Though the statistics are nearly a decade old, chances are they still hold up: 96% of job seekers have difficulty sleeping the night before a job interview, according to a 2004 survey by financial recruitment firm Portfolio Payroll.
If you’re one of the 4%, you can stop reading now. However, if you’re part of the majority, here are some interview tips to help you relax before your big day.
In the article, “Four Tips to Help Job Seekers Overcome Job Interview Jitters,” writer and human resources consultant Deborah S. Hildebrand offers these suggestions to help nervous candidates calm down before their job interview:
Take deep breaths or clench and release your fists several times before, during, and after the interview to relieve stress.
Videotape yourself or watch yourself in a mirror during practice interviews.
Review your work history and know it cold so you are better equipped to answer interview questions, including those that recruiters ask the most.
Don’t rush the job interview by trying to avoid pauses in the conversation. They’re a normal part of any interview. Instead, take your time, consider your answer, and paraphrase to ensure you’ve understood the question.
Prepare a list of questions you want answered in advance, so you won’t leave anything out.
Additionally, we recommend these interview tips to help you prepare for that all-important, nerve-wracking job interview:
Know where you are going and what time you should arrive. Drive by the location in advance, if you have any concerns about finding it.
Have the name and job title of the person you are to meet.
Prepare what you will wear the night before. Make sure everything is clean and mended. No safety pins, wrinkled clothes, or scuffed-up shoes.
With everything taken care of in advance, you will be able to relax and do your best. No sense losing sleep or the job offer over a bad case of nerves.
And if you have any other questions or need further assistance with your IT job search, contact us.
The decision to pursue a consulting opportunity versus a permanent position is often accompanied by a host of questions and concerns. There are a number of factors to consider--including opportunities for career advancement and training, compensation, and career mobility and flexibility--and job seekers must weigh the pros and cons carefully based on their own particular needs and priorities.
As a firm with nearly 30 years of experience in putting people to work, we hope to share the benefit of our expertise to help you in this decision-making process. That is why we are especially pleased to offer our new white paper--"Weighing the Benefits of Consulting vs. a Permanent Position"--at no charge. We hope it will be a helpful resource when considering the next step on your career path.
You can download this white paper for free by clicking here.
At Comrise we are always looking for ways to assemble the latest research and information on contemporary issues facing the staffing industry and to share these resources with hiring managers and job seekers alike. This new white paper marks the first in a series that will appear at our new Comrise White Paper Resource Center. We hope you will check back frequently as we continue to add new resources.
And--as always--we hope you'll continue to visit our job board for the latest openings. There you can easily apply online or set up personalized email alerts to make sure the positions that best fit your skills and interests are delivered to your inbox as soon as they become available.
At Comrise, we look forward to being your partner—not just in a specific job search but in charting your desired career path!
It's all over the news. HSBC is planning on laying off 30,000 people worldwide. Merck has announced plans to lay off about 12,000. Whether due to actual budgetary issues or perceived threats imposed by changing economic climates, companies are shedding jobs left and right. And of course, all the while U.S. economic growth is still slow, the market is still recovering from the downturn, and all too many American workers are unemployed or undemployed.
While Comrise is always working to find appropriate jobs for qualified job-seekers, 42,000 newly laid-off job-seekers is too much even for us to handle all at once. Folks who find themselves in this unfortunate situation (or fear they may shortly) should remember to check out Comrise's Career Advice Center, full of handy (free!) tips for job-seekers. If it's been a long time since you've had to update your résumé, don't worry - you can find plenty of information and advice regarding résumés, interviewing, and the job search process in general. And for those who're still working currently, it never hurts to have your resume up-to-date.
We sincerely hope that everyone reading this never has to worry about "cost-cutting", "downsizing", "restructuring", or any of the like. But if you're looking for your next opportunity, voluntarily or otherwise, Comrise is here to help. Good hunting!
New Years is a time for looking back at whom we were in the past year, and forward to whom we’d like to be in the future. It’s a time for personal and professional resolutions for the new year. This goes not just for people but for companies, too. The question is, can we follow through?
As a professional, what will your career-oriented resolutions for this new year be? Will you propose that bold idea to your boss, even though it’s not been tried before? Will you be more active in seeking out that next promotion within the company? Will you take the leap to another position, even if there’s some risk involved? Will you proactively fix up your résumé so you’ll be ready when the right offer comes along? Or will you enroll in that course to keep your skills sharp and up-to-date?
As a company, we’re always working to better ourselves so we can better serve you, and New Years is no exception. Our pledge is to get even better at helping you achieve your goals. Our perpetual resolution is to improve our responsiveness and turnaround time, to help you realize your resolutions in this new year.
What are your resolutions for the new year, and how can we help you meet them? Let us know by leaving a comment!
The raging flood of unemployment is still drowning many Americans in a land of hopelessness. The unemployment rate still rests at 9.6% with what seems like no intention of improvement. Those of us who are lucky enough to have a job in this current economic state certainly have something to be grateful for. As for those individuals that are fighting for their chance to get their foot in the door, hang in there! The stresses of job hunting very easily takes over people’s mind as pressure from family and society builds up and a sense of failure begins to define them.
But wait…
We somehow have forgotten the bigger picture in life. Some may recall being in that ever-lasting 9.6% of people unemployed and waking up every morning with the thought of, “Oh my God, I am unemployed, what am I doing with my life?” But how about turning that anxiety into a sense of excitement of, “How can I use my free to time not only job search but also self search?” Many times we get caught up in the actions of searching for a job that we forget to think about our careers and life goals.
Here are some helpful tips in making the most of these tough employment times:
Define or redefine your career path to remind yourself why you became interested in it and how you can excel in it.
Create a target list in terms of what kind of position you are looking for and with what kind of company you would want to work for.
Put together a schedule of how many applicable positions you want to apply to and stick to it.
Equally important: define your life goals and make sure your career is in line with it.
Then, ask yourself if the job you are applying for will serve as a tool to help you move further OR if you are signing off to become a tool for your job.
Most importantly… just enjoy life! We often get caught up in the thoughts of being unemployed and the actions of applying to jobs that we forget to make the most of that time we have to ourselves.
I’ll leave you with this note: introspection is one of the most important steps of job hunting. “Your work is to discover your world and then will all your heart give yourself to it.” - Buddha
Having graduated from my student life and now entered the real world, I’ve come to notice the vast shortage of time in my new life. From making my own schedule to following a set work schedule, having to more carefully manage one’s time is a difficult change but one worth making. This week at Comrise, we Leadership in Training Associates seized onto our “Time Management Lunch and Learn Session.” We learned all the different ways in which we waste our time and how we can properly allocate the precious 24 hours we are given in one day. Randy Pausch, a well known and respected scholar who passed away in 2008 due to pancreatic cancer, didn’t leave without sharing his helpful insight in his last few months. General Manager Tom Liou is a big believer of Randy’s philosophy on efficiency and took this opportunity to expose the Leadership in Training Associates to the secrets of time management.
Here are a few highlights that I personally liked that can help one be more organized and time effective:
1- Create a to do list 2- Buy yourself a calendar or organizer 3- Ask yourself which tasks are more important rather than simply due sooner 4- Turn off your T.V. for a week and see how you can allocate your time differently 5- Always write stuff down, it takes up less of your brain power to have to go back and remember it again
These are a few simple yet effective ways to better manage your time and be more efficient in your day. Take a look at this link to get the full scope of Randy’s lecture on time management to see how you can better use your time and thus accomplish more of the important things in your life: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oTugjssqOT0.
Main valuable lesson for me: Time is the most valuable thing you can give to someone, because it is the one thing you’ll never get back. Use it wisely, whether you devote your time to yourself, your family, to work, or to the community - just never waste it!!
So you're probably wondering what an intrapreneur is? An Intrapraneur is someone who does entrepreneurial things within an existing corporate context. A Change Agent. A visionary who can also drive the change he/she sees. Someone who brings new possibilities into reality - not for their own purposes, but to build, grow or improve an existing company. In the staffing industry, constant innovation and intrapreneurship is definitely a mechanism that be put to greater use to help companies avoid stagnation and foster consistent future growth and success. Comrise does.
Most firms are able to create competitive advantages by finding new and better ways to compete in any given industry and staffing firms are no different. Agreed, that companies such as Comrise are not really creating a “product” that they can innovate, however, the fundamental values at the core of intrapreneurship can be undoubtedly applied to staffing firms and their employees to help improve performance and business processes– starting with inventive changes from the inside.
These are the top 4 characteristics that I believe make the foundation of the intrapreneur:
Creativity. This is one of the most important attributes of intrapreneurs. They don’t see what is but what could be. This translates to always having the “creativity” switch powered on. Such a mindset allows the intrapreneur to consistently superimpose a view of the future on the present.
Agility. Intrapreneurs must be willing and able to roll with the punches and be quick enough to find new directions and opportunities to make progress. It definitely helps to take the initiative and do some independent research in order to avoid being slowed down by learning curves, etc.
Persistence. It is not always important to hit a “home-run”, so to speak, in every discussion or presentation. I have realized that it is much more important to be bigger than any one day or any specific (crushing) decision. Listen to and accept feedback/criticism, and use it to improve yourself and ultimately, the company.
Commitment. Something I recall from one of Guy Kawasaki’s speeches, is that an intrapreneur must be infected with “a love for what the team is doing”. It is important to hire and retain people in a business that actually “get it” and “love it”.
Employees should continuously build their personal entrepreneurial toolkit by learning on and off the job. By taking on multiple, multi-functional, challenging jobs within the company and by learning the art of taking calculated risks (frequently), not only will the company benefit, but the employee may also benefit a great deal. After learning about the complacent attitude and conservative approach taken by many other staffing firms within the industry, I am glad to see Comrise is taking measures to embrace and foster this intrapreneurial thinking and subsequently use it to drive its ambitious growth strategy.
Personally speaking, the intrapreneurial drive is one of the keys to keeping me focused on innovation in the workplace. If I’m not doing something innovative, the intrapreneurial urge kicks in and starts driving me in that direction. For young and dynamic companies such as Comrise, mastering the art of intrapreneurship is very important, and we do realize that. If implemented the right way, it will undoubtedly help many staffing firms such as ours to establish sustained profitability and powerful market presence within an industry that has always been characterized as having a very wide-open playing field.
Let’s say you apply to an average of 70 jobs a week, which results in only three interviews and NO callbacks. You might then ask yourself, “What am I doing wrong?” In the country’s current economic state, the employment rate is sluggish, which becomes evident when job-seekers are putting in the effort to find employment but employers seem to be just not hiring. Having been on both sides of the coin, I can understand how frustrating this situation can be for a job-seeker. Speaking from a recruiter’s standpoint, we are simply looking for qualified individuals who are hard workers and who fit our clients’ requirements. Sounds simple, right?
Well, it turns out that despite your best efforts in looking for jobs, your chances of getting hired can in fact be slim. Yahoo News takes a further look into this issue and summarizes the top 5 reasons you may not get hired.
Here are some helpful hints from Comrise on what you can do better to succeed in the job application and interview process, both with companies and recruiters:
1- Be yourself -Let your charisma and intellect speak for themselves, rather than misrepresenting yourself. Plus, if you get hired under false pretenses, it is only a matter of time before they figure it out…
2- Go into your interview prepared -Research the company for which you’ll be interviewing. See how their goals and values line up with your own, then focus on those parallels. Shared values and goals are more likely to get you hired than a glowing reference.
3- Only apply for those jobs for which you are suited -If you can tell the sort of experience level a job requires, don’t apply for any positions that are too senior or too junior for you. You’ll end up wasting your own time and finding yourself frustrated when it doesn’t work out.
4- Network wherever you go -If you share a cab with someone or strike up a conversation on line for a latte, take a second to introduce yourself. A quick business card swap might just be your golden ticket. In IT as much as anywhere else, it’s all about who you know.
5- Be confident in your skill set and clearly express what you have to offer - Have a healthy amount of self confidence (but don’t come off as arrogant!) and be to the point in expressing yourself (but don’t leave out pertinent details!). Make sure to emphasize how you can bring value to your potential employer.
