How College Graduates Can Improve Their Job Search Strategies

College is over. You’re done. That’s it. Maybe you go back someday, but you probably won’t. It’s time to start working, and while you are ready to take on the challenges of entering the corporate world, it’s not that easy to get there.

You know about resumes and cover letters. What you don’t know is that they account for only 33% of all jobs. 33%. For those that sucked at math, that’s 1/3^rd. The other 2/3rds of jobs are given to people that found them using other job search methods. So the one method you know (resumes) is barely even a good way to get a job.

Other Ways and Low Expectations

You’re not the only person that was planning on finding a job using a standard resume/cover letter. In fact, almost all recent graduates use nothing more than a resume to try to find work. The job market does not expect much else from college graduates, since college graduates only know this one method of applying for jobs.

You can use that to your advantage. Employers have very low expectations for college graduates. If you are one of the few/only graduates that tries to find a job using some other method, you will instantly stand out against your competition. Use that to your advantage.

Other ways to find jobs include:

• Networking

Yeah, it’s annoying, but professional networking is the number one way people find employment. Attend conferences and events that relate to your field, hob nob with annoying fat men that make 3 times what you plan on making and give out business cards to anyone you meet. The more you network, the better your chances of getting a job, and if you can network successfully as a recent graduate, you will be in a far better position than your competitors.

• Ask Your Buddies

You probably have friends that are already working. Ask them if their companies have any open positions. Referrals from friends is simply using your network to your advantage, and a good way to get a job at some great companies.

• Cold Contact

The standard resume/cover letter strategy involves finding a job description and applying for the job. However, you don’t need to wait for a job to open to apply. Send in your resume and a cold contact cover letter to companies that interest you. When a job opens, you can potentially be considered before the description is posted.

You are in a unique position. Most other college graduates only use the resume/cover letter method of applying to jobs. By simply using these other methods, you immediately stand out in ways your competition doesn’t.

Take Away Interview Tips

• Network
• Cold Contact
• Ask Friends

Sending a Shoe to Get Your “Foot in the Door”

Recently we came across an article at Career Builder about the interesting things applicants do to get noticed. We’ve mentioned time and time again that most hiring managers receive as many as one thousand resumes, making it hard to get noticed no matter how great your qualifications.

Some applicants have decided to take matters into their own hands, by developing “out of the box” strategies to get noticed by employers. It’s an interesting idea, but is it one you should consider?

Probably Not

Employees that are able to effectively think out of the box are considered prized workers. Companies like Microsoft provide logic puzzles designed specifically to see if the applicant has that ability. Yet as impressive as it is to be able to think out of the box, you probably shouldn’t use it during your job search.

Inappropriate Behavior

Most out of the box techniques for getting noticed are considered profoundly inappropriate and unprofessional. Sending someone a gift to get them to see your resume is a sign of desperation. Doing something extremely unusual will only serve to make the hiring manager uncomfortable. Trying to contact the interviewer directly will only make you seem creepy.

Realistically, there are not a lot of out of the box ideas that are going to be effective, and most – by all professional standards – are inappropriate. Sending a shoe to “get your foot in the door” is cute, but if the business has any rules about accepting gifts, you may be putting the employee at risk for getting fired all because you want to get the job, and now they are left with a shoe they cannot use.

When is it Acceptable?

The only time you should consider one of these out of the box tactics is when it is something related to the job. Like it says in the article:

“Whatever tactic you choose to use, make sure it’s relevant to the position you’re applying for,” Masiewich says. “If you choose a tactic that you think will grab a hiring manager’s attention but doesn’t tie into the job, the industry, or what you’re about, then it can come off as just seeming strange and weird instead of creative and clever.”

In general, there are very few unusual and out of the box tactics that are going to be relevant to most jobs. Only sales comes to mind, and possibly marketing (although that is questionable). Beyond those two, outside the box tactics only serve to make you seem like an unusual person, and that can be a dangerous label to have assigned to you. Except in rare circumstances, avoid these out of the box tactics.

Take Away Interview Tips

• Show you are an out of the box thinker with your words, not your actions.

Why You Should Be Happy Your Company Offers Outside Learning

You’ve graduated. You are done with school. You are entering the workforce because you have completed your education and are ready to start making some real money. Or at least, as real as it can be for an entry level worker.  You check out the job description of a good job that meets your qualifications. In it, it mentions that it offers continuing education courses. Your first reaction might be “Oh man, I don’t want more school.”

This is the wrong reaction.

Why Additional Learning is Beneficial

You should jump at the opportunity to continue your education after college. In fact, continuing your education after college may be more beneficial to your future career than earning another degree, and could even have longer lasting effects than some graduate school classes.

Benefits of taking company-provided classes while working include:

• Raise Considerations – Companies are only going to offer you classes related to work you may be able to do with their company. By completing these classes, you will become more skilled at the tools that are important to the organization, and be in a better position to receive an increase in salary someday.
• Promotion Considerations – Companies that offer classes rarely make them mandatory. By attending these classes, you will show that you are committed to the company, which will make them more generous with promotions in the future.
• Learn More Skills – Learning more skills can never be a bad thing. The more you know, the more you have to offer both this company and any future companies.
• Great Resume Builder – For all of the reasons listed above, additional learning is a fantastic resume builder. It shows you were committed to a company and to learning and it shows that you are equipped with additional skills that may be beneficial to future workplaces.

College was a good way to prepare you for the tools you need to know when entering the working world. Additional courses and training provided by the employer, however, can make sure that you find success in that world.

Take Away Interview Tips

• Be pleased that the company offers additional learning opportunities.
• Take advantage of them, even if it impacts your personal life a bit.

Do You Need a Job Search Firm?

Last year, an article was published on Forbes about the usefulness of hiring a job search firm to help you find a new career. Their analysis shows that there is simply no reason these days to pay a company to find a job for you.

We agree.

You Will Find Job Online

Almost every job is posted in some type of online job search engine. Unless you are lazy, you can get online yourself and search for available jobs. This is the information age. The likelihood of you not finding jobs that meet your criteria are essentially nil. Jobs are everywhere, and though you may have a hard time landing a job interview, that does not mean that you cannot find jobs that suit your qualifications.

You Will Find Advice Online

If only there was a place where you could find free, useful information to help guide your job search process. Unfortunately no such site exists. Wait…

You Can Get Additional Help

Even if you have a question that is not answered by one of our many, many, many, many, many posts on job related topics, there are forums you can visit that will supply you with dozens of responses from like-minded professionals for free (or for almost nothing). Indeed, if you want help with your job search, you can just drop off an email and we’ll make a post about it. We’re pretty easy going about these things.

You Should Save Your Money

These firms are almost prohibitively expensive. Some cost as much as $5,000 or more. If you have savings, this may not seem like much, but if you are willing to spend $5,000 on a job search firm, why not apply to jobs with less of a starting income and work your way up instead? Chances are you have decided not to apply for jobs that look like they are below your pay grade, but if you are spending that kind of money paying a firm to help you, you may as well have sent in your resume.

Overall, these firms provide a very useful service, but it is a service that no one really needs anymore. While it may be tempting to want to have someone else do the work for you, consider the time you put into your job search practice for when you go back to work.

Take Away Interview Tips

• There is no reason to hire a job search firm.

How to Improve the Chances of Your Resume Getting Selected in a Semantic Search

In the last post, we looked at what a “Semantic Job Matching Engine” actually is, and how it is quickly changing the application process. Your resume now must contain good information, otherwise the semantic matching engine will not know that you are a good candidate for the job.

Changing Your Resume

There are several things you can do to improve your resume – and several things you cannot. You cannot make up experiences, and you cannot claim you have skills that aren’t there. If the hiring manager searches for those skills, you’re out of luck. In addition, there is no surefire way of designing a resume for the matching algorithm. The algorithms are too complex, and generally unbreakable. Even if you could break it, you wouldn’t know what the interviewer is searching for in order to guarantee you show up in the results. You can only give your best guess.

Adding Keywords With Accomplishments

Though the specific keywords matter less, keywords are how a matching system learns what you know and what you don’t know. Recruiters across the world advise that you put accomplishments on your resume, such as:

• Improved sales by 500%.

They are correct. You should have accomplishments all over your resume. However, you should not allow the accomplishment to stand alone. The algorithm does not know how important “500%” is without additional information. Add words. Good words, not cliché words. For example:

• Improved sales by 500% by instituting “authentic relationship building” techniques.

The keywords will improve the content of your resume, which will improve your chance of showing up in searches.

Replace Objective Statement with Professional Summary

This is a no brainer. The professional summary is a great way to add content into your resume without ruining the impact of your accomplishments. Use the professional summary to sprinkle great words throughout your resume.

Tailor Your Resume to Each Job

Finally, your best bet of showing up in a search is to make sure your resume is written with the job, job description, and probable tasks in mind. If you are applying for a job in Networking and your resume focuses on your expertise in web design, you are not going to show up in networking searches. Each job has its own expectations and needs, so you should review each job description and company and write your resume based on what you believe they value.

No Perfect Formula

There is no way to know exactly how to change your resume, or whether the company is going to use a semantic matching engine at all. The best you can do is design your resume with the semantic search in mind, but make sure that it is still impressive to human readers. That is the best way to give yourself a chance of getting the job.

Take Away Interview Tips

• Use professional summaries.
• Add good words as needed.
• Cross fingers and don’t break any mirrors.

What Are Semantic Job Matching Engines?

Employers have a limited amount of time to find good candidates. Unfortunately, the job market is dense, and as soon as a job is posted, the employer is bombarded with hundreds and thousands of resumes and cover letters that they need to review in order to find the right candidates.

Hiring managers need to make their jobs easier. So they are looking at new technologies that help limit the candidate pool for them, rather than force them to look at every resume by hand. One such method is using what is known as “Semantic Job Matching Engines”

Introduction to Semantic Search

Semantic search is like “Keyword Search 2.0.” When you search for something on Google, like “Awesome Interview Tips,” you are going to come up with a lot of websites that have that exact phrase. You are not guaranteed, however, to come up with websites that have any relevance to what you are looking for. All you know is that they have the phrase. They may not have the information.

Why?

Because to a keyword search engine, keywords are nothing more than a series of words. They have no meaning to the search engine. If I searched for “Kickass Interview Tips,” I would probably get a different website, even though the meaning of the words are the same, because the search engine doesn’t know that “Kickass” and “Awesome” and “Everyday Interview Tips” are synonymous (wink).

Searching By Meaning

Semantic search is the next step. When you use a semantic search engine, the search engine brings up results that are tailored to what you are looking for based on the meaning of your search, rather than the exact phrase. This, ideally, gives you much more accurate results.

What This Means to the Job Seeker

Job seekers are slowly becoming more and more affected by semantic job search engines. These search engines use their algorithms to search your resume for words that imply the meaning behind the search. So if the hiring manager wants something with leadership experience, the algorithm will search resumes to find words that either directly mean or imply that the individual has that experience. Then it brings up those applicants directly to the hiring manager, giving them far fewer resumes to view.

In the next post, we will look at what steps you need to take to improve the likelihood of showing up in a semantic job search engine.

Take Away Tips

• Resumes are changing.
• You absolutely must spend time creating your resume.

15 Common Pharmacist Interview Questions

Pharmacy is one of the most unique job types available. Unless you pursue a degree in research pharmacists often work in retail. Yet their considerable education and knowledge makes them some of the highest paid retail jobs available.

The high salary of pharmacists make finding jobs somewhat difficult, as companies are cutting back on hiring new pharmacists in order to save money in the tough economy. Many pharmacists now work as floaters simply because companies do not want to employee full time, regular staff. If you want to compete for a pharmacist job, you need to make sure you practice answering common pharmacy interview questions.

Sample Pharmacist Job Interview Questions

• Do you have access to a car? Are you comfortable driving to multiple locations for work?
• Tell me how your education has prepared you for this role.
• Tell me about a time you have provided outstanding customer service.
• Why did you decide to pursue a career in pharmacy?
• Tell me about your rotation experiences. Which did you like most? Least?
• Here is a case describing a common drug interaction. How would you resolve the problem?
• If you were a drug, what kind of drug would you be?
• What subjects did you find most interesting when you were studying for your Pharm.D.?
• How would you deal with a difficult customer?
• How do you spot drug seeking behavior?
• You cannot read the prescription. What do you do?
• You realize that two drugs the customer is taking may interact. What do you do?
• What do you consider to be the most positive impact of pharmacy?
• What do you think pharmacy’s greatest challenges are in the future?
• What are the most important attributes of a pharmacist?

Some Basic, Few Technical Interview Questions

Despite all of your education, very few pharmacy jobs ask applicants about technical questions. It is generally assumed that you have the knowledge necessary to handle your pharmacy job, or you would not have completed your degree. It may be a good idea to brush up on your knowledge before your interview, but you should spend the most time studying more basic interview questions like the ones listed above, as well as common interview questions that are experienced at all interviews. You are not going to be able to study for most technical questions anyway. Your education should prepare you best for those questions. You may want to review common retail job questions as well.

Take Away Interview Tips

• Questions are not often technical.
• You will be asked about customer service/client relations.
• Be ready to explain why you chose the field.

15 Common Project Management Interview Questions

Project managers are at the heart of both client services and product releases. Without a highly qualified project manager, the project will suffer, either due to a lack of efficiency, poor planning, or both. Project managers need to be skilled at their role. No company can afford to hire an inadequate PM. Expect to be asked a lot of project management interview questions, as companies thoroughly grill you for the role.

Sample Project Management Job Interview Questions

• What project management software programs are you most knowledgeable in?
• How do you handle the stress of multiple deadlines?
• Describe a time where you had to use your written communication skills to perform your job.
• Are you comfortable reporting to multiple department heads?
• Describe the most complex project you have managed in the past.
• Describe a time you made a critical mistake.
• Have you had to work without outside contractors before? How did you manage them?
• What types of checks do you put in place to make sure the project is on track?
• How do you make sure that all members of a project understand their roles and deadlines?
• How do you handle a team member that is falling behind a deadline?
• How do you handle a team member that consistently fails to meet deadlines?
• What motivation tactics do you use to keep team members efficient?
• How do you know when a project may fail?
• How comfortable are you communicating complex information in layman terms to a client?
• How do you estimate the completion time of a project?

Project managers need to be knowledgeable in their field. Civil Engineer Blog created a fairly decent list (http://civilengineerblog.com/100-project-manager-interview-questions/) of project management interview questions. You should also expect a lot of behavioral questions, as well. Project managers are asked a lot about their previous experiences, since most project managers have experienced the gambit between success and failure with their projects. Practice answering these thoroughly to improve your chances of getting the job.

Take Away Interview Tips

• Expect a lot of behavioral interview questions.
• Make sure you are familiar with current best practices in project management.

15 Common Restaurant Job Interview Questions

Everyone needs to eat. Restaurants are one of the few jobs that will never go out of business in today’s difficult economy. As long as restaurants exist, there will be jobs available for people like you hoping to find work in a constant industry.

However, the tough economy has affected restaurants as well. They can no longer afford to hire a bunch of employees and see which stay. They need to hire the right people to take on the job, so that they are not losing money due to poor customer service, theft, or turnover. Below are some possible interview questions you may face when applying for a restaurant job.

Sample Restaurant Interview Questions

• What made you want to work in the restaurant industry?
• Do you have any food allergies?
• Tell me about a time you gave excellent customer service.
• Tell me about a time you made a customer service mistake.
• What do you think are the most important qualities in a server?
• What made you apply here compared to other restaurants?
• Are you comfortable working in a fast paced, demanding environment?
• Are there any people you refuse to serve?
• How would you deal with a demanding customer?
• How do you feel about a customer that doesn’t leave a big tip?
• How do you feel about sharing tips/tip sharing?
• What are your career goals and how long do you plan on staying?
• What hours are you available to work?
• Do you have any mnemonic tools you use to remember orders?
• Do you consider yourself a patient person?
• Have you dined at our establishment before?

Expect Several Common Interview Questions

In addition to the questions above, you will be asked a lot of common interview questions (“Tell me about yourself,” etc.), and questions about the specific position and your experiences in the role (server, chef, restaurant manager, etc.). Prepare thoroughly so that you can ace the interview and beat out your competition.

Take Away Interview Tips

• Thoroughly prepare for restaurant job interview questions.
• Thoroughly prepare for common interview questions.

Networking the Easy Way: Ask Your Friends

“Excuse me sir. I’d like to tell you about this wonderful new product that recently hit the market. It’s called ‘Me,’ and every company needs it. ‘Me’ can do a number of projects on its own, including (but not limited to) sorting, filing, bookkeeping, coffee brewing, decision making, leadershippage and hardworkery. Now, I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking: ‘How can I afford such a fantastic product?’ Well, rest assured that ‘Me’ is not only incredibly affordable – it is also incredibly desperate. Order now and get a trial offer of two free weeks of ‘Me.’ If you don’t like it, send it back without losing a penny out of pocket.”

Hooray! Networking!

People that are excited for networking don’t need advice on how to network. It comes natural. It’s like a second language to them. They had out business cards like it’s charity work and can introduce themselves to anyone like they’ve been BFFs for over a decade.

For everyone else, networking is difficult. It’s frustrating. It’s humbling. Most people don’t like networking. Yet if you are unemployed, networking accounts for over 50% of employment. It is unavoidable.

Finding a More Comfortable Way to Network

Going to events with networking time is not for everyone, nor is introducing yourself to strangers on the street or at social events. Luckily, there are other networking avenues. Perhaps the best one for you is to simply ask your friends and family for introductions.

Your friends and family have friends of their own, and they are likely to know people that work in your field. Utilize them. Ask your friends and family to simply introduce you to people they know that work in your field. Then, when you meet them, you have a connection that you can talk about so that it is not simply a blind introduction. You know about them, they know about you, and you both know the person that introduced you. Networking in this manner is far less painful, and you may even meet people that you grow to like, simply because your friends have good taste.

Networking is always going to be a little bit difficult for those that it does not come to naturally. Ask your friends to make some introductions for you, and hopefully you find that style of networking to be a little less painful.

Take Away Tips

• Your friends have friends.
• Ask your friends for introductions to people in the field.