Posts Tagged jobs
Recruitment from the Other Side – Part 2
Tip #1 – Politeness and Appearance
The job interview is a strange experience for all involved. It’s one of the few occasions when your skills and experience are really put under the magnifying glass and examined by complete strangers. Similarly it’s one of the few times you get to speak purely about yourself and what you’ve accomplished with a captive audience.
It’s important to remember in this strange situation, the basic cultural nomenclature to which society adheres. That means -
- Make sure you arrive well dressed (but not over-dressed), neat and tidy.
- Make sure you arrive 5-10 minutes prior to your appointment time, but no earlier.
- Make sure to get the names of the people who will be interviewing you.
- Make sure to shake their hand(s) and look them in the eye when you meet them.
- When you initially get into the interview expect to greet your interviewers in a friendly manner and make some initial chit-chat before getting down to business.
It’s easy to get uptight and anxious and forget basic manners and courtesy. The interviewer will certainly notice this and despite being understanding about your nerves, that old saying about “first impressions” is completely true, and you only get the one chance to make a good one.
Relax, and act normal. 
Tip #2 – Enthusiasm!
This is the most important tip I could give any candidate:
Enthusiasm…. have some!!
If I could put it in flashing lights with animated arrows and fireworks I would – you’ll have to imagine that for yourself. The one thing that will immediately improve your chances is to be enthusiastic and show that you have passion.
Passion for your work, passion for this job and passion for new things.
This was something I found surprising when conducting interviews – the number of candidates who don’t seem excited about what they do, the prospect of a new job or even the opportunity to talk about their best attributes.
When asked “why did you apply for this job”, you should have a good (and honest) response, that shows a bit of enthusiasm for the organisation you’ve applied to work at. If you’re not enthusiastic about it, why the hell are you here?
Tip #3 – Relax.
There’s a difference between being “enthusiasic” and a nervous wreck, sweating like a pig and speaking at 1/10th the speed of light.
Telling someone to relax when they’re nervous is a bit like trying to extinguish a fire with vodka.
That said, try not to build the whole situation up in your mind and remember that your interviewers are (most likely) reasonable people. If they aren’t reasonable people, you probably don’t want the job anyhow so there’s no need to be concerned. Remember that the people you are about to meet may be your future colleagues – they are under scrutiny here as much as you are.
It’s not all about “am I good enough for the job“, it’s about “am I right for the job, and is the job right for me“. So don’t shout, whisper or rush, and if you’re a big sweater, arrive early enough that you can cool down and relax before going into the interview.
Tip #4 – Know Yourself
The key thing that your interviewers will want to know about is your past experience and achievements. If you don’t have a clear idea of the things you have done, the challenges you’ve faced and your key achievements, then you are going to struggle to come up with good responses to your interviewers’ questions.
One way to deal with this is to have a high level list of the conflicts and milestones in your work activities. I say “conflicts and milestones” because those are the things you are most likely to be asked to recall during your interview.
This is a list that you can either prepare prior to the interview, or a better idea might be just to keep a running list of these types of things. At the end of each week or month, take stock of what you achieved and what challenges (a euphamism for “conflict”) you faced.
Reading over a list like this can be interesting from a personal point of view, because we rarely take stock of the actual high level outcomes of our day to day stresses.
In addition to listing these things you will want, firstly, to have a “60 second run-down” of the present state of your career; where you are, where you’re going. Make sure it’s not confused or boring. Secondly, you’ll want to reflect on any negative outcomes you have experienced and think about what you learned, how you would approach these situations differently.
If you go into an interview with these things in mind, you are far more likely to present well, and come up with good examples when asked those inevitable “what’s a situation when…” questions. It’s also healthy from a personal point of view, to do this from time to time.
Tip #5 – Technical Role = Technical Questions
If you’re applying for a technical role, don’t be surprised if you are asked some technical (and difficult) questions. There’s no advice I’d give you here about ways around this. You’re either going to know it or not.
But, if you don’t know the answer to something – admit it!
You could go on to explain how you would go about figuring this out, but don’t guess or worse, make stuff up. That sends a really negative signal. The interviewer knows that it’s not reasonable for any candidate to answer everything 100% – so just admit it if your knowledge is lacking in some areas.
When you are talking about technical things, stick to concepts and don’t get wrapped up in business domain terminology. Try to keep your explanations as simple as possible. If your interviewer wants more information, or a clarified answer, they’ll ask. Don’t get “flop sweat” and try to “over-answer” a question.
So that wraps it up – I hope that helps some people out next time they go to a tech interview. As I mentioned in Part 1, it was interesting to be on the otherside of a large hiring process, and I know I’ll read over these notes next time I’m back on the recieving end of probing questions.
Recruitment From The “Other Side” – Part 1
Posted by rn in General, Software Engineering on July 6th, 2009
Five tips for people applying for an IT or technical job.
Recently I was involved in recruitment for a number of development positions. Although I have reviewed CVs and done interviewing before, it had been specific roles with only a couple of candidates, whereas the recent positions had a large number of applicants for multiple positions.
This was a very interesting process to be involved in, and has given me a different perspective on the job application process which I believe will be helpful in the future when applying for IT jobs. Read on for the common problems and some tips I found when reviewing candidates applications…
NB. This is solely based on my personal experience and (of course) I am not a HR professional, but often for technical roles it will be a technical resource that evaluates the candidates, so with that in mind, read on…
Key Point
Think about the person who is reviewing your application and communicate to them.
They probably have a whole pile of CVs and application letters to read through, and they have a good idea of the sort of candidate they have for the job(s). They are trying to eliminate as many people as they can on that basis, as quickly as possible.
And, more than anything else, they want to know how well does your experience match up with the job needing to be filled?
With that in mind, tailor your application to make the reviewer’s job as easy as possible.
Tip #1 – Keep it simple and concise.
You have no idea how many people have applications numbering almost 10 pages. With a CV of that size you are telling the reviewer one of two things:
- You don’t know what skills are important to the job, so you are putting down everything in the hope that something will be relevant.
- You are too lazy to tailor your application to the position you are applying for.
So you’re either inept or lazy, neither of which are desirable in prospective employee. Keep your CV to 3 or 4 pages at the most, less if you can. Don’t add lists of skills you say you have, but can’t back up with some tangible experience or qualification.
Which leads me to the next tip…
Tip #2 – Remember that the reader is a skeptical one.
The reader will be skeptical of your past work, performance and achievements. It is your task to prove to them that you are as good as you say.Make it clear what you did.
Some people seem to think that being in a team that was building a product “X” or using a technology “Y” means you can say you are an expert in creating and using “X” or “Y”. That might get you an interview if you’re lucky, but you better have the skills to back it up.
In most cases, it is very time consuming and difficult for someone reviewing an application to figure out what the applicant actually did in their past work.
So make sure you write your past experience in the context of what you did while you were there, and what you contributed specifically!
Make it clear the technologies you used to do the things you did.
Just because someone in your team used [technology X] doesn’t make you an expert in [technology X]. The person reviewing your application knows that, so tell them what tools you used to achieve the things you said you did.
Notice I wrote, “the things you said you did”. A large number of applicants write a big box at the start of their CV’s with 50 different technologies / languages / frameworks and a number of years experience. Someone reviewing your application is very unlikely to take something like that at face value, and similar to my first tip, shows that you are just trying to get a foot in the door on the basis of some buzzword. It might work, but it adds more noise than signal, and again, you better be able to back up all those technlogies with skills and experience.
Tip #3 – Write your past work experience in layman’s terms.
Unless you are applying for a job at a workplace in the same industry or business domain as your last one, try to explain all your past projects in layman’s terms. Avoid domain-specific language or buzzwords, and concentrate on the value delivered to users and types of systems (technology) that you built and delivered.
My rule of thumb would be -
Explain your past work experiences as you might explain them at a dinner party with friends.
Industry-specific jargon and buzz-words will be lost on the reader if you are applying for a job in a different domain, and just add noise to your message. You want the reviewer of your application to understand what you did, not be baffled by it.
Tip #4 – Ditch baggage.
This is an extension of Tip #1 – more is not always better.
If you have 10+ years industry experience, you don’t need to include a university transcript with all your results. For any professional position that requires tertiary qualifications, you certainly don’t need to mention your primary and secondary school activities!
Similarly, if you have past experience that you’re not proud of, for example poor university results or a job at a company that didn’t reflect well on you, leave it out! You need to sell yourself (without distorting the truth), so leave out old baggage. You can talk about some of those things at the interview if you are asked, and maybe comment on those less-than-stellar experiences in the context of learning experiences, but don’t present them on a CV where you can’t put them into context for the reader. (Remember the reader is a skeptical one!)
Tip #5 – It’s okay to have a personality!
The vast majority of applications read very professionally, and very dry. Most people have interesting personalities, likes, dislikes, quirks and interests. It’s okay to present yourself with a little personality. In fact it is the single easiest way to set yourself apart from other applicants.
Talking about the hobbies and interests you have outside of work (and consider writing a sentence about them, not just personality-less dot-points) is a good way to let the reader know what sort of person you are.
If you are passionate about, something, anything - talk about it. Appear as a person, not a “professional”. We work with people, not professionals on a daily basis, despite what some companies or cultures want you to believe.
Your past experience and technical knowledge are only 50% of what contribute to getting you a job, the other 50% is personality and attitude. If you don’t have a personality on paper you are hiding half the information the employer needs to make a decision on whether to hire you.
A note about including photos of yourself…
Including a photo of yourself is one way to add personality to your application; but make sure it’s a good photo! If you include a weird, poorly lit or too casual photo then you’re better off not to include one at all. I would recommend that you err on the side of not including a photo, unless you feel very sure that it will add value to your application.
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