Archive for the ‘Interviews’ Category
Job searching campaign shares a lot of similarity with sales marketing campaign; the job applicant acts as the product to sell, and your resume acts as the salesman to promote you to your potential employer. The one and only objective of writing a resume is not to get the job, but to get an interview. Having a solid and effective resume will greatly enhance your chance of getting to a job interview and hence to get your dream job. A resume is a self-promotional document, an advertisement about yourself to promote yourself to potential employers, showing them that you are the best to suit the job they offer among all other your competitors.
There is a lot of information on Job Application Tips available in the internet which contains lots of tips in writing resume, but there are a few really important points that I would like to emphasize.
1) Know your resume purpose: Every resume serve the same purpose, which is to get a job interview. That’s the one and only purpose of a resume. You must keep in mind that the one reading your resume will be your potential employer, and for a job post on average there are 300 competitors fighting to get the job. That means employer has to read at least 300 resumes, and to “stand up” among your competitors, your resume must be simple and straight to the point. Some people treat resume as composition about themselves, which makes their resume a really long and boring. The employer has no time to read through, so try to be as simple and as straight forward in your resume. Show your potential employer what you want them to know, what is your strength and what makes you so suit for the job and then wait for your interview.
2) Choose the right keywords: Due to the overwhelming numbers of response for each job post, nowadays companies tends to use certain keyword filtering software and only will read resumes that contain certain specific keywords. If your resume doesn’t contain such related keywords to the job you apply for, your resume doesn’t even have a chance to get read, which means that you are out before the “game” actually starts. Normally the keywords will be nouns, and it will appear in the job ads where they specify what are they expecting for. Spot the keywords in their job descriptive and include it into your resume.
3) Avoid negativity: Please try to avoid any and all information that might sound negative for the employer. This is very important in both resume and when you attend interview. Please do not complain on how bad is your previous company, or any of your weakness (skill and attitude). You might think that that is only a minor weakness, but as your employer has lots of other choices (other applicants) your weakness might be your losing point.
There are lots of simple, minor but important things in writing resume that you might not know. Please find out more at my website on How To Write Job Resume.
Fetch useful information about internet marketing – make sure to study the site. The times have come when proper information is really at your fingertips, use this possibility.
When we meet someone for the first time, we pretty much immediately have a ‘gut’ reaction that tells us whether we like this person – whether in fact we see them as a friend or a foe. Where does that instinct come from, and how does it come up so quickly with such a damning or embracing reaction? More importantly, if we’re out to create a great first impression when going for a new job, how can we stack the odds in our favour and flash ‘friend’ into our interviewer’s consciousness?
We don’t want to get too deep into technical mumbo-jumbo – but it’s generally understood that the brain has two hemispheres; the right dealing with creativity and the left with logic. We call this the cortex, or new brain. But there’s also a third area, the hypo-thalamus or pre-historic brain. This is in fact the brain stem and is solely responsible for instincts. In ancient times, this was vital for making life saving split-second decisions.
Research from Switzerland more recently refers to the pre-historic brain as the ‘Gatekeeper’. Not being capable of rational thinking, the Gatekeeper’s sole function is to instantly judge whether someone is a friend or a foe, and it decides purely on instinct. If an approach causes the Gatekeeper stress, it switches on the fight or flight response. This immediately shuts down all other message receptors, and makes any further attempts at communication impossible. Today’s terminology would be you never get a second chance to make a first impression!
It’s essential to understand how this relates to modern life for effective communication. At interview, a person must learn to build a ‘Language of Trust’. The Gatekeeper doesn’t have the capacity to think, so that language isn’t just verbal. In the first few seconds of meeting an interviewer, your instinctive signals must comunicate the message of a ‘friend’.
Your body language will convey this, with open and relaxed movements, gestures, facial expressions and eye contact. The speed of your speech must be controlled and gentle, and your voice modulation and tone must stay calm. The Gatekeeper’s decision will also be based on your appearance, clothes, smell, enthusiasm and posture. Finally, don’t invade his or her personal space.
Your total focus initially is to get past the Gatekeeper. Then you can build and develop rapport, and open your interviewer’s message receptors. Once you’re through this initial first impression, you can move on with developing a relationship with your interviewer, for the gate will now be open to what you have to offer.
Let’s finally examine research on communication done at The Thomas Gordon Institute. They looked at the impact of voice, words, face and body, and how they all contributed to believability. After measuring the effectiveness of each component of communication, they came up with the following:
Facial Expression = 35%, Body Language = 35%, Voice = 23%, Words = 7%.
So in other words, how we deliver our words, our appearance and the gestures we make are more relevant than what we actually say. Don’t forget, the Gatekeeper can not use rational thought, just an instinctive reaction developed from pre-historic times. That gut-feeling really is an ancient brain feeling. When you understand this, you can take control and make sure you get off to the very best start.
(C) 2009. Browse LearningLolly.com for intelligent ideas on Diversity Dynamics and IT News Articles.