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We have read lots of articles about weird interview questions.  What kind of farm animal would you be (beware the rooster!) and what character would you be in the board game Clue.  Some of the questions are frankly, ridiculous and I’m not sure how any of them can be interpreted in any meaningful way.

I thought about this during my conversations with candidates this week and this set of interview questions came to mind.  These questions may never get asked but if you spend some time digesting them and reflecting on them, you may come across as a more calm and confident candidate in your next interview.

• Have you ever had a near death experience?  How did it affect you?  Did you make major changes in your life as a result?
• What was the last app you got?  Free or Paid?  (this is a bit telling – the last app I got was a free fart machine app for my Blackberry Torch)
• Soft Ice cream or hard?
• Mac or PC?
• What was your last donation? (yes, kidneys count)
• How much money would you need to live the life of your choice?
• Describe your ideal birthday party.

I’m not saying that you will be candidate number one, but as one of my good friends used to say “A life unexamined is a life not worth living” and if you are in a time of career transition, you can probably afford to set aside some time for reflection.

An avid follower of  Recruiters Couch wrote to me this week to tell me that he had, after two years of searching, found his next job.  He wanted to share some of the things he had learned and so, this week, I turn it over to him.

After a redundancy from a major corporation two years ago, I began the search for my next career step.  With a complacent economy in 2009, a rocky recovery in 2010 and a slow start to 2011, I recognised it would be harder to find the next career step, but failed to realise the biggest challenge would be myself.

Unlike some candidates, I found it easy to reassure myself that re-employment was inevitable with my diverse skill set and outgoing personality.   Harder to do, was avoid hitting those pesky traffic cones (okay, and a few pedestrians).

Here is a list of my best (hard learned) advice:

1. Leave.  That’s right, get out!  Jump on a plane and go.  Anywhere.  Now!  Redundancy is tough, celebration is easy.  Recognise you have a great opportunity to travel and take it…. You deserve a couple of weeks off before you start your search. [I did get this bit right (several times)!]
2. Find your most honest advocate (and it’s not yourself!).  Trust, listen and learn from them – even when their advice is contrary to what you believe, try it.  You may be shocked by the difference their advice makes. [I hit about seven traffic cones before learning this lesson]
3. An out of control driver, inevitably crashes their car (in a big way!).  Try to convey control over your career path and a logical flow to your career.  [Five more traffic cones and a concussion!]
4. Good bones + great accessories.  Make your cover letter and résumé as easy for the recruiter to say ‘yes’ – echo key skills / characteristics from the job description in both, with matching accomplishments from your employment history. [One traffic cone, many drafts
5. Run, don’t walk from bad recruiters.  I had the best result with recruiters who shared my professional designation and treated me like a valuable commodity.  Request another recruiter or change firms if you are not feeling ‘the love’. [Two pedestrians and innumerable expletives]
6. Speed date.  Invite relevant key resources at your ‘ideal’ companies to coffee (search LinkedIn; ‘follow’ their company while you are there). E-mail a request for 15 minutes to discuss their careers and what has made them successful. Take notes, don’t ask for a job! [Invaluable advice to avoid six traffic cones]
7. Wherever possible, never settle.  I understand if you need to take something ‘in the interim’ – just don’t tell your employer (or recruiter) this and promise to follow your dream as soon as the opportunity arises. [One swerve into oncoming traffic, quickly corrected]
8. Finally… Ethics, professionalism, reputation, sanity.  If your new career is failing in any of these areas, resign before your career becomes the collateral damage of your employer’s car wreck. [One nasty four car collision avoided]

Today, I am happy to report I am about to embark on the next step in my career, in a role I am excited to take.  I hope you will find my advice valuable in avoiding your own traffic cones and please be nice to the pedestrians in your career search!

This weekend, I discovered MoonPies.  I was in Connecticut and had a lunch date at Cracker Barrel.  The store attached to the restaurant had all kinds of neat candy and treats but the MoonPies just spoke to me.  Turns out, they consist of two graham crackers with marshmallow fluff sandwiched in between and then the whole thing is dipped in chocolate – kind of a cross between a Jos. Louis and a Wagonwheel.

I brought the box in for my recruiting colleagues to try.  No had ever seen them before.  They pored over the box and the packaging.  It took only minutes for them to figure out that MoonPies don’t have to be eaten plain but can be heated in the microwave for an “out of this world” treat.  They can also be frozen in to a lovely summer snack.  Or laid out under ice cream with bananas and chocolate sauce for a dessert worthy of two spoons.

This is a great example of what we do best.  We don’t just read a resume at face value.  We are always trying to figure what skills are transferrable and where a candidate’s experience will be most valued.

If we take those event planning skills and introduce them into a proposals department, suddenly we have a Proposal Coordinator.

If we take a pulp and paper process expert and stick him into a nuclear planning group, we might get a really good Process Improvement Lead.

I could go on and on but the bottom line is that a MoonPie is not always a MoonPie.  Sometimes it’s a banana split.

Even though Harry Potter is a rising star in the wizarding community, he needs to give some serious thought to his career options.  Curse throwing and hot wand skills will only get him so far.

First of all, he needs to finish high school.  It’s going to be pretty tough to sit though classes and exams after all the excitement of recent events but it will be critical for his future career goals.

He also needs to learn to channel some of that anger into something more productive.  Explosive tempers rarely get the results you want in the workplace.  Also, bewitching your manager for a performance review is probably not allowed under the Employment Standards Act.

Harry is going to have to figure out to spell out his skills and experience in terms of transferable skills.  How else will employers identify if he can fit into their team?

So take heart, wizards everywhere.  There is a place for you. You just have to find it.

Say you are at a cocktail party and you meet the boss of your dreams.  You have a great conversation about your industry and your ideas to move it forward.  The evening finishes with the boss pressing his business card into your hand saying “let’s keep in touch”.

Score!

You drive home feeling awesome and ready to take on the world.  You are already plotting the next conversation and when it’s going to happen.

Boss of your dreams has a slightly different experience.  He goes home and googles you while it’s still fresh in his mind.  The first thing that comes up is a facebook link. Clicking that leads to your profile with an image of you in little tiny shorts in someone’s kitchen with a drink in your hand.  Hmmmmm.

The next link is the online photo album from your community golf tournament.  There are lots of pictures of you with the other golfers.  There must have been a lot of toasts because you seem to be raising a glass in all of them.  Hmmmm.

Suddenly that great impression you made has evaporated.  Maybe you are not next divisional leader material after all.

This is the new reality.  Your digital trail follows you everywhere.  You need to be proactive and protective of how you look online.

1.  Google yourself.  Type “first name last name” into google, yahoo and bing and see what comes up.
2. Your linkedin profile should be the first result.  If it isn’t, make sure your profile is completed. That should help.
3. If you are on facebook, then it will be near the top of the list too.  Take a look at your profile picture and the info on your home page.  Is it appropriate for someone like boss of your dreams to see?  Make sure the rest of your profile is private, only viewable by friends.
4. To really make your digital reputation work, it’s nice to have some links that go to professional associations, alumni, volunteer or community group activities too.

So, look yourself up.  What do you see?  Is it what you want other people to see?  If not, get to work.  Replace the image of you in little tiny shorts with one of you shaking hands at a conference.  It will be worth the effort.

Laura is away this week and asked me to stand in as a guest blogger – a big honour for someone who has only recently graduated and has only been working in the recruiting field for a short time. I first began my foray into human sourcing in 2007 as an intern, and have been spending my summers at Ian Martin ever since working as a research analyst. My degree is in psychology; in particular my research has been into moral cognition.

Or at least a cyber-village – to make one professional a cut above the rest in their field

This sentiment is fundamentally important to successful job seeking. As a very green job seeker, I have made sure to keep my ears keen to the advice from other professionals who are successful in their fields, and my eyes open and searching for strategies posted online. This strategy is vitally important when beginning, but also appears to be of crucial importance to staying successful.

The job market is changing constantly (some argue it does so daily); and keeping up with it requires an adaptive personality. In my experience so far, the best strategy has been to

• Look at what makes other professionals successful and humbly listen.
• Seek out sourcing/seeking strategies which are posted online (these are prolific)
• Constantly ferret out new tools for fast searching online; these can be found through referencing by other professionals.

From these points, a common theme arises: you need the help of others to grow more successful and stay on top. It will often be other professionals who will develop new and prodigious strategies/tools that will propel you further than you could have gone on your own.

This mindset of being ‘forever the student of the cyber-village’ is intrinsic to the success of all professionals.

 by Jeff Millar

If you can’t remember what you started five minutes ago, you are distracted.

If you find yourself staring at the little spinning wheel while your computer thinks, you are distracted.

If you leave the kettle boiling until its dry, you are distracted.

It happens.  It’s summer. People are slowing down and relaxing their mind-focussing muscles.

It can be especially frustrating if you are looking for a new gig.  You get to the end of another day and feel like you have accomplished nothing.

The day started well. You sat down at your desk, showered, dressed and ready to work.  You woke up your computer, took a sip of coffee and bang!  It was dinner time.  Whoa.

Try this:  before you power up the master of distraction, make a list of things to do. Make them short and specific.

• Invite 2 people to connect via linkedin
• Send one thank you note
• Exercise
• Apply for 2 jobs
• Eat lunch
• Make a lunch date for next week
• Read a whole newspaper

In between these activities, you will have all the regular distractions (email, phone calls, letting the dogs out) but if you keep coming back to the list and checking off the items you will a) feel more accomplished at the end of the day and b) continue to push everything forward.

You will be connected, knowledgeable, fit and energized – the perfect state of mind for new opportunities.

For a long time, I avoided Skype. I thought it was just going to create more “noise” in my inbox. It’s hard enough to concentrate as it is.

But then I started working with a couple of candidates in the UK and it seemed like the best option for communicating with them. It worked very well. I could see when they were online and they could see when I was online. It was nice to eliminate the trans-ocean phone tag.

Over the course of this process, I reached out to a couple of friends and former coworkers who have moved overseas. We were still in touch but the connection was not the same as it used to be. Time zones, meetings and family stuff made it difficult to find time to talk that did not entail someone staying up way too late.

Now I have a few friends on Skype. Not fifty gazillion, just a few and it is the coolest thing. I see when they come online and they can see me. It does not mean that we have to have a long and meaningful talk. We just see each other.

It’s a bit like passing a friendly colleague (as opposed to the flakey, rude or otherwise annoying ones) in the hall on the way to get coffee. Even if you are in a hurry, you nod and make eye contact. If you have a minute or you have some news, you stop and talk but otherwise, you just keep going, safe in the knowledge that the connection is still there and real.

Skype is the same. It’s like passing my trans-Atlantic friends in the hall and there is comfort in that.

Last week, I saw Anderson Cooper interview Lady Gaga on the venerable CBS show 60 Minutes.  She is a pretty interesting character.  Anderson was asking her about how she handles the way the press hang around waiting to catch her in an embarrassing situation.

“Well, Anderson, I am just not a barf in the bar kind of girl”.

Love it.

Love it.

Love it.

This is the kind of authenticity that everyone needs to bring to an interview.  It does not matter if it is a telephone interview with a recruiter or a face to face meeting with a hiring manager.  Confident, direct and truthful is the way to go.

This does not give you permission to be rude or disrespectful.  If you are asked how you got along with your former boss, you really shouldn’t say he was a jerk or he couldn’t read financial statements to save his life.  It is okay, however, to explain that you made decisions differently or you had different approaches to customer service.

An interview is like the nice pair of shoes in the shop window.  You go in to see if they have your size. You try them on.  You walk around for a while, thinking of outfits that will work with them.  You think about whether you can afford them.  You see if the salesperson will give you a deal and together, you decide if they are the right pair for you. 

If they don’t feel comfortable in the shop, don’t buy them, no matter how good a deal they are.  They will mock you every time you see them in your closet.

Lady Gaga wouldn’t settle for ill-fitting loafers.  Why should you?

Stop hiding behind your laptop and get out.  Forget about getting your inbox to zero.  It’s never going to happen.  Monster and Workopolis will keep churning out jobs.  It will be there when you get back.

There are tons of industry events going on.  It’s the season for garage sales and community picnics.  The weekend soccer and baseball tournaments have started.

These are all prime places to talk to people about what you do and what you want to do.

This does not mean pressing your business card in to the hand of every soccer mom you meet nor does it mean you should have a sheaf of resumes in your sock.

You need to be able to say clearly and concisely who you are and what you are looking for.  Mumbling something about being an office manager is not good enough.  Saying that you manage a small group of admin pros that provide support in a major staffing company, now that’s saying something. In one breath, you have identified that you are a manager and that you work in a big company; two nice hooks that might incent interest or even further conversation.

Technology has changed six degrees of separation to only three degrees of separation.  This means that the guy you meet at the ball game could be the neighbour of your next boss.  Really.  We are all that connected.

So practice, practice, practice.

When someone asks you what you do, be ready.