Job Seekers

Today’s blogger is Amy Teske, NPAworldwide Membership Engagement Manager. Amy joined the NPAworldwide staff in June 2015. We’re happy she’s here, and happy for the extra blogging horsepower as well!

How are you engaged and inspired? Have you ever associated your engagement and inspiration with a message from a motivational poster? Probably not…but sometimes as corny and outdated as it seems, the message can be a thought starter and a way to reflect on certain situations we face in our careers. Read the rest of this entry »

What if you were a BMW car collector and reseller? You made your living by finding out about all the great BMWs available, buying and reselling these to others that collect BMWs. What if every day you got calls from people asking you to spend your day talking about Mercedes? Got so that every day you could spend 6 to 8 hours talking to collectors, owners and resellers of Mercedes. Do you think that spending 6 or 8 hours a day on Mercedes discussions would improve or damage your income, skills and reputation as the best darn BMW reseller in the world? You could learn about how to make Mercedes run more like BMWs, you could become expert in being the nicest BMW collector in the world, but your sales and income would forever be impacted by investing so much of your time on something that is not going to support your core business. Read the rest of this entry »

I think I have a new pet peeve – candidates who are subjected to endless job interviews. I’m talking 5, 6, or more interviews. It is madness! What do employers think they are gaining by this?

Here are 3 ways excessive job interviews are harmful to employers:

1. The best candidates back out. Top candidates simply don’t need to put up with an excessively-slow hiring process. They have other options, and will exercise those options.

2. The employer looks indecisive. Having candidates interview repeatedly sends a message that a company is disorganized, or indecisive, or both (or worse). That is not a strategy for attracting top talent.

3. The employer’s reputation is harmed. More and more candidates are posting reviews of their interview experiences on sites like Glassdoor. If the interview process is long, drawn-out, poorly communicated, with silly questions, candidates are going to share that information online. This negatively impacts an employer’s ability to attract top talent for future roles.

What’s behind all these job interviews? Fear of making a bad hire. No doubt about it, hiring decisions are big and important and need to be “done right.” Here are five ideas that will help employers feel more confident that they have an interview process that both evaluates candidates fairly and accurately and allows the employer to hire the person who can best “do the job.”

1. Develop a standard set of questions. Make sure every candidate is asked the same set of questions (and that the answers are documented). This is the only way to know if candidates are being evaluated on the same criteria. Pre-recorded video screening is a great way to do this.

2. Develop (and use!) a scale to score a candidate’s answers to interview questions. For each question, determine in advance what would be strong, average, and weak answers.

3. Determine, in advance, what success on the job looks like. For example, a specific project will have been completed, a new store will open, sales will be increased by a certain percentage or similar. Once success has been defined, it will be easier to develop questions that help an employer determine which candidates are likely to meet those targets.

4. Figure out which information needs to be gathered during each step of the process, and who needs to be involved. Without a defined process, candidates often are asked the same questions over and over again. Not only does this frustrate the job seeker, it also does NOT add value to the hiring process, since there is no new information being shared. If possible, limit the number of people involved in the interviews.

5. Tell the candidate in advance what kind of information is being sought. Job interviews are stressful! It *is* possible to have a rigorous interview process that still allows a candidate to focus her preparation on the skills and information that are most critical to an employer’s needs.

Too many job interviews alienate the best candidates and don’t improve hiring results. What’s your best tip for improving the hiring process?

Today’s guest blogger is James Seidel with James Seidel & Associates located in Kelowna, BC, Canada. JSA is an owner-operated firm with clients across western Canada. The firm primarily places candidates in I/T, engineering, and sales. James is a former leader of our IT Trading Group and is currently serving on the NPAworldwide Board of Directors.

Your resume has earned you a job interview, and now you have the most highly competitive stage of the recruitment process to overcome.

The interview process, in general, has become less subjective and more structured – with increased use of psychometric testing as an example. Despite this, first impressions still count and the key to success still lies in being prepared.

• The time to start thinking about the potential employer, your aspirations and questions you may wish to ask, is not when you are sitting in reception immediately before the interview (or in the car afterwards!). Careful and effective thought before this stage will pay dividends later. Here are some pointers: Research the organization thoroughly – most organizations expect candidates to undertake research prior to the interview. Look at their website, go to Linked In and see who’s who in the department you’re looking at, read the annual report and press releases. Find out all you can about the organization, including company history, organizational structure, size, locations, profitability, and competitors. If at all possible, speak with colleagues who may have worked there.
• In advance of the interview, and immediately before, think about the likely questions you are going to be asked and how you will answer those questions, as well as the questions you would like to ask. Bear in mind the two most common formats are the Standard Interview and the Behavioural Interview. Research them both. Give some thought to how you would answer some of the questions for each, then have someone ask them to you.
• Know where to go for the interview – be sure you can arrive 15 minutes early.
• Make sure, if possible, that you know who you will be seeing for the interview, what position they hold within the organization, the amount of time they have allotted, and the likely format of the interview.
• Dress smartly – you are generally less likely to offend by dressing conservatively. Put another way, it is generally wiser to be the best dressed person in the interview room than the worst dressed.

Our guest blogger is Tanya Sobti of Arnold Group Australia in Melbourne, Australia. Arnold Group Australia has been a member of NPAworldwide since 2004. Arnold Group Australia has a number of specialist divisions that provide recruitment services in safety, injury management, general insurance, broking, sales and marketing, and shared service.

I recently had a counteroffer situation which has prompted me to put my thoughts on paper.

In my opinion, most people decide to look for a new job due to one of two reasons: the push and pull factor come into play here. These reasons are:

• Seeking new challenges or career growth — essentially the “pull” into a more enticing opportunity and a positive environment.
• The lack of financial rewards and career growth, poor culture etc. — essentially factors that “push” you to seek an environment that is better.

The cost of replacing an employee, especially in a candidate-short market, can be quite high. Hence, some employers make counteroffers to save themselves the trouble of recruiting a replacement and do everything they can do to keep the current incumbent. Sometimes these counteroffers are accepted. However, the statistics are 80% of these employees leave the organization within 6 months because the real reasons for wanting to leave have not disappeared.

Once you’ve made your employer know you’re not happy, it’s never the same again. From this day forward you will always be considered a fidelity risk. Having once demonstrated your lack of loyalty (for whatever reason), you are likely to lose your status as a “team player” and your place in the inner circle. Counteroffers are only made in response to a threat to quit. Will you have to solicit an offer and threaten to quit every time you deserve better working conditions?

Accepting a counter offer rarely eliminates the factors that drove you to look for a new job in the first place. Even in the rare instance that these factors were resolved, why did it take a resignation for you to get better working conditions, career progression, salary raise etc.? Did your employer not think it was worth it before?

Counteroffers should never be accepted….EVER! Those very few instances where accepting a counter offer is beneficial occur just about as frequently as being struck by lightning.