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It would be interesting to review a few perceptions that job seekers have on issues stemming from feelings rather than from thinking. Such perceptions are based more on gut feelings rather than logic. Examples follow.

The interview is about me.

People feel good when asked to come in and interview, because they think the interview is about them. In fact, it is not. The interview is about the interviewer’s needs and the interviewer’s competitive evaluation process that considers the candidate’s ability to provide what the interviewer needs.

Accept LinkedIn invitations only from people you know.

When in transition, it’s not about whom you know so much as it is who knows you. After all, it’s you who is looking for a job. And the more connections you have, the more opportunities you’ll have. If you’re hiding in a box, no one will find you.

Create your own résumé.

People in transition need to preserve their savings, and so many compose their own résumés, which eventually get changed or edited or rewritten by others equally unqualified yet willing to help. The typical outcome is a less than competitive résumé that generates very few or no bites. The best advice, therefore, is to hire a trusted and recommended professional, certified, and experienced résumé writer. A less expensive solution—provided you’re absolutely certain your résumé is a good one—is to have it edited by a professional editor. Such an editor or resume writer knows what sells and would put that knowledge and expertise to work for you. And yes, the good ones are not inexpensive.

No need to tell family about being in transition.

Many people feel uneasy or embarrassed about revealing too many details of their transition. That’s a big mistake, because family and friends really are the people who will go out of their way to be of help.

No need to pay for career coaching.

Again, like with the résumé, people want to preserve their savings and do not want to spend on professional help such as experienced career coaches. This too is a huge mistake. A career coach will not only shorten the in-transition period but also teach you pertinent interviewing skills as well as how to negotiate a job offer. In most cases, fees spent on career coaching are dwarfed by the benefits gained from knowing how to negotiate a better compensation package.

Focus only on your past career path and ignore other possibilities.

In today’s fast-changing business environment, new jobs are being invented every day, and many of the past’s traditional jobs are morphing into new ones or becoming totally eliminated. Job seekers who do not consider job opportunities in fields unrelated to their past ones make a mistake. Some reach a point—possibly because of age discrimination or the elimination of their traditional jobs—at which a change in career might be a wonderful solution. It worked for me extremely well.

Hiring the best people is more critical than ever. In a tight job market, employers are able to be very selective about who they hire. However, the cost of finding, interviewing, engaging and training new employees is high. With so many qualified candidates, what are employers looking for in the people they choose to interview? Here are six things that employers look for when they review job applicants.

Professional Competency

Does the candidate have the necessary skills, experiences and education to successfully complete the tasks to perform well? Employers are looking for evidence in a person’s past that shows that they can. This doesn’t mean that each candidate needs to have done this particular job with this particular title before. Instead, it means the candidate needs to have a track record of success in the skills that the position requires.

Compatibility

Can this person get along with colleagues, and with existing and potential clients and business partners? An additional critical consideration is the person’s willingness and ability to get along well with his or her boss. If the new employee can’t get along well with others, there will be problems.

Satisfaction with the Organization

Most employers want to hire people who will stick around for a long time. They also want to hire people who will be happy with the job. Unhappy people tend to be less productive, a drain on other employees’ morale, and may quickly leave the organization.

Fit with Company Culture

Does the candidate seem like they will easily embrace the culture, or does it seem like they will struggle to fit in? Every business has a culture or a way that people behave and interact with each other. Culture is based on certain values, expectations, policies and procedures that influence the behavior of a leader and employees. Workers who don’t reflect a company’s culture tend to be disruptive and difficult.

Character

Does the candidate have values that align with the organization? Are they honest; do they tell the truth and keep promises? Are they a team player? It’s not enough to just show up at work every day and do the minimum required. Employers are looking for candidates who care about getting things done, and to do those things well.

Enthusiasm for the Job

Is this just one job of many the candidate is applying to? Or, does the candidate have a special interest in this one? Employers would rather hire someone who will be excited to come to work than someone who sees it as “just a job.”

There’s no newspaper or magazine nowadays that does not devote some space to the fast-developing new phenomenon called social media. My explanation for this is very simple: Let’s say you invite some people for a social gathering to take place in your house. Among the dozen or so you host will be some who are very knowledgeable about certain subjects, and some others, less so. That doesn’t mean that those who aren’t very knowledgeable will not contribute to the conversation. They will, but their content will be less factual or less valuable to the listeners.

So, how does this situation apply to the electronic versions of social media? Today there are a significant number of such venues. The more popular are Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn (which is oriented more toward business contacts). People use them for communication in a similar way that those guests of yours do in your house. However, the interchanges happen electronically. Some of the written material is thorough, researched, meaningful, and at times useful. Other information simply amounts to chitchat that has no value except perhaps to a very few. The advantage of social media is that if you don’t like what you read, you can just move on to read something else. Conversely, when you’re faced with a similar situation in a physical venue, it would be rude to tell the speaker you’re bored and you’d prefer to move on.

If you’re in transition and looking for your next job, you’ll have to interact or network with people extensively. Not everything you hear people say will be valuable to you, but some of it will. Similarly, you have to be selective about your sources of reading material and their contents; it’s easy to be swept into meaningless and verbose articles at the end of which you realize you’ve gained nothing. On the other hand, once you learn to become selective and focus only on substantive reading material, you’ll realize you don’t have to reinvent the wheel, meaning that some other people can provide you the information you need.

Twitter, as an example, is limited to 140 characters. Some tweets are obvious wastes of time. The fact that John finished eating his muffin is irrelevant to most readers. But if someone draws your attention to a newly written article about a subject you’re trying to learn more about, that article could prove to be very valuable. The conclusion is that you need to eliminate the garbage found on social media and follow the selective few gems that will compensate you for your precious time.

Hello everyone – I am Adrienne Roman, and I am one of the Social Media moderators for The Breakfast Club NJ.

I am thrilled to announce that The Breakfast Club NJ can now be found on Google+! In addition to our The Breakfast Club NJ Social Media suite of platforms on Linkedin, Facebook, and Twitter, we have just added Google+. You will need a Google account to use Google+.

What is Google+?

It is the 2nd largest social networking site after Facebook boasting 540 million active monthly users (Oct 2013). If you look up Google+ in Wikipedia, it gives a comprehensive history and explanation to its terminology and features. Right now, I want to highlight how it can help you in your job search.

Why should I join Google+ and how will it help my job search?

1. Look at the number of users:

According to Wikipedia – Social Media Statistics
• Facebook now has over 1.15 billion users.
• Twitter now has over 550 million registered users and 215 million monthly active users.
• Google+ now has over 1 billion enabled accounts and 359 million active monthly users.
• YouTube has over 1 billion monthly active users.
• As of June 2013, LinkedIn reports more than 259 million users in more than 200 countries and territories.
2. Branding – both professional and personal:

• Simply having another platform enforcing the professional brand you initiated on Linkedin, strengthens your brand.
• ‘Circle’ is a feature that allows for the organization of groups or lists for sharing information either publicly or privately. You can strengthen your brand by joining circles that reflect your area(s) of expertise.

3. Hangouts – multi-person video chat:

• Mobile friendly.
• Free video conferencing for up to 10 people – what a great way for a reunion – work related, college, networking in general.
• Great opportunity to hone those interview skills! There really never seems to be enough time for mock interviews. Google+ is an efficient and effective way for a group to mock interview each other. What would it take for a group to mock interview each other – maybe 3 questions a night for half an hour?
• Opportunity to give back – offer to conduct or evaluate and give feedback on a mock interview.
• Hangout with groups and people that may be out of your geographic range.
• Excellent way to practice for Skype interviews!

4. Convenient Networking:

• The Breakfast Club NJ has over 4000 members. The Google+ platform provides a convenient location for employed members and unemployed members to connect and network outside of the monthly meetings.
• An opportunity to shine (more on this later).

5. A special invitation to hiring managers and recruiters:

• Frequent our page and circles and connect with people to fill positions with qualified candidates at your company.
• Great way for you to find talent.
• It’s free!
• Get to know a prospective employee before making a job offer.
• Post jobs that need to be filled quickly, with just the right person for the job.

An opportunity to shine (I told you we’d get back to this), as well as, an opportunity to give back! This platform will only be successful with member engagement and help. We need volunteers to join Google + and create Circles. And we need members to join circles, and engage in conversation, post, share, etc. What is important to you? Industry? Profession? Geography? Career change? New to transition? LTU? Relocating out of state?

Personally, I would love to see a Circle entitled ‘TBCNJ Landing Success’, with everybody who has landed, posting their success stories. This would be a great way to give back by providing some useful guidance, motivation, and inspiration to the group.

Another thought I have is to have a morning coffee group to meet for a ½ hour or so – bring you own coffee – but do dress appropriately – it is a video chat – people can and will see you. Fuzzy slippers are optional. And to be fair – there should be an afternoon tea group as well. Volunteer moderators are needed for both of these positions.

Please contact me – Adrienne Roman adrienne1204@optonline.net to discuss Google + ideas, or if you need any help with Google+.

The emotional stress associated with unemployment is understood only by those who are unemployed. Often, even people closely associated with the unemployed such as spouses or other family members don’t fathom the emotional pressure and pain that settles in on those without sources of income and places to go to called work.

Unfortunately, some jobless people stay in transition for a long time. Today the main reason is usually the current economic condition, but it isn’t the reason all the time. In fact, some people get quickly transplanted into new jobs, but others get held back due to their lack of a solid plan and inability to make decisions. Have you noticed that some people procrastinate decision making and agonize even over the simplest kinds of decisions? For example, some people take forever to make a menu choice in a restaurant, while others wait impatiently for the last person to decide. Or, maybe you had a boss who couldn’t make even ordinary decisions and who constantly maneuvered just to avoid the need to make the decision? There are reasons that such phenomena exist and I’m certainly not competent to attempt to provide those reasons, but through my work as a career coach I see such indecision at times with my clients.

So, how can a career coach help with such issues? Well, it’s not the job of the career coach to conduct a session like a psychologist would. And sometimes even psychologists don’t know how to or neither prepared nor qualified to. A career coach, though, can at least help narrow down the choices and assist in the decision-making process by, say, guiding clients to the right personality assessment tests, or by listening carefully to clients’ affinities or certain successes from the past, or, if appropriate, by guiding clients to other recommended professionals with advanced degrees like Ph.D.’s who are expert in counseling regarding career, job search, and workplace issues.

Honestly, most people don’t know what they want in terms of a job unless they see it in context. People can’t predict the advantages and disadvantages of a profession or a job unless they can somehow identify with it. Perhaps a friend or someone else can tell them the good, the bad, and the ugly about it. And even in that case, the future is highly unpredictable. I’m sure that at one time or another, you asked someone for an opinion of the company the person worked at. And I’m equally sure you received an answer. But was that answer a valid one? Or was it only that person’s opinion about the boss? Certainly, if the boss treats us nicely, we’ll say the entire company is great! And if the opposite is true, the entire company stinks! Everything’s always relative, isn’t it.  Does this topic ring a bell?  What are your stories?  Feel free to comment.

A job interview has been scheduled for you, but do you know what types of questions you’ll have to answer? This is the dilemma most candidates face. Don’t panic. You can prepare for various types of questions, and I’ll give you a few hints later on. Most companies are using one or the other type: conventional questions or behavior-based questions; even a combination of them is likely.

Behavior-based questions have a clear purpose: the idea is to focus on your past and to conclude that if you behaved in a certain way in the past, then that would be the way you’d behave in the future in a similar situation. So, this expectation is based on predictable future behavior. The interviewer wants to hear how you applied your skills and whether you’ll demonstrate your capabilities in the future. The interviewer wants to assess the entire picture about what you did, what your thought process was, and how you felt about a particular situation. Best way to answer these types of questions is via storytelling. Start describing—in brief—the background situation, and then proceed to describe what you did or the actions you took. Finally, highlight the result of your action and its benefit to the company. Because behavior-based questions can be endless, I suggest that you prepare for them by organizing your thoughts in themes. Remember that the interviewer is looking to validate not only the skills mentioned in your résumé but perhaps also—and even more important—your traits.

Examples of themes are commitment, work ethic, problem solving, leadership, negotiation techniques, and dealing with adversity. To prepare for such themes, it’s best to write out in longhand some examples you could review before the interview and commit to short-term memory. In working on the examples, consider that the interviewer is more interested in the process than in the details of your stories. Rather, the interviewer wants to understand the reasoning that drove your actions: Why did you behave the way you did? And what skills did you have to use?

You will immediately know whether you’re being asked a behavior-based question because such questions typically start with, “Tell me a time when . . . ” or “What has been your biggest . . . ” or “What is the toughest . . . ” or “Describe a situation when . . . ” or “What example can you cite that . . . ” Notice that many behavior-based questions include a superlative or something of a superlative value such as biggest, fastest, toughest, and the like. This might be intimidating. My advice is that when you’re asked such a question, you first think for two or three seconds and then face the interviewer and say, “Well, I’m not sure I can come up at the moment with the [insert the superlative], but here’s an example,” and then give the story.

Behavior-based questions are not so difficult once you have half a dozen to a dozen examples, and you’ve had a chance to practice delivering them in a mock interview setting.