Job Search Dinner Party Etiquette

by Angela Copeland | Dec 23, 2019 | Career Corner Column, Interviewing, Job Search, Newsletter

The title of this column may sound funny. After all, you’re looking for a new job, not a steak and baked potato. On the surface, you’re right, but there are lessons you can carry over from your dinner tonight to your job interview tomorrow morning.

Like a dinner party, you never know who you might be introduced to when you’re searching for a job. When you go for an interview, it’s important to be friendly to each person you meet – whether they’re the intern or the CEO.

At dinner, there are also three topics universally considered impolite to discuss: religion, politics and money. Religion is obvious, since you often don’t know which religion someone may be, or if they practice any religion at all. Politics make sense too.

During the job hiring process, many people will review your resume and your cover letter. Some you may never meet and others you will spend hours with during the hiring process. During the interview, it will be difficult to distinguish someone’s religious affiliations or political beliefs. Making an assumption about someone else’s beliefs may easily lead you down the wrong path.

Although you may feel very strongly about your views, it’s important to consider one thing. Is it more important that everyone you meet during your interview process knows your personal views, or is it more important that you get a job?

The purpose of an interview is for your future employer to make judgments about you. They want to decide whether or not you would make a good fit for a particular role. In the same way that you wouldn’t want to distract them or turn them off by wearing jeans, you should also avoid the pitfall of sharing your personal views.

The best policy is to brand yourself with your educational and work-related achievements. Focus on these in your resume, cover letter and in-person discussions. Downplay things like religion and politics that will distract from these points.

Talking about money during dinner can create tension. In an interview, discussing money is not recommended because you may harm your chances of receiving the highest possible salary. The saying goes that in negotiations, whoever speaks of money first is the loser. Keep this in mind, and allow the interviewer to show their cards before you do.

After a dinner party, you tell the host thank you. You should also take the time to thank the company that interviewed you. They hosted you. They have put schedules on hold, setup meetings, and sometimes have even flown you in. At a minimum, send a thank you note via email to each person you meet.

The only exceptions are when you are applying for a religious or political organization with whom your personal views align. In that case, you may be more open. But remember, not everyone at the organization may share the organization’s views, so be sensitive in how you share.

I hope these tips have helped you. Visit CopelandCoaching.com to find more tips to improve your job search. If I can be of assistance to you, don’t hesitate to reach out to me here.

Happy hunting!

Angela Copeland
@CopelandCoach

Step One

by Angela Copeland | Oct 21, 2019 | Career Corner Column, Interviewing, Job Search, Newsletter

If you’ve interviewed lately, you know the first step of a job interview is a phone screen. After you apply for a job, a recruiter from the company will reach out to you. They’ll ask to setup a time to meet.

In the phone screen, the recruiter will ask predictable questions. They say, “Tell me about yourself.” Then, they’ll ask follow up questions. “Why are you interested in the job? Why are you looking for a job?” They may also ask how you heard about the job, or how much expertise you have in a certain area. And, they’ll ask how much money you want.

It’s pretty standard. The one question I have seen lately that is shocking however is this. At the very end of the interview, the recruiter will say, “After this call, can you email me a copy of your resume?” Read that again. “After this call, can you email me a copy of your resume?”

This seems like an odd question, right? What I’m getting at is this. Some recruiters are interviewing job applicants without having a copy of their resume. They aren’t downloading it ahead of time from the application. They are going into an interview cold, without knowing anything about the candidate. They’re asking random questions. They are completely and totally unprepared. And that is how they’re making important hiring decisions for the company.

As a candidate, I suppose you may want to start off an interview by checking to see that the recruiter has a copy of your resume. However, this question really seems like it may introduce an odd dynamic to the conversation.

HR leaders, if you are reading this, please take note. This is a genuine problem. I’ve observed many examples of this lately. If you’re a company, I know you want to hire the best people. And, you certainly don’t want to waste a candidate’s time. After all, candidates study for interviews. They memorize your job description. They scour the internet to learn about your company. They practice their answers to common interview questions. They prepare their own questions. And, often, they ask friends and family for help. This is a huge effort to go through for a recruiter to show up unprepared.

If you’re looking for a job, I don’t have a ton of great ideas for this problem. Honestly, the lack of accountability baffles me. And, companies are using these folks as the gate keepers. Sure, many recruiters are helpful. But, even one absent minded recruiter can really cause problems with an entire hiring process.

Companies, it’s past time that we hold ourselves to the same standards that we hold candidates to. It’s time to show up on time and prepared for our interviews. If we don’t have something we need in order to participate in an interview, we should ask for that piece of information before the interview begins. It’s step one.

I hope these tips have helped you. Visit CopelandCoaching.com to find more tips to improve your job search. If I can be of assistance to you, don’t hesitate to reach out to me here.

Happy hunting!

Angela Copeland
@CopelandCoach

Ethical Interviewing

by Angela Copeland | Oct 14, 2019 | Career Corner Column, Interviewing, Job Search, Newsletter

When a company is looking to hire someone, finding the right candidate takes time. There are often multiple phone screens, multiple video interviews, and in person panel interviews. In some cases, there are homework assignments, IQ tests, personality tests, and drug tests. Typically, there are reference checks. Sometimes job seekers provide writing samples or portfolios of their work.

Thinking about this makes me tired. Don’t you agree? The point is, going through a job search is a ton of work – on both sides. As you can imagine, it’s very important that the job seeker is honest and up front with the company. If they misrepresent their work in any way, the company won’t be able to make the best hiring decision.

On the flip side of this coin, it’s very important that the company is honest and up front with the candidate. What could I possibly mean by that? Well, did you know that sometimes companies will interview candidates when there isn’t really a job available?

That sounds pretty weird, doesn’t it? How could that possibly happen? First, it does happen. I recently witnessed someone go through fifteen rounds of interviews with one company. At the end, the person was notified that they were the top choice candidate, but that the team wasn’t authorized to hire anyone.

I don’t think the company meant any harm by this decision. I think they truly hoped they would get approval for the position, but just never did.

But, let’s think of this from the candidate’s perspective. The candidate turned down other interviews to attend these fifteen interviews. The candidate missed their own work meetings to go to these interviews. The candidate made a lot of sacrifices of their time over months in order to make this work. They made these choices because they were investing in an opportunity that the candidate wanted.

When the company shared with the candidate that they wouldn’t be able to hire them, the company never apologized. It seems clear that the company didn’t realize how much they personally impacted that job seeker. The company never thought about the other opportunities the person walked away from to focus on them.

This is where ethics come in. Interviewing candidates for a job isn’t the same as test driving cars at the dealership. They’re real people. If you don’t select someone because they weren’t the best candidate, no problem. And, if the job was canceled midway through the process, well, life happens sometimes. But, if you are interviewing candidates when you know there is not approval for a job, and you aren’t disclosing that information to the candidate in the first conversation, you are being an unethical hiring manager. The candidate should be able to decide if this role is important enough to prioritize it, considering the potential risk involved.

Let’s agree to be honest and up front. Ethics are important. Transparency is important.

I hope these tips have helped you. Visit CopelandCoaching.com to find more tips to improve your job search. If I can be of assistance to you, don’t hesitate to reach out to me here.

Happy hunting!

Angela Copeland
@CopelandCoach

What have you done in the last five years?

by Angela Copeland | Aug 19, 2019 | Career Corner Column, Interviewing, Job Search, Newsletter

There’s a new question emerging in the world of job seeking. It’s something I never expected. It doesn’t happen in every interview, but it happens enough that it’s worth mentioning. As you grow in your career, companies expect more. More senior roles require more experience. Job descriptions will ask for ten or fifteen years of experience in a particular field. If you have the ten or fifteen years of experience, this can seem like a great thing. You’ve finally arrived!

Throughout your career, you go through different phases. Perhaps there was a time when you were doing detailed, fundamental work (maybe right out of college). There was another time when you learned to manage people. Or, another phase where you learned to managed vendors and cross departmental relationships. You career has been an evolution.

You go into a job interview, ready to share the ten or fifteen years of accumulated experience that you bring to the table. You finally meet all of the requirements on the job description (or at least most of them). The question you aren’t expecting comes out of nowhere. The recruiter says, “Tell me about yourself.” That part is doable. You’re ready! Then, the recruiter says, “…but keep it to the last five years. We only want to know about the last five years. Recent experience is all that counts here.”

This question has been a bit baffling. The company wants ten or fifteen years of experience. And, it’s all those years that truly makes you qualified. But, if you’ve got to limit your answer to the last five years, you may miss out on half or two thirds of your experience. It’s one thing to be brief in an answer. It makes sense to be concise. But, it’s a completely different thing to omit large chunks of your professional background.

It feels like companies are asking for fifteen years of experience, packed into a five year time frame. This expectation seems to be an unusually high burden on the job seeker. I have to wonder how this strategy is impacting the companies that are using it. Are they able to find people with fifteen years of experience, who have done some of everything in the last five years?

This criteria doesn’t seem to favor young workers or older workers. Young workers don’t have enough experience to meet the minimum requirements. And, older workers very likely haven’t covered every inch of everything within the last five.

Whatever happened to being able to do the job? When I hire someone, I want someone who can do that job. The details of when or where they got the experience leading up to that point are much less important. A job interview should not be a computer game or a puzzle. It’s an opportunity for a company to find a motivated, experienced person who is dedicated and willing to do the work at hand.

I hope these tips have helped you. Visit CopelandCoaching.com to find more tips to improve your job search. If I can be of assistance to you, don’t hesitate to reach out to me here.

Happy hunting!

Angela Copeland
@CopelandCoach