Archive for Human Resources

My interview tips

20 June 2012 Rachel Career, Employability, Featured, Features, Human Resources One comment
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The other week I made an admission about liking writing CVs, well here is another weird one, I also like interviews. When you think about them they are a bizarre event, two parties saying why they would be great for each other. Perhaps it is the pressure, having to think through scenarios, but something means I enjoy the experience.

What qualifies me to write this? Have I got every job I have interviewed for? No, but I have sat on both sides of the table, had interviews go wrong and others go really well. I wanted to share the things I have learnt, they will not work for everyone.

Before getting into my tips I think it is important to make the point that if you do not get the job do not take it personally. We live in an employers market and this means they can be fussy, rather than not getting a job reflecting on your weaknesses it is more likely to represent the strength of another candidate. Not everyone gets their dream job, so we dust ourselves off and move on.

Now for my top 4 tips:

1) Preparation

Preparing for an interview is essential, there are many different techniques that work for people and we have to find what works best for us individually. Things to prepare can include organising your portfolio, showcasing your most relevant work; listing your key qualities and identifying weaknesses, I have seen this preparation go as far as writing out possible interview questions and answers. That may be a bit far for some, however the important point that you walk into the room feeling confident and ready to shine.

2) Research

Research is a part of preparation but it is so important that it deserves its own tip. There is nothing worse than being in an interview room, asked a question related to the organisation and being unable to answer it, it looks pretty bad as well. Research an organisation as much as possible, learn everything you can about them. The more you learn, the less likely they are to ask (in my experience!) and that is far preferable to not knowing something.

Take research a step forward and make a case study on part of the organisation, for example how they have launched a product. I have seen people have great success with this technique, and even if you do not share it with your interviewer it will help you gain a better understanding of the organisation.

3) Don’t worry about being perfect

As I have said, interviews are bizarre. We may think that the interviewer is expecting perfect answers, the reality is that they are not. You do not have to say the first thing in your head, you can take a moment to think about your answer. Although taking too long can start to look bad!

Interviews are also designed to test you in different ways, for example to see how you react under pressure. Try to remain as unflustered and calm as possible, remember that the interview is all a show, so play it well.

4) Be yourself

We may hear it all the time, but it is true. Do not walk into the interview room pretending to be someone else because that rarely works. I once went to an interview on crutches having fractured my ankle two days before, I had no expectation of getting the job but I felt it was too late to cancel, the result was I entered that room without the nerves or pretence that I might have, and the feedback showed my personality shone through.

 

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What does your CV look like?

2 June 2012 Rachel Career, Human Resources No comments
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I have an admission to make, I love CVs. This may be considered strange, but I really like them. I like writing my own, helping others write them, and during my period in recruitment I enjoyed reading others. The CV is a snippet of your life, one way you choose to represent yourself to potential employers.

Recently I have been looking at the future of the CV, the trend shows recruiters are looking to alternatives to the CV. One of the most popular alternatives being LinkedIn. My friend Liz introduced me to vizualize.me which takes your LinkedIn profile and turns it into an infographic.

Click on the image below to see my full infographic.

Rachel Barkley Aim High

It is an interesting way to look at your LinkedIn profile, and it allows people to easily interpret the information.

There are things I do not love about it, for example it does not show voluntary work as part of the Experience, when we all know voluntary work can be very important for adding employability particularly amongst young jobseekers.

Overall this is a fun and interesting way to look at your LinkedIn profile, useful for helping develop your profile or share your information effectively.

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What is the future of the CV?

23 April 2012 Rachel Employability, Human Resources One comment
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The CV is dead, or is it? Apparently 54% of employers believe the CV will be replaced by social networking, so I wanted to ask, how would this work. An easy place to start is Linkedin, the business social networking site (as deemed by Wikipedia!)

As of yet, I do not believe my Linked in has contributed to my career, however as it is open to anyone who types my name into Google, who knows whether my employers have looked at it or not! Linkedin does offer brilliant opportunities to share your careers, network with potential employers/employees and other exciting stuff. I have barely scraped the surface of the opportunities that Linkedin offers. This is evident through looking at my profile! If this was a replacement for my CV, one could say it’s essentially useless, almost empty, and rather uninteresting. Is this truly how I want to represent myself online?! Pop onto this page and I hope find it significantly better representation of myself. I have reasons for my lack of sharing in detail on Linkedin, they are complicated but the general idea is that I would rather someone popped onto my blog and got a real idea of me as an online entity.

Enough about me, Linkedin is having a growing importance in the world of recruitment. If you apply for a job, do expect to be searched online, and be prepared, either by being essentially anonymous or more likely, having a positive representation of your personality, life and achievements. I have also seen requests for a link to your Linkedin profile as part of job applications. In these applications they have also requested a copy of your CV, so while the CV may not yet be dead I believe that this represents the adoption of Linkedin.

Linkedin is great, show the world your jobs, your achievements, your recommendations. It’s easy and accessible, it keeps you to relatively rigid structure while allowing your personality to shine. It is more difficult to lie, which is good for employers, and should not be a problem to employees who should not be lying anyway!

There are disadvantages, if you are currently employed your employer may feel nervous about you having a profile. As social media policies join staff handbooks you may even find that you are prohibited from naming your employer, or talking about your work online. If it appears that you are actively seeking an alternative job an employer may not take too kindly to this either, demonstrated by the case of John Flexman. Generally these can be avoided if you take the time to understand your company’s policy on Linkedin, any doubts, then ask HR.

I think we are still a while away from the death of the CV, but I do think Linkedin is a great tool for recruitment and will continue to experience growth. It is important for us to understand the implications of this and be prepared.

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How can we control social media?

9 January 2012 Rachel Communications, Human Resources, Internal Communications, News, Social Media 2 comments
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Reading about the social media restrictions placed on Olympic volunteers had me thinking about the ways we can control the information that is shared on social media.

Social media has encouraged us to share our lives openly with many people but there are things that organisations can not have shared for a variety of reasons from security to competition.

How do we control information that has been unofficially put on social media? The simple answer is inevitably it is extremely difficult, but there are two important approaches that can be taken, proactive and reactive.

Proactive: Naturally it is important to ensure as an organisation that you have policies in place to ensure that staff or individuals know precisely what they can share and what information is prohibited. Most organisations have these in place but there is plenty of advice on compiling such a policy. As we know the online world moves very quickly so it is important to ensure that the policy is regularly reviewed and updated.

Reactive: I also believe it is important to have an official presence on social media platforms. If a fact is released which is inaccurate this source can react and correct the mistake. In other cases when information is released without permission while they may not be able to prevent it, it does mean that the organisation may receive the news sooner and therefore have more time to react. A social media presence does not necessarily have to be an active poster, it could simply be used to monitor information for use during a crisis or as an aid for general organisation activity.

The two approaches are most effective when combined. Human nature means we love to share information and therefore even if an individual is aware of a policy and the repercussions of sharing information they may still not behave as desired. In this case it is important to be able to react effectively.

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Social Media and Internal Communications

12 December 2011 Rachel Communications, Human Resources, Interests, Internal Communications, Social Media One comment
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It would be fair to say that social media has changed the way we communicate and it looks set to continue to create Zuckerberg‘s vision of an open and connected world.

While many people have let social media into the personal areas of their lives I think it is important to embrace the technology and look at how we can utilise it in other areas of our lives in the mission to create this open and connected world.

This is a hot topic at the moment, particularly after Atos announced ambitions of a workplace free of internal email. It is also something I am very interested in personally, being a perfect combination of two of my interests, HR and social media.

Naturally some organisations are hesitant in contemplating giving up some of the technologies they have come to rely upon and adopting social media inspired systems, however there are some obvious benefits in such a change.

There is nothing more frustrating than not knowing about something that affects you and in the workplace this can lead to disgruntled employees. Well designed internal communication systems can ensure that staff are notified of matters concerning them, from job opportunities, to events, to changes in contracts. The nature of social media means that staff are able to have conversations about these matters which can help an organisation understand the opinions of their workforce.

Intranets have been the most popular choice of system for sharing knowledge and while I would not dream of indicating they are redundant, they can certainly be improved by social media tools. For example an organisation could create a wiki style system allowing all employees to submit additions or edits to articles for approval. Alternatively if an employee is struggling to understand a topic or task even after reading an article they could post a question in a forum where anyone in the organisation would be able to offer feedback.

When an organisation is spread across different units nationally or even internationally it can lose its company identity. Social media is able to reinstall this identity. It allows easy communication between teams who may have never even met and allows a constant connection to the heart of the organisation, be that in the Head Office or another unit.

One of the most inspiring men I know is the director of a medium sized organisation. Speaking to him it is impossible not to understand his vision for the organisation and be motivated to achieve better results. Everyone who speaks has a conversation with him respects him and believes in his passion, unfortunately the logistics of the organisation mean that while he is dedicated to his staff team there is not always the opportunity to talk to all of them individually. I believe one solution to this would be for him to write a blog available to all the organisation’s staff, allowing his message to reach and inspire everyone. Social media brings down barriers meaning that he could have conversations with his staff even when he cannot meet his staff.

A very important aspect of social media is monitoring conversation and opinion. Within the workplace this can be used to see reactions to announcements or blog posts. It can be used to see how many staff are accessing company newsletters, or looking at job opportunities. There are many ways an organisation can monitor usage and get an improved understanding of their organisation’s people.

There are also potentially significant financial benefits as demonstrated by this article from Simply-Communicate, these systems return on their investment through saving on costs such as printing and recruitment.

Obviously it is important to be careful when introducing social media into the workplace, a model such as Facebook or Twitter is more likely to cause loss of productivity. It is important that a system based on social media is designed for maximum productivity and minimum distraction.

Social media is not a completely new tool in the internal communication’s toolbox, rather it is a natural progression of the current tools such as internal emails and intranets. I think it is important to look at using the successes of social media to continue the development and effectiveness of internal communications. The possibilities of how we can utilise social media seem endless and with innovation and development we could certainly see some beneficial changes within our internal communications.

Does your organisation use social media in their internal communications strategy?

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They didn’t even send me a rejection letter!

20 April 2011 Rachel Career, Communications, Featured, Human Resources, Public Relations 7 comments
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Job hunting is rarely an enjoyable activity and it can be made all the more stressful when the application you spent hours working on remains unacknowledged and seemingly ignored. When this happens many times over even your most enthusiastic job hunter can feel disheartened and even bitter.

This is the issue facing may HR departments particularly during periods of high applications. It is vital to remember that more than merely not offering a job to an unsatisfactory candidate but also communicating with a stakeholder; a potential customer or perhaps even a future employee. The communication that they receive will shape their opinions of the organisation.

It is by no means a simple task as I well know from my experience working with the HR department of a small growing organisation. In fact it is actually far more complicated that many people could imagine. We were lucky enough to be in the position of being able to recruit during the recession and this led to huge numbers of applications for each job advertised.

There are two types of rejection I will look at, rejecting post-interview and rejecting without interview.

It is bad practise to interview a candidate and not inform them of the outcome. I once experienced this after interviewing at a local cafe, they promised me a call within the week which never materialised and as a result of this I boycotted the cafe. I am not alone in this practise, and while I cannot find the article now, I did read that companies are at risk of losing customers through not telling unsuccessful candidates that they have been rejected.

At the organisation I worked at we would send all unsuccessful candidates a rejection letter as soon as a recruitment decision was made. If feedback was requested we also sought to provide it as soon as possible. They may have not been suitable at the time but they still form an opinion of your company which is important to manage, and also in a couple of years they may apply for another job at the organisation for which they are ideal.

Ideally an organisation would be able to provide feedback for every application they receive but in reality this is not possible. During a recruitment drive we could fill two arch lever files with just unsuccessful candidates, that is in excess of 100 candidates for just a handful of jobs. As an organisation we did seek to inform candidates that we would not be taking their application to interview however practically with 100s of applications this is very difficult and potentially very costly.

The head of HR at the organisation was very keen to maintain good communication with all candidates and while I worked there I designed systems to ensure we could maximise our communication abilities. Were we always successful? I dare say we were not!

Soon, if not already, school, college and university leavers will be applying for jobs to try and begin their career. No doubt many will come across this situation, and please do not let it dishearten you, think positive and good luck!

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