Search Results - society

Blog Post: What Civilians Say About The Military Transition Conversation - Part 1 Of 3

I FEEL SO BAD FOR THEM, THEY’VE…

Added by Jean South at 8:33pm on February 22, 2017

Blog Post: How to widen the workforce using technology: There has been a massive shift in the way that the British workforce operates — thanks to the digital revolution that is still going strong today after its birth in 1947 when the transistor was…; Added by Jake Holyoak at 5:34am on May 17, 2018

Blog Post: The benefits of corporate days out for profit and productivity: Are you searching for ways to boost staff morale, lower employee turnover and boost productivity in the workplace? If so, you need to focus your attention on corporate team-building…; Added by Tayla Reed-Hunting at 11:27am on June 28, 2018

Blog Post: How To Ask For Informational Interview

Added by Mandy Fard - CPRW, CMRW at 2:45pm on September 3, 2021

Blog Post: How Climate Change will Affect UK Businesses and the Economy: Climate change is a worrying issue that affects every government and individual in the world. According to NASA, Earth’s average temperature has increased around 1.1°C since the…; Added by Caitlin Purvis at 8:36am on June 17, 2020

Blog Post: 5 Recruitment Marketing Tools to Help You Work Smarter, Not Harder

Added by Deanna Breiter at 2:04pm on February 15, 2018

Blog Post: Spring cleaning...for the career!: It is late February in Michigan and although we have…; Added by Travis Furlow at 12:30pm on February 22, 2010

Blog Post: It's Mid 2022 - Reinvention Is the Magic you will Need to Succeed

It's been a few years since I have written a…

Added by Mike Rasmussen at 3:20am on May 27, 2022

Topic: Interview Tips: Jung, are energized by their own internal world and the world of ideas. They recharge their batteries through solitude and reflection, and they find social encounters, particularly those that involve a lot of people, draining. Extroverts, by contrast, are energized by the external world, and they find social encounters invigorating and stimulating. Because interviews are, by definition, social encounters, they put introverts at a disadvantage. In addition, introverts frequently struggle to find the right word and have difficulty thinking on their feet. While extroverts typically think out loud to reach a conclusion and generally aren't at a loss for words, introverts need time to process information before formulating an answer, have difficulty responding quickly, and may have trouble recalling a word or idea. This tendency is heightened under the stress of an interview. If you're an introvert – and up to 50% of the population is thought to be (including Bill Gates and Warren Buffett, among many other chief executives) – the seven steps below can help you manage your introversion effectively in the interview process. Before the Interview: Ask About the Interview – When you are invited for an interview, ask about the structure of the interview. How many people will you be meeting with? What are their names and titles? Will you be meeting with them together or in back-to-back meetings? How much time should you schedule for the interview process? With this information, do some research on the people you'll be meeting with. Search for their names on the company web site, and on sites such as Google, Zoominfo, and LinkedIn, to see what you can learn about them. You may find information that will be helpful in your conversation. As an introvert, having time to process that information ahead of the interview will help you prepare your answers. Knowing the expected timeframe will allow you to manage your energy flow, following the techniques described below. Advance knowledge of the sequence of events will reduce the stress and the energy drain. Review Your Work History – Re-read your resume to organize your thoughts and come up with additional examples that illustrate your accomplishments. Develop a brief statement that summarizes those accomplishments and describes your value to the company – this answers the "tell me about yourself" question. Anticipate the other questions you will be asked and prepare answers ahead of time. Consider actually writing out your answers, or rehearsing them out loud with a friend (or with a tape recorder), not to memorize the answers, but to engage several of your senses in the process of remembering. This preparation helps you respond to questions more quickly and easily. Brain scans show that introverts actually use different neurological pathways for information processing than extroverts use, thus accounting for their slower processing time. It's almost as if the information is in long-term storage, and it takes time to rummage through it to find what you're looking for, which is why it's so hard to think on your feet. If you do the rummaging in advance by reviewing your own history, you move the information into short-term memory, where it's more readily accessible. By planning your answers ahead of time, you won't have to "wing it." During the Interview: Allow Yourself Time to Think – If you're asked a question that you don't have an immediate answer for, it's acceptable to say, "That's a good question. Let me think about that for a minute." Then sit silently for a moment and organize your thoughts. By announcing that you need a minute to think, you've given a response right away, even though you haven't yet given your answer. Essentially, you've bought yourself some time and slowed down the process. Use a "Cheat Sheet" – If you're concerned that you'll forget the examples you came up with during your advance preparation, bring a leather portfolio with you, with a pad of paper, and use the paper both to take notes and to prepare ahead of time a couple of words or phrases as cues to your examples. (These need to be very brief, or else you'll have trouble finding the information on the page.) Then, during your momentary pause to organize your thoughts, you can glance down at your portfolio and find the prompts you've written for yourself. This strategy can help you think on your feet. Reframe Your Introverted Information Processing Style as a Strength – Because we live in a society that values extroverted behaviors, you may have come to regard your slower thought processing as a flaw. On the contrary, your careful deliberation and analysis means your answers will be well thought out – introverts don't "shoot from the hip." If you're called upon to describe a strength, consider identifying this quality and presenting it as the strength that it is. This has the added benefit of alerting the interviewer to your introverted style, to provide a context for your more methodical manner. Manage Your Energy – If you have a marathon interview that involves multiple interviewers and many hours, you may begin to feel depleted. Ask for a bathroom break, just to give yourself a moment alone and a chance to regroup. If need be, have an energy bar. You can also use this opportunity to glance again at any notes you've brought with you. After the Interview: Write a Powerful Thank You Letter – If you do stumble over an answer, your thank you letter gives you an opportunity to recover. Along with extending your thanks, you can note that, on further reflection about a particular question, you have additional thoughts, and then state them. Interviews can be a challenge for introverts, but careful preparation will enable you to manage these occasions successfully. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Wendy Gelberg is the owner of Gentle Job Search/Advantage Resumes. She is a certified career coach and resume writer whose expertise is in helping people who are uncomfortable "tooting their own horn." Designated the "Job-Hunt Pro for Introverts" for www.job-hunt.org, Wendy coaches individuals, gives workshops, and writes articles and blogs on all aspects of the job search process, Her book, "The Successful Introvert: How to Enhance Your Job Search and Advance Your Career," will be published Fall 2008). Samples of her resumes and career advice appear in over 20 books. Wendy has owned her business for over 10 years. She has been an introvert her whole life. Contact Wendy at wendy@gentlejobsearch.com.…; Added by C. B. Stalling!! at 3:14pm on October 16, 2008

Comment on: Blog Post 'Hiring the “Aged”': all the time. And it not only kills me because I'm in that age demographic, but because people think I have the ability to help them get jobs, but in fact I am pretty much powerless. I even have friends who have been out of work for a couple of YEARS now. My heart aches when I hear the horror stories about people losing their homes, having to pull their kids out of college, depleting their entire savings, just to survive until they get a job. And there are suicides too. Going back to school or taking classes? Forget it. It’s a waste of a job seeker's money 95% of the time. Employers just do not consider 'adult education classes' or even a later-in-life degree to be worth much if anything; they'll just keep ignoring those workers they 'assume' aren't a good fit and hire the people who have the experience/knowledge from their employment. And companies just don’t want to bother to train people anymore. The mantra is ‘hire ‘em with actual experience so we don’t have to spend time training ‘em!’ These days companies who are watching their bottom line (and who isn’t) want to hire people with at least some experience so they can be immediately productive. Many over 50 job seekers have given up on finding anything even remotely comparable to what they had before being laid off, but therein lies another problem: They can't even get hired at Starbucks or Home Depot! Many of these people will do ANY work – they’re smart, capable, nowhere near ‘over the hill’, and often desperate if not for income then for health insurance. People who NEED money often turn out to be the best employees. However, those companies assume anyone who is that over-qualified will bolt at the first offer in their field that comes their way. This may - or may NOT - be true, but I just hate all the assumptions and preconceived notions people have about certain age groups (hell, while we're at it, I also hate ALL assumptions about any group of people). No one is judged on their individual merit or circumstances. Why not? Time and workload. No one in an HR or recruiting function, nor the hiring manager him/herself, has the time to do a thorough review of every applicant. So what's the answer? Well, I highly doubt we will change American society and our sociological beliefs. Just look at history… how long did it take Women to gain a foothold in employment? And then African-Americans and other people considered ‘non-white.’ And today, the focus seems to be on Gay rights and acceptance, and that battle is still ongoing. Face it, we humans are imperfect; we are not computers. Even the best, most well-meaning people may harbor preconceived notions or outright bias against certain groups, and some do without even realizing it. People will stick to what they 'think' they know (like employers 'think' they know to never hire someone at a lesser pay or title than they held before), because it's easy. It's easy to lump an entire group of people together so they can be rejected. Makes the person whose job it is to review all the resumes much easier! I'm a firm believer that the hiring process in our country is broken. It has become a matter of rejection - how many people can the reviewer (could be an HR Manager, or a Recruiter, or an entry level admin or even a temp worker!) remove from the pile? That pile of resumes must be made smaller, of course, because no one has the time to read 500 resumes and cover letters for each position in their company. So employers first look for a reason to reject the person... you know, those age-old reasons that humans use to classify others: There are typos on the resume. The resume ‘looks’ bad. - The person’s English is a bit stilted or broken (possibly indicating someone whose first language is not English). The name of the candidate is ‘ethnic’ sounding. (studies have proved that ‘Colin’ will get hired more often than ‘Tyrone’, and that ‘Jason’ will get preference over ‘Abdul’). The person lives too far from the company (‘far’ being a very subjective term; 10 miles might be far to you, but many, many people in the U.S. drive more than 50 miles each way) - The person lives in a ‘bad’ area or neighborhood. - And, of course, the person graduated from school more than 15 years ago or shows employment dates on their resume from more than 15 years ago. If it IS a machine (computer) doing the first ‘review’, there is no guarantee the computer will reject the people truly not qualified, nor is there a guarantee the computer will keep the best candidates. The whole subject of keywords and rankings based on keywords is fodder for another debate! Lastly, they look at the actual experience and qualifications of the person. Yes, I said last. Those candidates who aren’t immediately rejected, move on to the next step in the rejection process, so that another imperfect human reviews and rejects, and by the time the actual hiring manager sees resumes, from that 500 he/she might only see 10. Do you for one minute think that every one of the 490 rejected candidates were rejected solely because they do not have the minimum qualifications? Now let this sink in for a minute… someone who has never met you, someone who could be racist, ageist, homophobic, someone who might be an entry-level employee without much breadth of business experience, someone who most likely has no understanding of what you do and how that fits into their company, could be the person who determines your future. Scary, huh? (dismounting my soapbox now)…; Added by Judi Wunderlich at 1:24pm on November 14, 2012