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Z Legal Placement Blog

10 DEC

How You Can Write Great Cover Letters

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In the age of digital recruiting, you might think that cover letters don’t carry much weight with employers anymore and that they should more properly be relegated to the archives of employment history, rather than carrying any current relevance. However, a recent survey conducted by the Robert Half Company discovered that quite the opposite is true and that more than 90% of all employers feel cover letters can be a valuable tool for getting to know candidates.

Once a stack of applications has been whittled down to a group of candidates with potential, it happens very often that the cover letter is consulted as an effective means of obtaining a first impression about a potential employee. Short of an actual interview, there’s no better way to find out some background information about a candidate, and why he/she feels qualified for an opening with a specific company. Here are a few tips about how to write a killer cover letter, one which just might get you the interview you’ve been seeking with a good company.

Get Personal

Assuming that you know who the hiring manager is for the company you’re applying to, it’s a good idea to address your cover letter to that person. In most cases, the hiring manager’s name will be listed in the job posting, but if it isn’t, you should call the main office and ask for the specific title and name of the person in charge of hiring.

Not only will this help to make a direct connection, but it shows the company that you are interested enough to make the inquiry in the first place. If you happen to have any personal connections to the company, they should be referenced in the body of the letter, and if anyone referred you to the company, their name should be mentioned as well.

Standard Format

Your cover letter should be very businesslike in its format, as opposed to a casual email which you might send to a friend. A good starting point would be to use Times New Roman font in a nice, readable 12-point size, and try not to exceed three or four paragraphs in length. Don’t go beyond one page with your text, or it will become much less likely to be read in its entirety.

Reference a Specific Job

You might start out with a cover letter template, but make sure you tailor the finished product to a specific company, a specific hiring manager, and a specific position that you’re applying for. Refer to the job skills listed in the posting, and explain to the reader why your skills would make a good fit for the company.

If you can concisely support your claims, it will be even more effective, but don’t ramble on and lose your reader’s attention. It’s also a good idea to mention how you appreciate the specific market that the company is involved in, and why you are anxious to become employed in that particular market. This will convey the notion that you’re not just interested in finding a job, but you’re interested in finding a job with that company, and the kind of business they are involved with.

Avoid Re-hashing Your Resume

Don’t make your cover letter a simple restatement of information contained in your resume – the hiring manager already knows that material, and that’s not what is being sought from a cover letter. Instead, explain why you’re interested in the job, how your skills match up well with those required by the open position and draw attention to the past skills and experience which will make you a good candidate for the job. If you have any gaps in employment which are obvious on your resume, this would be a good place to explain them.

Use Job Description Keywords

It’s no secret that some employers use filtering software in order to scan through piles of resumes and to quickly bypass the less likely candidates. To avoid ending up in the scrap heap, you should install some of the keywords mentioned in the job posting into your cover letters, so that you make a strong connection with those skills and/or experience mentioned. If the employer is using any kind of filtering, at least you should make it past the first phase.

Finish Strong

Use the last paragraph of your cover letter to re-emphasize why your skills and experience make you the right person for the job and point out the supporting evidence contained in your resume. If you’ve stated your case well enough, it should at least generate some curiosity for the hiring manager, so that your resume will be examined a little more thoroughly.

Proofread your Cover Letters – More Than Once

Once you feel you’ve written the perfect cover letter, it’s time to go over it a couple times to look for any kind of typing errors, sentence structure issues, or any other kind of grammatical errors. If you submit an error-filled cover letter, that’s pretty much a guarantee that your resume will end up in the circular file, along with the unfortunate cover letter itself. If letter-writing happens not to be a particularly strong suit with you, have a friend or relative look it over, so that a second or third set of eyes can pick out any problems.

3 DEC

Temporary Staffing Solutions

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It’s fairly common these days for temporary positions which come open in a company to go unfilled for quite a while and to remain open for a longer period of time than a company would want. While it’s certainly in the best interest of the company to be thorough about the hiring process, and to choose the right candidate, leaving a position open can cause other problems. A temporary position may be necessary.

While a person is missing in the workplace, everyone else around that particular job will be required to pitch in and take up the slack created by the open position. If this goes on for an extended period of time, it can increase the pressure on some employees, and lower the morale of those people affected.

As soon as it becomes apparent that a quick solution cannot be reached, and that a quick hire is not on the horizon, a company should take steps to temporarily fill the position, so that it doesn’t create a strain on other employees, and so it doesn’t develop into a severe loss of productivity. Here are some ways to bridge the gap left by the open position, and to avoid some of the problems caused by being one person short in the workforce.

Temporary Replacements

If you have a good relationship with a recruiting agency, you can generally find a temporary replacement to fill the position until a permanent hire can be made. The big advantage of a recruiting agency is that at any given time, it will always have a number of qualified candidates on hand, which it maintains contact with.

When the opportunity arises, any of these available candidates can quickly be put in touch with your company to supply short-term talent which is compatible with the skillset needed for the open position. Because the recruiting agency has done all the background work in filtering out qualified candidates, a quick solution can generally be found for the temporary replacement of an open position.

Part-time Employees

You might find yourself in a situation where you recognize that you need a full-time professional to fill an open position, but you’re a little cautious about pulling the trigger on making such a serious commitment for a salaried individual. Rather than plunge into hiring a full-time employee, you can engage the services of a temporary professional, with the understanding that it could develop into a full-time position.

This will fill the immediate need to get you over the crisis, and if it turns out that the individual really works out well, you can make a decision later on retaining them permanently. On the other hand, if your temporary person is not really an outstanding worker and doesn’t impress anyone else in the company, you’ll have the option of simply terminating the arrangement. This can be a great way of finding out whether someone will actually fit in with the rest of the employees, and with the culture, you’ve created at your workplace.

If this individual has been supplied by your favorite recruiting agency, you’ll also be able to simply replace one worker with another fairly quickly, since the agency will generally have several qualified candidates available. This whole process bypasses the need for you to go through hiring and terminating procedures while you are simply trying to determine the suitability of candidates for the position.

Short-term Openings

There are also occasions which come up that call for a skillset which no one on your staff currently has, and which would take too long to train someone in, given the brevity of the project itself. Clearly, it would be a bit of overkill to go through a full hiring process to try and find a suitable candidate with the skillset you’re looking for, especially since at the end of the project, there would be no further need for that skill set, or for that individual.

What you could do instead, is to bring in a project specialist who has the requisite skills and experience, and who would be willing to work on a short-term basis. There are a number of independent workers who are willing to accept contract work of this type, with the understanding that the duration of the project is not to exceed three months, six months, or whatever the duration might be.

If you don’t have the resources yourself to search for such talented individuals, you can always have a conversation with people at your favored recruiting agency, and enlist their aid in searching for the project specialist you need.

Other Scenarios

There are undoubtedly even more scenarios than this where it makes a great deal of sense to hire a temporary skilled person to fill in a position of need, rather than hiring a full-time employee. Sometimes it is either unnecessary to hire someone full-time, or the search has simply gone on for too long already, and some other action must be taken.

In truth, there are a great many scenarios today which call for temporary solutions rather than full-time permanent solutions, with regard to hiring practices. When you’re faced with situations like these, you’ll probably find that the fastest and most effective answer to your problem is to engage the services of a staffing agency, to help you find candidates that will provide the temporary skills you need.

12 NOV

Negotiation Mistakes for a Salary Raise

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Negotiation for a salary raise, or for an amount which would be paid when you are being hired by a company you’ve interviewed with, can be a delicate conversation, and it’s usually one which is at least a little bit awkward for both parties. Generally speaking, when you are first hired by a company, there will be some kind of ballpark figure mentioned in the job description or in the classified ad where you first encountered the opening.

But that doesn’t mean the amount is written in stone, and that doesn’t mean it’s what you have to sell for. By arming yourself with all the most relevant information, you will be able to confidently negotiate with your future employer about a salary that you feel is fair, and which you are entitled to, based on your skill level and experience.

Before you walk into any interview or negotiating session where you feel salary is likely to be discussed, you should conduct some research on the national salary averages for the position which is open. You can find these figures in the Bureau of Labor Statistics data which is listed on their website, along with regional differences in those averages.

Those figures may still differ somewhat from local standards, so you should supplement your research with information about salaries throughout the area for a position which is either the same as your new position or very similar. This kind of preparedness will allow you to be a little less awkward in any conversations, and much better prepared to get down to the nitty-gritty, with facts and figures at the ready.

More Research before Negotiation

In addition to canvassing the salaries across the country and across the region for your position, you should do even more research which will allow you to speak more confidently during negotiation. Part of your research should be about the company which is hiring you, and what its position is within the marketplace. If your new company is one of the top three competitors in the market, you can assume they’re doing pretty well, and that they are not hurting financially.

During your research, you should also look at any industry trends which are affecting your new company, and which may have a bearing on how you should be paid. If the business is booming and your company is in the thick of that upturn, you might reasonably expect to be paid a little more, whereas if things are trending downward, now would not be the time to be aggressive about salary.

Don’t Undersell or Oversell

The negotiation process is not really the time to reach for the stars and go for broke – it’s time to request a salary figure which you legitimately feel entitled to, and which the position itself calls for. If you overvalue your skills and what you bring to the table, it’s entirely possible that your interviewer will reject the request out of hand, and things will come to a screeching halt.

Also, you should take into account the standard of living in the area where you are expecting to be employed. If the job is being offered in a city like Boston, where costs are soaring, you might reasonably expect to earn a salary at the high end of the pay range, whereas a small metro area somewhere in the Midwest would have an entirely different standard.

Make sure to factor in the benefits package which is being offered, because some of these are really are so advantageous that they make up for being paid a little less than you’d hoped. If you get extra vacation time or any other perks or benefits that you may not have expected, these should also be factored into your salary request.

Be Prepared to Justify

Whatever your requests for salary are, be prepared to justify them in detail to a hiring manager or an HR representative who is conducting negotiation with you. Your request will probably not be considered unreasonable, as long as you can justify it in some way, and can adequately represent that justification to the interviewer.

In addition to all the skills and experience that you are bringing to the company, it’s worth mentioning that you intend to undergo personal growth there and develop professionally so that you can be even more valuable to the company.

Even if you make a great case and every point you make is a valid one, it’s still possible of course, that your salary request is declined on the basis of there being inadequate funding for that higher salary. You should be prepared for this eventuality as well, and you should be prepared to make a decision on whether you will accept the original company offer rather than the figure you feel you’re actually entitled to.

However, by being thoroughly prepared to discuss salary and to justify the salary request you are proposing, you’ll have a much better chance of walking out of the interviewing office satisfied with what you’ve achieved. This is a far better course of action than making demands for the salary which cannot be justified solidly, both on paper and verbally.

5 NOV

Questions to Ask During an Interview

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what questions?

One of the best ways you can help your cause in a job interview is by asking questions of your interviewer. This demonstrates that you are truly interested in the job, and it might go a long way toward separating you from other candidates who are also interviewing. By asking legitimate questions of your interviewer, you can find out a lot about the culture at the company you would be working for, and perhaps gain some insight into the co-workers you might be working with as well. There is any number of appropriate and useful questions which you might ask in an interview, and some of the best are listed below.

Is this a replacement position?

It does make a difference whether the position you’re being hired for is a replacement for someone who has departed, or if it’s an entirely new position. If it’s new, you may have it terrific opportunity to actually help define the role within the company, and you can bring your own perspective to the job. If you’re replacing someone who has recently left the company, you may want to ask about what’s involved in the turnover process.

Why is this job available?

It will be good for you to know exactly why this job became available, because it may afford you the opportunity to ask more questions, and it might be just good information to have. For instance, if the company is going through a boom period, and they are ramping up the workforce, that’s excellent information in terms of job security and future pay raises.

What kind of challenges has the company and its employees faced recently?

While an interviewer may be somewhat reluctant to talk about any problems the company has, it would be good for you to know what kind of challenges you’re going to face on the job, as soon as you get acclimated. In a worst-case scenario, you might find out that you’re being hired to repair a lot of damage done by a previous worker, and this is something you should be aware of. If it turns out that the company is on a very tight budget, or that there are some problem clients which have to be dealt with, these are also details which are good to know.

What is expected of me?

If there are formal expectations regarding your employment, these would be good to know at the outset. For instance, you may be charged with heading up a new project, or playing a very significant role on an upcoming initiative. On the other hand, you might be getting hired to carry out a long and tedious role, documenting company processes and procedures. Whether expectations are high or low, it’s good to know where you fit in beforehand.

What kind of metrics will be used to assess my performance?

Almost every white-collar job in the country is evaluated by some kind of performance review at least once each year. Even if this process only happens at the end of the year, and it’s literally months away, it will be good to know how your performance will be judged, so that you can begin trying to fulfill those expectations as soon as you walk in the door.

What is the corporate culture like?

During your research about the company, you have probably already found out most of what you need to know about corporate culture in the workplace. It still worthwhile asking the question, however, because it will be interesting to see how it’s described by a person in a management position.

There may also be some particular points of interest to you which you can pick out from any descriptions provided by the hiring manager. As you’re listening to your interviewer’s depiction of the corporate culture, you can be thinking about how well or how poorly you would personally fit into that environment, and whether you would thrive in such a scenario.

How do employees achieve a good work-life balance?

This is something that should be very important to you, because you won’t want to become completely dedicated to the job, at the expense of your personal life. Your interviewer may be able to tell you how other employees at the company have achieved a good balance between work and personal life, and how the company helps them in this regard. It will be especially interesting if the company offers perks which contribute to a good work-life balance, such as flexible hours, on-site daycare, or telecommuting options for one or more days each week.

What opportunities are there for professional growth?

Asking this kind of question will demonstrate to your interviewer that you are interested in professional growth yourself and that you intend to make yourself more valuable to the company. It will also provide you with answers on whether or not there are opportunities for upward mobility, or whether you are likely to be stuck at the same pay grade for quite a while. You will also want to know whether the company provides opportunities such as off-site training, attending conferences, and in-house education, all of which will allow you to improve your professional skills and knowledge.

8 OCT

Hiring Good Employees Doesn’t Have to be Hard

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There isn’t really a class you can take which will allow you to learn the best practices for hiring individuals needed by your company. The process has never really been reduced to a science, and even those managers in a position of having to hire new employees regularly never learned a formal method for going about it.

For the most part, hiring new employees involves winging it, trusting one’s instincts about a person, and executing some skillful questioning that can help determine a candidate’s suitability for a position. It might seem odd that this is the case, given the fact that so much depends on hiring the right individuals for the right positions in a company.

With the shortage of highly skilled individuals in the general talent pool today, there’s an even greater emphasis on hiring the right individuals to fill open positions. That puts a lot of pressure on a hiring manager to get it right, and sometimes it doesn’t work out quite right.

Consequences of Bad Hiring

What happens when you make the wrong choice and hire the wrong individual for a job? You don’t generally find out that it’s the wrong choice immediately, but over a period of time, it becomes pretty apparent to most people in the workplace that the wrong person was hired for a job.

For instance, a newly hired employee who continues to perform poorly even after adequate training and orientation often requires between 10 and 20 hours per week of supervision and additional guidance from managers or proficient employees. This takes skilled employees away from their jobs, and reduces the effectiveness of the overall workforce, while one specific employee is being brought up to snuff.

A survey conducted by Robert Half Company concluded that money lost on bad hires was not the worst consequence of a poor hiring decision and that other factors affected accompany even more negatively. In the survey, 39% of CFO’s considered the single worst impact of a bad hire to be that it lowered overall staff morale significantly. Another 34% of CFO’s considered lost productivity to be the most damaging consequence of making a bad hire. Surprisingly, only about 25% of those polled thought monetary losses constituted the worst single impact of having made a poor hiring decision.

Why are so Many Poor Decisions Made?

As stated above, there is no formalized process for choosing the right employee during a hiring process. If there were, all submitted applications would simply be processed by some kind of software application, and the perfect choice would always be made, with both company and employee ecstatic about the results.

However, the process remains highly informal and subjective, and the truth is that many hiring managers continue to underestimate the full enormity of making the best choices for new hires. While this may be understandable for newer managers who are unfamiliar with the hiring process, it can be almost unforgivable for a more experienced manager, who has been through it many times before.

In the end, even the best hiring managers will sometimes make mistakes and select the wrong person for the job. The best hedge against bad choices is to be as thorough as possible in evaluating all application documentation, and in thoroughly evaluating an individual during an interview from all those standpoints most important to a company.

How Recruiters can Help

Recruiters can add a great deal of value to the hiring process, first of all by taking some of the pressure off of hiring managers, to find the right kind of talent for the job opening. Recruiters are professionals who make this kind of work their living, which means if there’s anyone who is highly familiar with the whole hiring process and the talent selection process, these are the people for it.

Recruiting agencies can find talent from a much wider geographic area than a company might be able to find on its own resources, and that can go a long way toward overcoming the inadequacy of any localized talent pool. Another very valuable contribution of recruiting agencies is in the speed at which they can generate a list of potential candidates. Anyone involved in business knows that time is money, and the longer any job position is open, the more revenue is being lost by the company seeking new talent.

Because of the number of resources that a recruiter would have access to, a great many more candidates can be contacted in a short period of time, to expedite the hiring process for a company. Despite the fact that there is no real school to learn all the ins and outs of hiring from, it can be extremely advantageous to ally yourself with a very skilled and productive recruiting agency that can produce a number of qualified candidates.

For hiring managers, this should mean that much of the most difficult part of the total hiring process is handled by a reputable agency which is very effective at providing talented candidates. With some of the heavy work already accomplished, it remains for the hiring manager to sharpen his/her skills at evaluating character and choosing that candidate most suited to the profile sought by the company.

1 OCT

Why You Might be Having Trouble Filling Job Openings

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There is no doubt that it’s getting harder and harder to find skilled candidates to fill job openings these days, with a talent pool that appears to be shrinking by the year. However, there are other reasons besides the available talent level which may be interfering with your company’s ability to attract and retain qualified candidates for the most important positions in your company.

This can develop into a new very serious issue because without the talent to implement and carry out your long-term objectives, it will be very hard for your company to achieve its business goals. There’s a good chance that any difficulty you might have in securing strong candidates could be traceable to more than just the available talent pool.

Three specific areas will be discussed below, which you should consider in order to determine whether or not your company is losing out on qualified personnel for reasons other than supply and demand.

Company Perception and Job Openings

How much effort have you made to get your company name out there, so that potential candidates are aware of who you are, and what you do? Placing classified ads for job openings is not enough to achieve visibility to well-qualified individuals, so you’ll need to develop some better level of recognition among the demographic you’re targeting for job openings.

One good way to accomplish this is through using the social media since those platforms are routinely frequented by millennials as part of their daily or weekly routines. Another good idea would be to sponsor local events or meetups, which are specifically tailored to attracting the kind of candidates you’re interested in hiring. If you already have people on your staff with extensive social networks, it would be worthwhile to enlist their aid in casually recruiting qualified candidates as well.

Speaking publicly about your company in the local area, as well as attending local newsworthy events, can be a great way of achieving visibility in the community, and for gaining company recognition with the local citizenry. Granted, some of these options will take time to carry out, but it’s a worthwhile effort for both present hiring needs, and to establish an ongoing pipeline of talent.

Hiring Process

For a great many companies, the hiring process moves at a snail’s pace, and from start to finish it may literally involve months and possibly even years, depending on the significance of the job openings. However, when you’re dealing with white-collar workers, not at the managerial level, weeks and months can become long enough to lose out on many of the best candidates available.

In a survey conducted by Robert Half Company, it was discovered that nearly 40% of professionals would lose interest in being hired by a company which they felt extended the hiring process for too long. Nearly half of the same individuals declared that they would be willing to wait as much as a week after a job interview to find out the results, but waiting any longer than that was asking too much. These respondents felt that they owed a potential employer a week’s worth of consideration, but that if any other offers came up after that, they would be quite willing to abandon the original interview to connect with a second potential employer.

If you know for a fact that your own hiring process tends to be a long, drawn-out affair, it would be worth your while to adopt a few changes that might give you more of a fighting chance to secure the kind of talent you want.

One way to accomplish this would be to prepare ahead of time to make a preliminary verbal offer to a very promising candidate right after the interview, so as not to lose out on the most skilled and qualified personnel. You can, of course, make this contingent upon a clean criminal background check, and all the candidate’s references checking out, but the important thing is that you don’t let a good candidate get away.

If you’re going to do this, you should also be prepared to include preliminary offers for salary, perks, benefits, and a start date. This may seem like a radical departure from your past process, but if you’ve been losing candidates to an over-lengthy hiring routine, it might be the right thing to do.

Location, Location, Location

Location isn’t just a real estate concept which carries a huge impact on a transaction in progress – it’s also true about hiring qualified candidates. Obviously, if your company is located near one of the major metropolitan hubs, that could be an added attraction to potential candidates, whereas if you’re located in more remote areas, that might have just the opposite effect.

However, even if you don’t have prime location operating in your favor, there are certain perks you can offer which will help to offset any disadvantage of location. For instance, you could offer flexible work schedules or telecommuting one or two days a week, to make the job more appealing. If you have a company fitness program or a daycare service which is provided on-site, those could also be very appealing to candidates. If you don’t have the advantage of the prime location to offer qualified candidates, it’s up to you to provide some other advantages which will make applicants want to give your company strong consideration.

10 SEP

Eliminate These Buzzwords from Your Resume

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Too often, candidates applying for jobs fill out their resumes with clichés and buzzwords which are thought to be relevant to the industry or to the specific job itself, but in fact, usage of these buzzwords and clichés usually accomplishes more harm than good. Hiring managers in the process of reviewing resumes who come across these tired, non-descriptive phrases often suspect that a candidate is trying to inflate or exaggerate his/her actual skills and qualifications.

Just as bad, many of these words are used so frequently on other resumes that anything distinctive which you might have on your own resume is quickly overshadowed and lost. For these reasons, it’s best to filter out all those buzzwords and clichés which you thought were helping your cause, but which may actually be scuttling your chances of getting an interview.

Many of the most common phrases like this are listed below, and these are words you should simply leave out of your resume if you really want to have an attention-getting document.

Buzzwords like Leverage and Utilize

These words are generally used in an attempt to sound more sophisticated or more business-savvy, but what they really do is announce to the hiring manager that you’re not prepared to speak normally. Everyone understands that both of these words simply mean to use, and when you include unnecessarily fancy words in a resume, it simply takes attention away from your skills and accomplishments. Remember that the emphasis on your resume should be on your qualifications for the job, not on your writing skills.

Familiar With

This phrase is closely related to ‘experience with’ and the ever popular ‘knowledge of’, and all three of them are likely to get your resume discarded into the scrapheap before your skillsets are ever considered. None of these phrases describes your actual skill level, but all three of them are vague references to the fact that you may have heard about the skill in question. When you’re talking about skills and job experience that you’ve had in the past, use concrete phrasing like ‘five year’s experience’, or ‘worked with this software for three years’.

Proactive and Hard-working

Unless you have specific details which support your claim to either one of these vague phrases, they don’t mean much, and a hiring manager won’t think any more highly of you after seeing them on your resume. If you’re going to use either one of these phrases, surround them with specific details which illustrate the claim, and that will make your case better than a standalone statement.

Core Competencies

A phrase like this is better left to the Human Resources department, or some other group trying to describe what employees are proficient with. On your resume, it’s out of place and it’s not what a hiring manager wants to see. Replace this phrase with ‘qualifications’ or ‘skills’ and keep the wording on your whole document as simple as possible. Remember that the hiring manager will probably be reviewing many resumes at the same time, and he/she is not going to want to translate phrases into real hiring terms.

Responsibilities Include

This is a particularly dangerous phrase, especially if it’s accompanied by a laundry list of all the individual tasks that you performed on a previous job. This is a great way to get your resume thrown in with the pile of rejects. In the first place, a hiring manager is probably going to know all the detailed tasks associated with a position you held in the past and doesn’t need to be apprised of your specific accomplishments. Instead, describe how you personally advanced in a previous position, or how you helped your previous employer increase efficiency in the workplace.

Thought Leader

Any kind of descriptive phrases such as thought leader, influencer, or philosopher, will quickly have you pigeonholed as slightly delusional or self-centered. Discard phrases like these, and simply describe your contributions to a project in terms that don’t seem to be campaigning for a Nobel Prize.

Team Player

This would seem to be a beneficial phrase to include on your resume, but the reason it doesn’t do you much good is that it can’t be quantified. A hiring manager is going to hope that every single candidate being reviewed is a team player, which means it’s a rock-bottom requirement of the job. Seeing it on a resume is pretty much a statement of the obvious, and it doesn’t advance your cause all on its own. If you can demonstrate on your resume some of the professional achievements you’ve had in a team role, that would be much more concrete, and it would show a good quality without stating the obvious.

Unique

There are very few skills or qualifications which are truly unique, meaning that no other candidate has them. It might be worth mentioning certifications that you have because even though these two are not unique, they can be uncommon enough to distinguish you from among the crowd. The danger with using buzzwords like unique is that they appear to be a stretch, an attempt on your part to grasp for some kind of distinction that you probably don’t really have, relative to your rivals.

3 SEP

Creating a References Sheet for Your Job Interview

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Your list of references should not be overlooked as part of the overall package which will help you secure a position with a company of your choice. You should always assume that a potential employer will indeed be contacting each of those persons listed on your reference sheet, to gain some insight into your character, and to find out if you will make a suitable employee.

Most employers prefer to see between three and five people listed, whom you have either worked with or spent significant time with. Even though it is assumed that all these people will be advocates for you and that none will be presenting a negative picture, it can still be a very compelling confirmation of what an employer sees on a resume and in a cover letter.

For this reason, you should give just as much thought and preparation for compiling a list of references as you would for any other component of your application package. Here are some tips on how to prepare the most effective list of references you can, to help seal the deal with an employer.

Who You Should List

Don’t automatically list your best friends, assuming that they will give you the most glowing character references, because that’s not really what employers are looking for. Most employers would rather hear from individuals whom you have worked with in the past, especially in a supervisory capacity, who can confirm that you excel in such areas as punctuality, ability, professionalism on the job, time management, and superior job performance.

Such references can include either full-time or part-time positions you’ve held in the past, and can even be from volunteer organizations that you’ve worked with. Sometimes academic leaders and professors make wonderful references as well because they can attest to your participation and work ethic. In short, almost anyone who can speak to your skills, motivation, or character can be a very powerful reference on your behalf.

It’s not a good idea to put down anyone who doesn’t thoroughly know your history or your character, and you should likewise exclude family and friends because their testimony will be so obviously flattering that it will have limited value. If it turns out that you have more good references than you can list, choose the ones who have known you the longest, and who are best able to confirm your job skills and work ethic.

Getting References Together

Before you use someone on your references list, make sure you have talked to them about it and they are aware that they could be receiving a call from a potential employer. This would also be a good time to make sure they are willing to be a reference, and that they would have positive things to say about you.

Be sure that you have all the most current information about any reference you use so that your potential employer won’t have any difficulty contacting them. If there is a problem with contact, that particular reference will probably be dropped. If possible, make sure that each reference person on your list will be available to take a call or accept an email during the time that you are campaigning for an open position.

It would also be a good idea for you to share with your references the resume you are sending into potential employers, so they are familiar with the position you’re after, and which skills you intend to emphasize to make yourself more desirable for employment.

Don’t forget to express your gratitude to anyone you use as a reference, because you’ll want to maintain a very favorable relationship with these people, in case you have a need to repeat the process at some point in the future.

Submission of References

As you’re preparing your list of references, make sure to use the same format as you have with your cover letter and your resume, as well as any other documentation in your application packet. When you’re going to an interview, you should bring a copy of your list of references with you, in case the hiring manager requests it during or after the interview. If you haven’t been asked for references by the conclusion of the interview, it would be a good idea for you to bring it up yourself and ask the interviewer if he/she would like a copy of your references.

There are cases where an employer will ask potential candidates to have their reference individuals write a letter of reference which can be submitted to the company. Make sure you find out if this is necessary for any upcoming interview you have so that you have time to alert your chosen references about this requirement. It goes without saying that you should express your considerable gratitude for the time and effort that each of your references will have to put into writing such a letter.

On the Same Page

One last note about the kind of assessment your chosen references will give about you is that it’s very important that this be on the same page as what you personally declare about yourself in the interview. Employers are likely to ask your references about such things as interpersonal skills, job motivation, decision-making skills, and a whole host of other intangibles.

If the assessment given by one of your references is in serious disagreement with how you personally assess yourself, that could be grounds for disqualification. This means that you should have a pretty good idea of how any reference you choose will assess those kinds of abilities, and how they stack up against your own self-evaluation.

13 AUG

How to Boost Your Hiring Process  

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If your company is like most others, and it’s having considerable difficulty finding qualified candidates to fill skilled positions in the hiring process, there are a number of reasons why you might be going through these difficulties. To some extent, all companies are going to be affected by the fact that there is a smaller talent pool available now than there has been in the past, and with many companies scrambling to secure the services of qualified individuals, there is just too little supply to satisfy too much demand.

However, the supply and demand component may not be the only thing that’s hindering your company from securing the talent that you need to fill open positions. Here are some other factors to consider, which may be complicating your hiring process. If any of the scenarios described below pertain to your company, you may want to take steps to overcome these particular obstacles, and thereby give yourself a better chance of hiring the qualified individuals you need.

Are you Raising the Bar Too High?

When you went into the hiring process, you undoubtedly had a set of criteria which you intended to use, in order to measure each potential candidate by. This would have included the specific set of job skills needed, the interpersonal skills, and all the intangibles like commitment, motivation, and character.

However, it’s very possible that in establishing this checklist of qualities that your ideal candidate should have, that you set the bar too high and you’re looking for a super employee who simply doesn’t exist. Even a quick look at the classified ads for job listings will make it clear that many employers are simply asking for an entire catalog of skills and qualities, which no one person in Western civilization is ever likely to own.

While it may have been your intention to simply find someone who has as many as possible of those skills, you may also have been discouraging a great many candidates who looked at this laundry list and simply give up without even trying. In order to give yourself a better chance of finding skilled candidates, it might be better for you to choose the four or five skills which are most useful, and which would require the least amount of supplemental training to get someone up to speed. If you find someone who matches up well with these requirements, you can probably train that person to fill in whatever gaps in experience or skills he/she has.

Are you Really Committed to the Hiring Process?

Being committed to the hiring process doesn’t mean that you shuffle through a few resumes each day, shake your head, and discard them all in frustration. If you happen to be a hiring manager and you have other responsibilities as well, you’re bound to have to spend a certain percentage of your day handling those other responsibilities.

But if you start to use that as an excuse for spending very little time with the hiring process, you will simply not be doing yourself or your company any favors, and it’s not very likely that you’ll find qualified candidates with this kind of lukewarm approach.

The bottom line is, you have to make hiring a top priority, and any other responsibilities have to be sandwiched in around it. If it’s the centerpiece of your day and you commit your energies to make something happen, you will have a much better chance of finding qualified candidates who might be a fit for your company. If you really want to make this a priority in your day, put it on your organizer or your daily calendar, at a specific time slot every day, until you have achieved the desired results.

Are Other Workers Taking up the Slack?

When there has been an open position in your company for any length of time, it’s only natural that all the other employees in the workplace will end up shouldering part of the load until a replacement has been found. Of course, it’s likely that some of these employees are going to be so good at covering for a missing person, that you don’t even notice any loss of productivity or efficiency because of it.

Believe it or not, this can actually be something of a danger to you as a hiring manager. When employees are so good at taking up the slack for a missing person that you barely even notice the difference, that can lull you to sleep somewhat and make you feel that there’s no real urgency about replacing the individual.

This, of course, can lead to other problems, such as low office morale, and it could even result in some of those harder working employees wanting to leave the company themselves, because they’re overworked, and because they don’t see any real solution in sight. With all this being true, it’s definitely to your advantage to make hiring your top priority, and consider it one of the most urgent tasks you have on your daily agenda. When you’re pushing hard to find a solution, it’s a lot more likely that it will happen, and hopefully, that solution will be found sooner rather than later.

6 AUG

Choosing Between Two Good Job Candidates

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Most of the time, a hiring manager will probably have difficulty finding a one really good candidate to fill an open position, and that can prolong the search and make the hiring process rather painful. Every once in a while, however, the stars align just right, and you find two great candidates for a job, with both of them possessing strong qualifications and interviewing very well on top of it.

This is a nice problem to have, but it’s still a problem because if you take too long agonizing over a decision, you run the risk of losing both candidates. Two skillful job candidates who interviewed very well with your company will probably also be able to interview very well with other companies, so you can’t afford to drag your feet, and think for too long about which would be the better fit for your company.

While this kind of scenario may in fact never happen to you as a hiring manager, just in case it does, here are three strategies you might want to consider in order to distinguish one candidate from the other.

Think About the Long-term

Obviously, you’re hiring to fill an immediate need at your company, but that doesn’t mean that you can’t incorporate long-term thinking into the process as well. Take a good look at each of the two strong candidates from the standpoint of how each one has the potential to grow and thrive at your company over a long period of time.

When assessing the candidates from this perspective, think about any specific qualities which might distinguish one from the other, for instance, leadership ability or management potential. Another thing you might consider is some of the peripheral or additional skills that one candidate might have which aren’t really necessary for the open position, but which might somehow come into play favorably at your company in the future. Consideration of long-term potential is a good tie-breaker kind of strategy which you can use to help your decision-making.

Interest and Enthusiasm

After having had multiple interviews with both candidates, there was probably one or the other which showed a greater level of interest or enthusiasm for the job. Most likely, one of the two candidates seemed to be more engaged in the process than the other, for instance by asking legitimate questions about the company and about future co-workers.

One or the other may also have followed up more quickly after an interview, just as one of them probably seemed to want the job more. Granted, these are fairly fine points to consider for differentiating between candidates, but if you have no other standout distinctions between the two, one or two of these questions may be very helpful in deciding the issue.

Corporate Culture Fit

Apart from skills and qualifications, one of the two candidates may have seemed to be a better fit for your corporate culture. This might be because one candidate or the other would blend in with the current workforce better, or because he/she seemed to espouse many of the same values which your company does.

If the hiring decision is really this difficult, you may want to introduce both job candidates to office workers on an informal basis to see how well both are accepted, and how they all interact. You can also gauge current employees’ assessment of both candidates afterward. Obviously, this is not a foolproof kind of evaluation, but it just might give you enough feedback to use as the basis for your ultimate decision.

Wildcard Candidate

This is not really one of the three choices which were mentioned at the outset, but it is a fourth wildcard possibility which you might want to give some thought to. In a situation like this, where you have two terrific candidates who would both fit very well into your corporate culture and who bring tremendous skills and qualifications to the table – why not hire both of them?

Yes, this might raise a bigger issue than the problem of deciding between two good candidates, in that it would grossly exceed the budget you have available for a position. However, if you’re not on a shoestring budget and you do have the resources to take on both candidates, it’s an option that’s really worth considering.

It would also probably involve some discussion with upper management, and some serious justification for making such an unusual decision, but if you really feel strongly about both candidates, it’s worth going to bat for them. Keep in mind that it’s probably going to be a rare situation to find two really good candidates again, and for the most part finding even one will be a real trick.

This might especially be a good idea if you anticipate your business growing in the near future, and having a need for another very good candidate in that same position. It might be better to hire both right now than to conduct the same kind of job search several months into the future and come up empty.

Another justification for hiring both candidates might be that you have a backlog of several projects which have been sitting there for lack of manpower. Having two highly qualified individuals come on board at once would allow you to make a serious dent in that backlog, and get things current again.