Career One Reveals Top 10 Job Hunting Blunders

Employment website, CareerOne.com.au today revealed its list of top 10 job hunting blunders.

1. Spelling mistakes on a CV/cover letter

“The cover letter is a candidate’s first impression. It shows the commitment to the job from the very early stages,” says Gary Banks from ABT Recruitment.

Andrew Brushfield of Robert Half in Australia says spelling mistakes on resumes is a pet hate for consultants. “If you make errors on your application, employers assume you’ll make mistakes on the job.”

2. Using “crazy” email addresses

Example: sexylovegod@hotmail.com

3. Inventing careers and skills

Helen Olivier, of The Olivier Group said that there was a degree of desperation in the market so people overstate their skills and salary.

“Often people assume they are going to earn a lot more than market reality just because they are moving jobs. If you are head-hunted it doesn’t necessarily mean you are worth higher than market value.”

4. Interrupting an interviewer to look at a text message or take a call

5. Reeking of that last minute cigarette as you walk into the job interview. Overpowering colognes/perfumes are also bad form

6. Dressing inappropriately – the way you look should match the image of the company you are interviewing with. Also, jewellery that jangles irritates interviewers

Angela Vithoulkas who owns the VIVO Café franchise in Sydney said that one candidate came in for an interview dressed in a clown costume. “I felt like sticking a sign on my forehead saying ‘are you serious?’. It’s hard to take someone seriously when they’re dressed as a clown.”

7. Not setting up a quiet space for a phone interview. Pet noises, house mates/family asking questions or loud music in the background are interview killers

“Talk with a smile on your face. Keep answers short and think of the 50/50 rule – listen for half the time and talk for the other half,” said Annie Cerone from Resume by Design.

8. Sharing too much personal information

One recruiter said a candidate told him of his criminal conviction including a physical demonstration of how he assaulted his wife.

9. Bagging your former employer or boss

10. Not doing your home work about the employer – and worse – calling the employer by the name of their competitor

“Candidates should take the time to research the company and re-read the ad prior to the interview. This shows genuine interest, effort and commitment in the position,” says Geoff Mitchell-Burden from Recruitment Partners.

Mistakes made on a cover letter/resume:
1. Spelling mistakes
2. Addressing your cover letter to the wrong person
3. Cover letter too generic and not addressing the desired role
4. Length! Candidates sending through pages and pages of information
5. Inputting information over 10 years old
6. Submitting a handwritten cover letter
7. Providing too much personal information.
8. Inventing careers and skills. Professional resume checkers will sniff this out.
9. Excluding contact details and gaps in job history
10. Using inappropriate email addresses

Face-to-face interview mistakes reported by recruiters
1. Dressing inappropriately
2. Bringing in fast food during the interview and eating it while being interviewed
3. Turning up late or not turning up at all for the scheduled interview
4. Offering sexual advances/propositions
5. Sharing too much personal information. No need to tell us about your second job driving hookers around
6. Not showing enough or showing too much enthusiasm
7. Questioning the intentions of the recruiter and questioning the questions of the recruiter!
8. Behaving inappropriately – don’t pick your nose during an interview please
9. Turning up drunk
10. Threatening and physically abusing recruiters out of desperation for a job

Mistakes reported by recruiters made during a phone interview
1. Not finding a quiet place for the phone interview.
2. “Yes” and “No” answers or silences.
3. Waffling too much.
4. Forgetting which job you are interviewing for.
5. Being ill prepared – stick notes on walls – the interviewer can’t see you.
6. Making it obvious you are speaking from a pre-prepared script
7. Multi-tasking during the phone interview. What is that tapping sound in the background I hear?
8. Talking to the recruiter on your mobile phone…from the bathroom. Yuk.
9. Interrupting the interview for anything reason bar an emergency.
10. Being unavailable for your scheduled phone interview. Application death.

Editor of CareerOne, Kate Southam, says with the job market showing continual improvement it is a good time to search for a new job. However, job hunters must be careful not to sabotage their own success.

“Job hunting blunders get you remembered for all the wrong reasons,” says Kate Southam. “How well you conduct yourself at each step of the recruitment process speaks volumes about how your will act in the job – if you get it.”

Kate’s Top 10 tips on how to ace a job interview:

1. Research, research, research – on both yourself and the employer.
2. Tailor your resume and your interview prep for each role.
3. Rehearse for the interview – at least three times
4. Prepare to use real examples from your work history to answer interview questions
5. Pick your job interview outfit days ahead to make sure it fits and is stain free.
6. Be positive about your past work experience
7. Prepare questions to ask the employer
8. Always be 10 minutes early for an interview
9. Follow up with a thank you after the job interview
10. Be on your best behaviour but be genuine. If you have to pretend to get the job then it is not the job for you.

For more tips and information on the job-hunting process visit CareerOne’s News & Advice section: http://www.careerone.com.au/news-advice.

Fall Back in Love with Your Job

The word ‘love’ is not a word most of us associate with ‘work’, as work is about function, purpose and necessity, while love is a blissful emotion associated with immense happiness. But like the personal relationships we have in our lives, our relationship with our job can often present the same challenges and play the same role in influencing our day-to-day happiness.

Fiona Webster, Head of Career Coaching & Outplacement at recruitment & HR services company, Randstad, believes we need to treat work more like a relationship to see its positive benefits.

If you were asked to rate ‘love’ and ‘work’ on life’s happiness barometer, it would be rare to find them on the same scale, but think about the 168 hours there are in a week and how many of those you spend working. So learning to love your day job is vital to achieving a happy balance both at and away from the office.

It takes two
Like love, work is a two-way street, if you don’t feel satisfied about what you’re getting out of your role, then it might pay to give more to your day-to-day activities. Sometimes, ‘you only get out what you put in’ and thinking of ways to improve your basic daily tasks can give you more satisfaction and provide more value to those around you. In the same way, contributing more to your team or getting involved in social activities at work might hold the key to a healthier two-way relationship in 2010. Read more

Increase in job seeking activity

In what could be a further sign of Australia’s economic recovery, the number of employees applying for jobs in other organisations has jumped dramatically during the past six months.

It’s been a tough year for recruitment agencies. Those who were barely hanging on before the economic downturn, were forced to close their doors at the height of the Global Financial Crisis (GFC) when employers introduced a recruitment freeze. Now the job market is beginning to recover, employees are once again on the move and that’s good news for the recruitment industry.

According to Leadership Management Australasia’s latest Leadership, Employment and Direction Survey, one in six employees say they have recently applied to leave their current employment and more than half say they are considering moving on.

The survey also revealed that one in five are actively looking around – an increase of 36% since June 2009. Read more

New Website for IT Recruitment

Fairfax Media in Australia and CBS Interactive have joined forces to develop itjobs.com.au – a dynamic new website dedicated to IT recruitment.

Fairfax Media is the largest integrated metropolitan, rural and regional, print and online digital media company in Australasia, with publications and websites in every State and the ACT in Australia, and throughout New Zealand. In Australia, mastheads include The Sydney Morning Herald, The Age, The Australian Financial Review, The Canberra Times, BRW, The Sun-Herald, and The Land.

CBS Interactive (www.cbsinteractive.com.au) is a premier online content network for information and entertainment and part of CBS Corporation. It is a top 10 web network worldwide and in Australia alone, the CBS Interactive portfolio of sites across business, consumer and entertainment, reach over 3 million Australian unique browsers per month.

Combining the technological resources of Fairfax Media with the focussed tech industry audiences of CBS Interactive’s business sites, itjobs.com.au employs search technology to connect Australia’s largest business technology audience with the latest and most sought-after positions in the IT industry. Read more

When Saying Too Much in the Job Interview Works Against You

In job interviews: Do you talk too much, too little or say just the right amount to land you the job? Do you say the right things to the most appropriate people or shoot yourself in the foot?

What you say and who you share it with during the job interview process can work for or against you. There is no magic formula to follow to get the right balance, but rather an ability to read the interviewer and be discerning about who you share what information with about your abilities.

When most of us leave the interview we play back in our minds the interview questions asked and how we responded. Did we give the right answers? Were we too brief in our responses or did we prattle on too much? Did we come across as too shy or to confident? and so on. Ultimately, we wonder if we came across as the right person for the job. Rarely do we question if we shared the appropriate information with the appropriate person. We simply automatically assume we are doing the right thing by selling ourselves and our abilities to all that we interview with. Remember, not every interviewer is created equal! Read more

Six Figures Expands Offering to Deliver Executives More

Six Figures, the Executive Job site for $100K+ jobs and talent jobs across all industries and professions, has launched a new website design and expanded the offering to include Executive Jobs, News and Services.

Due to growing demand by high salary earners for more specific career and industry related content, Six Figures is meeting demand by catering for additional aspects of a professional’s career, with career development, directorships, education and industry news forming a part of its extended offering.

Since launching in March 2008, Six Figures, Australia’s only stand alone executive job site, has grown to over 25,000 members ($100K+ job seekers) and over 300 advertisers spanning government, education, corporate and recruitment firms. With a focus on quality, service and building relationships the site is continuing to grow and deliver success to both members and our advertisers in sourcing top passive talent via their job ads. Read more

This Week’s Top Jobs No 67

Each week we publish the latest six figure jobs available in Australia and the UK for executives and senior professionals across all industries. To view these and more positions vacant, register FREE with www.sixfigures.com.au today!

Hudson – National Transformer Service Manager, $170K+ (Sydney NSW)
* A world leader in power and automation technologies
* A national role
* A package of $170,000 on offer

Hudson – Market Risk Manager, $130K+ (Sydney NSW)
* Major Commercial Bank
* Dynamic, entrepreneurial environment
* Exciting career prospects

Hudson – Operations Manager – Substation Automation Systems, $200K+ (Parramatta NSW)
* Over 100 years of combined experience in power transmission and distribution
* A regional role reporting to the MD
* Circa $200,000+ package

Hudson – Senior Distribution Manager – Supply Chain, $130K+ (Sydney NSW)
* Global organisation
* Leading Consumer organisation
* Substantial six figure package

Quadrant Recruitment – Operations Manager – Electrical, $150K+ (Silverwater NSW)
Operations Manager with major electrical contracting experience wanted by this rapidly expanding company to lead and guide the NSW team

Test Manager, $140K+ (Sydney NSW)
Test Manager Enterprise Web applications. Mixture of .NET and Java technologies. Hands on plus strategic focus. True career opportunity with a strategic focus.

Building Services Manager/Commissioning Manager, $150K+ (Perth WA)
* Perth based role
* $100m project
* 1st tier Contractor, Building Services Manager/Commissioning Manager

Project Engineer – WA, $120K+ (Perth WA)
* Excellent remuneration package
* Work for friendly and supportive organisation
* Gain valuable industry knowledge
* This is a rare opportunity to be involved in the civil infrastructure operations.

To view all $100K+ jobs and contracts, go to Six Figures Jobs.

Free Information and Resources for Job Seekers

The recently-launched www.careerfaqs.com.au provides over 3000 web pages of valuable, up-to-date resources for Australian job seekers facing the considerable challenges of rising unemployment and retrenchments.

This all-Australian careers portal helps job seekers navigate through their careers and provides critical advice on how to improve your job prospects. And it’s totally FREE to access.

“Given the current economic climate and the number of Australians being laid off, it’s essential that Australians have a professional, well-written resume and cover-letter; and equally importantly, that
they know what the latest job trends are and which industries and employers are still hiring,” said Will Santow, Managing Director of Career FAQs. Read more

Recruitment, Redundancy and the Missing R – Respect!

Respect can never be underestimated as it is a value many of us hold dear; respect for our information, privacy, views, time, and so on. Yet one area that I increasingly hear about is a dearth of respect in and around both recruitment and redundancy.

Respect as defined by Wikipedia: ‘Respect is esteem for, or a sense of the worth or excellence of, a person, a personal quality, ability, or a manifestation of a personal quality or ability. In certain ways, respect manifests itself as a kind of ethic or principle, such as in the commonly taught concept of “[having] respect for others” or the ethic of reciprocity.’

When it comes to recruitment, the lack of respect shown by some falls on both the shoulders of the recruiter and the job seeker.

Recruitment, Respect & Job Seekers
From the job seekers side, it starts with an advertiser posting a job ad, with those that apply assuming that the ad is current and ‘real’.  Wasting people’s time with vague job ads where the advertiser may be simply fishing, looking to reverse market candidates into businesses, looking to build up the number of resumes in their databases, or maybe going through the advertising process as a part of protocol (even though someone has already been marked for the job) , shows a distinct lack of respect for the job seeker’s time. Read more

New jobs website connects the unemployed with small business

At a time when Australia’s unemployment rate sits at 5.4%, a new website for out-of-work Australians has hit the internet. JobsToDo.com.au is a free service that delivers work opportunities for the unemployed and offers cash-strapped consumers the chance to dictate the price they can pay for work they need done.

The country’s jobless rate is high at a time when job ads are down 55% since this time last year*. Skilled workers who find themselves unemployed face the reality of wanting to work but unable to find jobs, plus we see many small businesses straining to find enough work to survive. JobsToDo.com.au is a focused channel to source new business by bringing the work to service providers and filling up their work weeks again.

“Many small businesses have to reduce costs and expensive advertising is one such area that can be rationalised with this free website,” said Jobs To Do Managing Director, Kevin Sherman. Read more

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