Interviews

The Virtual Interview: What Hiring Managers Want to Hear from Candidates

Virtual Interviews have become more commonplace than ever during the early stages of the interview and hiring process. This is a way to efficiently screen through large candidate pools, as well as minimize interview expenses for out-of-town candidates. For some remote positions, an online or phone interview may be the only method.

Below are some ways candidates can ace their next telephone interview, according to Glassdoor:

How To "Kill It" at Your Next Job Interview

Lately I have dealt with some good candidates who end up interviewing badly. What gives? They have the smarts, education, technical/sales knowledge, and most importantly, the experience. Yet, they fail to connect with the hiring manager or convince the company that they should be their next hire. This can happen for a few reasons:

• Sometimes the person hasn’t interviewed in several years, and their interview style is a bit lackluster.
• In other cases, which I see more in junior people, the candidate is just plain nervous. (Nerves are totally normal because it shows that the person cares and is excited about the job opportunity.)

The hard truth is that not everyone who wants the job will get the job ... Here are some basic pointers for these two types of people I mentioned, or anyone really, so you can present your best self and land the job you’re truly excited for….

The Phone Interview: What Hiring Managers Want to Hear from Candidates

The phone interview has become more commonplace than ever during the early stages of the interview and hiring process. This is a way to efficiently screen through large candidate pools, as well as minimize interview expenses for out-of-town candidates. For some remote positions, a phone interview may be the only method.

Below are some ways candidates can ace their next telephone interview, according to Glassdoor:

The Simple Fact- NO room for Passive Hiring Processes

Here are some simple facts that can impact your company’s productivity and profits:

-The unemployment rate is at the lowest it has been in the last 17 years + There are 6.6 million job postings in USA = An unprecedented candidate-driven job market.

-Said candidates have multiple offers for employment, as well as a high rate of counteroffers from their current employers.

What does that mean to a hiring authority?...

The Dunning-Kruger Effect on Job Interviews

“The best lack all conviction, while the worst are filled with passionate intensity”-W.B. Yeats, The Second Coming

What W.B. Yeats intuited in 1919 is a phenomenon that psychologists would later name, ‘The Dunning-Kruger Effect’.  The ‘Dunning-Kruger Effect’ is a “cognitive bias wherein people of low ability have illusory superiority, mistakenly assessing their cognitive ability as greater than it is”. Conversely, people who are highly competent mistakenly assume that the tasks that are easy for them to perform are just as easy for others to perform, and typically do not self-assess themselves as highly competent. They recognize their weaknesses and focus on correcting them rather than blustering on about how good they are at this or that. 

Which Piece Are You?

Chess has always impressed me as a game that challenges two players to use all of their cognitive capabilities and outwit, outsmart, and out strategize their opponent.  I consider it to be a thinking person’s game, just like my job in staffing and recruiting, where skill, planning, strategy and some degree of gamesmanship are paramount.

“Exercise” Your Interview Skills!

Webster’s Dictionary (Excuse me? What’s that?... I meant Wikipedia), defines muscle atrophy as a decrease in the mass of muscle. Luckily, modern medicine has shown that moving around and getting active as soon as possible after a surgery or injury has big positive effects. Many of us, including myself, also know the positive outcomes of staying active by working out and/or going to the gym regularly. Although atrophy is not exactly what I am fighting at this point, it’s more “older” age, I realize the importance of keeping your muscles moving.

I Feel the Need, the Need for Speed

Tom Cruise said it back in 1986 when he was crazy cool, not just crazy (did anyone else watch the Scientology documentary “Going Clear”? Let’s just say it was “interesting”)… Fast forward to 2016. Hobson Associates just wrapped up their 43^rd fiscal year. Like a fine wine, we seem to get better with age. One way we got better this past year was our SPEED. 

Help Your Recruiters Help YOU!

Attention Executives and Talent professionals: I’m going to give you an inside view of how search firms look at your business, manage your searches and ways to improve the results you’re getting from recruiters.

The Numbers Don’t Lie

The performance based (contingent) search world is a numbers game. We recruiters have to manage a large pipeline of searches to generate the revenue needed. We do this knowing, for various reasons, we won’t necessarily fill all the job searches we take.

My Open Letter to Hiring Managers

Dear Hiring Manager-

I’m sure you’re aware that many large and mid-sized companies are growing rapidly,resulting in new positions being created in many departments, including HR/talent acquisition. As a result, some organizations are streamlining their processes by filtering everything through HR, making it much more challenging for me (the recruiter) to get you on the phone.