Interviews can be a daunting thing for some people especially if you’ve just started out or even if you’ve been in the same role for some time and are a bit out of practice. 

Here’s a bit of advice that will hopefully help you get past those barriers of uncertainty.  You are the best person who can sell you. You are the one who knows you best.  Ensure you spend enough time in preparation to tell someone about yourself and what the outcomes are from the meeting.

Ask yourself:

• What is my career destination? If you don’t know then how can anyone else know.
• What am I currently doing and why do I do what I do?
• What am I passionate about and how did this get me to where I am?
• What do I want to do next to get me to my destination?
• Why am I applying for this role?
• Why do I want to work for the company I’m applying for and how does it align with your goals or principles?

Interviewers may ask from the outset “Tell me about yourself?” DO NOT start from the very beginning.  You have a limited amount of time to impress and engage with your audience, so by giving them a blow by blow account of your first job 20 years ago, they will have turned off and immediately have made their mind up, pretty much in the first 5 minutes, on how they wish to proceed.

Use the above questions to structure a response that will encourage engagement and more of a dialogue with your interviewers.  This will build a much deeper rapport and interest in you and they will want to find out more!

RESEARCH THE COMPANY

Many people fall at this hurdle.  How do you know you want to work for a company if you haven’t researched them?  If you are just applying for roles because it’s a job, then it won’t get you that second interview or even secure the role. 

Research articles about them, there may be some pertinent news headline that you can bring to the table, showing that you are interested and again can open up a number of questions for you to ask the interviewers.

Remember, you are interviewing them just as much as they are interviewing you!! Do you want to work for a company that invests in fossil fuel when you are a green activist? What if their financial reports aren’t looking too healthy, do you want to start a role with a firm that is about to fold?  

Whether it’s good or bad news you read, you will go into the interview armed with information and the ability to ask relevant questions and to make your own well informed choices on your potential next employer. If you haven’t been having too much success in your interviews recently and you can maybe relate to some of what I have said, then hopefully with your next opportunity you can put these principles into play.

Happy interviewing people! 

2020 so far has probably been one of the hardest hit years most of us have seen in a long time if not our whole career.  It has brought a sudden halt to many programs and projects therefore flooding the market with some exceptional talent, and with it people’s anxiety to get noticed within such a tough market.

I often get asked for feedback on a person’s CV so I thought I would share a few of my personal hints and tips on how you can best present yourself and get recognised.  It is not completely full proof but will hopefully help both you and me….

ON YOUR CV

PERSONAL OVERVIEW – Recruiters and hiring managers are currently inundated with responses therefore a personal overview is your elevator pitch on who you are, what you have achieved and what you able to bring to an organisation, and if appropriate, your technical skills.

CAREER MATRIX AND DATES – This is more of a personal preference for myself and how I review a CV, but a matrix of where you have worked and the specific dates.  Often clients are particular about industries that they want candidates from so this makes it easier to see the full extent of your career in a snapshot.

BULLET POINTS – When going into more detail of your specific role, responsibilities and achievements, no one has time to read a book (if I did, I would be able to finish reading Shantaram!).  Remember your CV is a document that is to entice the hiring manager in, to make them want to invite you in and find out more – THEN you can talk in more detail.

LENGTH – This goes back to not reading a book.  A CV should be no longer than 4 pages, 5 at tops.  I know some people have years of experience or a varied skill set but you need to keep it sharp and to the point, emphasise your skills according to requirements.  If a client is actually interested in the specifics of a role you did 25 years ago, they can make a request for that information.

Other activities you can do include:-

KEEP NETWORKING – Linkedin is a great tool for getting back in touch with old colleagues and managers, even people you’ve not met before.  Remember it is a professional networking site so if you haven’t spoken to someone for a number of years, or you don’t know them, don’t let that bother you, they’ll know it’s about work and not about being your new best friend!

GIVE REFERENCES – And try and get some back.  The more you get on Linkedin, the better. 

KEEP POSITIVE PEOPLE, THERE IS A LIGHT AT THE END OF THE COVID TUNNEL AND WE’LL ALL MAKE IT ONE WAY OR ANOTHER

1. Identify pain points in your system or operations that can be highly repetitive and time consuming. These are ideal areas to automate especially with Robotics Process Automation (RPA).
2. Carry out small pilots with tools against easy, medium and complex areas of the system or process to determine timings and suitability of tools against the technology stack. It is no use spending thousands of dollars on tools and automation where it is not compatible or the cost to run it far outweighs the benefit from automation.  Try not to choose the tools first but rather determine what the problem is you are trying to solve.
3. Use metrics to determine effectiveness of automation. It is no use spending thirty days on automating something and then having to maintain it when it can be run manually in a far quicker time. Remember it is still fine to do some things manually.
4. Assess how the automation will be run in the future. Do you use a service provider to run and maintain it or do you want to upskill and maintain in house?  Both solutions are acceptable, but you need to weigh up the benefits of owning it in house versus using a service provider to run it as and when needed.
5. Work with IT & Architecture to determine what the end technology footprint looks like. If there are plans in place to create straight through processing that you were looking to automate via the user interface, then the benefits may only be short term.
6. Use automation such as RPA for areas where there is a high duplication of manual effort such as re-keying information from one system to another document or online form into another system. Many companies hire team of temporary staff to input data from one system to another without appropriate data validation .  This results in poor quality, mistakes and bigger problems longer term.  When automating these areas with appropriate validation rules, the investment payback can be extremely fast.
7. Consult professionals to get input into your automation approach but try not to create something that is so complex that it is difficult to understand and apply practically to your organisation. In other words, do not just do it for the purpose of saying you are doing automation.
8. Always ask yourself the question. Can this be done better by applying automation?
9. Use automation to address short term problems that you need to solve. Sometimes the time it will take large systems to integrate may be years away.  Why not look at automation solutions that will still solve the problem even temporarily where you will still get the pay back.  Many organisations hold off doing anything until the bigger solution comes along.  It is okay to decommission some of your automation in the future just like you do with systems.
10. Continue to measure the effectiveness of the automation you use. Sometimes things on a white board or spreadsheets analysing the benefits don’t always translate back to a real solution.  By constantly measuring and assessing you can re-calibrate and ensure you are getting the benefits you intended out of it.