My son is a senior in High School. Every day the mailbox is full of postcards, brochures and promotions from colleges from all around the country. Some of these colleges I have never even heard of and others I only know from watching College Football or Basketball. He has his choice down to about 4 schools that we are going to visit later next month.
Continue reading “Working with Recruiters – The Good, The Bad and The Shady”
Answering the Strengths and Weaknesses Question – You Know You’ll Be Asked This!
Almost every interview starts off with the same questions:
“Did you find the office okay?”
“Would you like some coffee / water?”
“Did you just fart?”
Let’s move a little farther into the future. The room has been cleared or maybe an ambulance has been called, but in any case now it’s time to answer some real questions.
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What is the ideal job situation? – Luck be an offer tonight!
What comes to your mind when I say “right place, right time?” Is it stumbling out of a bar and getting arrested for drunk and disorderly only to fall in love with your soulmate probation officer? Or maybe it is being the 1,000th customer and getting a years’ supply of milk bones at the pet store. Still, right place, right time could be walking off of rope bridge over a deep gorge right before it collapses behind you.
Continue reading “What is the ideal job situation? – Luck be an offer tonight!”
Resumés and Cover Letters – You’re doing it all wrong!
Traditionally, resumés are where you crap out all of your experience onto 1 or 2 pages of 8 ½” x 11” processed tree parts. They are impersonal and just state your version of the truth. Hopefully they sway the reader to react like a miner who has panned a nugget in the 1860’s.
Traditionally, a cover letter is where the appeal is made stating why you should be picked and is often much more personable. The cover letter is you putting out your cupped hands and asking for more gruel like Oliver Twist, with heartfelt words intended to turn the darkest hiring hearts into rainbows, unicorns and sugar plumbs.
Traditionally, many traditions suck and much like iPhone screens they will eventually be broken. Time to kick tradition in the nuts.
Continue reading “Resumés and Cover Letters – You’re doing it all wrong!”
How to tell when an offer is coming…You must be a carpenter, because you nailed it!
The interview is over. You dazzled them, maybe they sang your praises in the interview, you sang Sweet Caroline in 3 part harmony together and swapped recipes. Your soon to be new BFF’s are going to be calling you with a job offer…maybe. Oh no, it’s 2 hours later. Now it’s the middle of the night and your inner self-hatred monkey is on your shoulder screaming all of the mistakes you made into your head and the reasons why you won’t get the job and you don’t deserve it. Emotion takes over, you don’t sleep, you work yourself into an anxiety and pour yourself a drink as you sit in the kitchen at 4:30 in the morning brooding over this pending offer and if it will come.
Tell me about yourself…So, you better know thyself!!!
Every first interview, every first date, every first friendship, or every first meeting with your drug dealer is going to start the same way. You are going to be asked the dreaded question that everyone knows is coming, no one prepares for and even fewer people know how to correctly answer. Yes, you are going to be asked “tell me about yourself.”
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