Day: October 5, 2016

Career Planning for Your Next Big Move

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For most people, the idea of following their passion is an exercise in futility. If you are young, you may not know what you are passionate about because you have been so conditioned to work for grades. If you are older, any notion of passion may have been “beaten out of you” by systems where you have been rewarded to “shut up and do what you’re told, or else.”

As a result, most people I have spoken with, whether in search or in coaching are checked out in one way or the other. They want to have an impact but have little idea of how to foster change in their organizations, let alone their lives.

The other issue I see too frequently as that people accept the commoditized work they are performing and, as a result, have become “ordinary” and “easily replaceable.” Little distinguishes them from the next person with the result being when management is deciding between people to advance or promote, they might as well throw a dart at a group of pictures

What can you do to get ahead? How can you plan to get catapult your career?

Continued

 

© The Big Game Hunter, Inc. Asheville, NC 2016

 

Do you think employers are trying to help you? You already know you can’t trust recruiters—they tell you as much as they think you need to know to take the job they after representing so they collect their payday.

The skills needed to find a job are different yet complement the skills needed to do a job.

Jeff Altman, The Big Game Hunter has been a career coach and recruiter for what seems like one hundred years.

JobSearchCoachingHQ.com changes that with great advice for job hunters—videos, my books and guides to job hunting, podcasts, articles, PLUS a community for you to ask questions of PLUS the ability to ask me questions where I function as your ally with no conflict of interest answering your questions.

Connect with me on LinkedIn

You can order a copy of “Diagnosing Your Job Search Problems” for Kindle for $.99 and receive free Kindle versions of “No BS Resume Advice” and “Interview Preparation.”

Two Second Interview Questions and Answers

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Jeff Altman, The Big Game Hunter explains how to answer two tricky questions that are often asked on second interviews.

[spp-transcript]

Today, I want to talk with you about two questions the rest on second interviews pretty regularly. They aren’t difficult but, because of the stress and tension that is often associated with a second or third interview, people sometimes panic and blow the questions.

The first one is, “What have you learned about us so far?”

This requires a certain amount of good preparation for you because it will help coalesce your thoughts and opinions of this firm before the interview. You may be on a second or third interview. Each interview, you probably have spoken with different people or different groups of people that give you impressions about the job and the organization. You may have visited the website at some point before the interview.

Answer by starting off with an overview of the position as it is been discussed with you. When you get to the end of your description, pause and say, “Have I described it accurately because if I haven’t, I want to get the correct description of the position.”

Then talk about each of the people you’ve spoken with so far, what your sense of the personalities is and how they presented themselves to you ALWAYS IN COMPLIMENTARY TERMS, of course. Speak about the firm, what it’s standing is in its industry, what it does. That will come from the website and any other research that you’ve done.

So, that’s the easy question to handle. Then, there is the follow-up, “how would you proceed if you were hired for the role?”

Some people talk about it beginning from day one. I suggest talking about a firm before day one.

You receive the offer; you accept the offer; you give notice. You speak with your future manager about what their expectations are starting the role. You do that right after you give notice. In this way, you can lay out some plans, perhaps schedule some meetings not long after you come on board. Perhaps they have an idea of what your early schedule will be like, but it is best to talk about this proactively before you start, rather than beginning with your first day.

“On my first day, what will wind up doing is walking in and… ” Whatever

these are very simple questions but because of the stress associated with second or third interviews, you want to demonstrate that you have done your homework well.

And the second question (the one about preparing for when you start), that one is an easy one because what you are doing is showing that you are go-getter, aggressive, you are hardcharging and that you are getting yourself prepared even before you start.

[/spp-transcript]

Do you think employers are trying to help you? You already know you can’t trust recruiters—they tell as they think you need to know to take the job they after representing so they collect their payday.

The skills needed to find a job are different yet complement the skills needed to do a job.

Jeff Altman, The Big Game Hunter has been a career coach and recruiter for what seems like one hundred years.

JobSearchCoachingHQ.com changes that with great advice for job hunters—videos, my books and guides to job hunting, podcasts, articles, PLUS a community for you to ask questions of PLUS the ability to ask me questions where I function as your ally with no conflict of interest answering your questions.

Connect with me on LinkedIn

I’m Seen As a Job Hopper. What Do I Do ?

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[svp]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-RaKnedcKHI[/svp]
Sometimes, job hunters can be seen as job hoppers– changing jobs with too much frequency for the taste of the potential employer. What do you do? How do you explain why you change jobs with such frequency? It depends on your circumstances and here I talk about three possibilities.

[spp-transcript]

Sometimes, people are seen as job hoppers. They’ve changed jobs every year or two; sometimes, it looks like they’ve jumped into completely different fields; sometimes, economic circumstances of cause them to need to change from job to job. Let me address the job hopping question and try to put a lid on the list of your worries and fears.

If you are someone who has changed jobs every year or two and you are at the interview phase, it would have been better had you dealt with it in your cover email. The notion that I have is that you want to take on things head on and proactively because you know it can be seen as an issue, right? In your cover email, you might write something to the effect of, “I have changed jobs with some frequency but part of the reason I have is with an eye toward finding the field or career or the type of work that makes the most sense for me. I haven’t quite found it yet, but no one of these organizations will complain about my work ethic or my effort. I just didn’t find the job satisfying. As I understand this position, it’s far more appealing than anything I have done before. This is something that really excites me.”

In writing this in your cover letter what you’re doing is being proactive. Then, at the interview, you can again take it on because you know firms are going to raise it is an issue. If you are early in your career (like 30 years of age or less) and have had to deal with these  circumstances, you can deal with this in this way and it is creditable.

The next scenario is for someone who has been a consultant and, as a consultant, you are changing assignments with some regularity. What can you do? Sometimes the issue is your resume because you are listing these assignments in a way that suggests to employers that these are individual jobs and not consulting assignments. It’s best if you have an aggregated category on top of your consulting work such as, “CONSULTANT”  October 2013 to present. Even if it appears in your past, do the same thing. By doing it this way, you are demonstrating to firms that these were not full-time jobs, but consulting assignments.

Lastly, he if you are victimized by economic circumstances and forced to job hop like many people were there in the last economic slowdown when people took temp assignments and/or full-time positions from which they were cut back on because of economic circumstances, I don’t believe in lying but I do believe in telling the story in useful ways that an organization can understand.

Whatever the circumstances were in your life, you can say something like,” at that time, I went from organization to organization, not because I wanted to but because economic circumstances kept causing firms to restructure themselves, Lay off thousands of individuals, and, as a relative newcomer who hadn’t had a chance to prove myself with them, I was an easy target for layoffs. After all, I had only been there for eight or nine months; it was easy for them to chop me up.”

“I’ve since found places where I have been able to stay longer,” or, “I’m looking for a place where I can stay longer.”

[/spp-transcript]

Do you really think employers are trying to help you? You already know you can’t trust recruiters—they tell as they think you need to know to take the job they after representing so they collect their payday.

The skills needed to find a job are different yet complement the skills needed to do a job.

Jeff Altman, The Big Game Hunter has been a career coach and recruiter for what seems like one hundred years.

JobSearchCoachingHQ.com is there to change that with great advice for job hunters—videos, my books and guides to job hunting, podcasts, articles, PLUS a community for you to ask questions of PLUS the ability to ask me questions where I function as your ally with no conflict of interest answering your questions.

Connect with me on LinkedIn http://bit.ly/thebiggamehunter