Career Education - Free Online Tutorial

The information in this free Career Change tutorial is taken from “GetAhead in Winning at Interviews”. This accelerated learning course condenses a 2-day class-based course into a highly focused eBook & CD-Rom. It covers all aspects of changing your career, from analyzing your abilities against potential careers to negotiating the best possible employment package.
 

Free Career Education Tutorial

Career Education – Your Resume

Your Resume is a very important document; with it rest your hopes for the next step up the career ladder, a better position, more money, new challenges, etc. Your Resume therefore has to represent the best you have to offer – it will either open the door for you, or it won’t. A well written Resume is effectively your pass to enter the job race. At the Resume stage of selection the recruiter is looking for reasons to REJECT an applicant. They are likely to receive scores, if not hundreds, of applications for the position on offer. In this preliminary stage of selection their maxim is ‘when in doubt throw it out’.

The good news (for you) is that most people do not know how to write a Resume and only spend a short time preparing one. Of course your Resume can continue to work in your favour even after it has obtained an interview for you.

It can also help you at an interview by carefully focusing the interviewer's mind on your good points and on your achievements. Once you have left the interview it will continue to work in your favour as the interviewer will probably reread it before making a decision, either on who should be invited to the second interview stage or who the job should be offered to.

When it comes to salary negotiations a good Resume can also help. If your CV conveys your full worth you are likely to get a higher salary offer than you might have done with a poorer CV.

The life of corporate and graduate recruiters is dull enough already without everyone’s Resume looking identical. So, whilst you will see a lot of very good advice on how to write a great Resume it is important to make yours unique and special. Advice and guidelines on Resume writing are just that – very useful indeed, but NOT prescriptive.

There are no golden rules about this but following the advice will greatly improve your chances of being offered an interview, and ultimately securing the job offer.

The message that you must take on board is ‘Prepare your Resume in a professional manner’ It is quite probably the most important document you will ever write.

Career Education – Resume Design

If your Resume does not attract the reader's attention in the first 20 seconds of reading then your chances of obtaining an interview are greatly reduced. An employer may have a hundred or more Resume’s to look through and probably only a couple of hours in which to make their selection. So put your work experience at the start of your Resume, not personal or educational details; unless you have only just left education.

What an employer really wants to know is why they should invite you for an interview. For this reason a short summary of your capabilities and/or a list of your major achievements can often be a good idea. This should make an employer want to invite you for an interview - but please be careful that you do not oversell yourself.

Career Education – Resume Layout
The visual layout of your Resume is very important. Even though the wording you use may be correct, if people cannot find the information they want quickly they will move on to someone else's. You should use plenty of 'white' space in your CV and appropriate headings and section breaks.

Always use a word-processor/DTP package. Never use a typewriter as you will look old fashioned and out of date. Use good quality A4 paper, preferably 100 gram for both your Resume and covering letter.

It is usually best to try and keep your Resume to two pages of A4, unless someone specifically asks you for a longer Resume. If you cannot keep your Resume to this length then you probably have not understood an employer's requirements. Employers do not want to know your whole life history - just enough to decide whether they should interview you or not.

If your Resume is not well organized then the reader will find it hard to follow and will not be able to build up a picture of you quickly. Remember the reader will not spend very long looking at your Resume - so if they cannot find what they want they will not bother to read any further.

Career Education – Resume Written Words
Long paragraphs and sentences make it difficult to read your Resume quickly. Try to keep your sentences short and punchy and use bullet points to break up the text under section headings.

A lot of people do not include enough details about their previous jobs and experience and an employer therefore does not have enough information. This will almost certainly lead to them rejecting your application. Remember, in this preliminary stage of selection their maxim is ‘when in doubt throw it out’.
You need to shout about your achievements. Your Resume is your sales document to an employer. If it does not tell an employer why they should employ you then it has failed. An employer will only want to employ you if they can see a benefit in it for themselves. So do tell them the benefits of employing you.

In general being too young or too old can be a real problem and a barrier to future advancement, or even to getting a job in the first place. There are a number of ways round this problem - but this depends very much on your individual circumstances and the industry/job you are applying for.

It is essential that the entire document contains no spelling mistakes. Your Resume should be carefully checked for such errors before you send it out to employers. Tiny errors in your Resume can detract from an otherwise good Resume and make you look lazy or careless - not the sort of qualities you want to portray to an employer. As you will probably be 'blind' to these errors you should get someone else to check your Resume for grammar and spelling errors..

Career Education – What to Include in Your Resume

You should gather together all of the information required below. You may not use all of this information in your Resume but it will provide you with useful reference material when it comes to preparing for interviews.

Personal Details
Education / Qualifications
Professional Qualifications
Training Courses
Work Experience
Major Achievements to Date
Other Relevant Experience
Interests & Hobbies
References
Summary
List your major skills, strengths, personal qualities and achievements. Be specific, for example: good team player, excellent written skills, versatile, able to motivate others, etc. If you are lacking in ideas, look at your staff appraisals or at your references.

Career Education – Answering Interview Questions

The heart of the interview is the question and answer session. If you are not careful you can rapidly find yourself on the defensive, trying to justify yourself in the face of tough questions rather than having the chance to 'sell' your benefits.

A well-trained interviewer will throw all sorts of odd and challenging questions at you in an attempt to assess your true suitability for the job.

They will often deliberately create stressful situations to see how you react. In fact, the tougher the questions, the better you're doing. Knowing how to answer them with the 'correct' type of answer is the key to success or failure.

The good news is that interviewers ask only three basic types of question:

Can you do the job?
Will you do the job?
Will you fit in?

Career Education – Can You Do the Job?
The first type of question is seeking to determine whether or not you are capable of doing the job. These questions will be about your skills, attitudes, knowledge and experience in short your track record. Typically about 60 per cent of a professional interviewers time will be spent assessing your abilities against those required by the position on offer.

You should be looking for any opportunity to impart information about your skills and abilities, backing them up with examples of what you have already achieved. The common types of question that you might face are:

What is your greatest strength?
If you've done your homework before the interview, you would have several strengths to choose from. The obvious choice would be the strength which best suits the demands of the job. This is one of the most common questions and represents a good opportunity to assert your career statement. How to answer this question is covered in detail in the study area titled Selling Yourself.

What skill have you acquired most recently?
Here the interviewer is seeking to establish that you are an interested, active lifelong learner and not somebody who has just attained a variety of disparate qualifications along the way. Try to avoid putting a timeframe on your answer unless you attended a course very recently and try to add details of how you have already applied the new skill in the workplace.

Can you work well under pressure?
This is a closed question and can be a sign of an untrained interviewer. Use the opportunity to give a comprehensive but brief answer focusing on several clear-cut examples showing your ability to cope under pressure.

Specific, job related questions
The interviewer may ask any number of questions that relate to your past experience and how this might influence your suitability for the current position. Here you will need to call on the work you did in analyzing your own career achievements, as explained earlier in the course. Using real examples and framing these in terms of a problem or challenge that you successfully addressed is the key to answering job related questions.

Career Education – Will You Do the Job?
The second type of question is concerned with your personal disposition and approach to work. These questions are seeking to determine whether you are hard working, motivated and committed; in short are you the kind of person who will do more than just what is in the job contract.

You should be looking for any opportunity to impart information that demonstrates what a positive and committed employee you have been. In preparing for the interview, decide which areas of your work to date can be used to illustrate your commitment and motivation. The common types of question that you might face are:

What was it like working for your previous employer?
Here, you could choose to answer the question in terms of their product development, management style, use of new technology or any number of other aspects.

However, by taking the initiative and answering it in terms of what the job required of you and how you met these demands, emphasizing your flexibility, long hours working when required, etc, you will begin to address the real issue behind the question. Once again, stay alert and look for opportunities to sell your benefits.

Have you done the best work you are capable of?
This is a deliberately tricky question. If you say yes, the interviewer may determine that you have peaked, and that it is downhill from here. However, saying no invites the question of why not? Perhaps you haven’t been fully committed, or worse competent.

The best response is to recall some of the your top achievements to date, to answer in a way that implies an increasing performance trend. Follow this up by showing that you are looking forward to bigger challenges and even better achievements in the future.

How long will it be before you make a net contribution to our organization?
Unless the job is very mundane or routine, you cannot realistically make a real contribution until you have been through a significant learning curve. This learning curve is one that is recognized by employers and generally the higher the level of the position the more tolerant the organization will be about the time needed for this.

However, the upper limit for this is rarely more than 3 to 4 months and the longer the learning curve the more is expected from the performance following it. Think about the realistic bedding in time and what sort of contributions you might make during this period.

If you got this job, how long would you stay with us?
The best way to answer this question is to tailor your reply to fit the culture of the organization and your own career path. For example, if the organization is highly entrepreneurial then replying that you are looking for a retirement home will not play well.

However, if the culture is more paternal or family centered then indicating that you are considering your final job move may be very well received.

Some people think that implying that you will be happy to stay as long as you are developing new skills or facing new challenges is the best approach. The down side of this can be that it implies the organization is responsible for your nurturing, education and entertainment. Think carefully about using these type of explanations as you may give the impression that you may leave as soon as you are faced with a dull project.

Career Education – Will You Fit In?
In answering questions from the first two categories, you should be clearly demonstrating your abilities and motivation. However, the third basic question type is concerned with whether or not you will fit into the organization. Most employers are looking for staff who are not only capable of, and committed to, doing their job but who will fit the prevailing corporate culture and image. Here, the more senior the role, the more important fitting in becomes.

You should be looking for any opportunity to impart information that demonstrates how you would fit in. In particular areas to consider are:

How the organization manages people
How the organization devolves power
How people interrelate
How people are motivated
How the organization competes in the marketplace

It is your research into the organization, as addressed earlier in the course, that will equip you to assess the organizational attitude to the fundamental issues that lie behind this type of question. An important point here is that if you find yourself at variance with your potential employers value system then you would probably be advised to look elsewhere. It is almost impossible to succeed in a culture that feels alien to you. The common types of question that you might face are:

How do you see yourself fitting into a new project team?
Interviewers will often seek reassurance that you can demonstrate a track record of fitting in when you have been repositioned in a working environment. You will need to illustrate times where you were placed in a new team or group. It doesn’t matter how long or short term these placements were, rather that you can show how you did fit in; how the group was not disrupted by your arrival and that a clear improvement in overall performance resulted.

How will you be able to cope with a change in environment?
This sort of question is usually posed if you've spent a long time in one particular job. It sounds like a negative but can be turned into a positive especially if you're looking for a change, or a chance to develop. Avoid sounding negative about your current environment, whilst stressing the excitement you feel in seeking a new one.

How do you get to know and understand new work colleagues?
Show that you understand the process of fitting in to a new working environment and that you appreciate that the key to getting to know new colleagues is to listen. Show that you appreciate this overhead on your normal work duties and that you will invest your own time and efforts, for example in coffee and lunch breaks and perhaps in extra curricular activities. By demonstrating a knowledge of the processes involved and a willingness to commit to it, based on your past experiences, you will be creating a positive picture for the interviewer.

Where do you see yourself in five years time?
The obvious answer would be "part of the management team, or board of directors within this organization". This may not necessarily be true, but the interviewer needs to know that your intentions are to move up the career ladder within their organization. Be careful not to sound overly ambitious, as the interviewer may be your future boss. The safest option is to modestly express your desire to grow and advance within the organization. .

Career Education - eBook & CD-Rom

The information in this free Career Education tutorial is taken from “GetAhead in Winning at Interviews”. This accelerated learning course condenses a 2-day class-based course into a highly focused eBook & CD-Rom. It covers all aspects of professional interview conduct, from analyzing your abilities against the job requirements to negotiating the best possible employment package.