Feature Article: Unspoken Secrets of Job Interviewing: Nonverbal Behaviors
Special Feature: 10 Deadly Sins of Interviewing: Top Ways to Bomb a Job Interview
Bonus Feature: Consider Delivering a Sales Presentation in Your Interview
Quintet of Quick Questions: QuintZine's Q&A with a Career Expert
Quintessential Site: Featured Career Web Site of this Issue
Latest Additions: What's New on Quintessential Careers
Q TIPS: Quick and Quintessential Tips to Guide Your Job Search
Editor's Note: About this Issue...
Welcome to our interviewing issue. I'm excited about the interviewing
content we've added to QuintCareers -- my article on the nonverbal impression
interviewees make, Dr. Randall Hansen's 10 deadly sins of interviewing -- and two
terrific pieces by guest contributors.
Our Q&A expert this issue is an old friend, Michael Kaplan. I first encountered
Michael in the late 1990s. We met online -- can't remember how or where -- but he subsequently
volunteered to conduct phone interviews to give my students interviewing practice. I gave
the students who took Michael up on his kind offer extra credit, and he provided them with critiques
of their performance. Although his main gig has always been sales and marketing management,
he has built a nice side business writing resumes and providing other career-management services.
He offers superb advice to job-seekers in this issue's Q&A.
I've met our other guest contributor in person. Eric Kramer touts the innovative idea of
conducting a job interview like a sales presentation, sometimes even using slides.
Eric uniquely applies his cognitive-psychology background to his endeavors in the careers world,
and I recently had the pleasure of reviewing his book on networking, in which this cognitive approach
is very much in evidence, for an academic journal.
The QuintCareers team has delivered presentations at Syracuse University and
Daytona State College recently, and we hope to visit schools across the country later this fall.
In the meantime, happy spring to all our Northern Hemisphere readers!
One final note: I've split up my Twitter accounts so I now have one dedicated
to career and job-search tweets. Hope you'll follow me: @KatCareerGal.
You can also get up-to-the-minute career news between
issues of QuintZine by following QuintCareers.com
@QuintCareers on Twitter.
--Katharine Hansen, Ph.D., Master Resume Writer, Credentialed Career Master,
Certified Electronic Career Coach, and editor at
kathy@quintcareers.com
Feature Article: Nonverbal Behaviors
The Unspoken Secrets of Job Interviewing: How Your Nonverbal
Presentation and Behaviors Impact the Impression You Make
by Katharine Hansen, Ph.D.
The content of what you say in response to questions (and the content of questions you ask) is
obviously exceedingly important in a job interview. What is less well known is the importance of the
part of the interview that isn't spoken -- the way you present yourself and behave nonverbally.
If you think nonverbal behavior can't sink an interview, here's a story that might change your mind.
In a past job, my boss asked me to screen applicants to fill a vacancy in our department and narrow the pool
down to three finalists. I did so, and my boss then interviewed the trio. When I asked him his impressions
of the candidates, he said he had already eliminated one of them because the candidate never made eye
contact during the entire interview.
Have Your Resume Ready in Case of Job Loss in the Current Economic Climate.
QUINTESSENTIAL RESUMES AND COVER LETTERS provides solutions
with unmatched quality in the areas of career planning, professional resume writing, and interviewing, having
successfully helped tens of thousands of clients, from executives through individuals beginning a career,
succeed in their career goals.
10 Deadly Sins of Interviewing: Top Ways to Bomb a Job Interview
by Randall S. Hansen, Ph.D.
If you have made it as far as the job interview, you must have a decent understanding of job-hunting
and the key elements of job-searching. Now is not the time to relax, thinking you have made it from the
hundreds (or thousands) of applicants to the chosen few. While a strong resume helped get you to this point,
it will now take strong interviewing skills (probably over the course of several interviews) to obtain the job offer.
While QuintCareers.com has many interviewing resources to help you prepare, the purpose of this article is to
help you realize some potentially serious errors and interviewing flaws that can knock your candidacy
completely off track, leading you to bomb the interview and lose a potential job opportunity.
Consider Delivering a Sales Presentation in Your Interview
by Eric Kramer
Imagine this scenario; a salesperson walks into your office to sell you a new accounting
system. After a brief getting-acquainted conversation, the sales representative listens to your requirements
for the system and then proceeds to sit attentively and answer a series of questions you ask about the
system. Once you have exhausted your questions, you ask if the sales rep has any questions for you,
you answer a couple of questions, if he or she has any, and then you end the sales call. After going
through this process with a few salespeople you make a decision about what system to buy.
Consider this: would you buy an accounting system without hearing a sales presentation? Would you
expect a good salesperson to be reactive and passive, depending on you to ask the right questions to make
the sale? If a salesperson makes a sales presentation during the meeting, is he or she being aggressive and
"taking control" of the sales call? Would you buy from a salesperson who could not clearly and concisely
communicate the benefits of their product and why it's your best choice?
A job interview is a sales call. A candidate is selling his or her services to the hiring organization. In the
interview, good candidates want to communicate their match with the critical job requirements, their
fit with the company culture, and why they are the best choice for the position. In other words, why the
company should buy their services.
QuintZine's Q&A with Career Expert:
Michael Kaplan
Michael Kaplan, a marketing and management veteran who
operates MichaelTrains..
"I do not see enough passion during the interview," said Michael Kaplan in the Q&A
he did with QuintCareers. "I know job searching tends to be an emotionally draining experience,
but the job-seeker needs to convince me of his or her sincere interest in the job I am offering
(not just the need for a job)."
In our full Q&A with him,
read more of Kaplan's thoughts on interviewing, including his expectations of interviewees, as well as
marketing techniques to use in the job search, strategies for finding job leads, and two significant tips for coping with
the current tough job market.
Find Your Career Future. Learn More About Yourself
Career Maze is designed to help every job seeker, at every level, make smarter
career choices. Individualized to reflect your unique personality and written in
"plain English," it is thorough and easy to complete.
Once completing the assessmemt, your 2-part report includes:
A specific, career-relevant discussion of your workplace personality
A list of job types compatible with your personality
Career Maze encourages you to think about tapping your full potential to find your future.
As you might suspect, Interview Your Best is a blog about doing your best in a job interview.
This attractive, nicely illustrated blog covers all kinds of interviewing topics, including
active interviewing, answering interview questions, interview preparation, the interview as sales
presentation, the interview process, interviewing skills, and establishing rapport in an interview.
Interviewing expert Eric Kramer is behind Interview Your Best, which is loosely tied to
his Web site, Interview Best, where he
provides interview information and offers for a fee his InterviewBest product, a printed
document that communicates how the candidate's skills, experience, and personal characteristics
match the job requirements and why he or she is the best choice for the job.
No cost to readers of the Interview Your Best blog.
Engineering-Job-Site.com --
a job board for engineering professionals, where job-seekers can post your resume and browse or search for
jobs locally or internationally, and can find jobs based on keywords, skills, location, and information technology
experience. Job-alert notification also available. No cost to job-seekers.
StartUpHire -- a job site for job-seekers
searching for jobs with venture capital backed start-up companies. You can search job listings
(by industry, geography, functional area, investors, keywords), as well as establish a job-search agent for future listings.
No cost to job-seekers.
Top Sales Jobs -- a job site for
sales professionals, where you can find career advice related to finding a new job and sales training,
search for jobs (by keywords, location, job type), post your resume, and register for a job-search
alert. No cost to job-seekers.
TwitHire -- a job listing site, where job-seekers
can find Twitter "tweets" from employers seeking to fill jobs. Includes all kinds of job postings (though many
IT and programming) from around the world. No cost to job-seekers.
Find even more career and job site additions to Quintessential Careers by visiting our
Latest Additions section.
Q TIPS:
Quick and Quintessential Tips to Guide Your Job Search and Work Life
With recruiters regularly attending workshops on how to
find candidates through Twitter, the red-hot micro-blogging
service, it makes sense for job-seekers to follow the most active
recruiters on Twitter. You can find the top 50,
according to Twitter Grader (based on influence and
number of followers), listed here:
Top 50 Recruiters on Twitter.
The Job Outlook 2009 study by the National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE) shows that, for new
college graduates in this tight economy, becoming the perfect job candidate requires diverse skills. Nearly
70 percent of employers taking part in the study said they screen candidates by grade-point average.
Among the skills, attributes, and qualities employers prize most are communication skills, a strong work
ethic, ability to work in a team, and initiative. Employers also emphasize leadership experience. Asked to compare
two otherwise equally qualified candidates, employers chose the one who had held a leadership position over
the candidate who simply participated in extracurricular activities. Employers also expressed a preference for candidates with
relevant work experience. So co-ops or work experiences in the field can have an impact on how appealing a student is to a potential
employer. Read more here.
SlideShare, which could be
described as the YouTube of slide presentations, recently spotlighted some sample slideshows of portfolios and resumes
uploaded to SlideShare:
A visual resume (this one looks nice, but the passive voice is a huge turnoff)
These slideshows are another way to brand yourself in the job search -- a way to be found online. Slideshows like
these may also have applications in interviews.
Quintessential Careers Press Announces Our Latest Book: The Quintessential Guide to
Job Search 2.0: Advancing Your Career Through Online Social Media.
The
Quintessential Guide to Job Search 2.0: Advancing Your Career Through Online Social Media,
by Katharine Hansen, Ph.D., and Randall S. Hansen, Ph.D., provides six chapters to guide you
through the next revolution in online job search. Since job boards, vestiges of the first
revolution in online job search, should still be part of the job-seeker's toolkit, this
book helps you navigate those while also considering the future of job boards. The book
looks at building your personal brand, teaches you to make the most of social-media venues
in the job search, guides you in creating a digital presence, suggests you consider blogging,
and discusses ways to integrate multimedia elements into your job search.
Follow QuintCareers; Read the Latest Advice
Follow QuintCareers Latest Job Tips and Career News on Twitter
Also follow @KatCareerGal for regular career-related tweets.
QuintCareers Network of Empowering Blogs
What are QuintCareers empowering blogs?
The Career Doctor Blog:
Especially for those who miss our former regular feature, Ask the Career Doctor, this blog each day features a question and answer from The
Career Doctor, Randall S. Hansen, PhD.
If your school, organization, business or other
entity has a Web site, we welcome you to link to Quintessential Careers.
If you already have a link from your site, we want you to know we
appreciate it. If you don't have a link to us, please
send a request to your site's Webmaster to establish a
link to Quintessential Careers. Thanks so much!
For more details (including sample HTML copy), see our
Link to Us page.
Need a career expert for a story or article you're working on? Searching for college,
career, and job news? Interested in learning more about Quintessential Careers?
Our Press Room
is your one-stop location for getting the information and resources you need.
QuintZine: Topics in Upcoming Issues
WATCH FOR feature articles on these topics in upcoming issues of QuintZine:
* How Job Search is Like Online Dating
* The Confidence Factor
* Green Jobs
* De-Stressing Before an Interview
* More Cover-Letter Components
* Finding Your First Real Job
* Empty Nest Job-seekers
* Getting in to Prep School/Boarding School
* Top Presentation Tips
* Quiz: What Kind of Co-Worker Are You?
* How to Stay Motivated at Work
* Quintessential Career Profiles of YOU, our readers
* Q&As with well-known career experts
* Book reviews
. . . and much, much more...
