Sirona Says

Arrgghh! Why are candidates still being muppets at interviews?

This a mini-rant is born out of frustration and disbelief! Yesterday I spent the day with a client during one of their interview events. What I witnessed at the actual interview stages, was both unforgivable and unbelievable - from the candidates being interviewed -  in this current climate of large amounts of unemployment.
As a 'recruitment dinosaur' (someone who has been in the industry for 20+ years!) I have briefed more candidates than I care to remember on interview techniques and expectation - you could say, I tend to overbrief candidates - although you can never give a candidate too much information! So when I sat there yesterday listening to the responses to some standard 'every interview has them' questions, I was completely stunned with the answers given....or rather lack of answers!! And bear in mind here, that 99% of the candidates interviewed all had 2:1 degrees and above, and all really wanted it as their dream job!

There were three questions that nearly every interview asks, and yesterday was no different:

1. What are your strengths and/or weaknesses?
2. What motivates you? (or What gets you out of bed in the morning?)
3. Why do you want this job?

The answers varied from bad to awful to zero (Yes! One graduate couldn't even unbelievably answer the second question!!)

So my message is a simple one - if you are attending interviews for a new job, make sure you PREPARE FOR THE INTERVIEW otherwise you are completely wasting both yours and the company's time by even attending in the first place. You might as well just go and sit on a park bench and talk to the ducks, for all the good it is going to do!

Don't be a muppet - you know these questions (and other obvious ones) will be asked of you, so make sure that have thought about it, and what you are going to say in reply. These are basic, bog-standard interview questions, they are not exactly a curve ball question - but many many people sitting in an interview screw them up time and time again!  If you are really stuck (or being really thick) then Google it - many others have written the perfect answers for these questions.

Answer them well, and it will impress the interviewer;  answer them badly and you can go back to talking to the ducks - again, again and again!!

Innovation or Madness? New Recruitment company, Playfair and Noble, pay 50% of their fee to the successful candidate!

Do you ever get emails from companies looking to 'sell you' their company? Probably like you, I get a fair amount arriving in my inbox each week. So you could probably say that I am a little sceptical (too long in the recruitment world, I am afraid!!)

So it was a really pleasant surprise to see a recruitment platform (from non-recruitment people I might add) that is daring to be different and placing its big kahuna's right there on the middle of the recruitment table to be chewed at!! (Metaphorically of course!)

Now before you think I am over dramatising this a little, let me tell why it is so different - This company actually pays the successful candidate  50% of the fee they get paid from their clients!!  And before any of you recruiters say it won't work (like I did before I spoke to them), they have done their maths, and they believe it will.

Now that I have your attention let me tell you the company - Playfair and Noble - and with a name like that, and the offering they are proposing, it won't surprise you to guess that ethics are a HUGE part of what they stand for.
Basically they have a real issue with recruitment agencies.

Don't **** off the recruiters before you start - the little details count!

How many times have you pressed send, and then sworn out loud at your computer screen? I bet it has happened many times!!

Maybe you didn't notice the mistakes straight away.....but I guarantee one thing - the person you have just sent your CV to, whether it is the agency recruiter or the company HR person will notice.
What you have done is just finished you application before you have even started. And with today's tight market, it is the attention to detail that is going to make the difference in your communications with agencies and employers.

Having received many CV's over my career, I personally get really ****ed off when job seekers, make the silliest mistakes when doing something so important like applying for a job. It is madness, and usually means an instant reject. This may seem a little harsh, but if a job seeker can't be bothered to get the little details right, then for me, it is an indicator of things to come.

So it is absolutely crucial that when you communicate with people via email, to either submit the CV or make the job application (which is invariably by email) that you get your details right.
Just as an aside - how mad do you feel when you get emails that have typo's, wrong names and even inappropriate suggestions?
The Guru that is Seth Godin ( @LisaHoffman - great post but I think Seth is an exception and is a true expert) says that you should question yourself, every time, before you hit the send button on your email. Here are a selection of things that Seth says you must make sure you check before you send your email:

1. Have you got their name spelt correctly, and I mean correctly. My biggest beef!!
2. If it is a cold-call email, and you're sure it's welcome, and you're sure it's not spam, then don't apologize. If you need to apologize, then yes, it's spam, and you'll get the hurt you deserve.
3. Am I angry? (If so, save as draft and come back to the note in one hour).
4. Could I do this note better with a phone call?Totally - pick up the phone!
5. Am I blind-ccing someone? If so, what will happen if the recipient finds out?
6. Is there anything in this email I don't want anyone seeing? (If so, hit delete).
7. Is any portion of the email in all caps? (If so, consider changing it.)
8. Is it in black type at a normal size?
9. Do I have my contact info at the bottom? Don't send it without this!
10. Have I included the line, "Please save the planet. Don't print this email"? (If so, please delete the line and consider a job as a forest ranger or flight attendant).
11. Could this email be shorter?
12. Is there anyone copied on this email who could be left off the list?
13. Have I attached any files that are very big? (If so, google something like 'send big files' and consider your options.)
14. Have I attached any files that would work better in PDF format?
15. Are there any :-) or other emoticons involved? (If so, reconsider).
16. Am I forwarding someone else's mail? (If so, will they be happy when they find out?)
17. Did I hit 'reply all'? If so, am I glad I did? Does every person on the list need to see it?
18. Am I quoting back the original text in a helpful way? (Sending an email that says, in its entirety, "yes," is not helpful).
19. If this email is to someone like Seth, did I check to make sure I know the difference between its and it's? Just wondering.
20. Are there any little animated creatures in the footer of this email? Adorable kittens? Endangered species of any kind? Funny, but it does happen!

This is why Seth is so brilliant, he takes everyday tasks and strips them down to make you think.

Has he missed anything?

Who is actually helping the unemployed find a job?

Every single day in the media there is news of more redundancies - even the BBC have put a job loss tracker on their website - but have you ever taken a minute to think who is actually helping these people find a job. And when I mean helping them get back to work, I don’t mean assistance in filling in a form at the local Job Centre!

What I mean is proper and honest advice from professionals that can actually help and advise these people that have lost their jobs - people that can actually add some real value to helping the unemployed find work.

This post came about from an article of Fistful of Talent that I read earlier today concerning the trend in the USA for people to charge circa $2000 to write CV’s for executives looking for work. This particular post started my cogs going and I then started to think about the UK, and how people are actually going to find work again.

So what are the ways that people can get help in writing a CV, interview skills, using the internet job boards as well as many more areas of job hunting? Where do they go and what chances of success should they expect?

So who is helping the unemployed find a job?

Schools/Colleges career advisors
Suffice to say that, in my opinion, the majority of these people are just way off the mark. I have seen the advice they have given out to a good number of people and quite frankly, it is mostly common sense and a waste of time. They are usually too far detached from the real world and the harsh realities of the working world. There will of course be some very good advisors out there who care passionately about their students finding work, and if you have been exposed to them then you are very lucky.
Chances of them helping you with finding your first job – Nil – zero. (But they can recommend a nice university course that will put you £15k in debt though!)

Should you put your photo on your CV?

This is a topic that does cause heated discussions between job seekers, recruiters and hiring companies, because they all believe they know the answer! Well,  the truth is that there is no definitive answer, it is just opinion!
It is interesting though where the opinion sits.

 - Job seekers often (and more frequently now) put their pictures on CV's thinking it will give them the edge.

 - Recruiters often remove photos from CV's that candidates send them before they send them to their clients.

 - Hiring companies don't necessarily expect CV's to have a photo on them, so they are not fussed either way.

Let me explain why I think that you should not put your photo on your CV, but also offer a compromise to the situation.
There is are two words why I don't advocate putting photos on CV's and they are PREJUDICE and DISCRIMINATION. Now you may be shocked or surprised, but let me assure you that in the recruiting process of many, many companies discrimination happens at many levels.
You may say that there are laws prohibiting this, and of course you are right. But does it stop it happening? ...........absolutely not!!

Let me explain why.

Why don't the Government understand what Job Centres are really there for?

It is funny what gets your blood to boil isn't it? - especially while on holiday and supposedly 'chilling out'!
Well for me it happened a couple of days ago, while reading The Times with a very nice fresh espresso coffee. So what was the cause of the anger?

Strangely, I was getting annoyed by simple agreeing with an article written by a journalist called Melanie Reid, entitled 'Close encounter with planet Jobcentre.'

Here are some of the highlights:

• Gill was one of six directors recently made redundant by a well-known UK consortium. Once she'd recovered from the initial shock of losing a post that she had held for 18 years, Gill set out to find another. She knew it would take time and someone advised her to register as unemployed so that her national insurance contributions would be paid.

• She was given an interview slot at a local centre and told not to be late.

• There follows a tale of such humiliation, misunderstanding and Stalinist bureaucracy

• The young woman who interviewed her was ignorant but condescending in manner and kept asking Gill why she was there. She was told that in order to get her national insurance paid, she would have to apply for job seeker's allowance, which she did not want.

• The official asked Gill what she used to earn, and then - unbelievably - repeated the figure to nearby colleagues, exclaiming: “Hey, I've never had anyone in here with that salary!”

• Gill's circumstances did not fit any of the boxes on the official's computer screen. And if she defied classification she could not exist. “Tell me what your job was and I'll do a job search for you,” said the official. “Operations director for a Footsie plc,” said Gill. “It's not coming up with anything. What about ‘area manager'?” “Yes,” sighed my friend, by this time a broken woman, “area manager will do.”

• “Then she told me that she couldn't really do anything for me and I was told to report back ten days hence,” said Gill.

This is something that I have experienced first hand a six years ago, following a redundancy. At the time I just needed to register with the Job Centre to be able to trigger my insurance payments on my mortgage for a couple of months, before I found a new role. But the process I went through six years ago, was exactly as described above - it just shows they way behind the times!
The woman that was my 'contact' in the Job Centre, had no recruitment experience, no understanding of the job market, and absolutely no commercial experience at all!! She told me she had been drafted in to that team from admin because someone had gone on maternity leave!

Let me be crystal clear with my argument here. I am not criticising the whole benefits piece ( I don't need to - there are plenty that are going that!), I am specifically referring to the jobs piece of the jigsaw - as in the name of the service - the 'job centre'.
Why do the government think that unskilled, uncaring and totally unmotivated people are actually going to be able to give support, confidence and help to people who have been made redundant and simply want to get back to work??

LinkedIn - the next stage, network expansion

Following my article about LinkedIn for beginners, several people have asked what the next stage is with LinkedIn. Fortunately I don't have to write that one as there is a very good video below by Geoff Peterson - a global Top 150 linker - that explains very well how to further expand your network.

Find more videos like this on RecruitingBlogs.com

The Chicken or the Egg - the recruiters dilemma!

In a business world where communication is key, via websites, blogs, newletters, RSS feeds etc, recruiters are now more accountable than ever - not just to the companies that they provide a service for but also for candidates that they are interacting with every day. I therefore have a a nice question for all you recruiters out there that will get you thinking........ "Do you know who your clients are?"

In a sweepingly broad statement, recruitment organisations sit in two camps;
1. Client Driven (ie retained search). Specific targeted recruitment, aimed at finding well defined candidates. The clients engage the recruitment company and pay fees up front for this method (usually anyway!).

2. Candidate Driven (contingency | success only recruitment). Much larger volume based recruitment where it is focused on finding roles for the candidates. Payment is only forthcoming when the right candidate is found by the recruitment company.

So far you, as a recruiter can at least define which 'camp' you sit in. I think you would agree that in 1, the company that have engaged you are definitely your client. But with 2, is it the candidates you are working for or the companies who have vacancies that are your clients?

Just to muddy some waters here, just add to the mix the level of direct recruiting that is now going on with companies. They have been slowly (way too slow in many cases in my humble opinion!!) building their own direct resourcing capabilities, with the creation of Talent Pools of candidates interested in working for their companies. This change of focus has also been driven by the candidates themselves. Due to the level of information, career sites, Google, newletters etc candidates (especially the Y and soon to be Z generations - the employees of the future))  now actively target companies they want to work for themselves. They don't wait for recruitment companies to come knocking on their door with 'suitable' vacancies, they go and find these vacancies themselves.

So as a recruiter, who is more important to you - the companies looking for staff, or the candidates looking for a new job? They are both clients - but which one is your client?

Remember the chicken or the egg question?

Do companies actually recognise Talent when they see it?

I wanted to pose you a question, that I find myself regularly asking when speaking to companies. While HR and resourcing teams can happily recruit staff (well some of the time anyway!), do they actually know when a really good candidate - a category 'A' top talent individual - is presented to them?

If you asked an HR or resourcing person this, then of course they will say they would instantly recognise top talent. But from my experience I am not sure many of them do. Either through training resourcing teams or doing recruiting for companies, I have noticed that they are more focused on time saving, 'tick-boxing', actual CV processing and business pressures, rather than actually looking at the potential quality that they have in front of them (whether that be a CV or a candidate interviewing). 
The question is whether this is down to a) the wrong people doing the recruiting? b) these people not actually understanding what they are looking for? c) bad (or lack of) training? d) they haven't 'bought into' their company and are focused on helping look to the future? or e) all of these points?!!

Of course there are some very good companies who do identify and recruit these top individuals, but I would put them in a minority (unfortunately!). So, do you have any ideas on my initial question posed?

How to say, "I like you" without even speaking a word

Getting it right will win you business, but get it wrong and you can kiss that deal goodbye! What am I going on about? simple really, body language. This follows on from my previous post, and shows you all the positive and negative indicators that will show you where you need to improve, before you go into that 'big meeting'. Positive body language is all about how you make other feel. The most 'attractive' people in a room know how to make everyone else feel attractive and interesting, but the converse is unfortunately also true! Body language centres around clusters of gestures and expressions. These patterns of movement can be most revealing and show our true inner feelings. Test yourself - imagine the most recent meeting and see whether you are more positive or negative when it comes to other people.

Here are the positive body language movements that say "I like you"  - it will also tell you if they're interested in you as well.