CV & Interview 101 E-Book

Sinead English

• Herausgeber: Polaris
• Kategorie: Ratgeber
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 143

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2019

Beschreibung

Writing your CV or getting ready to interview for a job? Chances are you have lots of questions. Should I? What if? How can I? Help! This book gives highly practical and instantly actionable advice on the 101 issues, questions and scenarios most frequently encountered by people when applying and interviewing for jobs. When you don't have your own personal CV and Interview coach on speed dial this book is the next best thing . . . and costs a lot less. Straight-talking, instructive and using templates and worksheets to help you give the employer exactly what they want to see and hear, it will make the task of securing your ideal job significantly easier and a lot less stressful

Leseprobe

CV & INTERVIEW 101

HOW TO APPLY AND INTERVIEW FOR JOBS

SINÉAD ENGLISH

This edition first published in 2019 by

POLARIS PUBLISHING LTDc/o Aberdein Considine2nd Floor, Elder HouseMultrees WalkEdinburgh, EH1 3DX

www.polarispublishing.com

Distributed by Birlinn Limited

Text copyright © Sinéad English, 2019

ISBN: 9780957507623eBook ISBN:9780957507630

The right of Sinéad English to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or transmitted in any form, or by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the express written permission of the publisher.

Every effort has been made to trace copyright holders and obtain their permission for the use of copyright material. The publisher apologises for any errors or omissions and would be grateful if notified of any corrections that should be incorporated in future reprints or editions of this book.

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication DataA catalogue record for this book is available on request from the British Library.

Designed and typeset by Polaris Publishing, Edinburgh

Printed in Great Britain by MBM Print SCS Limited, East Kilbride

INTRODUCTION

Writing your CV or getting ready to do an interview for a job? Chances are you have lots of questions. Should I? What if? How can I? Help! This book gives highly practical and instantly actionable advice on 101 issues, questions and scenarios most frequently encountered by people when applying and interviewing for jobs. When you don’t have your own personal CV and interview coach on speed dial this book is the next best thing . . . and costs a lot less. Straight-talking, instructive and using templates and worksheets to help you give the employer exactly what they want to see and hear, it will make the task of securing your ideal job significantly easier and a lot less stressful.

Sinéad English is a career consultant and highly engaging speaker across all aspects of managing your career. She has helped thousands of clients secure their ideal job by advising on how to write CVs that get noticed and preparing them to deliver excellent interview performances. She set up the career advisory firm Hilt in 2007. Learn more at www.wearehilt.com

For John, Emmet, Aoibhinn and Hugh

CONTENTS

Introduction

YOUR CV

1 What is your CV’s job?

2 CV vs LinkedIn

3 Applicant Tracking Systems – ATS

4 OK, enough about robots . . .

5 Don’t state the obvious – we know what it is

6 Does anyone print CVs anymore?

7 How long is too long?

8 What’s in a name?

9 What email address to use?

10 Postal address on my CV? Do I have a choice?

11 What font works best?

12 Typos – I have an excellant attention to detail

13 Truths, near-truths and mis-statements

14 Chronological and functional CVs – what’s the difference?

15 CV Sections – what comes first?

16 The Bullet Point Summary

17 Do I need a completely different version of my CV for each job application?

18 Work Experience – Duties include . . .

19 Employers love data

20 Describing your Work Experience. Competencies are key

21 How many ways can I say . . . customer service?

22 I’ve had six different employers in three years – do I look like a flake?

23 Mind the gap. How to explain it.

24 I took a year out of the workplace to travel the world. How do I explain that on my CV?

25 I’ve run my own business for years. I’ve never needed to write a CV – until now. How do I start?

26 Describing your Education

27 I started but never finished my degree / diploma / certificate. Should I mention it on the CV?

28 How many is too many? Education course overload

29 Should I put Hobbies and Interests on my CV? Does anyone care?

30 Referees – should I mention them?

31 Same CV rules for all countries? Of course not

32 The Europass CV . . . Great idea or bland and outdated?

33 Does a picture really paint a thousand words? What’s the story with infographic CVs?

34 Cover letters – do I even need one?

35 Here’s my cover letter. I’ve used the same one for five years

36 Please apply using a video cover letter

37 Competency based application form

38 How to structure your answers for competency based application forms

39 Turning a CV into a resume

40 Going for the chop. After all of this your CV is still four pages. Tips for getting it to two

YOUR INTERVIEW

41 What’s the purpose of the interview?

42 You are not a mindreader. Ask them what to expect

43 Competency interview

44 Technical interview

45 Whiteboard interview

46 Strengths-based interview

47 Market sizing interview

48 Internal promotion interview

49 The clueless interviewer interview

50 Phone interview

51 Skype interview

52 Video interview – I may as well be talking to the wall

53 Quick chat

54 Coffee shop interview

55 Presentation

56 Who will be interviewing me? One person or a panel?

57 Group interview

58 Assessment centre

59 How much time should I spend preparing for an interview?

60 When should I start to prepare?

61 I got a call today inviting me to an interview in two days. I’d love this job but I’m not ready for the interview.

62 Okay, I get it. I need to prepare for my interview. How do I do that?

63 Now let’s talk about the right way to prepare

64 Looking for question clues? Start with a forensic investigation of the job description

65 You are the interviewer

66 The question is . . . what are the questions?

67 Now it’s your turn

68 How many is enough?

69 I know what I want to say – how do I make it sound like an interview answer?

70 Okay, I’m sold on STARR. Tell me more

71 Create your own STARR stories

72 Too much information – use Trigger Words

73 You need to talk

74 The most asked interview question – EVER

75 Tell me about yourself (TMAY) – what do they want to know?

76 Show me the TMAY template

77 What do you know about us? How to do company research

78 Should you speak to people you know working there as part of your preparation before your interview?

79 Strengths and weaknesses

80 Should you look up your interviewer’s profile on LinkedIn before the interview?

81 How do I get out of work to do an interview – will I pretend to be sick?

82 Logistics

83 What to wear

84 I think I can. I know I can. Visualising success

85 First impressions – formed quickly and difficult to change

86 Shake their hand and take a seat

87 Should I bring notes into the interview with me?

88 Water – Yes Food – No

89 What the hell are you asking me?

90 Hands up. I just don’t know the answer

91 That was a terrible answer. What can I do?

92 What are they WRITING?

93 Do you have any questions for us? How to respond

94 How do they score my interview?

95 Blindsided

96 Is there anything else you would like to add? What’s the last thing you say before you leave the room?

97 Interview life cycle

98 And then you go and spoil it all . . . Should you send an email to the interviewer after the interview?

99 I’ve done all my preparation but I’m still NERVOUS AS HELL. What can I do?

100 If at first you don’t succeed . . . Get feedback

101 And finally – let’s talk about money. What are your salary expectations?

YOUR CV

1

What is your CV’s job?

Your CV has only one job to do: get you an interview or put you on a shortlist that moves you to the next stage of the selection process.

Your CV should tell the employer that you have experience and achievements that could be of benefit to them. The words you use throughout the CV should give them evidence that you can meet the requirements and challenges of the job and make a great contribution to their company.

If a real-live human being is the first to review it (increasingly unlikely) a good CV will make them sufficiently interested, curious or just downright fascinated to meet you. They will want to ask you questions about what they have read. If the CV is analysed by a robot searching for keywords (quite likely) your CV needs to give them enough fodder to tip you into the Yes list. Once your CV has done that it can relax and take a break – mission accomplished. Then it’s over to you in the interview to bring the words on the CV to life.

2

CV vs LinkedIn

‘I don’t need a CV anymore. I have a LinkedIn profile – surely that’ll do the trick.’ WRONG. Some employers advertising jobs on this social networking platform will invite you to apply using your LinkedIn profile. One click and off goes the application. What could be easier? This will work well under certain circumstances.

1. You are 100% sure that your profile is excellent.

2. You are applying for a role that closely matches your past work experience – it’s all about the keywords and ensuring the skills you have listed on your profile match what the job advert is looking for.

Here’s the problem with this one-click-and-you’re-done approach: we have seen thousands of LinkedIn profiles and most of them are far from excellent. 49% of profiles on the platform are incomplete. You could be sending a half-baked profile to the employer for a job you would love to get – good luck with that approach.

Even when a job advert invites you to apply using your profile, most employers will also give you the option to attach a CV. If you are to maximise your chances of getting an interview this is not an option – you need to do this.

3

Applicant Tracking Systems – ATS

So much for Human Resources. Do humans even look at CVs anymore – or is it all robots?

If you click an ‘Apply Now’ button to apply for a job it’s almost certain that your CV is going to be run through an ATS. Here’s a scary statistic – over 75% of CVs are rejected by the ATS without ever being seen by a human. When you receive an automated ‘Thank you for your application but you have been unsuccessful . . . ’ email you would really like to think that someone, ANYONE took the time to diligently review and consider your CV before they sent you that email. They didn’t. The robot did it.

Four ways to maximise your chances of getting past the ATS

• Keywords are everything. This is all the ATS has to assess when it is analysing your CV. Mirror the exact words they used in the job description. Match the language and terminology they use. Think of it as an exercise in the card matching game snap. If they want it, make it crystal clear that you have it. ATS robots can’t interpret that the ‘several accounting software packages’ you mentioned you worked with are in fact Sage and Quickbooks. It will think that you don’t have that experience and you will probably end up in the No pile.

• Avoid tables, charts, graphics and logos. You may think they look slick but the ATS will churn out a rejection as it won’t be able to interpret what is in the tables or depicted on those amazing charts you spent hours perfecting. Keep it simple. Clear section headings, plain bullet points, no fancy fonts, borders or shading. Go easy on the boxes, tables and formatting. Content that is highly stylised and uses data visualisation or snazzy infographics to explain what you are offering (think pie charts indicating how much time you have spent in each job or bar charts depicting your level of proficiency in particular skills) is also a tough one for the ATS to figure out.

• Keywords are good but resist the temptation to go overboard. Mentioning the same keyword two or three times throughout the CV is enough to make an impact. You are not the first person to think it is a great idea to put multiple keywords in white ink in the footer of the page. Invisible to the human eye but the ATS will pick them up. Genius! Wrong! The ATS will flag blatant keyword stuffing and your plan will backfire.

• And speaking of headers and footers – many of the CVs we see have the name and contact details of the candidate neatly displayed in a header or footer on the document. The problem with this is that some ATS cannot read these sections. There are enough potential reasons why you may not be contacted for an interview – don’t let the fact that the ATS couldn’t figure out who you are or how to contact you be one of them!

4

OK, enough about robots . . .

Back to the humans. How long will they take to review my CV?

On a good day employers will take a maximum of thirty seconds to review the CV and decide if they are interested enough to read on. Some research puts this figure as low as six seconds.

What? It’s taken metwo weeksto write my CV. It’s a masterpiece. Are you seriously telling me that if a human being reads it they will give it an average of six seconds before they decide to bin it or interview me? What can they possibly find out in that time?

Plenty, as it happens. They are checking if it passes the Glance Test. Sloppy formatting, unclear section headings, important information that provides evidence of the required experience or skills being buried deep on page two, spelling mistakes and ‘personal profiles’ lifted straight from a Google search are the main reasons why CVs will get rejected so quickly. Get the basics right and they will keep reading.

5

Don’t state the obvious – we know what it is

We know it’s a Curriculum Vitae so you don’t need to put ‘Curriculum Vitae’ at the top of the document. Put you name in the centre in a font that is at least 4 points larger than the font used in the body of the CV. And never be tempted to put a black frame around the perimeter of each page. It’s depressing and makes us want to ask who died. There are still a few free CV templates floating around the internet that have this as standard. Unfortunately, we haven’t managed to eradicate all of them yet.

6

Does anyone print CVs anymore?

Hard copy? Hardly ever. Over 90% of employers want your CV emailed or attached to a form on their application website. There are a few exceptions. Hard copy versions will work for local small businesses where you can go door-to-door distributing your nicely printed CVs. Some employers at career fairs or career expos may also take a hard copy (but would really prefer if you emailed it to them or submitted it via their ATS so their robots can give it a good three-second interrogation).

And in case you’re thinking, ‘I’ll print it out on nice thick paper. Best quality, might even go for a nice shade of blush rather than white – that’ll make them notice me,’ don’t bother. You will have the employer thinking style over substance before they even start looking at the content. Avoid.

7

How long is too long?

The rules on this are pretty clear. For 95% of people, a CV should be NO MORE THAN two pages. And just for clarity, and to prove that your reasons for why you think you should be in the 5% exception zone don’t stack up, here is a list of all of the types of jobs/professions that can get away with their CV being longer than two pages:

• Academics

• Medical doctors

That’s it.

And yes, we hear this all the time. ‘But I’ve had such a varied career – twenty-five-plus years and counting of experience. It’s just impossible for me to fit it onto two pages.’ It is possible and to have a good shot at getting called for an interview you have to do it. We had a client who came to us with a thirteen-page CV – font size 8.5. They claimed that everything on there was hugely relevant and nothing could be taken off. They genuinely couldn’t figure out why the hell they were not getting interviews – they had great experience. We got the CV to two focused pages and they got the interview. Every two or three years they came back to us asking us to update it as they were applying for a new role. And every time they sent us the CV to update it had somehow, magically, expanded to six-plus pages again. They were addicted to adding CV content and our job was to hack it back again to maximise their chances of getting an interview.

8

What’s in a name?