It’s pretty easy to recognize a terrible cover letter within the first 2 seconds of reading one. People tend to forget that this document is a sales tool – you use it to sell yourself to a prospective employer. That being said, it’s very easy to ruin your potential sale with just a few simple words.

The most important thing you need to do when writing your cover letter is remember that the person reading it cares about what you have to offer them, not about who you are in…

In the course of our talent acquisition work at Kinetix we invariably see both the good and bad habits of both companies and candidates in the process. One item that regularly bothers me on the company side is a behavior practiced by so many corporate and HR folks that we call it the “Heisman”…. that is to say that they feel so overwhelmed by all the applicants to their job postings…many of which may not be…

You may already know that social networking sites like LinkedIn and Twitter can supplement your job search. Since Twitter has a simple and open platform, people are continuously exploring ways to use the service…

Whether we like it or not, we will be forced to make plenty of new energy choices in the decades ahead. Who knows what will emerge as the dominant "energy flavor," but the sources of energy we use today for shelter, lighting, entertainment and…

Performance-Based interviewing yields better hires, when compared to competency-based interviewing. We are advocates for doing the work during the interview to find the candidate’s precise skills in context (in directly comparable situations) that align with the SMART (specific, measurable, achievable,…

Job seekers hear about the hidden job market and often wonder how much is myth vs. reality. Here is a guide on what is real, and what you can do to tap into these opportunities.…

Originally posted on the SmashFly Interns Blog

I recently read the article, They Don’t Want a Relationship, They Just Want an…

For many of us one of the most stressful and traumatic things that can happen in our life is being made redundant. Particularly when you have been working for a company for a long time and quite frankly been a hardworking loyal employee. Shock, depression, anger and resentment set in. All understandable feelings and reactions….however I am going to…

Starting Again with your Recruiting Budget

Take a big step back and think about your recruiting budget. If you started from a blank sheet of paper and only one dollar, how would you use it? Would you keep pursuing the same recruiting strategies you use now or start from scratch? Would your job board spend be the same percentage it was in the past? Would you…

Is it just us or do so many people seem to be changing jobs at the moment? Some didn’t have a choice, of course ... need we mention a certain former Prime Minister and his inauspicious and involuntary removal from government? But aside from the country’s Very Top Job, many ‘commoners’ are changing jobs for a variety of…

For several decades, employers have been utilizing video conferencing in order to communicate with their internal staff orclients without having to fly people around the country. Video interviewing can help employers to assess from the interview the skill and confidence of the candidates by reviewing all the video interviews held. They can then skim the best candidates possessing the required skills for the particular job. Remote video interviews provide numerous benefits. One…

Now that all the site upgrades are pretty much out of the way, let’s get back to business. In one of my previous articles titled, “How to Ace

Your Next Job Interview”, I talked about how to answer the most common

questions asked by a hiring manager.

A lot of folks responded with, “What are the best questions to ask during an interview?”

So today I am going to look at the other side of that coin and help clarify the best questions to ask…

Sorry to tell you this – but job boards are businesses. They make money. They produce results.…

Honestly, if I had a penny for every time I have read about how the job boards are dying I'd have ooh, let me see now, at least one of the Queen's English pounds sterling. And you know what? they are not dying of old age, they are being poisoned into oblivion by the very people who are meant to make them work - the recruiter.



Yes siree, it doesn't take much figuring out. Social media isn't the holy grail these gurus would have you believe it is. Post the same crap as you've been…

Times have changed, after all, as Grant Cooper, president of Strategic Resumes Strategic, notes in the Resume Critique Writer software that he authored. “Brief resumes are simply no longer effective in today’s increasingly competitive job market,” he said. “The advice that ‘They only want to see one-page resumes,’ is perhaps the single most outdated and incorrect statement job-seekers hear today.”…

Some job advertisements ask you to include your desired salary, and if they ask for this, it usually means that you can’t avoid doing so. Listing salary requirements is always tricky because it’s hard to “guess” what the employer will think about your preference. Asking for too much can rule out your chances right away because you might appear unrealistic, but asking for too little can signal a red flag and tell the hiring manager that you don’t value your skills and experience. So the…