Elevator Pitch
One of my least favourite interview questions is, “tell me about yourself”. I don’t like it, so I don’t ask it. To me, it’s always felt like a ‘gotcha’ setup, because there are no parameters, there’s no direction. You could start by saying where and when you were born (almost certainly missing the recruiter’s meaning by at least a couple of decades) and technically you’d be answering the question.
And yet, you will be asked this question in an interview, if you haven’t already. So – to appease those people who (ugh) insist on asking it – what’s the right approach? The answer is: the elevator pitch. Read More
There are many ways a person might stand out from the crowd. Sometimes that’s a good thing. Depending on the way you choose to stand out, though, sometimes it’s not. When you’re a candidate competing for a job, your experience and qualifications are the things that should differentiate you from your competition. Not gimmicks.
I can be a broken record when it comes to cover letters, but if I am, it’s only because I want you to know where they fit into the hiring process – particularly at the screening stage. I will probably only read your cover letter if I’ve read your resume and already decided that I’m probably going to interview you.
New job regrets? Throughout my professional career, I’ve seen a great many people struggle with a recent job change, wanting to make an immediate U-turn. Candidates I’ve recruited and placed have called me in near-panic a few weeks afterwards, warning me that they were probably going to leave their new job. Several former employees have called me after leaving the organization I managed, asking whether their job was still open and whether they could come back. I’ve experienced it myself – feeling like a deer caught in headlights, asking myself, “Oh, no … what have I done?”
To a certain extent, a job search is a numbers game. Statistically speaking, the more applications you send out, the more likely that one of them will materialize into a job. This assumes, of course, that the applications are 
During a job search 
As if today’s job applicants didn’t have enough to worry about. You’ve got the quality of your 
After a big game – win or lose – a good coach always gathers the team together and talks about how they played. After each performance, a world-class musician reviews where they made mistakes, and practices those passages repeatedly before the next performance. I could go on, but you get the drift. We have to figure out what needs improvement, before we can improve it.
If you’re on the job market – whether you’re employed or not – responding to job postings is usually the starting point. And rightly so; to borrow sales terminology, these are the ‘hot leads’ of the job-seekers world. But if you’re stopping there, you’re missing out on a lot of potential opportunities. The way to tap into that opportunity is through networking. If you’re wondering why or how, read on.