Applying for a job of your dreams? Make sure to read this!

These are not your regular times that we live in today. And yet it is not the time to put your career on hold!

Many would even argue that these days may actually be the best ones for a career move – competition may have slightly decreased – not everybody would risk moving now. Of course, this is true for some industries more than others.

Having said that – it is especially important, now, more than ever, to invest time and effort in preparation.

Alexandrina Trofim and I have put together a few recommendations for those who are seeking new adventures!

Start with the basics

How does your CV look like? Do you have one standard CV that is supposed to “fit all” potential roles you are interested in? Have you updated your resume with the new skills that you have acquired last year?

Here are some recommendations on how to up your game on CV:

1. Make sure to tailor your CV to the role you are applying for.

Read the job description and review what are the required skills and capabilities. Make sure that you showcase your skills and experience appropriately to align to what the role is looking for. It is important that you represent these in your CV, make sure you use buzzwords that are used in the job description - provided you actually do have those experiences and skills of course!

Try to avoid assumptions and do not think for a hiring manager – think like a hiring manager. Sometimes things that you know or have had experience with, may seem to come “by default” with the role/position, or with the industry that you work in. It may seem that putting those in your CV is kind of like stating the obvious. It is not. Highlight those most important skills and experiences - help yourself to stand out to recruiters and hiring managers while they are scanning through your profile. You want them to understand that you are the one and only candidate they have always been looking for!

1. Update your LinkedIn profile, having similar principles in mind.

Just as you use LinkedIn to look at the hiring managers’ profile, so to do Hiring Managers, even when they have your most comprehensive CV in front of them. This is because they may look at how connected you are, if you have any connections in common, how active you are on the network, what groups you are part of and most importantly do you have all your relevant information on your profile? It is therefore extremely important that the information on LinkedIn matches your CV and your profile is fully completed i.e. your career summary is up to date - and is it showcasing your brand. This is your digital representation of yourself and should be taken seriously.

Now, imagine you have applied for the dream job, submitted your perfectly tailored, detailed yet concise CV, and received an interview invitation. This is exciting!!

Here are a few things to remember while preparing for an interview:

1. Because of the impact of Covid globally, interviews are now mostly virtual. It is therefore even more important to be prepared, articulate, have answers really thought through, as you cannot fully rely on the non-verbal part of communication while on camera. Make sure to ask for special accommodation if required in advance (such as a sign language interpreter, a reader for visually impaired or other).
2. Do your homework on the role itself – check the job description again, mark those aspects of it that are not entirely clear to you and make sure to ask clarifying questions in the interview. Try searching for current employees with the same role name on LinkedIn and gather more insights into potential career paths and details about what they do in their roles that may not be in the job description. Look to see, do you maybe have connections in common? Can you ask for an introduction or informal chat to help you prepare?
3. Make sure to be on top of the recent news about the company, latest acquisitions, product launches, official press-releases etc. And most importantly why do you want to join the company.
4. When you receive an invitation to an interview – most likely you will have the names of interviewers on the invitation. Make sure to check their LinkedIn profiles – do you have common connections? Did you go to the same university? Have you lived in the same town/worked in the same countries/have similar hobbies or are passionate about similar charities or volunteering activities? Or maybe you used to work for the same company or industry before? I have seen so many time interviewers being disappointed when candidates did not use this opportunity to make a personal connection, and how doing this can have a huge impact on the interviewer or potential hiring manager. Think about the interview as an opportunity to build a rapport with the hiring manager.
5.  Demonstrate a growth mindset and learn-it-all approach. Think about examples that would illustrate your persistence in the face of setbacks, your desire to learn, your approach to failure, how you grew from it, what actions you would have done differently and how essential it is to mastery.
6. Research the company’s core competencies and prepare cases that you would talk the interviewer through, to demonstrate a certain competency. Use STARL model to frame you answers and examples: By using Situation, Task, Action, Result and Learning, (where Learning is the most important part!) you will demonstrate your ability to showcase you experience concisely and with specific reference to the question you are being asked about.
7. Work with the recruiter to help you prepare. Always make sure to ask for a quick call to discuss the interview goals, insights about the interviewer that are available, advice on how to prepare. Recruiter is your friend!

After the interview

Step that is, in most cases, forgotten, ignored, disregarded, while it is an incredibly powerful thing to do: a “thank you” email!

Make sure you follow up with the interviewers and recruitment team, with a thank you note. Expressing your gratitude for the time invested by all parties, for all the help and learnings that you gained during the process, for insights, for interesting discussion during the interview – immediately this makes you stand out from most of other candidates.

How you react to rejection is a big deal

Interviews do not always go as planned and we do not always get the result that we wanted. This is not always about how you preformed; I have seen plenty of candidates who were a ‘hire’ but someone else had one other attribute that meant they were the successful one. The way you approach rejection makes a tremendous difference. Looking at rejection as a great learning opportunity, asking for detailed feedback with a learner mindset, to help you to learn and develop. By approaching it this way, rather than confronting the feedback and filing it as an “incorrect” assessment, this shows how you would react in other circumstances. Remember, just because you didn’t get this role doesn’t mean you won’t get a future role with the company. By saying “thank you” for the feedback and making sure you have a proper closing call – you may actually be opening doors to other roles for yourself in the same company in a very short period of time! Hiring managers and recruiters do make a note of candidates who demonstrate a great deal of growth mindset when being rejected.

To finish this with a nice quote, we thought this one would be the most appropriate:

“You do not hire for skills; you hire for attitude. You can always teach skills.”

-        Simon Sinek