The Hiring Blog
10 Ways to Cope with Sudden Unemployment
You've just been laid off unexpectedly and your first instinct is to start scouring the Internet job sites and call some headhunters. Before you leap into action it might be wise to take stock of your situation. If you interview immediately you stand the chance of coming across as negative, highly emotional and confused.
Self-Assessment Questionnaire
The questions below are designed to help you examine where you are in your career.
- Do you feel that you are tracking in your career?
- Do you know how your career progression would be viewed by a Headhunter or an HR professional?
- Are you happy with your career progress so far?
- Are your ambitions in line with your career to date?
- Do you have a plan for your career or is your career unfolding by chance?
- Do you know how to achieve your goals?
- Is there anything stopping you from reaching your goals?
- Do you have a clear understanding of the unique qualities you bring to an organization?
You’ve written your resume, but are you prepared for an interview?
Writing a resume and preparing for an interview are overlapping yet different processes. Don’t assume that your interview preparation is complete because of the many hours you’ve invested in writing your resume. Doing so can result in disconnects in your presentation that undermine your interview success.
Using feedback to improve your interview skills
We depend on supportive feedback, from parents, partners, friends, teachers and colleagues, to improve ourselves and our ability to connect with others. When we lack feedback, we navigate in the dark. Yet a lack of interview feedback is very much the norm. What little feedback there is creates false beliefs that hamper interview success and career advancement.
Three myths about acing job interviews
Myth: My success in interviews is all about what I say in response to questions.
Reality: An interview is about what you do.
A very common misconception is that what you say is the most important contributor to your success in interviews. In fact, an interview is typically more about what you do than about what you say. Your body language and other aspects of your nonverbal communication are more important than your verbal statements and can fatally undermine your presentation if you’re not careful.
Imagine, for example, the impression you would create if you described your calmness under pressure while fidgeting nervously, or if you described your attention to detail while wearing wrinkled clothes and scuffed shoes. Your nonverbal communication would weaken your verbal statements by giving the interviewer mixed messages. To ace an interview, always make sure that your verbal statements and nonverbal communication reinforce each other.