Tips on Interviewing Prospective Employees

Tips on bewerberinterviewing Prospective EmployeesTips on Interviewing Prospective EmployeesWant job interview tips to help you select the most qualified employees? These tips will help you assess the skills, experience, and cultural fit of your potential employees. The job interview is a powerful factor in the employee selection process in most organizations. While it may notlage deserve all of the attention that it receives, the interview is mucksmuschenstill extremely important. Background checking and checking references are also key factors in your hiring decisions. Hopefully, you have added these checks of factual information to your hiring arsenal. Recent trends are moving toward favoring test scores and otzu sich impartial means of assessment in employee selection, but most companies still rely on a good, old-fashioned job interview. The job interview remains your key tool in assessing the candidates cultural fit. It is also the tool you can use to get to know your candidates on a more personal basis. The interview process helps other employees get to know the candidate, too. Including additional potential coworkers in the interview and selection process helps the new coworkers own and feel some responsibility for the success of the new employee when he or she joins your organization. How to Select Candidates for the Job Interview Your starting point, before scheduling a job interview with a candidate, is to review each candidates cover letter and resume. When faced with 100 to 200 candidates, its important to use tools that separate the great candidates from the many. These will help you select the best candidates for the job interview. They will also help you prepare your list of questions to use to telephone screen candidates and then ask during your onsite or online job interviews. Telephone Screen Candidates Prior to a Job Interview The telephone interview or candidate phone screen allows the employer to determine if the candidates qualific ations, experience, workplace preferences, and salary needs are congruent with the position and your organization. The telephone interview saves employee time and eliminates unlikely candidates. While you will want to develop a customized job interview with customized questions for each position, this step helps narrow down your prospects. How to Prepare for the Job Interview The interview team was selected at your earlier recruiting planning meeting, so the interviewers have had time to prepare. You will want to use the list of qualities, skills, knowledge, and experience you developed for the resume screening process. Use this list to make sure each interviewer understands his or her role in the candidate assessment. Review each interviewers questions, too, to make sure the interview questions selected will obtain the needed information. Illegal Job Interview Questions Ask legal interview questions that illuminate the candidates strengths and weaknesses to determine job fi t. Avoid illegal interview questions and interview practices that could make your company the target of a U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) lawsuit. Hold a Behavioral Job Interview With Each Candidate During the job interview, help the candidate demonstrate his or her knowledge, skills, and experience. Start with small talk and ask several easy questions until the candidate seems relaxed. Then hold a behavioral interview. A behavioral interview is the best tool you have to identify candidates who have the behavioral traits and characteristics that you have selected as necessary for success in a particular job. Additionally, behavioral interview questions ask the candidate to pinpoint specific instances in which a particular behavior was exhibited in the past. In the best behaviorally based interviews, the candidate is unaware of the behavior the interviewer is verifying. This is a much better approach to learning about your candidate then asking the individual to look into a crystal ball and predict probable future behavior. In addition to the candidates verbal responses during the job interview, youll want to notice all of the nonverbal interaction, too. Assess Candidates Following the Job Interview Provide a standard format for each interviewer to use to assess each candidate following the interview. You should have several candidates who youll want to ask back for a second or even third job interview. The information provided, while authoritative, is not guaranteed for accuracy and legality. The site is read by a worldwide audience and employment laws and regulations vary from state to state and country to country. Please seek legal assistance, or assistance from State, Federal, or International governmental resources, to make certain your legal interpretation and decisions are correct for your location. This information is for guidance, ideas, and assistance.

What Should You Remove from Your Resume

What Should You Remove from Your ResumeWhat Should You Remove from Your ResumeWhether youre new to the job-seeking market or a long time pro, you understand that a professional, well-crafted resume is your foot in the door for any open position. From part time, hourly jobs while in school to career-making positions in the c-suite, the resume is often the only piece of information a prospective employer will have prior to deciding whether to bring you in for that all-important interview.While many blogs, posts, and articles may talk about all the myriad of things you should include on your resume, far fewer devote time to items that are better left on the cutting room floor. With that in mind, here are a few items to subtract, avoid or remove from your resume.The Glamour ShotSo we get it. Youve got a great smile or sparkling platzdeckchen of pearly whites. Maybe your headshot is to die for or your haircut is on point. I mean, its understandableour mom tells us were adorable too. But j ust because you think you scored in the looks department doesnt mean you should be including a photograph in your resume or application package. Adding a photo to your resume is a no-go for multiple reasons. First, despite all of our best intentions, human nature may lend your hiring manager to make assumptions about your character based on a picture before youve even walked into the interview room. In plus-rechnen, including photos can make many uncomfortable as state and federal laws prohibit employers from making hiring decisions based on certain physical characteristics. So to help keep everything on the up and up, ex-nay on the picture-vay.Just a Little T.M.I.Similar to the discomfort an employer may feel over the inclusion of a headshot, adding in factoids such as height, weight, age, ethnicity or religion can make a prospective employer leery about bringing a candidate in for an interview. Whether they select your resume or not, the addition of non-discriminatory information can open the door for hiring liabilities. Keep things professional by including your education, experience, and skills. If you must disclose certain work-place limitations based on religious beliefs, do so after the offer has been made and accepted for everyones peace of mind.Teeny, Tiny White LiesWeve all been in a social situation where weve felt like adding a zero or two to our salary or adding on a few vowels to our official work titles. While this is a grey area at best when attempting to pick up that attractive person at the bar on Friday night, its a solid no-go when it comes to pumping up your resume.Always assume that the hiring manager, recruiter or other representatives of your prospective employer will verify the information on your resume. From educational background to previous titles, keeping this information as accurate as possible is critical to getting and keeping a job offer. Even if your new employer doesnt check up on the facts in your resume, mistruths can crea te hurdles down the road when asked to apply your skills or experience in your new position.That High School Hot Dog Stand JobEveryone has a high school or college job in their past that was mora than acceptable for helping to pay the monthly rent check or that kept you from eating ramen during your school years. While these are perfectly acceptable steps on the career ladder, most likely your experience as a go-kart operator wont be relevant to your new position in office management. Listing every position youve had since high school is not only unnecessary, it can take up valuable resume space for actual applicable experience. Weed out the short term positions and elaborate on your job duties and experiences from jobs in similar fields. Be careful about leaving large job gaps but feel free to otherwise edit away that summer you spent pretending to be a princess for crying five-year-olds.Ditch the ObviousSo youre computer literate, have an English degree and show up to work on time , huh? While we applaud your ability to perform the necessary skills of being a grown adult, obvious traits or characteristics that should be a given for anyone over 16 years old probably shouldnt be taking up valuable resume real estate.Your prospective employer will assume that any candidate applying for an open position meets the minimum thresholds for employability. If your experience or skills arent directly applicable to the job youre applying for, ditch those commonly held traits in lieu of conveying the information that sets you above the field. Your resume should set you unbekannt from the crowd and let your prospective employer know youre the best and brightest, not just another fish in the employment pond.Have an opinion about any of our above exclusions or have another pet peeve when it comes to what to leave out of your resume. Drop us a line and maybe your recommendations will make our next updated list.

How you measure the process, not the results

How you measure the process, leid the resultsHow you measure the process, not the resultsNOTE This is part of a series of personal lessons on life, success, and goal-setting as a way of ending the year on a reflective note. To catch up, you can read lessons below.Most of my life, Ive felt like a loser.I know that sounds harsh, but its true. Ive just never felt good enough.When I played soccer as a chubby little ten-year-old, I welches too slow to score any goals, so my dad (who was the coach) had me play defense.That year, I won the Most Improved Player award. This, in a way, is a pretty good metaphor for my life good, but not great. Solid effort, Jeff. Nice try.In sixth grade, I got my first real taste of greatness by winning the school spelling bee. The winning word was acquiescence, and the eighth grader who lost allegedly cried the entire bus ride home.It was the only time I ever made an eighth grader cry, and to be honest, it felt good. To beat somebody. To win. To not be a lose r.The next year, I didnt practice at all and lost to a sixth grader. The losing word was flourishing.Most of my life has been like this one step forward, one step back. Make a little progress, then regress.Measure the chaseIts not until recently that Ive learned why I do this. I set goals, accomplish them, then slowly start to sabotierung myself.Do you know why we humans do this?Because we dont believe we deserve success. That can mean whatever you want, but the reason we get a little bit of happiness or money or influence and then squander it is because, deep down inside, we dont feel worthy of such things.Now, the reasons we do this are complicated and you should probably talk to a therapist about them (I do), but I want to offer a simple way that you dont have to feel like a loser.Its so easy and yet almost no one does thisWant to feel healthy? Great. You can set a goal to lose 10 pounds or whatever, but dont fixate on the outcome. Research proves that we humans dont love accompl ishing results as much as we love chasing results.So what should you do?Measure the chase, of course.How you achieve something is vastly more important than whether or not you achieve it.For example, you can lose 10 pounds by starving yourself for a week, but that will slow your metabolism down and likely cause you to gain more weight in the long run. Its an unsustainable practice.The same goes for setting a goal of writing a book. If you sprint through NaNoWriMo and complete your first novel but havent developed the daily discipline of working on your writing, its unlikely that you will continue being able to write great stuff.What Im talking about here is habits, practices, and process.Celebrate the processSo, what should you do about that weight loss goal? Measure the thing that youre doing to get healthier. Did you go for a walk today? Eat enough vegetables? Stay under your caloric goal for the day? Then you should feel good about that.What about that writing goal? Did you write your 500 words today? GreatTime to celebrateAfter my second book came out, The In-Between, it didnt do as well as my first two books.I remember sitting on my back porch, texting a mentor of mine, saying how let down I felt, expecting him to commiserate with me. Heres what he saidThere was a time when where you are sitting now seemed out of reach. Rejoice, my friend. RejoiceLook. I dont know much about anything. Ive been a loser my whole life, remember? But I do know thisIf you cannot celebrate the process, you wont be able to enjoy the outcome.So start measuring the process.This article was originally published on Goins,Writer.com