admin

We all do it. We get nervous during interviews, causing us to do things that are out of character. Those pesky little butterflies cause some strange responses. I've had people lie to me, breath heavy over the phone, ramble, launch (see a previous blog post on launching), be 45 minutes early, shake, make inappropriate jokes, change their natural speaking accent, and otherwise fail themselves during an interview. So here's the good news; most hiring managers are [...]

What You Really Need to Know About Key Word Matching I’ve worked with several applicant tracking systems, only one had keyword match, and it didn’t work very well. As a result, every application was read by human eyes. Even when I was getting over 500 applications a week. I’ll use the term “read” lightly. They were scanned (by human eyes) looking for a potential match. If that match wasn’t readily apparent within a few [...]

A while back I sat down with some of my college interns to talk about successful interviewing as they were getting ready to transition to graduation and continue their budding careers. One of the first questions they asked was “what are all the types of interviews. So far I have phone, skype, in person…” After 15+ years in recruiting, I see types of interviews completely different. They aren’t how the interview physically takes place, but [...]

3, 2, 1 and we have an un-successful launch! One of the things about me is that I have nicknames for the types of candidates I come across. I’d like to think I am as clever as a Seinfeld episode (“she’s a low talker”), I am sure I am not. But I digress. Most of the times, my nicknames are for positive attributes of candidates. However, when I refer to a “Launcher” it’s a negative [...]

You shouldn’t write a thank you note... Your traditional “thank you” note goes like this. Dear Ms. Applebee, Thank you for taking the time to meet with me today. I liked learning about your team. I am confident I can make an impact within your company. I look forward to hearing from you, Jake Barnum That is wasted real-estate, wasted time, and wasted money if you snail-mailed it. Here is a list of what [...]

A hated question by candidates, and a loved question by hiring managers. There is probably more information out there on how to answer this question, than any other information on interviews. Sadly, what most blogs and vlogs don’t talk about is why this question is important to hiring managers. I am not going to give my opinion on whether or not this question has merit, the fact is that people ask the question, and you [...]

The number one issue I see in candidates during an interview is their need to be politically correct. I don’t mean real politics, but their own internal head politics about needing to sound proper. The problem, is when a person focuses on being proper, they lose what makes them real. I don’t hire people based on their ability to say the right thing at the right time. I hire people because they prove they can [...]