London Bridge pics!

I'm afraid I've neglected the blog recently due to the arrival of my beautiful little daughter.

More content to follow soon, and more frequent blogging is already on my New Years resolutions list!

I've just added a subscription link to the blog, so please sign up (on the right).

In the meantime, I thought I'd share some recent pics I've taken from London Bridge whilst on my daily commute...

Writing an effective CV - keep it simple!

If you search online for advice on preparing your CV, you will find a whole world of contradictory tips, guidelines, rules and warnings.

Most sites/articles will undoubtedly offer some great advice, and broadly speaking there are some rights and wrongs that should be adhered to, but when it boils down to it, it’s the relevance of your experience that will secure you an interview, not the layout of your CV.

This isn't to say that you can’t decrease your chances of securing an interview by sending through a badly designed CV however. There are definitely ‘wrong’ ways to present your CV, and you can undermine years of relevant experience with poor spelling and grammar, or by hiding away the key skills and achievements somewhere they’ll get overlooked.

In my opinion, the key to a successful CV is to keep things simple and ensure that the first page provides the reader with quick and clear access to the most pertinent skills and experience relevant to the role you are applying for. This will most likely include your academic achievements and qualifications, your IT/Systems experience and details of your current or most recent experience.  Your goal should be to secure an interview before they’ve even reached the second page!  

Here are my tips on how to write an effective CV:

• Ignore any ‘golden rules’ on the ideal number of pages your CV should cover. If you have many years experience and/or lots of achievements and experience don’t leave it out just so you can squeeze it in to two pages.
• Make sure your qualifications and skills (e.g. systems, languages) are at the top of page one, followed by your current position and then working backwards through you career from there. If a potential employer is only interested in the last few years, it’s no problem if they decide to skip pages 3 and 4.
• Lay off the clever formatting. Fancy borders and embossed headers may look pretty, but your CV’s not going to get framed and hung up on a wall. Better to just keep it looking clean & simple and let your experience do the wooing.
• Spell-check is not infallible. When you think you've finished, take a break from the screen, have a cup of tea and then re-read it one last time. Slowly!  
• Personal profiles. A topic that I’ll come back to soon in a blog of its own, but for now, try to avoid clichés and statements that offer no examples or evidence to back them up.

Finally, I know some social-media champions will have you believe the traditional CV/resume is on its deathbed and a job seeker will soon only need an online professional profile, but I'm pretty confident it’s got at least a few years left in it for now, so hopefully this blog will remain relevant for a little while yet.

If you’ve got a different view to those above, or have any other CV tips you’d like to share, please do add a comment below. 

What to do if recruiters don't seem to be helping you?

Firstly, I want to start this blog by stressing that it’s in every recruiter’s interest to help a job seeker secure new employment. If there is a reasonable chance they can help, they will certainly try to do so. 

There are however plenty of instances where a recruiter feels they are unable to assist. This could be for a number of reasons; some perfectly logical, and some based on the recruiters own instincts. 

They may for example concentrate on permanent vacancies and struggle to secure interviews for individuals with a series of temporary placements over a number of years (logical). Or they may just feel they have met with several other individuals with similar experience who they feel would be more likely to be of interest to their clients (instinct).

So what do you do when you find yourself in a position where the recruiters who hold the vacancies you are interested in don’t seem able to able or willing to help you? 

Firstly, you need to assess whether it’s just the market conditions that are the hold up (perfectly likely over the last few years). If not, you need to get some honest feedback from them. It may be that you’re being unrealistic in the opportunities you are applying for (lacking suitable skills & experience, being overqualified, being too expensive etc), or it may be for reasons an inexperienced recruiter is a little uncomfortable raising with you (e.g. poor grammar on written communications with them, concern over interpersonal skills, your approach, etc). Try to find out the issue and in some circumstances, be willing to take on constructive feedback.

Whatever it may be, it’s never personal and can be invaluable feedback to take on board. Remember that a recruiter has every incentive to place you with their clients and will want to do so if they can. If you can take their feedback and use it, it’s likely to have a positive impact on your career prospects.

It may mean having to reassess your career expectations, even if only for the short term. If several recruiters have fed back to you that you don’t have the level or type of experience required for the move you want to make, they could be on to something. In this circumstance, can they give some advice on how to address this or keep you posted on stepping stone opportunities that can get you there? 

If you find that you’re still banging your head against a brick wall and getting nowhere with your job search through recruiters, you may experience more success applying for roles directly with employers. Work out which firms you’d like to work for and add the ‘Careers’ page of their website in to a ‘job search’ folder on your internet browser. Check the sites weekly to see if any new suitable positions have become available. 

A bit of networking (real life and social) could also strike gold. Speak to your network of contacts and former colleagues to ensure they know you’re looking for a move. Make sure you have a professional online profile, by setting up an account on LinkedIn and update it frequently.

Why selective recruiters can help you more than 'Yes-Men'

Although it's frustrating when a recruiter doesn't feel you have quite the right experience for a vacancy, you're in fact more likely to be successful in securing interviews through them than you are with a recruiter who is prepared to forward your CV to any opportunity you show an interest in.

I often hear of individuals being forwarded for vacancies when they clearly don't have the experience I know the employer requires. Most of these applications will be rejected at CV submission stage, but some will be invited through to a difficult interview which they have no real chance of progressing through. 

This is where the problem lies. The recruiter has got it wrong, and in the employers eyes this raises a doubt over the credibility of future recommendations by this recruiter, especially if it's not a one-off. Conversely those recruiters who consistently prove to understand the profile of individual required will develop a stronger relationship with their clients and their recommendations will carry more weight - to the point where the employer will trust the recruiters judgement rather than decide who to invite in purely based on CV's. 

A recruiter will generally have a much clearer picture of what their client is looking for than is evident in a job description or an online vacancy advert. They'll also know the availability of other interested applicants which will further help to profile who is likely to get an interview and who may not. 

Although it will be frustrating, if they're giving you open and honest feedback as to why they don't feel you would secure an interview, the chances are they'll continue to get more and more repeat business from their clients and will have something that is suitable for you further down the line, and when they do, you'll stand a very good chance of securing an interview through them.

Researching an employer ahead of an interview

Everyone knows they've got to do it. The majority will spend time on it. But how many see value in it, other than to prove during interview that they've done a bit of research?

From my experience, I'd make an educated guess that's it's around 50/50. That's a high proportion of people who don't understand the benefit of doing some homework prior to an interview and therefore put themselves at a disadvantage in the recruitment process. If you fall in to this category, it's time to change!

Employers do of course want to know that the individual they're interviewing has looked through their website. It's the minimum expectation. Depending on the firm, their website may well provide nearly everything you need to know to get an impression of the firm from a potential employee's perspective. A detailed 'careers' section and a content rich 'news' feed are great sources of information. Many company websites don't provide such useful info however, and in these cases you'll need to look further afield. 

When asked at interview what you know about the firm, very few interviewers want to hear just stats and facts, e.g; "I know the business was established in 1845 by Sir Joe Bloggs, and now has 42 offices in 25 countries across the EMEA region, with 2500 staff serving over 600 clients". They want to see an understanding of what the business actually does, their culture, how they engage with their customers and what they're trying to achieve. It's also reasonable to expect that if they've been in the press lately (trade press or mainstream) the interviewee may well be aware of it.

The key point here though, is that you might not actually be asked "what do you know about the business?". If all you've done to prepare is memorise the number of offices and staff they have, you're going to struggle to drop it in to conversation naturally and are therefore unlikely to leave the impression that this is a business you know much about and are genuinely interested to join. 

Fortunately, other sources of information are easy to come by. A simple search of the employer name on Google, filtered to 'news' results may bring up some invaluable topical information about the business. Wikipedia might provide some useful data too. One of the best sources however is online trade publications e.g. in the UK, for a Law Firm visit: www.thelawyer.com, or for a Retail business: www.retail-week.com. All industries will have something similar (and if they don't - there's a good business venture!). 

Finding topical news articles can create great opportunities to show your interest and understanding of the business, by asking questions such as: "I read that you're opening an office in Paris this month. Would this role have any involvement with the overseas offices?". This can set you apart from other interviewees and is very helpful to have in mind when you're asked in the interview if you have any questions.

If you're interviewing via a recruitment business, the other key source of information is your recruitment consultant. A good recruiter will be a goldmine of information, and will expect (rather than wait) to be involved in your preparations for interview by sharing their knowledge of the firm. 

The interview cancellation dilemma:

It’s a dilemma I’m sure many hiring managers and human resources professionals have faced; they’ve just interviewed the perfect candidate for a vacancy and are keen to offer, but they already have further interviews scheduled. Should they risk losing the perfect candidate by waiting until all interviews have been conducted, or should they just make an offer and either cancel the other interviews or conduct them out of courtesy, even though they have no chance of securing the role?

On some occasions the decision will be guided by the perfect candidate’s availability. If they’re already under offer elsewhere, they may not be prepared to wait until the end of the interview process, especially if they’re spread over a lengthy period. Then it becomes a case of whether the employer is prepared to risk letting them go elsewhere whilst they meet the remaining applicants.

I've recently had this scenario unfold for one of my clients, and due to business demands and risk of losing their preferred candidate they decided to offer the role to him before completing the scheduled round of interviews and called wishing to cancel the final remaining interview.

The candidate whose interview was cancelled was understandably disappointed. He’d already invested time preparing for it and was eager to meet with the client to prove his suitability to the role. Fortunately in this instance, he was understanding of the situation and hadn’t pinned all his hopes on the interview.

Personally however, I don’t feel the situation was handled well and the client ran the risk of damaging their employer brand by having a job applicant come away from the process feeling aggrieved. This particular candidate happened to be the understanding type, but that’s not always going to be the case, and it’s well documented that people like to share negative experiences more than the positive.

If the client needed to make a quick decision on this hire, the sensible option would be to bunch all the interviews together over the course of a day or two. In the real world this is easier said than done, but if a candidate can only commit to interviewing a few days after the others it should be made clear to them from the outset that there is a chance the interview will be cancelled if an appropriate candidate is identified beforehand. Then there can be no surprises and the dilemma of whether to cancel or honour the interview is already decided.

Play Me, I'm Yours

Ok, so this isn't recruitment related, but just thought I'd share a photo I took this morning of this talented amateur pianist who took time out to entertain the joggers and commuters along the Southbank on an otherwise grey Monday morning. 

The piano is part of an artwork project called Play Me, I'm Yours by a UK artist called Luke Jerram. Pianos have been dotted around the City free for anyone to use, and there are various planned events/singalongs. For more info see here: http://streetpianos.com/london2012/events/