Job interview & Getting Hired Guide

Link to course: 

https://www.udemy.com/course/job-interview-and-getting-hired-guide/?referralCode=BBFAE2BCFD2B2A611986

I have my first job interview tomorrow. What's going to happen?

First of all, if you have your job interview scheduled already, this means that they see potential in your CV and want to explore more. This means that they consider you one of the potential candidates for the job and you have a good chance of getting it. This is good news, so don't panic.

What's going to happen:

- first of all DON'T be late. It's VERY important to make a good first impression. Nobody appreciates having their time wasted. Better go early - 15-20 minutes earlier even is fine. Much better than late. If you don't know how to get there and how long it takes, do an exercise today. Go find the place and time your distance from home to the company headquarters;

- someone from the company is going to invite you in, offer you something to drink; if you feel that you need water or even coffee, it's ok to accept it and drink it during the interview; it's not a test - they want to be nice and make you feel comfortable. A real recruiter doesn't create panic and intimidate the candidate but tries to get the best out of him/her. So let's hope you get one of the nice ones;

- they are going to offer you a seat;

- they are going to start asking you questions. Again, don't panic. Reply as you can and ask questions of your own if you have any. It's ok to do that doing the interview. Concentrate and reply as you feel like doing. Don't invent answers or reply what you think they might want to hear. Even if they reject you in the end, it means that maybe you wouldn't have been happy there or the job wasn't for you. And don't give up no matter what searching a new job if you don't get this one. There's always something for everybody out there.

- they are going to ask you in the end if you have further questions. Go ahead and ask if you have any more questions. Just don't keep them for 30 minutes more. Try to keep it short - 2-3 questions that are most important to you should be enough.

- they will thank you for the interview and tell you what happens next - how you will get the feedback and if there are further steps should you pass this one;

- they may keep you at the end for a little more to give you individual tests (language, IT, etc.) depending on the position. However, this is not mandatory for all positions;

- you can go home and relax.

See :) it wasn't that difficult. I will come back in my next posts with details about each step of the way.

Recruitment and Selection Strategy: I Want to Work as a Recruiter. What Kind of Employer Should I Look For?

If you want to work as a recruiting specialist, you have 3 main types of employment you can look for. The final choice is yours.

Choice 1 - less risky and most comfortable - an ordinary company which has an HR Recruitment specialist position open. You will get a list of job openings and you will start recruiting. You will do mostly only recruitment tasks: posting ads, reading resumes, doing interviews. Maybe some presentations and recruiting events from time to time.

Choice 2 - medium risk and medium comfort - a recruiting agency. You will face 2 situations:
 - competitive, well-placed on the market agency where you will do mostly recruitment but at high volumes. You will work with multiple clients and a wide-range of positions. Great place to get lots of experience.
- smaller company, struggling to survive. Since agency recruitment fees are quite high, you will work for a company struggling to get clients. You will do recruitment but you may be involved in sales and searching for new clients. By client I mean - company in need of candidates to fill open positions.

Choice 3 - high risk and not much comfort, but great satisfactions in case of success - your own recruiting company. You will do part sales in search of new clients and part recruitment. If you are successful you may find someone in time to do the sales, the recruitment or both for you.

Good luck.

Recruitment and Selection Strategy: What Skills Do I Need to Be a Good Recruiter?

This is an extract from my book - A Career in HR - The Good and the Bod;


These are the skills you need to have or to develop in order to be a good recruiter:

Intelligence level over the average.

Highly responsible person – will be taking the initial decision concerning a candidate being rejected or selected for next stage. Someone’s fate depends on his/her decision, experience, skills, mood sometimes or state of fatigue.

Great decision taking skills – will take decisions concerning candidates being selected or rejected, will change the strategy in a project if things don’t go well on the initial path, will take decisions concerning recruitment channels and will be responsible for the success of decisions taken, will take decisions concerning partnerships with recruiting agencies (if to use or not and when since costs are very high).

Very organized person – will manage hundreds of resumes (sometimes thousands!), hundreds of candidates, will give hundreds of feed backs – all on time and to the correct candidate; will prepare daily, weekly, monthly and yearly reports.

Good communication and presentation skills – will give information to candidates, will deliver presentations to general public, and will represent the company.

Pro activity – will have to come with solutions for problems that haven’t yet appeared; will always be searching for ways to improve and make work more efficient.

Mature person – closely connected to the amount of decisions to take; will be responsible for own actions.

Strong analytical skills – will have to analyze resumes, recruiting channels’ efficiency, market reports, recruiting agencies’ reports; will be carefully analyzing a candidate’s skills and if they fit to the job or in the new team;

Flexibility – will have to change recruitment strategy as often as necessary to meet targets and deadlines;

Great time management skills – must be aware that requested resources and reports must be delivered on time;

Highly sociable person – will be working daily with a lot of people; must be sociable and must like interacting with people since there will be days with 14 interviews (situation not recommended by theory books, but different and inevitable in reality).

Some project management skills – can be given a project to complete by himself/herself and will need to organize available resources. I.e. it’s not possible for a recruiter to recruit a large team of let’s say 30 people alone. Ability to organize and conduct own work and available resources without too much supervision.

Professional attitude – represents a first contact between candidates and the company, can influence negatively or positively the company’s image on the market;

Some telephone skills – will be conducting from time to time phone interviews;

Some technical skills – will need to setup some software alone; will need to prepare and conduct a presentation with a laptop and video equipment alone in a different location than the company headquarters where an IT representative is available; will need to use a laptop, smart phone sometimes, conference equipment, video equipment, USB sticks, headphones, some software. A recruiter must be ready to learn how to use all these and how to make work easier.

Great resilience to effort – will be reading sometimes resumes at 10 pm at home; will be carrying a large laptop around, will be carrying presentation materials around, flyers and others. Will be asked to work overtime from time to time, at work or at home; will be asked to give up vacation if a new project needs to start and reschedule own family time.

Great resilience to stress – will have tight deadlines and huge volume of work from time to time; will have stressed managers who will ask for fast results for projects.

Human Resources Mysteries: Is Human Resources a Good Career Option?

Depending on what your skills and aspirations are, it can be a great career option.

Please consider the following:

Pluses:
- you have the possibility to implement a lot of great measures to motivate and help the employees;
- you have the possibility to represent your company in public meetings, conferences, at the University, at job events, you get to talk to the media, to students, to teachers, you can even get to present your company in the same auditorium where you used to study - this time in front of the students;
- the management asks for your opinion concerning recruitment plan, training opportunities, employee motivation, labor requirements, performance management, employee surveys and action plans - your opinion matters;
- you can influence the image of the company when communicating to candidates and job portals;
- you can influence the well being of the company by recruiting and developing the best people;
- you can create a great work environment by organizing team buildings and various other smaller team activities;
- you can help people by offering them advice or simply listening to their problems and at least trying to improve their life;
- you get to talk to a lot of people, to learn new things, to make friends.

Minuses:
- working with a lot of people every day can turn you in an anti-social person; you need to really be a great people's person if you want to survive; human resources is not for those who want to work alone in a closed office in front of their computer;
- sometimes people drive you crazy with silly questions and actions: they lose their badge, they don't like their photo in the database and absolutely need another one taken, they forget to fill in and sign things and you have to chase the around, they don't read the procedures and make mistakes that you have to help fix all the time, they forget their passwords, they create chaos and you have to be a moderator for disciplinary actions, they forget their locker key at home and come to you for another one for the day, they lose, forget, ignore and don't pay attention to details and make your life a living hell;
- most of the times when something's wrong, they come to HR, even if it's not HR's job (someone took their parking space, someone stole their food from the fridge, there's no more coffee in the machine, they don't like the carpet in their office, they want to suggest removing plastic cups from the kitchen etc etc.); all this because you did their Induction training and they don't know who to go to;
- bureaucracy can be a killer in HR; legal paperwork takes ages to complete, has strict deadlines and is not valid if a word or number is missing; so you must be really careful about the paperwork you prepare and register with the authorities;
- payroll, unless outsourced can drive you crazy - lots of numbers to insert in the system - hours, absences, sickness, bonuses, advances, vacation, new hires, leavers, taxes, contract changes; you must be a patient and attentive to details person;
- if you work as a recruiter, the huge number of resumes to read and people to interview can become overwhelming; you may end up at home after 14 interviews with no desire whatsoever to see anybody, to be called by anybody - you can even turn up to consider water dripping down the pipes tooooo noisy :) ;
- candidates not coming to the interview after you bothered to read the resume, prepare tests, schedule the meeting, prepare questions etc. can make you really mad sometimes, especially if recruitment deadlines are tight;
- reporting in HR is also annoying - everybody asks for HR data in all sorts of formats, most of the time it's the same information in 5 different templates that the 5 requesters can't seem to agree upon and want it their way;

All this being said, inform yourself and choose wisely. HR can be rewarding but also crazy. You decide...

Recruitment and Selection: Are You a Recruiter?

Here are some questions and tasks you can give to candidates at the interview if you are selecting a person for the human resources department to perform the function of recruiter:

1.       Please write below what recruiting and selection means to you.

2.       Can be recruiting considered a motivation factor?

3.       What are the main tasks involved in the job of a recruiter?

4.       What recruiting channels do you know?

5.       Please describe in details the recruiting process for the following project:

You need to hire 10 German and English speakers (German fluent, English medium) and 5 English speakers (English fluent) for a new client on the following positions:

1 team leader – English speaker

2 senior agents – 1 German, 1 English

1 administrative support – German

11 agents – 8 German, 3 English

           What are the steps you take, the channels you use and the time frames you consider suitable.

6.       Please describe in details the recruiting process for the following project:

You have a team leader position that is filled in by somebody in the team - promotion. How do you back fill the open position remaining in the team after the promotion? 

7.       Please describe in details the recruiting process for the following project:

You need to hire 3 fluent Italian speakers (with medium English) and Linux/UNIX skills.

8.   You are interviewing a candidate that says he has team leader potential but no real team leader experience. What questions would you ask that person in order to see their real potential for a TL position?

9.   One of your colleagues from sales asks you the following question: we would like to see if Iyour city has potential for hiring 5 fluent Portuguese speakers; if yes, what would be the time frames and the salaries that the candidates might accept. What do you do in order to answer this question?

10.   You need to hire 5 great sales agents. What questions would you ask at the interview?

11.   You need to assess if a candidate has good attention to details skills. How do you do that?

I will come back with more...