Hey Jow Forums
I work for a recruitment consulting firm that hires mostly for white collar companies of all sizes. I review CVs and cover letters, interview candidates, speak with business owners and managers about what they want in a candidate, and know quite a bit about hiring in general.
Willing to answer your /jobhunting/ questions.
Can you get me a job?
How much does height and social awkwardness matter when finding a summer job?
Not unless you pass my interview stage.
I wouldn't care if you were a midget. The company does well when we put competent people in the role's we've been given to fill, so I'm very careful to judge people on what comes out of their mouths vs how they look.
Awkwardness is another matter entirely. Unless I'm speaking to some executive in his 40s, most people tend to present as being a little nervous. I think better of those who get over it more quickly than I do of those who continue to be nervous, but I also try not to count it against anyone because nerves don't mean you won't do a good job in the long run. However, if you're truly awkward, can't formulate a cohesive answer to a question, can't look me in the eye, have a limp handshake, I will draw a red line through your name before you've even closed the door.
Any way to fix that? I have a decent handshake but I can't talk for shit when it comes to basic questions.
Prepare some answers to common questions. Just google for them and look through the top results, they're pretty accurate.
I would suggest that you don't write out a full answer or anything, but instead make a few notes on what you'd like to cover when answering that question and then speak about those points organically when you get to them. Obviously you can't prepare for every question and some of the ones you do won't come up, but having put some thought into your answers in advance can help you if, say, a similar question comes up where you can use a partial answer to help structure what you want to say.
Try to remind yourself not to be intimidated. I know that people are apprehensive when they meet me and I'm sympathetic about it, so I'll give you a lot of slack if I think it's just nerves. In fact I would say that, barring dudes who are like 40 and really established in their professions, people who come in totally unperturbed by the situation actually make me wary. Those are the types of people who are very good at telling you what you want to hear, and I'm not necessarily looking for someone to say exactly what I want to hear.
More than anything I want to hear answers that show some level of consideration, and I want them to be formulated in an intelligent manner. I want the answer to be the truth as you see it and not the truth as you think I want you to see it.
I am waiting on hearing back on a job i applied for about a week ago. I called up to find out about the vaccancy on the first place. It's been a week and i expect they are looking for someone to start soon. The role was posted the day I applied.
Would it be reasonable to put in a call to ask how the recruitment process is progressing. i just want to know if i need to start putting in more applications.
You should always put in more applications. Applying to one place at a time is a waste of energy. I live in a fairly major city, and for an entry or mid level white collar job I get at least 20 applicants in the best case scenario. I would choose probably 5 of them to interview with the view of sending 2 or 3 to the client for a final interview. If a company is doing their own hiring and gets those 20 applications, it means you have about a 15% chance of getting an interview, and then a 33% chance of getting the job. That adds up to a 5% chance that you get any given job you've applied for, and even then we're assuming you're equally as qualified as all the other candidates, which will rarely be the case.
To answer your question though, no I don't want to hear from you chasing up about the job if I haven't interviewed you, especially not after a single week.
Our normal timeline for hiring goes like this:
>job is posted for between two weeks and four weeks (two weeks is more normal though)
>applications come in during those two weeks
>toward the middle of the second week I begin to shortlist with the knowledge that the longer it has been since the ad was posted the fewer applications I will receive, but also with room in my pile to add any good applicants that show up after I've already begun this process
>I make my interview callbacks some time at the end of the second week, setting people up to come in usually in the following week, though I can be flexible if the client isn't desperate and the applicant really can't make it or is very impressive
>I interview
>I have more or less made my decision after all the interviews are done but there is always people who need to be apprised of the situation
>I send off my top 2 or 3 recs to the client who gives me the go ahead to set up final interviews or not
Takes about 3-4 weeks from when I first post an ad to when someone is receiving an offer and I don't want a million phone calls before then.
I don't know why I did math like that. 1/20 is 1/20 no matter how many people get to the interview stage. ~35 applicants for a decent job is what I'd expect, more for popular brands/companies or those with better pay packages on offer.
Under Obama it would have been a case for the SEC, just saying.
ok thanks, I will hold fire on the phone call.
I guess I am a bit peeved not to have been invited to interview yet is all.. I also had high hopes for this role as their office is v. near where I am based ha.
Basically, by the time this position starts I will have a masters qualification in the relevant field AND I have accepted a fairly prestigious white-collar job (in the same field) due to start in 2 years time. I thought this would make me like 'gold dust' to recruiters but the phone has not been ringing for me (...yet)
Your cover letter is probably not as great as you think, or your resume (less important, since graduates don't really have much to show off in most cases). If it's within your skill set I would strongly recommend drawing up a resume that doesn't just use one of the Word templates as a base. I'm not suggesting you do anything too flashy, unless you're working in a design field maybe, but something that is obviously not from the same 5 templates that everyone else uses will catch my eye. Also don't bother too much with colours. I print almost exclusively in black and white unless I fuck up and send it to the wrong printer. Having some small splashes of colour will get my attention on the screen but don't go overboard.
Make sure your cover letter isn't shit. Replace any "To whom it may concern" with "Dear sir or Madam" 1.5 pages long is the sweet spot, business formal language, use full sentences to tell me about your skills and any specific achievements which are relevant to the job. If you've got space feel free to address any shortcomings you have.
Don't discount the fact that your future job offer might be hurting you. A lot of clients are looking for a longer term prospect. When you say you've got somewhere else to be in a couple of years the client will hear that your maximum stay with them will be ~18 months when they were hoping to find someone who'd work for them for 3+ years. Not applicable to every job in every industry obviously, but it might not be helping you. I certainly wouldn't necessarily think of you as gold dust just because you had an offer already. We're not like women fighting over chad, if you've got a better offer then I'm not going to try and stop you, you know?
Don't get pissed off if you don't even get a call back. Even I know that feel but it's a waste of energy to behave like you are top shit because not only does it look like arrogance from the outside it will make you feel shit every time you get turned down.
sure, thanks for the response. The job was CV only application, it is a pretty entry level thing. I see what you mean though.
And yeah in my initial call with the Co's recruiter he said 'oh, we might be looking at someone to stay with us for longer than 24months'
That's fine, whatever, but from my experience people rarely stay longer than a year or so in this type of position... anyway fingers crossed they call sometime in this second week.
Hi OP,
What advice can you give me if I am trying to switch from physics to IT? To be more specific, at the end of the year I will have a masters degree in applied physics, with quite some programming included in the curriculum. How can I make myself stand out if it is most likely that my programming skills are bleak compared to people coming directly from computer science?
You're right. 20somethings tend to stay in jobs for shorter periods and it's often considered an indicator of ambition if someone has that "if you don't promote me after a year I'll go somewhere else" attitude. Personally I don't like those people because they fall into the category I mentioned above of being good at saying what other people want to hear. I am not the only recruiter here who holds it against a person if they have never stayed 2 years in a job. Once you've stayed 2 years I'll know that you can commit and be loyal, which are pretty highly prized as far as my industry is concerned, but if all your work history is 12-18 months before you moved on I'm going to assume that's how long you'll stay at the job you're applying for and act accordingly depending on what the client wants.
If the recruiter said that to you then you're not going to get the job, and probably not an interview unless you really stand out from the other applicants. Even in-house HR teams get their candidate requirements from on high and although we get leeway, some stuff is more negotiable than other stuff.
I don't think I've ever hired for a really technical programming job, but the stuff I do have experience in is always pretty rigid about what they want in technical skills. Obviously I personally have no way of knowing whether a candidate is any good or not except by looking at their formal training and from which institution (pro tip: I'm not going to waste time checking your claim, 90% of white collar workers have some kind of degree and 99.99% of the time it's legit).
Otherwise I honestly don't know how you will fare. In industries where there is wiggle room between "I can't do that" and "I can do that" as long as I feel a candidate is intelligent then I won't have any issue in assuming that they can handle themselves well enough to learn a skill on the job. In development jobs? I have no idea. They're often looking for proficiency in certain coding languages or styles so I guess as long as you make claim to being able to do those you'd be fine, but probably still at a disadvantage.
hmm ok :( hopefully I will stand out.
Put it this way.. to land the 'prestigious' role I had to write a bespoke application for the Co, do a video interview, go a half day assessment, then impress during an internship. Not to toot my own horn but this Co gets a few thousand apps for a few scores worth of positions.
Thanks for the quick reply. The best move for now will be to sharpen my skills while I still have time. Best of luck OP
Okay, don't take this the wrong way but you sound like you're tooting your own horn. Absolutely be proud of yourself for scoring a coveted job, but don't assume that means anything to any other companies. My clients don't want someone who can pass a hard interview, they want someone who gives them the impression that they can handle their shit, and you run the risk of making yourself seem arrogant by being overly invested in this future job. Congrats, but keep your ego in check when interviewing.
Looking for pro-tips on resumes and cover letters.
I want to work in web development, and I have some minor projects.
What do I need to do to hook the recruiter? How should I structure my resume and cover letter? What really hooks the recruiter?
Also, I landed an interview, and I thought it went well, but I didn't get the job. What's the most important in interviews?
Kind regards,
haha ok i will try to make sure my head fits through the door if i do get called to interview :)
>Looking for pro-tips on resumes and cover letters.
As above . There is a big design component in most web dev jobs, so you can stand to prove you've got design chops by making a resume from scratch. Don't use a Word template. Keep it understated and not too colourful, but make sure it's obviously not from the same template everyone else uses. Business formal. 1-2 pages each for the CV and cover letter. Your CV should include specifics of your achievements and your own projects, along with links to them, and it's totally okay to repeat some stuff on your cover letter.
>I want to work in web development, and I have some minor projects.
They all count at entry level. I know a little about web dev, enough that you should provide links so that I can browse and see what I think. Every good project you've completed is going to work in your favour when I go to the client.
>What do I need to do to hook the recruiter? How should I structure my resume and cover letter? What really hooks the recruiter?
Have a beginning middle and end to your letter. Introduce yourself and your chief qualifications briefly. Use full sentences. Tell me about your best skills and most relevant achievements. Do not send me a form letter. You can and should be reusing any good phrasing/paragraphs between cover letters, but if I get some generically addressed letter that doesn't seem to know who you're applying to/for you'll go straight in the bin without a second look.
For me the best hook is outstanding language and minimal mistakes. Recruiters are almost universally grammar nazis and you will get tossed in the bin for little mistakes.
Cont
>Also, I landed an interview, and I thought it went well, but I didn't get the job. What's the most important in interviews?
Don't sweat it. There is always some dickhead better than you at everything, and you were unlucky enough to come up against him at the interview stage.
Be engaging, come prepared with good answers and information about the company you're applying for, don't tell me any lies, don't be afraid to say "I don't know" as long as you can tell me how you'd find out, make sure to prepare at least one decent question about the company that isn't just some generic question like "how is the company structured hurr durr", smile, make jokes, a sense of humour is the great connector between all people and a recruiter who likes you is a recruiter who will give you preference.