Interview myths - never talk negatively about your previous employer

It’s a commonly held belief that you should not talk negatively about previous employers/managers when interviewing.

Why?

If you’ve been working overtime to clear up the mess left behind by shoddy processes and a temperamental boss who doesn’t know what they’re doing, why should you fall in line and be expected to come up with some other reason for wanting to move on?

Maybe your boss has his or her favourites in the team, who they’d prefer to give the interesting work and promotions to, and this isn’t based on merit, but on who accompanies them to the pub most often to listen to their tales of business dominance.

So what should you do if you find yourself in this situation and you’re asked at interview why you’re looking for a move?

Tell the truth! 

It may be negative, and you would probably be wise not to go in to granular detail about all the goings-on, but if you can explain the key reason/s without getting personal and put any examples in to the context of how they have a negative impact on work performance or on your career development, then these are perfectly valid reasons and therefore a prospective employer should have no reason to cause alarm.

Exercising some discretion is of course advised, but it’s far better to be open and honest than to conjure up some alternative reason, which may come across as vague and lead them to assume (rightly) that there’s something you’re not telling them. 

Have you found yourself in this situation? How did you deal with it if so?

How to follow-up after an interview

Creating a good impression to a potential new employer can be a stressful process. We all know the importance of first impressions, but the do’s and don’ts of leaving a lasting impression are not quite so clear.

So when you’ve attended an interview and come away knowing that you will be devastated if you don’t secure the role, it’s natural to start worrying about whether there’s more you could have done during the meeting and if there’s something else you can do now to increase your chances.

Maybe I should have said this? Maybe I shouldn’t have said that? Perhaps I should connect with her on LinkedIn and stress again how keen I am? Or maybe send an email?

Now, when you’ve arranged the interview directly with the employer (with no third party/recruiter involved) this may well be wise. It should in fact have been actively encouraged by the employer. They need to know if the role appeals to you and whether you would like to progress to the next stage if invited.

However, if you’ve been introduced to the employer by a recruiter, they have intentionally appointed a third party to help with the process and will anticipate feedback to be collected and passed through via the appointed recruiter. Very rarely in this circumstance will it be encouraged or expected to make contact directly. Contrary to some advice I’ve read online!

This needn’t take away the level of influence you can still have on the process however. Firstly, be quick in debriefing your recruiter on how the interview went. The quicker you can provide feedback to them, the quicker they can pass this through to their client, which will be appreciated. It’s also important to be specific in what appealed to you about the opportunity and how and where you feel your experience/skills will be well utilised.

It may also be worthwhile putting together a carefully composed email to your recruiter as a follow-up, expressing your interest in the position. Discuss it with them and see if they feel it could help for them to forward the email on themselves. This won’t come across as pushy as sending it direct, but will still give you the opportunity to get your message through.

Reputation Management - Look After Your Temps!

Over recent years, I’ve had many conversations with hiring managers in which they’ve asked about the reputation their departments hold within the market as an employer. These questions will often come at a time when a firm is struggling to attract candidates for what should be a relatively straight forward vacancy to fill, and I’ve had a couple of these conversations just recently.

On both occasions the hiring managers were concerned that a negative message may have been filtering out to the market from temporary workers they’ve had working within their teams within the last year. This may or may not have been the case, but it highlights an extremely important consideration for managing your employer reputation: LOOK AFTER YOUR TEMPS!

Recent legislation (the Agency Worker Regulations) has ensured that temporary workers are assured of equal treatment to comparable permanent employees in terms of their pay, annual leave and access to employer facilities, but legislation can only go so far.

When it comes to how welcome they are made to feel, how much time is invested in getting to know them and to what extent they are made to feel part of a team, temporary workers will experience vastly different approaches from one employer to the next, and even between different departments within the same firm.

These temporary workers may only be with an employer for a matter of weeks, but during that time they will have formed an opinion on whether the department they’ve been working in is one they’d recommend or one they’d advise others to steer clear of. Naturally their views may not always be taken as gospel, but people talk, and ‘career temps’ will already know and come in to contact with a huge number of potential hires for your firm as they move from one assignment to the next.

So, if you use interim staff in your firm, consider how much time you invest in making them feel welcome, and consider how other team members will engage with them also – do they know why they’re joining? Might they feel threatened and unwilling to assist them as a result?

Treated well, a temporary worker can make a significant positive impact on your employer reputation.

Social Recruiting - let's get some perspective...

Although I like to think of myself as a modern day recruiter, and one who embraces the world of social media (both personally and professionally), I can’t help thinking that there is a huge amount of information and advice for recruiters online that will only help a very small proportion of the industry, and actually have a detrimental effect on the performance of others.

I hold a dual role at Balance Recruitment. I’m an owner/Director of the business and I am therefore jointly responsible for the promotion of our brand, our culture and for ensuring we achieve and maintain a positive reputation with all those we come in to contact with. I also carry out a full 360 recruiter role, representing a niche client base, sourcing candidates and managing all the really easy stuff (ahem) that goes in between.

Whilst wearing both hats, I feel it’s vital to keep abreast of new networks/tools/techniques to utilise the internet for the benefit of the business, but I also need to guard against investment of time in networks that just aren’t ever likely to yield returns. But this is where there’s a problem, because with each new social network online, there seems to be a blog somewhere telling recruiters that they should be using it or risk getting left behind.

So on the one hand, agency and search recruiters are working hard to stay ahead of the competition from in-house recruiters and RPO’s, whilst at the same time they’re being told that they should also be spending an untold amount of time on the development of peripheral social branding even just to keep up?

As I see it, too many recruitment or business focussed social media experts place the readers of their blogs in a position of being behind the curve, without considering how generic and non-targeted the advice they’re providing to a broad recruitment industry audience actually is. So whilst it may well be fair (I assume!) to admonish a specialist online marketing & design recruitment business for not having a Pinterest or Instagram presence, does this also mean an IT recruiter should be scouring the internet for stylish photos of server storage racks too?

Sure, some of the social networks are clearly beneficial to recruiters, whilst others may have great success for specific sectors and career disciplines (online, creative and marketing usually), but there are plenty for which, I suspect, the majority of recruiters will never really see enough return from the investment of time they put in.

The dangers of one stage interview processes

For recruiters, recruitment processes with just one stage of interviewing can be very appealing. Less time spent arranging interviews, and generally a quick process to manage with fewer decision makers for the applicant to please/upset. In most cases however, this is a false economy.

It may be convenient for an employer to reduce the time spent interviewing during busy periods or for urgent hiring requirements, and in some instances, such as when it’s for an interim assignment it’s also convenient and anticipated by the potential employee. But in other cases, these one stage processes often do not provide the opportunity for potential candidates to build up enough of a connection to the employer or hiring manager.

Recent recruitment industry surveys in the UK have shown that whilst demand for staff is on the increase, the availability of candidates is decreasing, which inevitably means that jobseekers who are actively interviewing will have more options to consider. Whilst on the one hand it’s important to move quickly in order to secure high calibre candidates, if the focus is all on speed of hire, the candidate engagement process will be compromised, which could lead to offers being rejected as candidates join competitor businesses.

For the instances when time is at a premium, adding in a 15 minute telephone interview to the recruitment process can make all the difference, even if only for the preferred applicant. It adds another layer of selection in to the process, giving the candidate confidence that they’re being selected on merit, not just availability, and crucially it allows them time to reflect on the opportunity after their first meeting, so they can follow up with any questions or raise any potential concerns they might have. The chances of them accepting any offer would undoubtedly increase and potentially save the employer having to go back to the drawing board.

Do you agree, or you do feel one interview should be sufficient to identify and attract the right candidate to your business? Please add your thoughts below. 

Financial Recruitment Continues to Make Gains (Guest Blog)

A guest blog from James McCaffrey - with a number of years of accounting experience, James now focusses on recruitment and the financial jobs market, writing for Total Jobs.

As recently documented in the latest edition of Balance Recruitment’s Quarterly Update, financial recruitment is continuing to make gains. The latest update also pointed out that there had been an increase in the number of vacancies in the financial sector, coinciding with a demand for more staff – especially those with backgrounds as Analysts or within Billing, Revenue, and financial reporting.

In a recent Google Hangout for Total Jobs, Tom Newcombe, a leading journalist for HR magazine also agreed that growth was taking place in the financial sector, pointing to figures from PWC which highlighted that by 2020, there could be an additional 200,000 financial jobs vacancies which could contribute to a 3% growth in GDP- but only if the financial sector can improve regulation.

These figures hold relevance for the wider financial industry too, as the recession has forced businesses to increase their focus on due diligence, accuracy and transparency- and in recognising the importance of sufficient monitoring; the financial sector, and indeed the financial departments across all industries have made a demonstrable commitment to tidying up processes across the board. It’s this commitment that is reflected not only in the increased number of vacancies, but also in the roles that are currently high in demand. In the same session, Jane Clarke, Head of Campus Recruitment at Barclays Bank, also noted that over the next year, the biggest intake of new graduates would be in the fields of compliance and legal capabilities, roles centred on analysis, monitoring and managing processes efficiently.

There have long been calls for more transparency in business, especially when it comes to balancing the books and reporting on performance – now that more businesses are making a commitment to delivering on transparency, they are starting to recognise the vital importance of hiring teams of skilled people who can deliver the processes, monitoring and accurate reporting that will go into making sure that finances are in order and that balance sheets add up.

When businesses can present themselves to the public, stakeholders and potential investors, as well as potential staff that they are committed to honesty and thorough processes, it helps to boost the reputation of company, making it more attractive for business opportunities and skilled jobseekers – the figures reflect the truism that investing more in staff makes sense for all areas of business. Jane also pointed out that graduates who had been studying during the worst phases of the recession were keen to ensure that they found work in companies that were seen to have honest practices – in as much as companies of all sizes have re-evaluated their recruiting criteria since the worst days of the crisis, jobseekers are also showing a desire to work for a company which has a will to organise its finances and processes too. 

Personal Profiles on a CV - do it right or don't do it at all

I referred to Personal Profiles on a blog late last year giving advice on writing an effective CV, and said I’d come back to the subject in a separate blog soon. I may be stretching the definition of “soon” leaving it 10 months, but here goes…

The first question to consider about Personal Profiles on a CV is whether it’s worth having one at all, and that’s a debate on which I could argue for either side. Having been a recruiter for well over 10 years now, I wouldn’t like to guess how many CV’s I’ve reviewed in my time, but let’s just say it’s a lot. From those, I would argue that the majority of the CV’s which have Personal Profiles would stand no less chance of progressing with an application if the Personal Profile were removed.

There are two main approaches people take with these profiles:

1.       Opinion based about the personal qualities the individual believes they hold, which they wish to share

2.       Factual about the experience and informative about the specific career focus of the individual

The problem with the first approach is that the reader/hirer is often offered no real evidence to back up the claims made in these profiles, and can therefore only be satisfied that this is just how the individual would like to appear. Claims to be hardworking and proactive are worthless if examples are not provided, and it’s far better to include this information where it might be expected elsewhere on the CV – when detailing your experience/achievements within your employment history.

The other common problem with this approach is that the same qualities/attributes are nearly always used.

“I enjoy working in a team but work equally well on my own”

If this is a phrase you recognise from your own CV, don’t worry you’re not alone (trust me!), but it may be worth taking it off for something a little more original.

It’s my opinion therefore that the first approach is worth avoiding altogether. The second approach can be useful to give the recruiter/hiring manager a brief summary of the individual’s experience and career focus, and displays that the potential employee can communicate pertinent information in a concise manner. An example would be as follows:

·         I am a 2012 CIMA Qualified Management Accountant with experience gained within the Legal sector, including financial analysis, budget preparation and supervision of an Assistant Accountant. I am now seeking a more commercial role in a larger international firm where I can improve my business partnering skills.

The third approach (not having one at all) is also an option, as long as it’s very clear from the rest of your CV what experience you hold and that the career path you are following is evident.

Do you agree or have a different viewpoint you’d like to share? Please be bold and add your thoughts/comments below!