Tag Archives: job applications

Careers Advice, guest blogger

Employers’ Most Desired Skills

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Filling out job applications is all about advertising your skills to potential employers. You might have a wide skill set built up over many years, or you might have had a more focused career, but the trick is in working out which of your talents would be of the most value to an employer and placing more emphasis on them in your application. Of course, this might mean that each application form or speculative letter will have a different emphasis depending on the company you’re applying to.

But within the specialist skills that each of us has is a set of skills that are almost universally valuable in the workplace. We’ve listed the most crucial here.

Verbal Communication

No matter what field you’re working in, you’ll have to be able to communicate instructions, reports and opinions to colleagues. Clarity of speech, a mature, professional manner of speech and confidence to express yourself are all of value. It’s also important to be able to tune your voice to fit the purpose – you’ll communicate with clients differently than you would with suppliers and colleagues, for example. You could be the first voice a potential client hears when they contact your company, so they’ll be placing great importance on how well you can pull it off.

Written Communication Skills

It’s the same with the written word. If you can express yourself on the page and on the screen you’ll be an asset to any company. If you’re prone to spelling mistakes, make sure you get someone to proof your application forms, CVs and speculative mail. Spelling, grammar and punctuation errors are a huge turn-off and could be the difference between getting the job and missing out.

Listening

It’s not all about talking to other people. Communication is a two-way street, and listening is key to successful navigation of it. After all, the excellent talking skills you’ve cultivated might not be gifts of those who communicate with you, and you might find yourself having to not only listen intently to what they are saying but also to interpret subtext and make sense of it all.

Good Judgement

It’s hard to show good judgement in an application form or a CV, but a shrewd employer will be able to see evidence of it in your past actions. They’ll be able to judge the career path you’ve taken so far and discern whether your judgement has ever been rash or immature. That’s not to say failure is a detrimental factor; most employers will recognise the value of an entrepreneurial spirit when applied to a promising project, even if the situation doesn’t quite work out. Indeed, failure is an important part of character-building.

Above Average Computer Skills

Nobody wants to take an employee on and spend the first weeks teaching them how to use Windows, Outlook, Word, Excel and PowerPoint, or popular but specialist solutions such as Photoshop, Digital Publishing Suite or MySQL if they’re appropriate to the task. You might be fine with a good working knowledge of the main solutions, but all of them feature hot keys, advanced workarounds and uncommon features that can greatly enhance your productivity.

Ability to Absorb Knowledge

All jobs will require a blend of the skills and knowledge you bring to the company and the specific skills that are unique to the job. You’ll be expected to treat your existing knowledge as a base on which to add the skills of the new job, and the quicker you can do that, the better it is for the company. If we take your existing skills as a given (assuming you haven’t overworked them on your application), it is a good idea to give evidence of times in the past when you’ve picked up new skills and put them to good effect.

Adaptability and Flexibility

Companies taking you on are investing in you, and if you can show you’ll be able to give a long-term return on that investment, so much the better. We’ve all seen how quickly technology has moved along in the past decade, and there’s no reason to suspect it has stopped. Anyone who has proved unable to adapt to the new reality will have fallen by the wayside, but to employers, that represents a big expense if they aim to replace them. It’s far preferable to companies to have people who know their jobs and how to adapt them when change comes – as it always will.

 

Charlie Reynolds has over 10 years’ experience working in HR and been a writer for the past 12 years. Charlie now uses his field expertise as a copywriter for Skills Arena.​

A bit of fun, CV Tips, CV Writing, Guy Fawkes, Job Applications, Job Hunting, LinkedIn, PMO CV, Project management CV

Explosive times  

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On the eve of Guy Fawkes it only seems fitting to talk through some explosive ways to impress your potential employer and add in a few examples of when the anticipation has fizzled out from a short fuse or two. Getting that next role has become increasingly more challenging over the years with the double dip recession and banks collapsing have left employers strapped for cash and particularly averse to taking risks. The better candidate is deemed as the one who has an exceptional CV and can really sell themselves in interview, often leaving great PMs out in the cold because their CVs aren’t up to scratch. Depending on the industry you are applying to, there are less traditional ways of capturing the attention of hiring managers such as a more creative CV and including hobbies/interests which are deemed a little different. I have had recruitment clients who have specifically asked for candidates who take time out to go travelling and have an “different” portfolio of interests, I met with recruitment clients who like their candidates to be a little more creative with how they dress – not the usual suits for them thank you sir! However I have known candidates to dress in quirky outfits only to be rejected at interview for being a little “too far out there”, you must pick your industry carefully so your rocket doesn’t backfire and set the interviewer alight in the wrong ways.fireworks

Of course for the drier industries the way to really impress is to do your research to understand what it is they really look for with potential new employees, you can look on their website but also check out their employees on LinkedIn to look at backgrounds and particular skill sets. Understanding your target audience and drawing out key experiences and skill sets can really set up your display for the right kind of “oooooos” and “ahhhhhs” as opposed to “oh” and “argh”. It’s going that extra mile which demonstrates you are bought into the business but also how there is much more to you than just “turning up” to work. Keep thinking about adding value, remember you are judged from the moment to make contact, right down to how you word your email so make an effort and be professional. Treat your job applications like you do your projects, provide the right kind of information which isn’t overbearing and ensure your stakeholders are thoroughly informed about the product you are delivering – in this case… YOU!

Careers Advice, Job Applications, Job Hunting, Observations, project management recruitment

Making the right impression when applying for jobs – PM CV Tips

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I had a call the other day from a male asking me if I had any jobs – I pointed out that I am not a recruitment agency and ended the call, but after hanging up I realised that the person who had called really came across as quite rude and a bit of a mumbling mess. Putting myself back into my recruiter shoes I thought to myself how I wouldn’t have gone out of my way to help this person if I had roles available. This got me thinking about the hundreds of speculative calls I received as a recruiter back in the day and how people would come across on the phone. Phone meSome days I would be delighted with callers, those who really thought about what they wanted to discuss and could talk through their career/experience without taking too much precious time and were clear on the roles they wanted to go into next. Other days I would have people calling who would take a good couple of minutes to even properly engage in a conversation, they couldn’t summarise their experience and certainly didn’t know where their skill-set fit in future roles. I would remember all of my callers – for better or worse, and would often make a note stating the good and bad points. This greatly assisted me when I was qualifying new roles, I would usually already have a shortlist of candidates I wanted to speak to about it before I had written and advertised the job advert. As recruitment is so very competitive it is important to make sure you get your shortlist to the client ASAP, this way you had a better chance of getting ahead of the other agencies.

guest blogger, Job Applications, Recruitment, Technology

How Technology is Changing Recruitment

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Today’s graduates and school-leavers looking at how their parents used to go about getting a job would be forgiven for thinking they had stumbled into some kind of Victorian fantasy. For a start, everything happened so slowly, letters and CVs trundling through the Royal Mail – and some companies actually taking the trouble to send out formal rejection letters. Let’s have a look at how things have changed.

The Internet

The first change barely qualifies as new technology any more because it’s been in the mainstream for approaching 20 years. But if you’ve been in the same job since the mid-1990s, you’re in for a shock when you come to make your next application. You’ll be expected to be a fully signed-up, switched-on member of the online community. You’ll be submitting your CV online and communicating via email or other instant messaging techniques.

Social Media

If the internet is a confusing territory for you, the phenomenon of social media is going to blow you away. But if you’re reading this article, we’ll assume you know your LinkedIn from your Pinterest.
First of all, recruiters will be using social media to make contact with potential candidates – sometimes actively, sometimes passively. People make contact with companies they are targeting, and will look out for advertised openings, which they’ll no doubt duplicate on social media for maximum exposure. You need to be one of them if you want to get the inside track.
But it works both ways. Your entire social media history (or at least the parts that aren’t set as private) is there for them to see. Candidates from the generation that has grown up barely knowing a world without social media have their entire lives online – from their professional lives to their hobbies, relationships, nights out and family lives – for all the world to see.
While no employer is expecting candidates to have no life outside work, some recruitment experts warn against making the more colourful aspects of one’s social life public. But there’s a balance to be struck – many employers do value people with active social lives. In some industries sociable candidates tend to make better colleagues.

LinkedIn

The business social network LinkedIn deserves a section of its own because it’s the only mainstream channel whose stated purpose is to assist business. It works via multiple streams:
• Users have professional profiles, which can augment your CV (although it’s still a good idea to edit your CV to emphasise aspects relevant to the role you’re applying for and to keep you LinkedIn profile as more of a permanent record of skills and qualifications).
• Other users can give endorsements and recommendations – a modern-day reference.
• The number of connections you have gives some indication as to the strength of your connections. Unlike some social media, LinkedIn connections are necessarily mutual.
• You can use the “degrees of separation” on LinkedIn to discover mutual friends, colleagues or ex-colleagues and approach them for a personal reference.
• The network is a place for employers to post jobs.

Your Portfolio

It’s normal nowadays for people to display their wares on an online portfolio. Whether you’re a writer, a painter, a carpenter or a computer programmer, you can put your produce online in a gallery or it could be a self-serving demonstration (in the case of a programmer or web designer). A demo says much more than words alone ever could.

Application Analysis

Not all job applications take the traditional advert–CV–interview path. For many jobs, especially in the middle or lower echelons of a company, the application form will be completed online. But this isn’t only for speed and cost reductions. The data that candidates input might be sent straight to a database to be analysed to produce a shortlist based on the stats you put in. It might seem like a brutal filter – and no doubt some good candidates will be rejected – but when even low-grade jobs can expect hundreds of applications, it’s the only way employers can efficiently do it.

It’s Not All Electronic

While it might seem that the whole process of candidate selection is managed electronically, some things will never change. So expect to be grilled at an interview … although it might well be in a local cafe or over Skype.

Samuel-James McLoughlin is Press and Communications Officer at hronline and has over 15 years’ experience in the field. He has worked in HR for the last 5 years and has been with hronline since its launch in 2013.