.  Her response in these situations is typically to call our network of family priests and books masses (#Catholicproblems). Then I put on “All we can do is keep breathing,” by Ingrid Michaelson on repeat. (That song has seen me at my worst I tell you!). Then I write in my crimson “Life Notebook” that I carry with me everywhere. I make two columns:   “Things I can control” and “Things I can’t control.” At the top of the Things I can’t control list, I put “God is in charge.  At the top of the Things I can control list, I put Kovie is in charge. Recently, due to circumstances beyond my control, I have had to step up what I call “my stable job” search. I cannot  put “Kovie is in charge.” Sounds detailed, doesn’t it? Well, it is because I recently have just had a life emergency and taking the high road just got a lot more complicated. I cant go into too much detail as the situation does not involve solely my professional and personal life but others as well as. And as comfortable as I am in airing my professional grievances; as someone who is private in some respects, I respect what others choose to keep private. I made my list and I realized my “Things I can control,” has a lot more on it than my “Things I cannot control” list. Therefore, I have gone to work â€" more applications, more networking, more everything and 10X better! WHY am I telling you this?! Because in life emergencies, as much as we would love to break down and cry, the word, EMERGENCY, suggests that it is no time to cry. If you must cry, do it while you WORK on moving forward. Since when did panicking do anyone any good? Even in our life emergencies, our resolve should be strong, our goals clear and our actions as calculated as we can possibly achieve. Why did I come up with a “life emergency” process? Because in the words of Aristotle, “excellence is a habit, not an act.” And  if I know full well that this current life emergency is not going to be my last one, so I damn well better resolve to be excellent even in these situations. Believe it or not, there IS a positive to life emergencies: we quickly discover how thick-skinned we really are. We find out how thick-skinned we need to become. Pressure is sometimes exactly what we need to achieve  difficult  things. We also tend to find out which people around us are really there when it comes down to the wire because I assure you that a life emergency is seldom conquered by a sole individual. Perhaps the greatest thing about a “life emergency” is that just like any other life occasion, it eventually passes. I want to know: what was your most recent life emergency and how did you handle it? I assure you myself and people reading this need all the help we can get. Cheers, Kovie

How to Add Writing Undergraduate Thesis to Resume

How to Add Writing Undergraduate Thesis to ResumeIf you have a piece of work, be it an article, a journal or a book, which has a thesis, you will need to know how to add writing an undergraduate thesis to resume. This can either be done manually or with the aid of programs. However, most of the people prefer to do it manually because they do not want to put in much effort in doing this.Nowadays, there are more job sites which target people for hiring who want to have their work and document in the online form, thus making it more accessible to many. You may do this manually as well by posting your writings in their websites. However, many of these websites may not accept what you post. Thus, you will need to upload your document in the website through its submission option.At times, a resume is not sufficient to get a job. Thus, you will need to write a thesis. In this case, you will need to know how to add writing an undergraduate thesis to resume to increase the chances of getting hired.First, write about your current work. You can put in your goals and objectives about your future work, other projects you have been working on, the amount of time required for each one, and the educational background you have. Also include in your writing undergraduate thesis to resume the projects that you have been working on for some time.Second, include your writing samples and written journals. You may also include academic papers, dissertation and dissertations. You will be in greater need of a formal title page. Use some formal call number in the beginning so that it does not confuse anyone.Third, make a resume that includes all of your accomplishments and listit in the order of chronological importance. These accomplishments will show up first on the resume so that the employer will see them. After you have listed your accomplishments, list down your educational background.Fourth, if you are applying for graduate school, it would be best to indicate your honors in this list. The statement 'academic honors' should be included in your resume. This is considered to be a prime advantage when you want to have your work accepted by a graduate school.Writing this sort of article is very difficult to do. However, the benefits that it can bring to a person are worth all the difficulty. In fact, with these methods, you will be able to show off your knowledge in writing more and enhance your resume.

Failing at work is a good thing - Wolfgang Career Executive Coaching

Failing at work is a good thing - Wolfgang Career Executive Coaching Guest blog sharing good insight on the upside of failing at work. -Amy My pilot program officially bombed today for the second time. I sat there with my boss and we talked about why the participants never embraced the pilot program. My boss wanted results and we didnt have any. He was agitated. Then it got worse when I told him that the pilot WAS successful! This incident coincided with some reading I was doing. One of the chapters in Smartcuts by Shane Snow discussed how failure can help you reach your goal faster. It gave me a healthy perspective on my recent failure so I wanted to share a few stories about how to turn failing at work into succeeding at work. Back to the pilot and that look on my boss face What failing at work looks like The pilot failed for a few reasons: I hadnt given the participants a full perspective of how they should incorporate this new process into their daily activities. The participants already had an overwhelming number of priorities on their plate. The managers of the participants were not working together to make the changes. Ideally, we wanted to show how these new processes would impact the bottom line but we couldnt get the data because we couldnt get the pilot team to use the new processes. We were conducting a pilot for 4 people before we rolled it out to the entire force of 500 people. We wanted to see if the content was good but what we uncovered was flawed assumptions about how our team learns new processes. Organizational change is not easy and we wound up finding five major obstacles that needed to be addressed first. Could you imagine if we rolled this into a larger roll out? That would have been the wrong stage to fail on! Instead we learned this with only four people and with two weeks of time. So instead of stats we uncovered a pretty important area I had overlooked. This failure was really a success because we learned, we learned fast and now we are pivoting. The next pilot will look dramatically different and we will try to fail even faster so we can get to the next pivot sooner. Learn when you fail Do you know where theres a lot of daily failure? Sales. To succeed in sales, they say you need thick skin. Yes you need to be able to handle failing at work but, more importantly, you need to know what to do with failure. When it comes to failing at selling, there are two types of individuals: Keep on using the same techniques hoping that a next prospect will react positively to your message. Look for the lesson after each sales call, adjust for it, and try something new on the next call. The latter attitude is how you find the best time to call, the right tone to use, the optimal opening line, etc. Embracing failing at work, in fact, speed up your failures! The more you fail the more things you can learn. Dont just learn but apply what you learn into a new hypothesis and new experiment on your next cold call or email. Build your laboratory The very nature of programming is to fail often. This is why the right development tools and dev-test environments are critical. Failure is the business and speed is what gets new products to market first. Writing a line of code is, really, an experiment. It may work, it may not. The key is try something, fail, pivot, and try something new. Later, rinse, repeat. My mom was a programmer back in the 60s and 70s. To test their programs, they had to convert their programs to punch cards, physically take them down to the mainframe room and leave them overnight to be compiled. In the morning, if you had one little error, you knew it! Its archaic by todays standards but can you imagine how frustrating that must have been!? Programming tasks can be quite large so think in terms of experiments. How can you break your tasks down to a series of experiments? How can you quickly iterate and try new experiments? What tools and equipment do you need to run your experiments quickly? Set an appropriate amount of time for testing and clearly define what success looks like. Get in your zone and then crush it! We are all scientists Experimentation is a more accurate term than failing at work. The spirit of testing and experimenting is needed to find answers to new and challenging questions, no matter what field or department you are in: Marketing: what pain points are relevant to this audience? Sales: what do I say in my email intro to get a response? HR: what mix of investment options should we offer in our 401k? Programming: how do we store this data in multiple systems? Engineering: how do we shrink our circuit design? Think about what experiments you can be running in your job to improve the way your department operates. Most of us dont think this way because it is additional stuff to do. Think bigger! Choosing an appropriate scale There is an extreme here, that you need to be wary of: too many experiments. You need to adjust the amount of time you spend on experiments based on the size of the problem and the potential impact of solving it. If you want to send a human to Mars then youll need a few years, a few billion dollars and a lot of experiments. If you want to find the best of three subject lines, then spend two additional hours testing them with 1,000 recipients no need to work on it for a week! So break out of your fear of failing at work. When you fear failure, your goal turns into following the process rather than achieving breakthrough success.

179 Mireille Ryan - Social Media Marketing Institute - Jane Jackson Career

179 Mireille Ryan - Social Media Marketing Institute - Jane Jackson Career Mireille Ryan is an impressive professional driven, dedicated and highly creative with a huge heart and big dreams. In this podcast episode, Mireille shares her career aspirations as a young woman, her career journey and how she transitioned into entrepreneurship, creating the Social Media Marketing Institute.In 2010, Mireille Ryan was named Australian Exercise Professional of the Year and her business was named 2011 QLD Personal Training Business of the Year. Mireille’s success led her to be featured on radio and in over 20 magazines around the world including Grazia, Prevention, Weight Watchers, Ultrafit, That’s Life and also was named in 2010 as Australia’s #1 Personal Trainer by Good Health.Mireille has over 85000 followers on social media and regularly appears on podcasts such as Success Stalkers radio and was featured in the book “Picture Them Naked”, which shares the secrets of successful speakers. When Mireille was CEO of her own company Health Guru Industries, s he learnt first hand the importance of communicating through content and social media to reach her ideal audience.All the skills Mireille has learnt in the digital marketing space is as a result of needing to learn how to use it in her own companies. When other business owners saw Mireille’s success, they started asking her for her help. This passion for social media led to Mireille to establish the Social Media Marketing Institute, a membership, education and professional development organisation for the Social Media Industry. The goal of the Social Media Marketing Institute is to support social media marketers throughout their career, by providing mentorship, training, conferences, awards, education, advisory and support. After seeing the huge impact that winning an award had on her career, Mireille wanted to establish an awards program specifically for the social media industry as a way to celebrate excellence in social media marketing. The Social Media Marketing Awards (w ww.socialmediamarketingawards.com) was launched in 2017. In 2019 The Social Media Marketing Awards are on 15th August 2019. Mireille has spoken at conferences in Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide, Brisbane, Canberra and the Gold Coast.  Where to find Mireille:Website: SMMI AwardsTwitter: @mireilleryanAttract career opportunities by building a powerful personal brand online learn the 3 Secrets to Personal Branding for Career Success in this FREE Masterclass today!