Interview Technique - 6 Tips on what not to do - Position Ignition

We get asked a lot to help with interview technique. The things you should do and shouldn't do when preparing for an interview.  Here are a few tips and tricks outlining what not to do for your interview:

Turn up late

Never turn up to an interview late.  Imagine you are the interviewer for a moment. If you were kept waiting by someone you have never met before and by someone who is meant to be trying to ‘win’ the job – would you be impressed by their lateness? Turning up late will reflect badly on you as it suggests that you are disorganized and bad at time keeping – which can be important qualities for certain roles.

Waffle or talk too much

Talking non stop in an interview is a bad move. This is bad interview technique. No-one wants to be talked at! An interview is a two-way conversation and so make sure that it stays that way. Make sure that what you have to say is relevant and has a point to it otherwise it’s just waffle i.e. a lot of noise but without much in it.

Criticise your current employer or boss

Criticising who you currently work for is not a good idea. Even if you do not like them, do not talk badly of them or put them down. Describing them in a negative light will only look badly on you.  Your interviewer doesn’t want to know that if things don’t work out with them you are going to bad mouth them to everyone you meet! Your interviewer will know that you want to leave your current job because you’re in an interview. Whether it’s because you hate your old boss or company or not – is irrelevant and isn’t something you should dwell on.

Answer your phone

Turn your phone off when going into an interview. Having it ringing in the middle of an interview is not only distracting but is only rude. What is even worse is answering a call in an interview. It is disrespectful to the interviewer and implies that you are not serious about getting that job nor do you respect the person who has taken the time to interview you.

Express bad humour

Humour is a funny thing! Some people will find things funny when others will not so tread carefully here. Anything that could be construed as cruel, racist, sexist or discriminatory is a no no.  Having someone try to be funny when they’re not, is not a pleasant sight or experience.

Sit in silence

Being overly quiet is not a good move in an interview. Again - bad interview technique. Responding with basic yes and no answers isn’t what the interviewer is looking for. They want to see energy, enthusiasm and passion for the role. They want to get to know you and see that you are interested in it. Short responses or just sitting in silence won’t get anything across or give the interviewer anything to work with.

 

Author: Nisa Chitakasem and Simon North from Position Ignition (www.positionignition.com) - taking you to the next step in your career!

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Personal Branding Interview: Michael Hyatt | Personal Branding Blog - Dan Schawbel

Today, I spoke to Michael Hyatt, who is the Chief Executive Officer of Thomas Nelson Publishers, the largest Christian publishing company in the world and the seventh largest trade book publishing company in the U.S. In this interview, Michael talks about how and when he started using social media tools, the impact blogging has had on his life, what types of authors get book deals, his thoughts on the future of publishing, and more.

What got you started blogging and using Twitter in the first place?

I began blogging in 1998, before it was even called blogging. I blogged in fits and starts, usually around the launch of various projects. However, I began again in April 2004 because I wanted to be able to better engage with our employees, authors, and customers. In April 2008, I began twittering at the recommendation of a close friend. I just was going to try it out for 30 days, and it stuck.

How has using these tools impacted your life personally and professionally?

• Blogging helps me clarify my own thinking. This is probably the primary benefit of blogging for me. Sometimes I am not sure what I think about a topic until I have written on it. Writing helps me untangle my thoughts.
• Blogging has given me first-hand experience with emerging technologies. I have listened to many CEOs pontificate on this or that technology. But they are not speaking form personal experience—and it shows. When you actually use a technology, your learning and insights go to a higher level.
• Blogging has provided me with a mechanism for instant feedback. I love the fact that people can comment on what I have written.
• Blogging has helped me bypass traditional media when necessary. I didn’t really understand this at the outset, but it has proven very helpful. When the media fail to get the story right, I can quickly address it and provide my side of the story. This has been particularly helpful when we make big decisions that cause people to speculate. A blog post can stop a rumor dead in its tracks. Blogging has made our company more visible. I currently have more than 100,000 readers a month. I have received scores of emails from people who had never heard of Thomas Nelson before stumbling onto my blog. Also, my blog has given me a way to “put a face on the company” and, I think, make it more personal.
• Twitter allows family, friends, and others to follow my activity throughout the day and keep up with my life. Twitter enables me to meet new friends. I am following several people that I would have never met otherwise. These are relationships have proven very fruitful.
• Twitter encourages me to think consciously about my life. What am I doing now? What kind of story is my life telling? Is this really what I want to be doing? Could I—should I—be choosing something different?

  

When you, and your company, look to bring on authors, how important is their personal brand and marketing platform? Is it more important today than it was ten years ago?

As a publisher, I would love to have a great book from an author with a giant platform but you rarely get both. I still believe in the power of a great concept and great writing. Authors should focus on the aspects of the publishing process they can control beginning with writing the best manuscript possible. That being said, it is important for an inspiring author to do what they can to build their audience.

What do you think about these new publishing platforms, including the iPad, Kindle, and Nook? Are they the future?

Yes, I believe that over time the bulk of publishing will be done digitally. New devices are being designed everyday that make it easier for consumers to digest words and ideas. This is definitely an exciting time to work in publishing.

How important is it for you to be out in the public as the human face of Thomas Nelson? How do you and your company benefit by this?

As CEO, I feel that one of my main responsibilities is to get visibility for Thomas Nelson. Networking and communicating are two of the most important parts of my job. In today’s marketplace, companies need to have personality. Customers don’t want to champion a corporation, they want to champion people. As my team and I get more involved in social media, we commonly hear that customers seek out Thomas Nelson products because of their interaction online with our people.

Looking back, what business decisions did you make early in your career that have helped you be successful today?

I decided that even though I had completed my formal education that I would be a life-long learner. I seek out experts who can broaden my knowledge base through executive coaching, mentoring, and reading. These resources have helped me take my leadership to the next level.

——
Michael Hyatt is the Chief Executive Officer of Thomas Nelson Publishers, the largest Christian publishing company in the world and the seventh largest trade book publishing company in the U.S. His company is privately-held and he has worked at the company for a total of fourteen years. He began my publishing career at Word Publishing while a student at Baylor University. He worked at Word for a total of six years. In addition to serving as Vice President of Marketing at Thomas Nelson in the mid-80s, He also started his own publishing company, Wolgemuth & Hyatt, with his partner Robert Wolgemuth in 1986. Word eventually acquired his  company in 1992. He was a successful literary agent from 1992 until early 1998. He has also written four books, one of which landed on the New York Times bestseller list where it stayed for seven months. He is currently working on two new books, which he plans to announce closer to publication. He is also the former Chairman of the Evangelical Christian Publishers Association (ECPA).

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Sell Your Used Car for More by Getting It Detailed - Selling - Lifehacker

Dealers take real time to polish up a used car so it looks as showroom-fresh as possible. Take a cue from them and increase your chances of getting the asking price on your used car.

Photo by area57.

MSN Money put together a list of six ways you can get more money for your used car. Key among them is thinking like a dealer—as shower-inducing as that sounds—and getting your car as clean and shiny as possible:

Dealers have a few tricks up their sleeves. They know that even a clunker can look like a cream puff when it's cleaned up.

A detailing that includes vacuuming the interior, cleaning the seats, and washing and waxing the exterior will run about $50. Shining up older tires is cheap — $5 to $10 — and helps increase curb appeal. Dealers also steam clean the engine, polish chrome surfaces and even use Armor All on the plastic tubing, says Phil Reed of Edmunds.com. That can give buyers a sense of confidence in the care of your car when they look under the hood.

Besides the spit and polish, make sure your vehicle is clear of all your stuff. Look in the compact-disc player, seat-back pockets, under seats and in the trunk. Verify that the spare tire is there (if it comes with one) and that all jacks and tools are accounted for.

It seems like having a spotless maintenance record would be more important than a spotless driver seat, but purchasers like to feel like their getting a "new" car, even when they're shopping for a used one. Check out the full article for more tips. What put your own used car over the top for a buyer? Share your trade secret in the comments.

6 Ways to Get Top Dollar for Your Car [MSN Money via Free Money Finance]

Send an email to Jason Fitzpatrick, the author of this post, at jason@lifehacker.com.

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April 2010 Hiring Trends Show Slow Employment Improvements - Secrets of the Job Hunt Career Podcast

At the end of April 2010, the major job aggregation sites released hiring data and analysis, indicating slow but measurable growth. Today's article summarizes job reports from Indeed.com, SimplyHired.com, and Execunet.com.

The slow job growth demonstrates some early signs of a recovery. However, job growth was inconsistent, effecting some cities, industries and job functions more than others. Some job markets remain in the dumper - Florida and certain California job markets are still in deep trouble with up to a 1:9 ratio of unemployed workers to job advertisements. Detroit remains in trouble, but registered some small improvements.

Not only is this valuable for job seekers, but for business analysts, corporate strategists, marketers, salespeople, investment analysts, financial advisers, and others who are interested in job growth.

The article analyzes job reports that compare job competition by metro area, job growth by industry, job growth by function, and job growth by management level. The trends are slow, positive and vary widely, giving insight to job seekers and others who study job growth patterns.

Source: http://reCareered.blogspot.com

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TheWiseJobSearch: Keys To A Great Email In Your Job Search!

Most opportunities you have to present yourself to a hiring decision maker will involve sending an email.

The form and substance of that email will have a great deal to do with whether you get a response or not.

As a recruiter, I receive a lot of emails from job seekers looking for leads, looking for help in their search, or pursuing specific job opportunities I’m working on. On average, I receive between 1000 and 1500 emails per month. In those emails, I’ve seen the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly.

What gets my attention? What gets a response? And what really gets my interest? Three different questions, with three different answers. Here are some observations, opinions, and ideas about how you can improve your chances of getting a response to your emails.

What gets attention? – Often an extraordinarily bad email gets as much attention as a great one. It often amazes me how poorly or cryptic people write. Generally, it’s not a good idea to send a cover letter as an attachment since it rarely will get opened at all. The greatest cover letter in the world has no impact if it doesn’t get read. The body of your email is effectively your cover letter. Considering how important it can be, I’m stunned how casually people treat it. I’ve received emails that have only said: “I am sending u my resume” and have their resume attached. I’ve had worse ones that are full of texting abbreviations. In my opinion, it would be better to not write anything at all, and only attach a resume than to write overly casual, overly cryptic, or non-sensical notes. First impressions DO matter.

What gets a response? – If someone sends a professionally written, clearly customized introduction for help or in response to a position I’m recruiting for, I will invariably respond to them even if they are not a fit for the role or the profiles I generally seek. If they made the effort to present themselves in the best way they can to me, I believe they deserve a respectable response. If they send what is clearly a standard form letter that does not necessarily apply to me directly, or if they carelessly sent something with no effort at professionalism, I will often not bother responding to them.

What gains real interest? – Brevity is a virtue, and connecting dots is key. When I’m processing the many emails I receive each day, I only have a very brief time to decide what to do with each one. If I open an email that has several long paragraphs, I will rarely read past the first line. If there’s a resume attached, I will open it and quickly decide if this is someone I want to examine further, but because the email message was too long, the note has no impact on my decision to go further or not.

If someone writes a couple very brief paragraphs and has written something that very quickly and easily helps me see why I may be interested in pursuing this person further based on specifics related to the position I’m trying to fill, or generally as the types of people I target, it has a tremendous impact on my decision.

Whether you send an email to a recruiter, an HR representative, or to a hiring manager, connecting the dots for them as quickly as possible has everything to do with gaining their interest. Help them see the connections by directly linking their requirements with your specific experience. Some people make it even visually easier on me by creating a short table with my requirements on one side, and their related experience on the other.

Secondly, give one brief reason you stand out from everyone else. Give an accomplishment, brief success story, or a unique qualification that emphasizes why you should be considered.

Clearly showing your related experience and what makes you stand out from the crowd will cause me to follow up with you every time.

Relevance and Impact!

A good email can make a tremendous difference in your response rate. Take the time and put in the effort to make it work for you!

Posted by Harry Urschel

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Detect A Good Liar By Knowing Their Most Effective Tactics - Mind Hacks - Lifehacker

Breaking someone's poker face doesn't require a piercing look so much as knowing what makes some liars so effective. Pyschology Today details the most effective strategies of good liars.

Photo by polandeze.

The most effective liars are often people who tell some version of the truth—a half-truth—and enjoy the game of deceiving others. But if you're getting suspicious and they suspect, sometimes you have to step back and see how they might be changing the game:

(Good liars often) raise the emotional stakes. "The best liars are natural manipulators," says Sgt. Yarbrough. He cites as a perfect example the scene in Basic Instinct where Sharon Stone is brought to the cop station for questioning and winds up flashing everyone a glimpse of her Lesser Antilles. "She was turning them on," Yarbrough explains, "and that's a form of manipulation—using sexual or emotional arousal to distract the interviewer."

You might not be able to run everybody you meet through a human lie detector, but check out the Psychology Today article for a few other ways to spot good liars and the tactics they commonly employ, along with our previous tips on knowing if somebody's feeding you a line.

Top 10 Secrets of Effective Liars [Psychology Today]

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How College Students Should Use Job Boards : CollegeRecruiter.com Blog

The biggest mistake the first time job seekers make when it comes to using job-search websites such as Monster, Careerbuilder, Dice, CollegeRecruiter.com, or any of the other 100,000 is relying too much on them.

Job boards by conservative measure account for about 12 percent of new hires and by industry measure for about a third of new hires. The share of new hires derived from job boards is increasing regardless of which camp you listen to, so this issue is becoming more and more important despite the increased attention paid to social media sites.

Yet the best job boards in the world cannot accurately match candidates with employers and, I suspect, never will. The reason isn't the technology. The technology is there. The reason is that employers and job seekers are either unwilling or unable to spend the lengthy period of time needed in order to create accurate, detailed profiles that are used by the technology to create matches. Both sides take much less time than needed and then complain about the poor matches. Garbage in, garbage out.

Job seekers should spend at most one full day on the job boards. Search the big general sites, niche sites for your industry, and niche sites for your geographic location. Apply to all of the jobs which are advertised and for which you are interested and qualified and then follow-up with the employers directly. Create job match alerts / agents so the boards will notify you when new, matching jobs are posted. Then only go back to the boards when those matches alert you to a job which appears to be a match for your interests. Spend the rest of your days networking.

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