What Employers Want: 12 HR Hot Buttons

Dawn Dugan, Salary.com contributing writer

The competition is fierce in today’s job market, and standing out in the crowd is more important — and challenging — than ever before.

How do you know you’re giving employers exactly what they are looking for? This article explores 12 human resources hot buttons. Continue Reading

The 5 Best Ways to Approach Interviewing

Ken Sundheim, CEO of KAS Placement Recruitment

There is no one correct way to approach interviewing, however there are some universal implementations that any job seeker can use to further their chances of getting the job that they want.

While interviewing can be difficult and is a time that is full of rejection and uncertainty, follow the below approach and you should see a significant increase in your abilities: Continue Reading

Become the Solution To The Job Interviewer’s Problem

Carole Martin, The Interview Coach

The absolute worst way to go to an interview is with the attitude of: “Please, please – hire me.”

When you go to an interview with that attitude you appear desperate. And even though you actually may be desperate in a difficult job market, you don’t want to appear that way.

The demeanor and attitude that you bring to the interview will set the tone for the entire interview.

Let’s look at it from the employer’s/interviewer’s point of view. Continue Reading

There’s More Than One-way To “Sell Yourself” In A Job Interview

Carole Martin, The Interview Coach

There is a “hard sell” approach – the hard-core sales person – and there is a “consultant” approach – letting the customer you understand their problem.

Selling yourself doesn’t just come naturally to most people, but one of the first rules of sales is to understand where the customer is coming from. Anyone who works in sales would tell you that you should “qualify” your customer first before you begin the sale.

There are those sales people that can sell vacuums to people in dirt huts – but chances are that you are NOT a natural-born sales person or you wouldn’t be reading this article. Continue Reading

Answering the Tough Job Interview Questions

Robin Ryan

Kevin was a well seasoned Project Manager looking for a new job. He entered the interview feeling confident that his resume was strong enough to land him the job. The company set up a panel interview, so Kevin walked into the office and sat in front of five people. The first question asked was: “Tell us about your most impressive contribution that you’ve made at your current company.”  Kevin simply froze. He couldn’t think of a good example in those few seconds and sadly realized he’d lost the job by not being better prepared. Continue Reading

3 Job Interview Tips That Work Like A Charm!

Jimmy Sweeney, President of CareerJimmy

Today it’s more challenging than ever to land a great job. It’s possible you’ll have to go through several interviews before you find the position you’re looking for. You might feel a knot in your stomach, your pulse rate jump, and your hands suddenly perspire as you anticipate the interview. In fact, if you’re prone to sweaty palms, Continue Reading

Securing a graduate role in Financial Services

Bank lender shaking hands with customer. Photo courtesy of Shutterstock.

Financial services’ as a career choice can be difficult to define. One organisation’s financial services position constitutes another’s banking and investment role, meaning the variety of graduate jobs available defies easy clarification. The higher levels of remuneration at most financial organisations means that jobs are more sought after by graduates, but in the current climate of redundancies at many of the leading investment banks, securing a graduate role is becoming increasingly difficult. In this blog post, we discuss 3 key pointers for graduates looking to secure a role within financial services. Continue Reading

Ranking Yourself: Be Confident yet Self-Aware

Nathan Stuller of Midwest Developer Insights

A common interview tactic is to ask you, the candidate, to rank yourself on acquired technical skills, attributes, and aptitude. The interviewer may run through a list of them, asking you to simply “rank yourself from 1 to 10 on:”
• Leadership ability
• Getting along with coworkers
• How hard-working you are

Or, they may be interested in more specific technical skills such as:
• Differential Equations
• Electricity & Magnetism
• Computer-Aided Design (CAD)

You are right to suspect that the answer is not as easy as it might seem, especially for someone with limited professional experience. Continue Reading

Recruiter’s Advice: 5 Things Employers Look for in Entry-Level Job Candidates

Dunya Carter

A fresh graduate is always intimidated when going in for his or her first real job interview, and many feel that no matter what they apply for they are woefully unprepared and unqualified – especially in this economy, when even jobs advertised as entry level are apparently seeking years of experience. But regardless of how many flourishes are requested in the help wanted ad, many employers are really looking for a few basic things for entry level positions, and all of them are more than attainable for the new worker. Continue Reading

Employers Taking 30+ Days to Extend Offers After Interview Date

How long can a college student expect to wait for a job offer after an interview? And, after an offer is extended, how long will he or she have to accept or reject it?

NACE’s 2012 Recruiting Benchmarks Survey found that, on average, employers hiring new college graduates take 24.2 business days to extend an offer to a college student after an interview. If you add in weekend and holiday days, that means that the employers are asking the average candidate to wait more than 30 days from the date of their interview to receive an offer of employment. Once an offer has been extended, employers then give the candidate an average of 14.1 business days to make a decision. Continue Reading