Recruitment "Wise" Thoughts of the Day

Avoid employing unlucky people - throw half of the pile of CVs in the bin without reading them.

Know your limitations and be content with them. Too much ambition results in getting a job you can't do.

If your recruiter is playing smart aleck with you, look at him through the prongs of a fork and imagine him in jail.

My personal job searching techniques

Now that I am in the midst of job hunting, maybe I should sum up all the different approaches I used trying to land a cool sexy MBA type of a job and analyze what really worked for me and what was a total waste of time.

Sending out my CV
Most time consuming and least effective. It's like cold calling: you think that it's gonna work just because you are so amazing and everyone will be taken by your accomplishments, but it practically never works: the success rate is one in a zillion or something.

Applying on companies' websites
Slightly better and I did get a few interviews out of that. Among the best career portals that I have been to are the ones of BP, GE, Philips, and Shell. Sometimes they are horrible - if you want to spend an hour of your time and arrive nowhere, try applying for a job at Investec or ABSA.

MBA programs
The finance maxim applies: high risk - high return. Applications to these take hours to write and the recruitment processes are stringent. However, once you are in, you will be taken care of and from the career development perspective, this might be the best choice, as normally  those are rotational programs, giving you a chance to move around a few countries and change a couple of positions within 3-5 years and providing senior leadership exposure. You might want to read about my personal experiences with the Prudential Momentum Program or DHL Inhouse Consulting.

Overall, such experiences are quite unnerving, so here are some personal lessons on dealing with assessment centers: http://hrboutique.blogspot.com/2011/04/dealing-with-assessment-centers.html.

Job portals
I am registered on a couple of those and I do not find them effective at all. To the best of my knowledge, none of the opportunities came from that avenue. The ones that I am using (maybe they are the wrong ones!) are:

• Experteer
• Ivy Exec
• MBA Exchange
• Step Stone
• Head Hunter (Russian)

LinkedIn
Proved to be very effective and easy to use. There are at least two different ways how it can be used in job hunting. The first one is straightforward and it is applying for jobs openly published on LinkedIn. I do get e-mails and phone calls back regarding those applications. The second is joining various LinkedIn groups that are of interest to you (function, industry or affiliation). In the group space you will see numerous publications from headhunters and managers looking for candidates. What I do is sending them a LinkedIn message (something like below) and I can tell you, it is a very effective way to get noticed...

Hi xxx, I came across your profile in the xxx group on LinkedIn.

I am an HR professional with 10 years of experience including 5 years of international experience in the oil&gas industry (Shell). I am now finishing my MBA at IE Business School in Madrid and looking for further career opportunities. Please take a look at my CV (http://bit.ly/iuCgxh) and hopefully my candidacy will be of interest to you.

Kind regards, 

Sergey

Head Hunters
Difficult to get to, but if you are in, your life is a breeze. Since most head hunters work on assignment, often you are only of interest to them if they have a "burning" vacancy. However, sometimes (particularly if you are very interesting candidate possessing a rare skill, like petroleum economist) they would want to have a chat with you "for future reference". Such relationships need to be nurtured and those head hunters need to be kept in the loop of your career development. We all know the names of the best ones:

• Russel Reynolds
• Korn Ferry
  
• Spencer Stewart
• Heidrick & Struggles
• Egon Zehnder
• Michael Page

Leveraging Networks
In Spain it's a must do, but it equally applies to all other countries: best jobs are found through personal connections. Think about it... People recommending you to their employers or their personal contacts take risks so if they do that, they do it for a reason - because they are sure that you are a good candidate. Hence, personal recommendations are most trusted. Shamelessly use your networks! Contact former colleagues and bosses, people you did business with, your professors, strangers you met at conferences and business lunches... Yet, be suave. Don't ask for a job, but ask for information or being introduced to someone. That was you are not putting your network under pressure but rather leveraging its potential. In my experience - super effective!

IE Career Center

I know that half of my fellow-MBAs are going to hate me for what I am about to say, but IE Career Center has helped me greatly in the job search process. As they say, the best helping hand is a good kick in the butt, and that's what they help you to do: get off yours! I noticed that the Career Center specialists help those who help themselves. In other words, they won't find a job for you, but if you are active in your job hunting and making progress, they will direct, provide advice, polish your resume and cover letter and will open door, within IE and externally, be it with head hunters or directly with companies. I got a few interviews directly with the hiring managers merely because a Career Center officer recommended me to an employer. It's all about relationships!

6 Tips To Improve Your Cover Letters

A great blogpost on wirting a Cover Letter...

6 Tips To Improve Your Cover Letters

There are a bunch of tools you need for your job search (Job Search Marketing Toolkit), one of which is the Cover Letter.
If you don't know what this is take a look at the link listed below. Your cover letter is most likely the first correspondence a potential employer will see, so it pays to take the time to get them write. No, I did not make a mistake when I wrote "them".
You should have several cover letters, each tailored to specific jobs or audience (see the links below as well). On to the tips.
1. Why One Cover Letter is Not Enough - You will be sending cover letters to potential employers at companies where you would like to work (no specific job application), recruiters, blind intro letters, you get the picture.

• How many cover letters do I need to write if I apply for multiply jobs within the same company? - Not sure of the answer? Take a look at the list on this page as well as the related links.

2. Okay, I need a cover letter. Where do I start? - First, you need to decide what type of a cover letter you are writing. Then you need to understand the main sections of a cover letter.

• How to Write a Great Cover Letter - Describe your desired outcome, take a look at the construction of a cover letter, take a look at the sample and you are on your way.

3. Formats, formats, formats, who has a format? - Okay, if you've not defined the types of cover letters and your goal, then now is the time. Once you've got the basics, you need to include an explanation (why are you writing it), who are you and why they should look at your resume. Technical format is as important as well.

• Cover letters: types and samples - This article will help you fill in the blanks as mentioned above, but also covers technical format, a few sample cover letters and then a number of links to additional samples. Also take a look a the related topics at the bottom of the page.

4. Pick a format and content that is right for you - As you start to look at some of the resume samples, you may notice that many are industry specific. If you are writing to someone with a specific industry in mind, pick a sample for your industry. On the other hand, maybe your cover letter is all about introductions, and in that case pick a format that suits your goal.

• What Makes A Great Cover Letter, According To Companies? - Main points of this article is don't make your cover letter sound like a form letter. Make sure "you" come through and that the letter represents information that is appropriate to the person/company. Lots of great information in this article (including the simple stuff we so often get wrong - like spelling). A long article, but worth reading every word.

5. Create a list of what you are trying to accomplish - I love lists. We so often think we know exactly what we need to do and, for that very reason, we so often forget some of the basics. One rule of thumb is to let someone else read your cover letter formats in case you missed something. But you should still make a list.

• CHECKLIST FOR A JOB-WINNING COVER LETTER - Here is your list. Basic stuff but also stuff you may forget. Add additional items and you are on your way to a great cover letter.

6. It's easier to change something than it is to start from scratch - Yes, you can start with a clean sheet of paper and write your entire cover letter(s) from scratch. But, you will likely get a better result if you start with several of the samples and edit them down to something that works for you.

• 50 Sample Cover Letters - 50 examples is a good place to start. This link has a number of different types with 2 or more samples for each.

Good luck in your search.

Author: CareerAlley

When do you stop the interview? My short BP story.

Has it ever happened to you that you realize that the job you are being interviewed for is actually not a got fit? That's my today's experience. I applied for an HR Business Partner position with BP in their Shipping business and on paper it looked weighty and exciting. This is obviously a caveat everyone should be wary of - job ads do not equal job descriptions and both often do not equal reality. But I thought that it was an interesting opportunity. I had to do two psychometric tests online before the interview (really looking forward to see the results!), so everything was set for this morning's 9 am phone chat with the HR Manager.

She called me promptly on the dot (this is not Spain we are talking about) and after a brief and jovial introduction we jumped into discussions of the role. After a couple of minutes it became clear to me that the role was even smaller than what I used to do with Shell in South Africa. I looked after a much larger client portfolio, I did have the experience of looking after the Health & Safety and Maritime functions, and I had more organizational support people to manage and coordinate + all the exciting projects that regularly came my way. I asked a couple of questions more and politely told the recruiter that I was not interested in that particular role explaining why. She was very understanding and even recommended an agency to contact who is handling the lion's share of BP recruitment in the UK, so that they are aware of my candidacy.

Should I have gone though the entire interview just for the experience and maybe a chance that in the process I could have developed a stronger bond with the interviewer and hence she could have considered other opportunities for me, or was it the right thing not to spend our time on discussing something that was outright not suitable? Both options have their pros and cons... Tough choices...

Video Regret Message: Priceless!!!

This is totally cool. When everyone else is ignoring your applications or merely sends out hundreds of standardized regret letters, tricks like this stand out.

A few days ago I applied for a Talent Management & Diversity position on LinkedIn. Today I received this link with a recorded regret message. Even though I was unsuccessful, it made me feel great, and now I have a positive opinion about Simpson Consulting, even though I really have no idea who they are. But they found a creative way to connect with their candidate base and they offer to stay in contact. In short - kudos!

Watch the video message here:  

Resume Stuff

Just for some lazy but insightful reading :)

Here are two interesting links that I came across:

• http://blogs.hbr.org/silverman/2009/06/how-to-write-a-resume-that-doe.html

• http://blogs.hbr.org/silverman/2009/06/the-best-cover-letter.html

Creative Resumes

A couple of nice companies are coming to the campus a week from now, and I was thinking of making something special for a couple of them, like - preparing a creative resume. After all, I need to stand out from the crowd of job-eager throat-cutting crowd of mighty MBA candidates. The question is how far do I want to stand out.

I started searching for creative resume templates, and stumbled across this web page: http://www.webdesignerdepot.com/2009/05/30-artistic-and-creative-resumes/. Some of those are truly awesome and would definitely catch my eye if I were hiring. 

Has anyone had experience with people sending you out-of-the-way resumes? How did you go about it?

More Electronic Resources for Landing the Best Job

After a second session with Mr. Daniel Porot on job search and career management, it has become clear that:

• best resume is no resume and CV is a curse word
• postpone salary negotiation until the recruiter is ready to pull out the torture instruments
• you are not selling, they are buying

I don't know if I am fully convinced by these approaches, but definitely they would work, perhaps, in the majority of the situations. Not if you are dealing with a professional recruiter though. That's why Porot is an ardent advocate of targeting the hidden market and approaching anyone but HR.

Some of the tools that I find particularly interesting (or at least unorthodox) in the process of job search. I do not promulgate their use - simply alerting you to their existence...

Free Mind. A mind mapper, and at the same time an easy-to-operate hierarchical editor with strong emphasis on folding. These two are not really two different things, just two different descriptions of a single application. Often used for knowledge and content mgmt. Downloadable from many sites, for instance, this one. Alternative software: NovaMind, xMind. These easy-to-use tools will help you understand better your strong points and make connections between your past work experiences, which might result in unique combinations, making you a unique professional in a particular area.

WORDLE. Wordle is a toy for generating “word clouds” from text that you provide. The clouds give greater prominence to words that appear more frequently in the source text. You can tweak your clouds with different fonts, layouts, and color schemes. The images you create with Wordle are yours to use however you like. You can print them out, or save them to the Wordle gallery to share with your friends. Why is it useful? Simply take a couple of job ads of positions/industries you are interested in and put them into Wordle. You will get a list of key words, which should be incorporated into your CV, making it stronger and more attractive to your prospective employers. 

WebMii. An interesting toy to discover your popularity index. Use WebMii to find out how frequently you are mentioned in the world wide web. "Sergey Gorbatov" returned a pitiful 2.9 score, and I am sure you are going to do much better. WebMii will help you see if there is anything on the Internet that you are unhappy about - references, pictures, links, etc., which might raise an eyebrow or two of a recruiter who will be doing background checks on your candidacy.

123People. The idea is largely similar to WebMii, but the outcome you are getting provides more information. Log onto 123People.com and find out (sometimes surprising) facts about yourself: blog, documents, videos, pictures, links, new, IMs, microblogs and others. Be particularly careful about this one, as it captures bits and pieces of your IM conversations.

Suicide Machine. The essence of this web service is best described in an article from Time magazine:

Need to disappear from Facebook or Twitter? Now you can scrub yourself from the Internet with Web 2.0 Suicide Machine, a nifty service that purges your online presence from these all-consuming social networks. Since its Dec. 19 launch, Suicide Machine has assisted more than 1,000 virtual deaths, severing more than 80,500 friendships on Facebook and removing some 276,000 tweets from Twitter.

 Happy experimenting!

How I got to DHL Inhouse Consulting

I am not sure if my career is going to be dominated by yellow and red (remember my previous company was Shell), I just keep my fingers crossed it is not going to be McDonalds in the future.

As you remember, last week I went to Bonn in Germany for an assessment center with DHL Inhouse Consulting. Some of you even sent me messages to find out what that was all about and how to apply, so I figured out I'd rather make the details of the trip public; hope someone finds it interesting and useful.

Everything started on Monday in Bonn with my crude misconstruction of German behavior. Take these three things into consideration: Germany, Monday morning and Germany. Everyone in the office was smiling and greeting me!!! How weird is that? I mean... on a Monday morning it is generally a very BAD idea to talk to me before I had my first cup of coffee. In Bonn people on the streets were greeting me - huh? Well, I allow a possibility that was because I was wearing an awesome Calvin Klein linen suit with a tie and a fresh haircut - still, I was not prepared for that.

What I WAS prepared for is that everything will be measured to the dot and it was. The process ran smoothly according to the schedule, not a minute wasted. I have always admired German punctuality (not when you live with one of them, though), but in general you can check your clock by the German schedule.

The presentations and interviews are done by consultants and project managers, which instantly signals the level of commitment the company places on the recruitment process. As Jack Welch said, recruitment is the single most important activity in any organization. I think Goldman Sachs is another company taking it seriously with up to 60 interviews when you join them.

I have never done a case interview in my life and I should tell you, it's not something you want to go through every day. I used to run assessment centers at Shell, but that was somewhat a different experience... not so stressful I believe. With a case interview you need to think of your feet and lay out your reasoning and calculations there and then. The key (as I see it) is to reveal your thinking and show the ability to look at the problem holistically. Nobody expects you to demonstrate Financial Management knowledge - if that is your biggest asset, probably you should be doing this interview at Merrill Lynch or Lehman Brothers... no... hold on... scrap the latter one... Obviously, you need to pepper your answer with the typical MBA lingo, such as "sustainable development", "win-win solution", "leverage" and the like, but you can only do this much BS - you are expected to give a concrete recommendation at the end of your verbal torrent of business school profanities. The case studies turned out to be relevant real life problems, examples of which can be found on the DHL Inhouse Consulting website. I struggled a little with "getting my hands dirty" and digging deeper into the numbers, but I am aware of my preference to go for the bigger picture. If you demonstrate the ability to think on the fly, you are fine.

The feedback and decision was instant, so walking away from their office three hours later I was given the offer and the details. HR gets involved only at the final stage when it comes to figures and contracts, and it is all polished and smooth, which sort of can be expected from a worldwide logistics leader.

One concern that I still can't get my head around is: if they stress the importance of teamwork so much, why were all the candidates given only individual assignments? Or maybe it's merely because it is only an assessment for an internship, and the "real" assessment will be more grueling, longer and earth-shattering?

Now I have four months before the start and the personal question is what I need to do to get the most of that internship experience and weigh up all the other options. There are electives, there are long- and short-term exchanges, Venture Lab, and surely I can try getting into another company. They say that options are good, they give you the sense of freedom. But when there are too many of them, they give you a headache.

Tolerance Theatre and my CV

The first time I saw a theater production of the Laramie Project, it was at Otterbein College in Ohio, USA, where I was studying International Relations during my undergraduate year. The intensity of the play did not let me go for a while, and when a couple of years later a group of alumni of that undergraduate exchange program were discussing an idea for a community project, I suggested that we translate and stage it in Russia. The project evolved into a much bigger thing. We adapted the script to fit the Russian reality, so that we could appeal to our audiences on a deeper level and the actors turned into trainers after the performance and conducted facilitated discussions with the audiences on the topics unearthed in the play. I won't go into details - if you are interested, I have uploaded a newspaper article about the Tolerance Theater project, take a look (GoogleDocs does not always open it from the first time, just click "Refresh" if it happens).

What I really wish to discuss here is what impact that project had (still has and potentially might have) on my career. To tell you the truth, I have quite forgotten about that year of presentations, trying to gain support, searching for a director, keeping the team motivated, rehearsals, performances, exhilaration of the first successes... It was back in 2004-2005, between now and then there are a couple of years filled with other achievements: hiring people, firing people, implementing policies, designing learning interventions, etc. Many of them were noticed and recognized by big people in my company (and outside, I guess... otherwise, how would you explain multiple job offers? :) I never mentioned the Tolerance Theater project on my resume, considering it distant and not really relevant to work environment. Up until now...

I was working on a case study in Organizational Behavior with my classmate Jessica and I asked her to review my resume and provide any suggestions for improvement. In our discussion that ensued it transpired that, probably, Tolerance Theater is the most distinguished result I have delivered so far and it should be featured prominently on that piece of paper most people will request from you when you are looking for a job.

This proves the value a team can bring into your life. You will never be able to deliver on something of that magnitude on your own, and at the end of the day it has the potential to set you aside from the rest of potential applicants, because it has a kick, it makes you special, it gives you that notorious USP all recruiters are after (USP - not to be confused with UPS - Unique Selling Point). I am so grateful to Jessica for making me realize what I should genuinely be proud of. If you want to be a success, you need to be the best, the first or different (the credit for this maxim goes to my English teacher at school, Mila Paulsen). So I am not the best and I am not the first, but one thing you cannot deny me - I am different.

Job Hunting or Job Begging?

Still being under the impression of the session delivered by Mr Porot this afternoon, I would like to share some general considerations on the topic of job searching, hunting, and sniffing. Basically, the dry remainder of an eight-hour session is that:

• you need to define (for yourself in the first place, because it might turn out to be terribly hard) what you really love. It means what makes you genuinely happy, why you wake up singing you favorite tunes and why you don't really need to smell coffee in the morning, because you are already jumping and kicking, impatient to get back to the colleagues, projects and admin issues. Hmmm... on the issue of coffee I stay to be corrected...
• think, what you are bloody good at. Now, this is now a tricky question - it is quite serious and dangerous, because many people confuse the two and are trying to make believe that what they would like to do is what they do best. The Tarzan interviewing technique (called so because you need to swing from "rope" to "rope" trying to find out what is the specific skill that differentiates you from the rest of the crowd of bloodthirsty job seekers) proved to be very efficient, however, only if you know how to use it right.
• marry the two concepts (like + can) together and the most difficult part of the job search process is done.

Let me quote something from my favorite book (one of the most philosophical and difficult for understanding and interpretation pieces - if you think I'm mad saying that, read it again!), Alice in Wonderland:

"Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?", Alice asks.

"That depends a good deal on where you want to get to," said the Cat.

"I don't much care where –" said Alice.

"Then it doesn't matter which way you go," said the Cat.

“– so long as I get somewhere," Alice added as an explanation.

"Oh, you're sure to do that," said the Cat, "if you only walk long enough."

Target (or focus) is another component of successful job search. If you are unsure of where you want this path of life to take you, most likely you will not get there, but will wander in the darkness, prone to labor market whips and euro fluctuations. Be specific, and your chances to land a dream job will shoot through the roof. Rules of flirting apply: an easy target is not that enticing.

I would question the statement that you should not send your CV (or resume) at all, but I am talking from my position of an HR professional here. I can understand the frustration of many, who send hundreds of e-mails to various HR people and never hear back. Challenge: is your approach right? After all, that is the right door to knock on (maybe not the most efficient in certain situations), but it is my accountability as a manager of human capital in a company to make sure that we get the best resources in. I even felt a little angry how HR was portrayed as a function and I wish to state that not all HR departments are useless paper shifters! More thoughts on the topic in my earlier posting: http://hrboutique.blogspot.com/2010/05/laundromat.html.

Leveraging networks is another key in securing a job and I would agree that those should be used for information mainly. Asking for too much favors will erode the value of a connection (unless you give sufficiently back) and also you might be putting the other person in a difficult situation, especially if you are using a personal relationship. Many of your friends have a limited view on you as a professional and often the view is skewed. If you are not doing well in the job they helped you to get, it will backfire at them as well.

Finally, what will make you a success in life:

• 50% - savoir etre: self-management skills - adjectives
• 35% - savoir faire: transferable skills/competencies - verbs
• 15% - savoir: knowledge - nouns 

This provides a fresh perspective on what one should be focusing on. Knowledge is not valued as much as it used to be even 10-20 years ago, and the emphasis is shifting towards emotional intelligence and the softer side of management, which immensely raises the profile of HR as a function responsible for building the organizational leadership capability and creating the learning culture.

CV - ¿more is less or less is more?

Now that the career day is drawing in, several classmates asked me to provide comments on their CVs. Having seen thousands of those in my professional life, I see that people are prone to make same mistakes over and over again: cramming as much information as possible into the limited space provided. Well, I am not entirely honest here. This is also market and culture dependent. In South Africa, for example, it is customary to have a cover sheet just indicating who the person is (or sometimes just saying "Curriculum Vitae") and then 5-10 pages filled with EVERYTHING that personal has been doing in their conscious life, nicely spaced and indented, but you just drown in the amount of information. In Europe and the US, if you are going over one page, that is most likely already too much, unless you have more than 6-8 years of professional experience.

Second point: if I am a professional recruiter, I deal with hundreds of resumes every day. If I am an HR in the Business, I might have much more important stuff to do than reading through pages and pages of other people´s accomplishments. Well, Dave Ulrich claims that talent attraction and selection is the most important HR activity possible, but let´s leave this debate for later. In any case, spending more than 30 seconds on a resume is a luxury I don´t have, so don´t make me angry and irritated either with numerous pages I have to go through or with blurred constellations of font 8 paragraphs, which numb my information intake instantaneously.

Third: as I have implied before, people who deals with many resumes professionally are highly irritable and prone to throwing paper products (or even more so, closing e-mail attachments) sooner than you can say "unemployment". So don´t risk your chances to get a phone interview (most you can hope for at the initial stage) by enraging them with spelling mistakes. Apart from you being unprofessional, it triggers something in their mind that sends a convulsive impulse to their wrist muscles - and there flies your inaply crafted written rendition of your academic and professional life into the trash.

There are numerous point (many of which are debatable!), but I believe the three mentioned about are a solid step forward. Among others are:

• Age (I strongly believe it should not appear on the resume, but there are counterarguments too)
• Marital status
• Resume layout
• Sequence of resume components
• Personal interests
• Special skills, languages and recognition, etc.

There are hundreds of books and reference materials available on the subject, most helpful probably is that one about the parachutes...

I am always happy to help those who need advice, so give me a shout, but bear in mind what I have mentioned, otherwise you are risking to get me into a fit, and that is highly undesirable.