Category HR Tips and Practices

10 Reasons Why You’re Not Getting Interviews

Robert Half International

No matter how strong your skills or experience are, you won’t land a new job without first securing an interview with a prospective employer. Job seekers often consider this step of the hiring process the most difficult — and perplexing. After all, how many times have you considered your qualifications ideal for an open position only to never hear from the hiring manager about the r¨¦sum¨¦ and cover letter you submitted?

If you’re looking for an edge, make sure you’re not falling into these common traps:

1. You only focus on the Googles of the world.
Companies that continually grab headlines and are highly recognizable can be exciting places to work. But so are many companies you’ve never heard of. Keep in mind that organizations that are household names often receive thousands of r¨¦sum¨¦s for each opening. Consider exploring opportunities with small and midsize companies. They make up the vast majority of businesses in the United States and sometimes have trouble locating qualified candidates. If Google is your dream employer, don’t give up the good fight, but also keep your eyes and ears open to other opportunities.

2. You don’t follow directions.
Each company has a different procedure it asks applicants to follow for submitting employment applications. Some ask that you use a form on their Web sites while others prefer traditional phone calls or faxes. Make sure you understand what the prospective employer seeks by carefully reading the job listing. Then, follow the directions to the letter. If you don’t, your application may never reach the hiring manager.

3. You need to revamp your r¨¦sum¨¦.
Sending out the same cover letter and r¨¦sum¨¦ to all companies isn’t likely to capture the attention of prospective employers. Hiring managers want to know why you’re a good match for their specific business needs. So take the time to research employers and customize your job search materials by explaining why you’re interested in a particular position and how you could make a contribution to the company.

4. Your cover letter isn’t enticing.
Think of your cover letter as an appetizer that convinces the hiring manager your r¨¦sum¨¦, the main course, is worth sampling. The best cover letters take select details from the r¨¦sum¨¦ and expand upon them, explaining in depth how your talents and experience can benefit the prospective employer.

5. You don’t reference keywords.
Companies that receive a high volume of r¨¦sum¨¦s often use scanning software that looks for certain keywords to determine which candidates to call for interviews. More often than not, keywords come directly from the job description. Terms such as “Microsoft Office,” “accounts payable and receivable” and “Cisco Certified Network Administrator” are examples. As much as possible, ensure your r¨¦sum¨¦ and cover letter contain keywords.

6. Your application materials aren’t perfect.
Submitting an application that contains typos and grammatical goofs is perhaps the quickest way to foil your chances of securing an interview. In fact, 84 percent of executives polled in a recent survey by our company said it takes just one or two errors to remove a candidate from consideration. The reason: These types of mistakes show a lack of professionalism and attention to detail. Make sure to carefully proofread your r¨¦sum¨¦ prior to submitting it and ask a friend or family member to do the same.

7. You don’t know who to send your r¨¦sum¨¦ to.
Though it’s fine to start your cover letter with the generic salutation “To Whom It May Concern,” hiring managers pay special attention to applications that are addressed directly to them. If the job advertisement doesn’t include the hiring manager’s name, call the company and speak to the receptionist or a member of the person’s department. More often than not, you can obtain the information fairly easily if you’re candid about your reason for wanting it.

8. You don’t have an ‘in’ with the company.
Using the name of a common contact to make the connection between you and the hiring manager is by far the best way to ensure your cover letter and r¨¦sum¨¦ get optimal attention. So, keep in touch with members of your professional network; you never know who has a contact at the company you hope to work for.

9. You don’t follow up.
One way to improve the odds a hiring manager gives consideration to your r¨¦sum¨¦ is to follow up with him or her. According to a survey by our company, 86 percent of executives said job seekers should contact a hiring manager within two weeks of sending a r¨¦sum¨¦ and cover letter. Often a brief phone call or e-mail reasserting your interest in the position and strong qualifications is enough.

10. You’re not as qualified as you think.
The bottom line may be that you’re simply not as perfect for the job as you think. Before submitting your r¨¦sum¨¦, take a close look at the job description and compare your skills and experience with those required for the position. If a job calls for five years of retail management experience, and you have only two, you might not be as qualified as other applicants. While sometimes it’s possible to make up for skills gaps if you excel in other areas, hiring managers frequently have specific criteria in mind, and they use it to determine whom they call for interviews.

By avoiding common pitfalls, you can improve your chances of landing a job interview. Often something small — fixing a typo, for example — makes all the difference.

Recruiting Value

Contributed by Mohammed Senin of Clownfish Marketing

According to the latest research from the Carbon Trust, consumers are more likely to buy products and services from a business they think is tackling climate change¡­ Euan Murray, strategy manager at the Carbon Trust, said: “There has been a definite shift in behaviour. Fifty-three per cent of people felt that in the last year, climate change had become more of an issue for them¡­Consumers want to use their purchasing power to reduce their carbon footprint and that of the UK as a whole¡±.

This is further confirmation of what many other articles and reports have already claimed. And in order for consumers to make easy and quick purchasing decisions, they need brands. Brands help to ¡°edit¡± choices on their behalf, saving them the need for exhaustive research and allowing them to behave in the way they want.

I don¡¯t disagree with that but I would like to put a slightly different concept out there¡­

Sustainability initiatives are often driven from the most senior levels of organisations. It has become the vogue for large companies to boast positions such as ¡®Chief Ethics Officer¡¯ or ¡®Director in Charge of the Environment¡¯ to bolster their claims to good governance. This is nothing more than window dressing unless the ethics and values of sustainability and social responsibility are embedded throughout the organisation and the brand that it brings to market.

For example, the performance and remuneration of individual staff is often assessed against ¡°key performance indicators¡± that have little to do with values or sustainability. Few are the companies that reward their staff for reducing their carbon footprint or developing socially beneficial products.

The human resources industry has a lot to contribute here, since HR directors are closely involved in the development of job descriptions, performance criteria, and remuneration structures. If HR is equipped with the knowledge and support to do so, it can start introducing ethical, environmental, social and values-based criteria into this process. This is one of the most effective ways to infuse such values into the lifeblood of the corporate machine.

WWF¡¯s recent report, ¡®Let Them Eat Cake¡± (downloadable from http://www.clownfishmarketing.co.uk/clients_wwf.html) found that the majority of employees consider themselves to care more about sustainability than their employers do. Furthermore, very few companies reward employees for environmental and social performance. Only 6% were rewarded for carrying out environmental and social screening of suppliers and associates; a meagre 11% were encouraged to consider the environmental and social impacts of what they were marketing; and only 6% were encouraged by their employers to support environmental causes.

This trend must be reversed. Brands of the future will be rewarded for their commitment to sustainable development and social practices, and as such, they must behave as good corporate citizens in everything that they do. CSR values must be incorporated into recruitment and reward systems, because there¡¯s nothing like the prospect of a bonus to change employees¡¯ behaviour.

Recruitment has a critical impact on the performance and future success of any organisation. With increasingly fierce competition for the best candidates, and the proliferation of (sometimes dubious) qualifications amongst candidates, values and sustainability can help to attract and retain the very best.

A successful recruitment and selection strategy must consider CSR values in order to remain one step ahead of the game. Successful brands, therefore, not only need to be successful in the commercial market, but also in the recruitment process.

Candidate Bill of Rights

how to treat candidates and working professionals. We call it respect or graciousness. Accolo gets right to the heart of the matter by providing a Candidate Bill of Rights at their website. This is a good thing.

Confidentiality

Individuals are entitled to the security and confidentiality of their personal and professional background and data. Any decision to make that data available to others must be at the specific request of the individual.

Credibility

All advertised positions must be verifiably open and available to job-seekers, with the intent of the hiring organization to make any and all efforts to fill the open position.

Accuracy

The description of an open position should accurately and specifically identify the unique attributes of that position as they relate to the Hiring Manager, organization, geography, work group, work to be completed, and performance measurement criteria.

Consideration

All interested candidates, from all available sources, should be considered for an open position based upon their ability and aptitude, and that consideration should be free from racism, sexism, and other forms of prejudice and intolerance.

Consistency

Hiring decisions will be made based upon on a set of specific and defined criteria that is relevant to the position, consistent across all candidates and applied objectively.

Follow Up

All applicants are entitled to consistent communications regarding the status of their candidacy, regardless of the outcome of their application.

Preparation

Each individual should expect that they will be provided with all relevant information about the organization and hiring manager in order to best prepare them for success during the interview process.

Respect

Scheduling of interviews will occur in a manner that connotes respect for the candidate, their time and their efforts.

Communication

Every inquiry regarding the status of candidacy or application is worthy of a response.

Information

All applicants will be provided with the necessary information about the company, hiring manager, compensation, performance expectations, etc. in order to make an informed career decision.

Exploring the Job Candidate Bill of Rights

What a long, strange trip it¡¯s been. OK, maybe not that strange, but over the last several weeks we have broken down the Job Candidate Bill of Rights created by Accolo¡¯s John Younger. We¡¯ve covered everything from confidentiality to communication, and now we have arrived at the end. Number 10 on John¡¯s list is ¡°information,¡± something that candidates feel they¡¯re just not getting enough of:

Information

All applicants will be provided with the necessary information about the company, hiring manager, compensation, performance expectations, etc. in order to make an informed career decision.

Information, or the lack thereof, is such an important topic to job candidates that The Wall Street Journal actually included it twice in their bill of rights:

¡°5. I want to know the details. Companies that provide details about their benefit plans get my attention. They can easily explain the basics on their website with a PDF, instead of a brief, meaningless overview that does me no good.

¡°6. I want to learn about you. ¡°Day in the life¡± profiles help me see myself in an organization.¡±

For some job boards, a lack of information isn¡¯t the real problem. Instead, it¡¯s the lack of usable information. These boards are filled with countless details, but none of them really give the candidate a better understanding of the job, the company, the work environment, or anything else:

¡°For the job seeker, the problem is the same: when they look on giant job boards they see a bunch of undifferentiated jobs, often posted by clueless headhunters that provide all kinds of information you don¡¯t need (¡±A leading provider of whatever¡±) and none of the information you do need (what¡¯s the name of the company? Do they make nuclear bombs? Will they give me a private office and a big monitor? Free M&Ms? Are they sloppy hacks or quality hackers? Can I use Ruby on Rails?)¡± (From Joel on Software)

The last ten weeks have given us the chance to see what¡¯s on the minds of most of the job candidates out there. As we see it, there just isn¡¯t a source right now for candidates, recruiters, and hiring managers to effectively connect and communicate. As we¡¯ve said before, change is coming, but it won¡¯t just be for candidates. After all, there are things that recruiters and hiring authorities need, and we hope to explore those topics in the future with a comprehensive Bill of Rights for each group.

Survey: Job Seekers are Stretching the Truth

Rosemary Haefner, Vice President of Human Resources, CareerBuilder.com

There’s marketing yourself on your r¨¦sum¨¦, and then there’s flat-out lying. Many job seekers are crossing the line.

Although just 5 percent of workers actually admit to fibbing on their r¨¦sum¨¦s, 57 percent of hiring managers say they have caught a lie on a candidate’s application, according to a CareerBuilder.com survey. Of the hiring managers who caught a lie, 93 percent didn’t hire the candidate.

When r¨¦sum¨¦ inconsistencies do surface during background checks, they raise concerns about the candidates’ overall ethics. Forty-three percent of hiring managers say they would automatically dismiss a candidate who fibbed on their r¨¦sum¨¦. The rest say it depends on the candidate and situation.

Stretched dates to cover up employment gaps is the most commonly-caught r¨¦sum¨¦ lie, with nearly one-in-five hiring managers saying they have noticed this on a candidate’s application. Other top r¨¦sum¨¦ lies include:

Past employers (18 percent)

Academic degrees and institutions (16 percent)

Technical skills and certifications (15 percent)

Accomplishments (8 percent)

Reasons for lying range from the innocuous (not being sure of the exact employment dates) to the more sinister (intentionally being deceitful to get the job). To ensure your r¨¦sum¨¦ is accurate but still portrays you in the best light, heed these tips:

If you don’t have much formal experience… Highlight any activities or coursework that could be relevant to the position. Volunteer activities, part-time jobs and class projects can all provide transferable skills and training.

If you didn’t quite finish your degree… Do not indicate on your r¨¦sum¨¦ that you graduated. Instead, name the university and list the years in which you attended.

If you were out of work… Don’t stretch the employment dates to cover the gap. Instead, keep the dates accurate and address the gap in your cover letter. Be sure to mention any classes you took or volunteer work you performed during this time to keep your skills up-to-date.

If your company uses unfamiliar titles… This is one of the only circumstances in which it’s acceptable to change your title to something more recognizable. For example if your title was “primary contact,” and you performed the duties of an administrative assistant, you can clarify your title by writing “Primary Contact/Administrative Assistant.” Giving yourself a promotion to “office manager,” however, crosses the ethical line.

Rosemary Haefner is the Vice President of Human Resources for CareerBuilder.com. She is an expert in recruitment trends and tactics, job seeker behavior, workplace issues, employee attitudes and HR initiatives.

Most Frequently Used Recruiting Websites by China Online Job Seekers

According to iResearch 2005 China Online Recruiting Research Report, the comparison between 2004 survey results and 2005 survey results indicated that the most frequently used percentage of each super recruiting website has increased a lot. This shows that online job seekers tend to concentrate when the stickiness of super recruiting websites to online job seekers is increasing gradually.

Use Your Social Network to Get Jobs

The latest craze in hiring is the oldest craze in hiring–find employees that come highly recommended by their friends and colleagues. Social networking has always been used in a non-technological sense to find the perfect candidate or to find the perfect job. Now technology meets the job search.

Sites like Jobster, H3, and O’Reilly Connections have sprung up to bring potential employees together with potential employers–particularly those “passive” job applicants who are already employed and may not be actively searching for a new one. From Wired:

The recruiting sites are all about connections. Most share the goal of helping employers reach the coveted “passive” job applicant, which is recruiter lingo for the qualified person who is already gainfully employed and thus not maniacally reading job boards. Such people are often the best new hires, but are hard to reach through conventional advertising.
Many personnel recruiters find that an e-mail campaign yields better candidates than a traditional “Help Wanted” ad.

A Trip Abroad Can Help You Win a Job

By Kevin Voigt

From The Wall Street Journal Online

Finding a job in a distant market can be tough, as employers are less likely to give a break to someone who has no experience in the market, or who must be flown in for an interview. To make matters even trickier, what holds true in one country often doesn’t apply in another, says job recruiter Lawrence Wang, author of the job-hunt book “Know the Game, Play the Game” and managing director of Beijing-based Wang & Li Asia Resources.

For starters, he says, remember that while the Internet is good, legwork is better. With the proliferation of specialized online job sites, it is easy to get your resume to the market you are interested in. “But there’s really no substitute for being there,” says Mr. Wang.

He suggests planning a trip to the area and letting the companies you are interested in know you are coming to town and would like to stop by. “If you fly there, it shows your commitment and gives a much higher indication of your interest in relocating.”

Contacting local chambers of commerce and career centers, or stopping by bars and clubs frequented by professionals in the area, can give a job searcher more ideas and contacts, Mr. Wang says. If you don’t know anyone in the city you are targeting, check your university alumni directory to see if any classmates live in the area.

Often, this process can help people decide whether they really want to relocate. “For example, Beijing is a real exciting place, but it’s not for everyone,” he says. “People sometimes come here a few times and decide it’s not for them — which is good. Now they won’t spend the next five years wondering what could have been.”

Spread your net of contacts. Dumb luck is often a key ingredient in a successful job search, and it often is resting in the hands of someone you haven’t even met. By broadening your list of personal contacts, your break can come from the unlikeliest places.

Mr. Wang, a California native, began his first job search in Taipei when he was a 28-year-old graduate business student at the University of California, Los Angeles. Seeking a marketing position, he cold-called 50 foreign-owned companies. He got only three interviews. They were all unsuccessful. His break came not by slogging through company directories and mass-mailing resumes, but by calling an acquaintance — a former classmate — who had family in Taipei. In the end, his “classmate’s sister’s husband” was the one who made the connection that netted his first job with a Taipei marketing firm.

“The kindness of strangers can really come through for you,” Mr. Wang says. “People in the international community have been through this before, so they can identify with you. And the average person knows a lot. They can know the people to talk to, have their names and numbers, and they’re flattered that you’re asking their advice. Use them.”

Patience is a virtue in this kind of search. Don’t be disheartened if the first trip doesn’t yield a job. One of the biggest mistakes job seekers make is born out of impatience, Mr. Wang says. Overeager applicants often don’t take the time to gain an understanding of the market, and they let their naivete show. “A common mistake we see is people coming into the market and completely outpricing themselves,” he says.

Salary requests have to be within the market range, and wildly overshooting the curve undercuts your credibility.

Mr. Wang suggests talking to anyone who knows something about the job market you are looking at: “What are the trends, what is the current market mindset? What kind of skills are employers really looking at right now?” he says.

Job seekers must also be realistic about their chances in a market where they have no language skills, Mr. Wang adds.

Email your comments to cjeditor@dowjones.com.

Project names ‘top employers’

A project was launched in Beijing on Friday aiming to build employer brands by naming China’s “top employers” in a new publication and on TV.

The China Top Employers project was also launched in Shanghai in May by the Corporate Research Foundation (CRF), a Netherlands-based independent publishing company.

“Its format is unique in China. It aims to help companies build an employer brand,” said Cai Rong, chief representative of CRF China. She added the project is currently active in nine countries.

Jobseekers, MBAs, EMBAs and graduates returning from overseas will be able to get information about companies selected by the CRF through books and TV shows.

“But each company has to pass a rigorous selection process to become one of the ‘top employers’ in China,” Cai said.

After registering, companies complete a questionnaire and a CRF journalist interviews one of their senior human resources managers and two employees from the firm.

“Our questions vary from country to country and region to region covering a wide area from salary, welfare and corporate culture,” Cai said. She added questions for each region are designed by a panel comprising experts from human resources companies, universities and the media.

“The information provided by the questionnaire is fully confidential and will be used to evaluate the participant and generate benchmark data,” she said.

The CRF determines whether a company meets the minimum criteria to become one of China’s “top employers,” determining the top three reasons to work for the firm and a confidential report.

If a company fails the final selection and publication, all research material and CRF reports are returned. The whole process is then free of charge.

If the participating company is selected as one of China’s “top employers,” the company profile as written by a CRF journalist is submitted to the firm. Companies are only able to make factual changes to the text.

The companies will be listed in a book, which is to be directly delivered to jobseekers. The book describes the advantages of the companies through information gleaned from the interviews.

“We will also take them (the selected companies) to seminars and TV shows to discuss with young talents issues concerning employer branding,” Cai said.

Companies are charged US$5,800 in Shanghai and US$7,800 in Beijing to cover research, writing, editorial, production and marketing costs.

The programme attracted 48 companies in Shanghai, including DHL, Alibaba, China Mobile and Home Inns. Thirty-eight have been selected as China’s Top Employers for 2007.

But Cai said domestic companies only make up a tiny proportion of the firms about 10 per cent of the total.

“We hope Chinese companies will attach more significance to building an employer brand,” she said.

The concept of employer brand was put forward by Western enterprises. Human resources departments play an important role in Western companies, but this is not the case in China.

“Human resources directors are not given enough rights in China and some roles that should belong to the department are played by other departments,” Cai said. “China’s human resources departments always remain at the operational level rather than at the strategic level.”

In many Chinese companies human resources departments are responsible for recruiting but not for retaining people. For this reason job turnover in Chinese companies is two to three times higher than in Europe.

Cai said it is also an initiative that drove them to bring the project to China

A reader’s toolbox:

70-536 as well as 70-290 are necessary to meet the eligibility criteria of 640-822 and 642-812 as well as EX0-101. Eventually all this experience matters in ccie.

All star corporate talent a scarce resource in China

By Michael Flaherty

SHANGHAI, Oct 9 (Reuters) – Minutes after news he had quit as chief financial officer of KongZhong Corp. (KONG.O: Quote, Profile, Research), J.P. Gan took a call from a headhunter.

On offer was a top spot at a venture capital-backed Chinese company with plans for an overseas initial public offering.

CFOs and top level executives are in high demand across the globe as cash-rich investment firms put their money to work buying companies, changing management teams, and growing the businesses.

In China the effect is amplified. Young, western-savvy CFOs who have language skills, regulatory knowledge and international experience are highly sought after and hard to find. “Talent is limited, in general. That’s just the way things are in China,” said Jixun Foo, a Shanghai-based managing director at venture capital firm Granite Global Ventures.

Aggravating the shortage is the flow of western-educated executives out of the the corporate and investment banking sectors and into private equity firms and hedge funds.

To name but a few: HSBC China investment banking chief Huan Guocang joined Primus Pacific Partners. Dennis Zhu left JPMorgan to join Oaktree Capital Management while Bain Capital recently hired away Morgan Stanley China chief executive Jonathan Zhu.

Mark Qiu — former CFO of CNOOC Ltd. (0883.HK: Quote, Profile, Research), last year left the top Chinese offshore oil producer to set up a private equity fund.

“Understanding the people-risk factor may be one of the most important things an investor needs to know before coming here,” Foo said.

Buyout firms have invested more than $4 billion in China this year, compared with only $723 million in 2003, according to market data firm Dealogic.

While talented chief executives are in demand in China, many investors view equally talented CFOs as more significant and harder to find, given the increased accounting demands required by global securities markets.

Chinese companies need CFOs who can put in place or modernise their financial infrastructure to satisfy investors and regulators.

That means establishing proper billing procedures, cleaning up books, creating budgets, and setting up legal and compliance departments — areas either neglected in many existing companies or not yet formed in young start-ups.

“There is a great demand for the CFO position,” said Gan of KongZhong, who from 2000 to 2005 was Carlyle Group’s director of venture capital investments in China.

Gan is leaving KongZhong, a $250 million Chinese wireless services company, for venture capital firm Qiming Venture Partners in Shanghai. He said he knows at least 10 venture-backed companies hunting for CFOs right now.

One key executive requirement is solid English skills.

With Wall Street investors and outside regulators increasingly involved with corporate China, English is seen as essential, especially for CFOs who handle the bulk of calls from such people.

A CFO of a foreign-listed or Hong Kong-listed Chinese firm can expect to earn anywhere from $150,000 to $500,000, plus options, said several people interviewed for this article, with CEO’s earning slightly more.

That is well short of what some U.S. and European executives make, but it is more than many non-listed, old-style Chinese companies would pay.

Also fuelling CFO demand is a string of successful new China listings, which have sparked a rush to the initial public offerings market.

Peter Mok, President and CEO of KLM Capital Group, an investment firm specialising in Asia, says the real talent search action goes on among companies going for IPO.

“They are looking for someone who understands GAAP (Generally Accepted Accounting Principles) and who can connect with Wall Street,” he said. “They need a guy who is dynamic and who is going to stay up late to talk to New York.”