Resume Help Blog

Posts Tagged ‘interview tips’

Everyone knows that resumes serve as the quantification of who you are, what you’ve accomplished, and what expertise you can bring to your next employer. So, in this competitive job-seeking environment, a professionally written resume is a necessity to help you stand out from other applicants—but it’s not the only tool that should showcase your talents and experience. Today’s business people also need actively managed profiles on the social media sites that recruiters and others are using to find and learn more about potential hires.

LinkedIn is the most popular of these sites from a professional standpoint. While many people think of it as a Web-based contact management system, it’s so much more. In fact, it’s really a 24/7 personal branding machine. Here are a few ways you can use LinkedIn to help sell yourself to a hiring manager:

• Position yourself accurately. The first step to fully leveraging LinkedIn is to think about your “positioning.” Since most people will not remember a lot about you, you want to give them one or two nuggets of information to associate with your personal brand. Let’s say you’re a salesperson who specializes in selling widgets to emerging biotech companies. Your profile should be constructed around reinforcing that role so anyone reading it knows that’s your area of expertise.
• Use keywords. You’ll want to populate your profile with keywords that someone looking for a person with your experience would use when they search LinkedIn for job candidates. This helps LinkedIn serve your profile to them as an option.
• Join groups. Once your profile is configured, you’ll want to proactively cultivate your image as an expert by joining LinkedIn Groups where people with similar interests congregate. Resist the temptation to jump into the conversations you find posted there. Rather, sit back and observe for a week or so, getting a feel for the ways people communicate, and then start participating in discussions. Eventually you will want to begin new discussions for others to join too.

Here is a brief list:

1. How would you describe yourself?
2. To be successful in this career, what do you think it takes?
3. Do you have the qualifications and personal characteristics necessary for success in your chosen career?
4. Why should we hire you?
5. What are your long-term goals and objectives?
6. What major problem have you handled recently? Did you resolve it? How?
7. What characteristics do you think make a manager successful?
8. Why did you apply to our company?
9. How do you approach critical assignments?
10. If you had to think on your feet to solve a difficult situation, what would you do?
11. Why were you fired?
12. What steps do you take before making an important decision?
13. Name the most difficult assignment you had and how you finished it.
14. What kind of supervisor do you prefer?

As you can see, the questions are open-ended, not allowing for a simple yes or no answer. The more you talk, the more the hiring authority learns about you. That’s why you need to be prepared before you utter one word. Each answer must be crafted carefully to maximize your chances of being hired.

You just graduated and think the world is just waiting for you to leap on life’s stage. Don’t be so smug, every graduate feels the same way. But now comes the next challenge; finding the right position that you have been planning for so long. Where do you start?

I don’t want to burst your bubble or prick your ego but competition is fierce especially now during this current recession so let’s just start with a couple of ideas to help you get started.

First—always the best place to begin is with your friends and neighbors; friends that you have known for some time especially if they have a pretty good position in a major company. Possibly someone in your graduating class that you have become friendly with who may have a relative or good friend that can give you a hand up. That may take a while to run down the list of people you know and have known over the years, especially if you have lived in the same place for a while. If you have moved around a lot it will take more time.

Second—consider having a professional resume company help you work your resume to your best advantage. If you are a person that believes that a resume, is a resume, is a resume etc. then you are in for a rude awakening. That isn’t so, a professional resume writer is just what the name says – “a Professional”! Who is most qualified to help you find the perfect position that you have worked so hard for – the professional resume writer!