gcapone, Author at Palladian Career Resources

Should You Script Your Answers to Interview Questions?

The simple answer is yes. Scripting the answers to questions ahead of time gives you the opportunity to think through the answers more thoroughly. You can work on your answers and try different things.

What Questions Should I Prepare For?

When I work with someone to improve their interviewing, I usually pick out questions that are most likely to be asked in the types of interviews they will have. I also try to ask questions that get to the heart of their weaknesses. I don’t do this to be mean; I just want them prepared for these questions.

Hopefully, you have an idea of the types of interviews you can expect in your field. If you don’t, work on a wide range of questions, or research the industry until you have a better idea.

Then, script as many questions as you can.

But If I Write My Answers Out, Won’t It Sound Canned?

That’s true only if you try to memorize the answers. I don’t recommend memorizing answers. This can make it very difficult to adapt to unforeseen questions. The reason you want to script your answers is to get an idea of what works and what doesn’t.

Have you ever been talking with someone and ended up on a tangent that went in a direction you really wish you had avoided? I know I have. Having an idea of what the concepts you want to emphasize can help keep you on track.

Early in my career, I made a lot of mistakes interviewing. I can remember getting a lot of the same questions over and over. Every now and then, I would try answering a different way. Usually, this didn’t work out well, and I would know as I was finishing the answer “that was a mistake – better not use that story again.”

It’s a lot better to practice when it doesn’t count, instead of waiting to experiment in an important interview.

Should I Write Out The Entire Answer?

For the few answers you script, yes. Get a few answers on paper and get comfortable with preparing this way. Then, practice by answering out load and rehearse a lot of questions. Pay attention to where you get hung up. Revise it and keep reading it until it’s smooth.

When you get into the interview, just relax and create your answers as you go. Don’t worry about remembering any of the answers that you wrote. You will naturally develop answers that are similar to your practice. Even though you will never use any of the answers you scripted verbatim in an interview, you will remember the practice and, you will be more confident.

How To Practice

Once you have rehearsed a bit, find someone to do a practice interview with you. The interviewer should be someone you respect, and ideally, someone you don’t know very well. You want to simulate a real interview as much as possible. Unfortunately, a close friend can’t do this for you. A friend or family member won’t be able to create the same level of tension that exists in most interviews. The best interviewer for a practice interview will also have a lot of experience interviewing and be able to critique you relative to other job seekers.

If you can’t find someone that can help you prepare, get a practice interview from an interview coach. If you do this, you will not only be less likely to make a mistake in an interview, but you will also be more comfortable and confident with your interviewing.

Explaining Your Progression on Your Resume

Most resumes don’t explain how the job seeker made their career changes. They just list the jobs they have held, in reverse chronological order. This is fine for the vast majority of people. Most people have a career path that makes sense.

I want to share with you a resume that doesn’t make sense. The individual that sent me this resume had this progression: graduated with a bachelor’s degree, worked as a production coordinator in mfg, was promoted to production planning manager, was hired as national sales manager at another company and recently became unemployed.

This individual was looking for a sales management position and had some great accomplishments on their resume. Here are a few (I took out the numbers for confidentiality – the sales growth listed is very impressive):

Increased nationwide revenues from $# million to $# million per month in year one and to $# million per month in year 2 through product launches, new market penetration, and customer acquisitions.
Negotiated a multi-million-dollar contract with *** Corp., boosting revenue $# million dollar per month.
Raised <product> sales 40% by implementing marketing campaign for <brand name>, integrating television, radio, and field events.

Just reading that, I would say that this is someone I want leading a sales team. The problem is their progression. Let me explain.

I almost never see a person make a career move that changes their company, promotes them to a higher level and completely changes the type of work. It just doesn’t happen. I’ve seen people get promotions into a different field within the same company. I’ve seen people take lateral positions with another company in a different field. It’s just very rare to get promoted into a higher level role where you have no expereince. So, how did this person do it?

The other question is, why are they unemployed if they were so successful in leading sales for the company – more than doubling sales in two years.

There may be great reasons for this and this person may be a superstar sales manager. Unfortunately, with the information they’ve provided, I have a lot of doubt.

To address this, I would explain the transitions in a cover letter. This person has a well written cover letter, focusing on accomplishments. It didn’t say anything about how they got into sales or why they’re out of work. Another option would be to put an executive summary at the top of the resume that includes this information. I prefer the cover letter option, but both would work.

When you look at your resume, make sure it looks believable. That doesn’t mean you water down your best accomplishments – just that you should explain things that you know are going to raise really big questions. For many job seekers, their progression makes a lot of sense. In that case, explaining their transition probably won’t add any value.

7 Things You Need To Do Before Your Next Interview

When you go to an interview, good preparation is essential. It will help your confidence level, avoid getting surprised by unexpected questions and allow you to provide the best presentation of your skills, abilities and potential.

There are a ton of things you should do to get ready for an interview – so many, it’s almost overwhelming. I like to keep things simple, so I broke it down to the seven most important steps. If you cover these, you’ll be in better shape than most. Don’t stop here – the more you prepare, the better, but make sure you hit these:

1. Why should the company hire you?

This question is huge and something many job seekers struggle to answer. You need to be able to state, clearly and concisely, what value you bring to the company and to the specific manager you would work for. Giving a compelling reason why you should be hired will set you apart. One of the reasons people struggle with this question, is their reluctance to brag. You shouldn’t be arrogant, but you need to be confident in the value you will provide and be able to talk about it.

2. What is the company looking for?

You need to know what the company and hiring manager are seeking. This will help you tailor your answer to their specific needs. If they need someone extremely good at managing projects, you want to emphasize your attention to detail, organizational skills, abilities to coordinate people and overall project management skills. If you don’t know this is important, you may skip discussing it entirely – and hurt your chances of being hired. To research this, study the job description and the job descriptions of similar positions. They will clue you in to the key priorites.

3. What’s new at the company?

You need to do your homework. At the least, check out the company’s website and read the press releases and other news they have published. After that, Google the company – I like to search under both Google News and Blogs to find out what people are writing about them. You need to have good questions to ask at the end of each interview. Ask about something major going on at the company that will impact the position you are interviewing for. This will show that you did your homework and help you understand the company better. It’s amazing how many job seekers skip this basic step.

4. What are the company’s mission statement and goals?

Most companies will publish their mission statement and corporate goals on their website. Read these and get a feel for what’s important to the company. This can give you an idea of the culture of the company and their values. If you really like what you hear (the company’s values are probably consistent with yours) this can make a great question in the interview – “I saw in your mission statement that doing XYZ is really important to the company. I value that a lot and was really impressed. Can you tell how well the company is at following and achieving this mission?”

5. What are three things you have done successfully in your career that will help the company?

You need to be able to talk about your accomplishments. Some accomplishments will be directly relevant to the company, others will just show your talent and track record of success. Make sure you have at least three accomplishments, that you can discuss in detail, that are directly related to the job you are pursuing.

6. Why is this position a good career move for you?

Companies want to hire people that will stay. Turnover is expensive and minimizing turnover is a big priority. As a result, it’s important for the hiring manager to see that the position is a good career move for you. Be able to discuss why you want to leave your current job (or why you have already left). Have a clear explanation of what you are looking for and why this motivates you. This is where a lot of job seekers get tripped up with "being overqualified.” If the hiring manager thinks you are only considering this job because you need a job right now, they may assume you will continue looking from the day you start. This is a bad situation for them if it’s true. Know why this is a good job and why you would want to stay long term and be able to talk about it.

7. Do you have all the details you need for the day of the interview?

There is a bunch of basic information you need to have ready before you interview. Directions to the location, the time of the interview and who to ask for when you get there, are some of the basics. Make sure you have this information written down at least a day ahead of the interview. On the day of the interview, you want to focus entirely on interviewing confidently. Getting distracted and stressed out because you realize you forgot to MapQuest the location, right before you’re walking out the door, won’t help. Take care of these tasks ahead of time and your interview will go more smoothly.

If you work on all seven of these questions, you will be much better prepared and more confident at your interview.

Incomplete Education

There are a lot of talented job seekers that have not completed a Bachelor’s Degree. Many have started and are working towards their degree, but aren’t finished. How you present this on your resume can make a big difference in how you are perceived.

If you are working full time and trying to complete a degree – you can’t finish quickly. A bachelor’s degree could take six to eight years going to school part time. During this time, your effort and progress can help you job search.

List your progress towards the degree. You will have to provide a little more detail than normal, but it’s worth it. In addition to the school, degree and major you are pursuing, list the number of courses you have completed (or credit hours) and the number you need to complete your degree. You can also list specific courses you’ve finished, if they relate directly to your field.

If you have a schedule for when you expect to finish your degree, you can list that date as a projected graduation date.

All of this can help the impression you make. The discipline, commitment and motivation that are required to pursue and complete a degree while working full time are impressive and will make a very positive impression on many hiring managers.

Some companies that require a Bachelor’s degree may consider a candidate as meeting this requirement if they are close to completing the degree – say 12 to 18 months or less to finish.

Let’s look at how a job seeker presented their education on a resume I read today:

EDUCATION

BA-in-progress. University of <school name>, City, ST
Major: Law and Society (pre-Law), #.## GPA, ## units completed.

This is a pretty good presentation. It gives the degree and major, the school, location, GPA and progress completed. The one thing that’s missing is some indication of how close this individual is to finishing. The units completed helps, but I don’t know what this school considers a unit – it could be the same as credit hours or the number of classes completed. I also don’t know what the requirements to graduate are – they’re probably in the neighborhood of 36 classes, but there’s no way to know from this. A little more detail in this area would really help.

One more thing to consider, if you are working towards your degree and highlight that your graduation is forthcoming, an employer may expect you to finish. This is especially the case if the employer requires a degree and hires you without one. If you decide not to pursue your degree after getting hired, this could impact your position in the company. I’ve even heard of companies making the completion of the degree a condition of continued employment.

Planning Isn’t an Accomplishment

I read a resume today that reminded me of something I see from time to time on resumes from sales and marketing people.

The resume had some very good accomplishments and was pretty good overall. What caught my eye was one bullet that I don’t think served any purpose other than to take up space.

Spearheaded the development of a strategic sales plan, which projected sales in excess of $## million over a #-year time frame.

I see bullets like this on resumes a fair bit – a statement of developing a sales plan with high projected sales.

Developing plans in any business is important and sales plans are some of the most important. The problem with the bullet is that it doesn’t really say anything. It doesn’t say if the sales plan was approved and acted upon. It doesn’t say if the target was achieved. It doesn’t even say if it was a realistic projection.

I’m a big fan of specific accomplishments, but a bullet saying someone planned on succeeding doesn’t tell me anything – just that the job seeker arrived at a sales figure that they planned to achieve in a few years.

With something like this on your resume, you have two choices – expand or delete.

Expand: You can write a little more to change this from a waste of space to a really impactful bullet. You might have to combine other bullets to tell the full story. Here’s an example.

Spearheaded the development of a strategic sales plan projecting sales in excess of $## million over a # year time frame. Enacted this plan and led a team of ## sales associates. After # years, the team was $# million ahead of the projections.

Now, that’s someone on my team. They built a good plan. Managed the execution of the plan and exceeded their objectives.

Delete: The other option is to delete the bullet entirely. The resume that I got the bullet from had some good accomplishments. It didn’t need anything extra. Deleting this bullet would have improved the overall resume by making it more concise and easier to read.

It’s important to prioritize what’s important. If something isn’t helping you on your resume, change it or get rid of it. Keep the information you absolutely need and add the accomplishments that make a strong case for hiring you.

Cool Resume Checker

I hope everyone had a great Labor Day!

I’ve been thinking about something for a long time and finally got around to exploring it more fully this weekend. It’s a tool that can help you check your resume in a completely different way – I think you’ll find it helpful in giving you a different perspective on your resume.

The tool I’ve been interested in is Wordle (www.wordle.net). It’s a free website and allows you to create word clouds. If you’re not familiar with the term “word clouds” – don’t worry. They’re pretty simple.

The idea is to create an image from the word frequency in a piece of text. Every word is listed once in the image and the frequency determines the size of the word.

The advantage of this for job seekers is to see what words are emphasized on their resume. This has an obvious benefit for search results in resume databases and ensuring your keywords are prominent – but this is only a secondary benefit.

What is really important is the impression your resume creates. The words you use and their frequency can affect this. Since were talking about an imaging tool, we need to take a look at an image.

Below is a word cloud created from a job seeker’s resume (all references to the job seeker’s name, company and location were deleted before creating the image). The resume is from a transitioning senior military officer.

What is most prominent here? Here are the top 10:

Support ~ Logistics ~ Program ~ Provided ~ Requirements ~ Command ~ Army

From this list, it’s pretty clear the individual works in a field that does project or program management. Beyond that, there is only one verbs – provided. This is far from impressive. You have to look hard to find action verbs that demonstrate accomplishments.

Overall, the word cloud is pretty bland – a lot of detail of responsibilities and not much substance. What’s really interesting is that the resume has the same problem.

One final note… the job seeker whose resume I used above is actually a very strong candidate. Their track record is excellent with a consistent pattern of success and achievement. Unfortunately, the resume they sent me and are using for their job search does a terrible job presenting their background.

Keyword Summaries on Resumes

If you are planning on posting your resume on the internet or applying to large corporate sites, it’s important to include keywords in your resume. It will be tough to be found if your resume doesn’t appear in the search results. This is even more of a problem if the company uses database software to conduct the first screen of the resume.

It’s easy to put keywords into your resume. They should naturally occur within the text. To ensure you appear in every search that matches your background, you may want to include a keyword summary section.

Here’s what I saw on a resume today. The resume started with an executive summary, then had a keyword summary and then the work experience. The job seeker was from a non-technical executive position. The keywords listed included things like training management, organizational development and project management.

The order is the first place where the job seeker got it wrong. The keyword summary isn’t important enough to go at the top of the resume. Having the words "organizational development" at the top of a resume do nothing to differentiate the candidate.

The other big mistake was calling the section a keyword summary. The keyword summary is essentially a listing of skills. Call it a skills section and write it in a format that appeals to a human reader. The content will still help with search results and it won’t detract from the presentation.

What if you’re in a highly technical field? Then you may want to put your technical skills near the top of your resume. For technical roles, the technical skills can be the most important information on your resume. They are one of the primary selling points for you. For most job seekers though, the skills section is information that is important, but a much lower priority than the work experience and education.

Employment Dates on Your Resume

While reading a resume today, I was reminded of a mistake some job seekers make with their employment dates.

When listing the current position the job seeker is in, the convention is the starting date to “Present.” If the job seeker is unemployed, they should list the starting and ending date.

The mistake I have noticed occasionally is listing the current date as the end date for job seekers that are still employed. This sends a mistaken message.

Here are some examples and how I would interpret them:

	12/94 to 4/08	Unemployed since April 2008
	1/00 to Present	Currently employed in a position since Jan. 2000
	2003 to 2008	Unemployed for part of 2008

These are three formats I commonly see. I don’t like the years only format. I prefer to have months listed. If the months aren’t listed, I ask for them in the interview – usually in the first phone screen. If the job seeker had a gap in their employment they were trying to hide, it’s eventually going to come out. When the gap is uncovered, it usually makes a worse impression than if it had just been listed on the resume. Part of the reason for this is that the job seeker is probably uncomfortable talking about the gap, otherwise they wouldn’t have tried to cover it up. They would have been better off to have disclosed it up front. If the gap is a significant factor on the resume, talk about it in the cover letter.

Ok, so back to the format…listing the years with an ending year implies the job seeker is unemployed. Although rare, some make the mistake of doing this while still employed. If you are employed, go with the 2nd format, listing the starting date to "Present."

Highlighting Poor Computer Skills on a Resume

On a resume of a financial services professional, I saw something that surprised me. It shouted “poor computer skills” because of a single omission.

The resume was for a sales rep in a financial services firm – someone that sells investment and insurance products to individuals and businesses. This is a field requiring excellent sales skills along with good quantitative and technical skills.

The resume had all the stuff you would expect… state and NASD licenses, sales numbers, client numbers and other details relevant to the industry. At the bottom, the resume had a Technical Skills section. This is what caught my eye. Here’s what the section contained:

Microsoft Windows XP and Word
Act! Contact Management
Proprietary in-house systems

The reason this caught my eye is that it doesn’t list Excel. I find it hard to believe someone could work in the industry without some Excel experience – it’s a basic tool that is almost fundamental to financial analysis.

Now if the resume didn’t have a technical skills section, I wouldn’t have noticed. It was the overt statement that the job seeker knows Windows and Word, without mentioning Excel that made this odd.

There’s a chance that this individual knows Excel and just forgot to list it. I’d probably give them a call to check, given that the rest of the resume is pretty strong. This wouldn’t kill the job seeker’s chances but it would cause me to question their technical skills more than I ordinarily might, since I would assume the skill level is low.

There are situations where this could be a deal killer. If the hiring manager considers Excel expertise a key priority, the resume has a fair chance of being discarded.

Remember that if you are highlighting your skills, create a complete picture of the skills relevant to a position. Listing Excel experience isn’t what’s important, it’s listing software that is a primary tool within the industry.

How to Update Your Resume

It’s been a few years and you’ve decided to brush off your resume and start looking… what now?
Many job seekers will simply tack on their current job and send it out. The problem with this is that your old resume might not be the best sales pitch for your current situation.

When you update your resume, you should reassess every bit of it. Start by looking at the structure.

Review the Structure – Did you have a functional or chronological structure last time? Is this still the best choice? The reasons you chose the structure may not be relevant today. For example, if you used a functional structure, there’s a good chance you chose this structure because you were changing career fields and wanted to highlight your skills over your progression. Hopefully, you’ve gained some valuable experience making your progression more impressive. Switching to a chronological format would make sense in this situation.
Add New Info – Write a description of your current job, along with accomplishments you want to highlight. At this stage, don’t worry about where you put the information you write. You may put skills or accomplishments in an executive summary, a skills section, an accomplishments section or somewhere else. For now, just add it all to the work experience section.
Prioritize Information – Identify the most important information that you want to highlight. This is the content that best sells you. The priorities will change over time. Two factors will affect this – time and relevance. As time passes, a very significant aspect of your background may lose importance. For example, for a recent college graduate, their education is probably the most significant thing on their resume. Ten or twenty years later, it’s still important, but not the top priority. The relevance of something may also change. As your career progresses, your responsibilities will change and the skills and accomplishments that demonstrate your potential to succeed in new roles will change.
Review the Structure Again – In step 1, you assessed the overall structure. Now that we have the prioritization of information, it’s time to review the order of information. Should your work experience go at the top, or your education? Do you want to add/remove an executive summary? How are you going to present your accomplishments?
Add/Delete Information – Over time, you will want to trim down descriptions to make room for newer content. Review everything on your resume and ask the question, is this important enough to keep? This will help you avoid preserving information that has no importance to your current career. For example, one job seeker I assessed was a senior executive with 30 years of experience. At the bottom of his resume he listed several accomplishments from the start of his career, including being an Eagle Scout. 30 years ago, this was fine to include. Today, it is almost comical… in 30 years, I would hope you have accomplishments significant enough to displace this.
Customize your resume – It’s unlikely you are pursuing the same job today that you were seeking the last time you sent out your resume. Make sure you are highlighting the skills and experiences that are most relevant to your current search. Are the skills you deemphasized before, skills that you now want to bring to the forefront? For example, if you were in a technical role and have since moved into a leadership position, you may want to deemphasize your technical skills in favor of highlighting your leadership.

Follow these six steps, and you will be well ahead of the majority of job seekers that only do Step 2 – pasting their newest info to the top of the work experience section.