|
What should I expect in a "behavioral interview?"
|
#
?
Aug 15, 2014 02:52
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 29, 2024 22:56 |
|
|
the posted:What should I expect in a "behavioral interview?" "Tell me about a time you..." questions
|
|
#
?
Aug 15, 2014 03:11
|
|
|
Chaotic Flame posted:"Tell me about a time you..." questions ...had a conflict with a co-worker. ...made a mistake at work. ...improved your workplace / processes. You might want to prepare answers for those.
|
|
#
?
Aug 15, 2014 03:24
|
|
|
FrozenVent posted:...had a conflict with a co-worker. yeppers The OP posted:You may be asked some "situational-based" questions. These are easy to identify because they almost start with "Tell me about a time when...". These are trivial to answer if you remember to be a STAR. If you can't remember that gimmicky thing, just tell a complete story, from beginning to end, explaining what you needed to do, why you needed to do it, who was involved, what you specifically did (seriously, use "I" here - not "we", lots of hiring managers hate that because it makes it sound like the situation happened with you as a passive observer), and the outcome. Success or failure are okay, as long as you can show you learned from it and you had a good reason to fail.
|
|
#
?
Aug 15, 2014 04:17
|
|
|
I realise this is a bit off-topic, but I couldn't think of where better to put it... I resigned for the first time in my life this week, but my boss and HR have started asking me why I left. My partner suggests that I blame it on a health condition I have and leave it at that. However, I am leaving 90% due to the very poor behaviour of a member of management who has used the health issue to bully me and feel like saying 'it's cus i'm disableeed' is letting them off the hook. I feel that it's basically constructive dissmissal on the part of the company, but I know that a tribunal will go nowhere and I need to rely on these people to provide me with a reference for a little bit longer. Is it acceptable to just say 'personal issues' and leave it at that? HR has asked if it was specifically in relation to a specific action of theirs (which broke the law), but in reality that was just the final 10% in the imma quit sandwich. I'm switching careers to one which is better paid and I have more qualifications in, so I'm not anticipating having difficulty explaining this at future interviews or anything.
|
|
#
?
Aug 15, 2014 09:12
|
|
|
Rolled Cabbage posted:I realise this is a bit off-topic, but I couldn't think of where better to put it... Are you in the uk? If so your employer will very likely only provide a reference that consists of "they worked here between x and y dates and left because they resigned". Refusing to provide a reference or providing a negative one is very very rare because most companies don't want to deal with the poo poo that's likely to result. That said, you're under no obligation to provide them with a reason for leaving if you don't want to. Also, related to my previous question in here, I've got a first interview for the job I really want on Wednesday and a second interview for the one I'd take if I had to on Friday. If I get invite back for a second interview for the one I want and the other one makes me an offer, am I ok to say I'm waiting on other offers? I don't want to burn bridges with job 2, but job 1 has better hours and more money...
|
|
#
?
Aug 15, 2014 10:25
|
|
|
I really need some help here. I have interviewed for two positions that I felt I would be a good fit for in the past 5 months.. One was a state university for an IT Support job. I interviewed with a panel, then got called in for a 2nd interview with the CIO, waited two weeks, and got a letter saying they were not hiring the position at all. Recent one was at local school district for another IT Support job, similar scale and scope. Interviewed with panel, got called in for a 2nd interview (same panel) and they basically told me I was one of their top candidates and they wanted to get a 2nd look since I was their first interview. Just got a reject letter saying they didn't hire anyone, and found the position reposted. I have two questions here... one is should I try to reapply to the 2nd position anyway, or perhaps try emailing the hiring manager and seeing if there was some specific deficiency on my resume? The second question is more generic.... what the hell am I doing wrong? My resume is getting noticed and I've gotten interviews and 2nd interviews. Both times (especially the most recent one), I felt really good after the interview, like I nailed it (I've been on interviews that have not gone well, and I knew it) Am I saying or doing something wrong, or what?
|
|
#
?
Aug 15, 2014 23:17
|
|
|
I recently had an interview with a smallish (<100 employees) tech startup. One of the questions they asked was whether I wanted to start my own company. Anyone know why they would ask that or what the right answer was?
|
|
#
?
Aug 16, 2014 01:16
|
|
|
dangittj posted:I really need some help here. I have interviewed for two positions that I felt I would be a good fit for in the past 5 months.. In both case, they didn't refuse you - they didn't hire at all. This is generally a sign of budget fuckery or internal politics. In the case of the school district, it could be a case of them having a budget to interview but no funds for the position. I'm not kidding, this is a thing that happens. I'd reapply for the second position. Worst comes to worst, they don't call you.
|
|
#
?
Aug 16, 2014 02:01
|
|
|
I have a job interview tomorrow for a Strategy Analyst position with a services company. I've been advised that the interview will include a 'BCG/Bain type strategy case study' to test my ability to solve and structure problems. I am familiar with these from my university days and have used structured problem solving type skills in my current job (management consultant). Nonetheless, I'd really like to brush up on my skills and prepare ahead of the interview tomorrow. Obviously a quick Google search reveals numerous examples, but I was wondering if anyone could suggest any particularly useful resources (youtube videos, etc) that I could use to practice and prepare at such short notice? I have less than 24 hours to prepare.
|
|
#
?
Aug 20, 2014 05:17
|
|
|
FrozenVent posted:...had a conflict with a co-worker. You can't go wrong just literally googling common interview questions and preparing a response for them. Make sure you actually go through your entire answer and not just think, "Oh yeah, I'll just talk about X." STAR is good. Do it.
|
|
#
?
Aug 20, 2014 18:41
|
|
|
I received a "pre-employment verification and background check form" for a job I am very interested in. The form requires me to list my last 5 positions and the Reason for Leaving. The 4th position was a position I was terminated from. This position was also listed on my resume. I know I shouldn't have listed it, but I can't do anything about that now. I feel like these are my two choices: A. Lie about the reason for leaving. I've been told that my previous employer will only verify employment and not the reason for leaving due to legal issues. However, if this company finds out I am sure that will disqualify me. B. Tell the truth but paint it in a good light. I was going go put "Laid off due to time conflicts" and explain that the job was difficult to manage with my school workload, and that the position was ended amicably with a handshake (this is true). I immediately went to a position at a desk in my university department which allowed me to work on my schoolwork in the downtime, and it was a much better fit for me. However, I'm afraid that putting I was terminated from a position not so long ago (June 2013) will reflect poorly on me and may cost me the job as well. What should I do?
|
|
#
?
Aug 21, 2014 19:53
|
|
|
Liam Emsa posted:I received a "pre-employment verification and background check form" for a job I am very interested in. The form requires me to list my last 5 positions and the Reason for Leaving. Is this company doing the verifications themselves? If not, did they tell you the name of the company conducting the verifications? I would try to check that company's website. They might list the things that they check for (in order to get HR depts. of companies to use them)
|
|
#
?
Aug 21, 2014 19:57
|
|
|
Liam Emsa posted:should Ending a job due to time conflicts and transferring to a different job at the same organization doesn't look particularly bad. Lying on a job application is grounds for termination at any point in the future.
|
|
#
?
Aug 21, 2014 20:01
|
|
|
Liam Emsa posted:I received a "pre-employment verification and background check form" for a job I am very interested in. The form requires me to list my last 5 positions and the Reason for Leaving. Second, IANAL but despite whatever's going around as far as I know it is not against the law anywhere in the US to discuss performance or dismissal issues with a reference checker. Whether or not your previous employers feel it's any legal risk -- well, it's completely up to them. To be fair you have to be a really bad employee (or have had a really vindictive manager) to get an actively bad reference even if you were fired. It's actually not an uncommon practice to "negotiate" reference terms with your last bosses. Hoping to put you at ease, but I don't completely understand your post, are you talking about one job in (B) or two? I have absolutely no idea why anyone in their right mind would drop you for shifting a student job to better accommodate your class schedule. If I'm understanding correctly you were never terminated, you resigned your position on good terms to have something that better suits your schedule. Not sure why you're specifying "laid off" either. Generally when coaching up out-of-college employees I have to explain that: laid off = position was eliminated due to lack of work (not your fault). terminated/fired = YOU (not the position) were removed for performance or misconduct issues (generally your fault, but depends on your manager) resigned = left the position of your own accord (hey, at-will employment goes both ways guys). I must add: Do not lie on any paperwork, even by omission. I hate to use corporate speak but sometimes the position really wasn't a good fit or you have a crazy boss or you didn't realize the material you spilt $20,000 a kilo or you're human and made any sort of mistake. It doesn't sound like you were terminated at all from your post. I'm just kind of throwing it out there for the thread: my current awesome boss and her also awesome boss were fired from their jobs because the owner of the business they are working wanted to throw a bitch fit and thought he knew more than their decades of experience. Now they are making more money, enjoy more control, run a bigger business and are generally much happier. So checking that "Have you ever been terminated from a job" box is not the death sentence some people make it out to be. In my company they don't even give me those boilerplate applications, I have to ask for them (and rarely do). What I go by is the applicant's resume and cover letter and a brief phone screen. When it comes to forms like you mention above it sounds like it's just HR paper churning so just give them some general answer. "Seperation due to lack of fit". They use that vague business speak all the time, so can you.
|
|
#
?
Aug 23, 2014 00:38
|
|
|
totalnewbie posted:You can't go wrong just literally googling common interview questions and preparing a response for them. Make sure you actually go through your entire answer and not just think, "Oh yeah, I'll just talk about X." I love that STAR is really just good story telling. It's essentially a variation of Freytag's pyramid.
|
|
#
?
Aug 24, 2014 15:27
|
|
|
I'm not sure what thread to put this in and I think this is kinda appropriate but whatever. If I get offered a job while I'm already employed and I have to fill out my background check information and it asks for my current supervisor and contact information
what the hell do I do? I mean obviously I don't want anybody calling my current boss to verify my employment because that's a sure tipoff that I'm getting background checked for another position with another company. The position wouldn't start for a couple months and until then (-2 weeks) I'd kinda like to keep being employed.
|
|
#
?
Aug 25, 2014 01:09
|
|
|
Last time I had to fill one of these out it had a box for "May we contact your current employer? YES ( ) NO ( ) Please initial." Otherwise, leave the information blank and tell whoever's handling it that, hey, you don't want to tip off your current employer. Everybody does that.
|
|
#
?
Aug 25, 2014 04:24
|
|
|
So I created a "gimmicky" resume, which I prefer to think of as more visual and semi-non-traditional. I've shown it to a few people that are managers or do hirings and across the board everyone is intrigued and is neutral to very positive about it. I know it says not to post resumes, but I'm not really looking for comments on anything but the presentation of it. I have a more traditional resume that I'm using for my career search of teaching positions, but this is the resume I created for lovely minimum wage jobs, serving jobs, that kind of junk, as I'm moving to a different city and need to find some work until I can get my career a go. *IMPORTANT* This is just a screenshot. The actual resume is created in Illustrator and completely vector so it is scalable to any size and maintains clarity.  Thoughts?
|
|
#
?
Aug 26, 2014 00:10
|
|
|
It's very busy. You have a lot of experience, which is good, but I'm looking at it and having trouble even figuring out where to start reading. edit: On a more general level, gimmicky resumes set you apart, and not necessarily in a good way. Xandu fucked around with this message at 00:29 on Aug 26, 2014 |
|
#
?
Aug 26, 2014 00:26
|
|
|
Good Canadian Boy posted:So I created a "gimmicky" resume, which I prefer to think of as more visual and semi-non-traditional. I've shown it to a few people that are managers or do hirings and across the board everyone is intrigued and is neutral to very positive about it. I know it says not to post resumes, but I'm not really looking for comments on anything but the presentation of it. Look man as a piece of graphic art I commend it and I wish I could make stuff like that for my company's various documents, I don't even know how to draw a straight line in Photoshop. It's nice, not tacky, pretty pleasant to look at. But my advice as a (caveat: only 2 years experience so far) hiring manager is: do not do this. I can't imagine it's any easier for job seekers in Canada than the US but this is just not the way to set yourself apart outside of a few niche fields. It falls in the same realm of stuff as sending chocolates to your interviewer and wasting your money on fancy resume paper. If I have a position over and I get 40 resumes for a position I want to go through them as quickly and fairly as possible to identify the top candidates. Which means a graphically boring but content filled 1 page resume will actually do you better. This thing would just confuse and frustrate me. The content is where you need some work although it's far better than what I've seen from most fresh college grads. "A charismatic and organized professional ..." sentence means absolutely nothing. You just graduated from college, you're not a professional yet. Take that off. Take off everything from high school. Take out Word/Excel/Powerpoint/Apple OS/Windows OS from computer skills -- everyone with a college degree and a pulse should know the rough nuts & bolts of all those, it's implied. Try to improve your bullet points, they're a little bland. I just did a quick scan and there are six instances of the word "Worked" in your experience/teaching placements sections. Obviously you worked there. What did you accomplish? Also what kind of jobs are you actually applying for (presumably teaching)? Can't give a much more specific critique. Sorry I'm not trying to be a dick or send you back to the drawing board. But unless it's graphic design or some other creative industry you're shooting for this will probably hurt you more than help.
|
|
#
?
Aug 26, 2014 01:15
|
|
|
I'd recommend using LaTeX to write your resume because that way you just get a perfect format every time and just have to worry about content. There are a lot of templates on here: http://www.latextemplates.com/cat/curricula-vitae and you can edit it in your browser or download an editor for your computer. You can do the same thing with cover letters. It sped up the process when I was applying, and helped me make some quality PDF resumes.
|
|
#
?
Aug 26, 2014 17:44
|
|
|
That looks like a good format for a personal website, but it's a little too busy for a traditional paper resume. I have a slightly non-traditional resume format to set mine apart but for the most part it's still a standard resume. Yours looks more like a flyer at first glance and if I saw it in a stack on a printer my first assumption may be that it's a piece of fax spam and to toss it without looking closer at it.
|
|
#
?
Aug 26, 2014 17:52
|
|
|
I will come up with something more traditional. I guess my question is then: how do I show my jobs as accomplishments when they really weren't anything special? Every year I've had to work some lovely brainless job because I've never had the necessary experience for anything better and people fail to recognize that a person working on two degrees with good social skills is capable of handling the majority of jobs under $20/hr without previous experience. All of my employers have been happy with my performance and see me as a hard worker. Especially the teaching placements I did, I have near perfect reviews for those. I just need to get to the interview stage to show employers that I'm capable and motivated. The main thing that I would argue makes me employable is I am a teacher. I'm a certified ontario teacher (hence why I described myself as a professional). Teaching involves a great variety of transferable skills that can work for a lot of simple jobs like customer service, sales & serving positions. But apparently managers don't really care? If I haven't worked at X restaurant for 3 years picking up whatever bad habits you develop at specific jobs like that I'm not qualified to even be interviewed. Any help with how I can market myself better for these positions? I was attempting to use my creativity to show that I have additional tools, but I guess employers don't really care that you can do a lot of different things well. I'm mainly applying to things like customer service, sales, anything at all I can find even minimally related to education.
|
|
#
?
Aug 26, 2014 22:31
|
|
|
The problem is, if you're applying to "lovely minimum wage jobs" then all of those things you mentioned are red flags that say "this person will quit as soon as they possibly can.'
|
|
#
?
Aug 26, 2014 22:58
|
|
|
Wait which things that I mentioned? All the job positions I had, the employer knew they were only summer positions. It's only now that I'm looking for something a bit more permanent (a year probably).
|
|
#
?
Aug 26, 2014 23:26
|
|
|
Having a degree and being able to read and write at a professional level are actually negatives when it comes to poo poo level minimum wage jobs. If it comes down to you and an uneducated slacker who misspelled her name on the résumé, she's gonna get the grocery store stocker job every time - you're going to be loving off in six months when you get a real job, she's gonna be around until she gets fired. Think about it from the manager's perspective.
|
|
#
?
Aug 26, 2014 23:45
|
|
|
Yeah it's worked against me on some of these things, excepting the ones with a clear end-date in the not too distant future. Like Vent said, people see someone who will clearly be leaving in a couple months (even though they're likely to suck it up and be chill and do great) but hiring is a pain in the rear end so they want someone who will stick with it as long as possible even though they probably won't be great. If there's a clear end date, they tend to assume that you'll be decent enough to just set things up for after the end date and choose the person who is probably gonna pick things up within the first day.
|
|
#
?
Aug 26, 2014 23:50
|
|
|
How do I best position myself then?
|
|
#
?
Aug 27, 2014 01:59
|
|
|
I received this resume from someone looking for a critique. I think there is information on here that would be valuable for anybody working on their resume, so I decided to share. 
Goon Approved Resume and CV Writing Service
|
|
#
?
Aug 27, 2014 19:28
|
|
|
Good Canadian Boy posted:I will come up with something more traditional. I guess my question is then: how do I show my jobs as accomplishments when they really weren't anything special? Every year I've had to work some lovely brainless job because I've never had the necessary experience for anything better and people fail to recognize that a person working on two degrees with good social skills is capable of handling the majority of jobs under $20/hr without previous experience. All of my employers have been happy with my performance and see me as a hard worker. Especially the teaching placements I did, I have near perfect reviews for those. I just need to get to the interview stage to show employers that I'm capable and motivated. Your resume is going to work significantly against you, because the format and content you have chosen scream loudly that you DON'T want an unskilled job. The formatting literally decentralizes your work experience in favor of a huge amount of space devoted to graphic design and teaching-specific credentials, and you have the word "professional" in your mission statement when you are applying for non-professional jobs. Advice: keep the content from the left side of your resume, get rid of the rest. There's way too much detail on your various teaching placements and the computer skills aren't that impressive and are mostly implied by your other experience. Use your design expertise to format it nicely, but it should be black and white, on normal letter paper, with no background. Your work experience should be enough to get you interviews if you are personable and have a reasonable cover letter. Use your cover letter to express interest in the specific position. The cover letter is the place to talk about how your teaching placements have given you transferable skills. Try to sound less corporate and more genuine. The main thing you need is to show enthusiasm. It's really clear that you want to be doing something else other than working minimum wage. Suppress that feeling for a while. It comes across in your resume and all your posts, and it probably comes across in person too. Psych yourself up about having a job and it will make it more tolerable.
|
|
#
?
Aug 28, 2014 00:32
|
|
|
this little bastard posted:I'd recommend using LaTeX to write your resume because that way you just get a perfect format every time and just have to worry about content. There are a lot of templates on here: http://www.latextemplates.com/cat/curricula-vitae and you can edit it in your browser or download an editor for your computer. You can do the same thing with cover letters. When I started looking for jobs I went with TeX as well since that's what I was used to in grad school but if you're doing any type of engineering related job I'd recommend just sticking with Word, without any fancy tables and poo poo. Why? Most company's job application websites are stuck in the stone ages and will either ask you to copy/paste a resume into a silly little text box, or they're going to ask you to upload a Word document (but a doc, not a docx  ) and their system will try to parse through it and populate all the fields. Which 99% of the time doesn't work properly with a non-fancy Word document and 100% of the time doesn't work with a pdf.gently caress those applications. I swear it's like the same company that gets outsourced to do all of them or the same application software package.
|
|
#
?
Aug 28, 2014 02:54
|
|
|
It's basically some variant on brassring or taleo and they're all annoying, and the parsers still don't quite work. Also they're almost never configured to tell you what the password requirements are, and they're frequently something stupid like no special characters, or a special maximum number of characters, or some other bullshit that you don't find out about until your password doesn't work.
|
|
#
?
Aug 28, 2014 03:01
|
|
|
Shugojin posted:It's basically some variant on brassring or taleo and they're all annoying, and the parsers still don't quite work. Every taleo site I've had to use when applying for poo poo has enforced a "no duplicate characters next to each other" rule, which is the dumbest thing. I mean, doesn't that actually reduce the number of possible permutations significantly?
|
|
#
?
Aug 28, 2014 09:59
|
|
|
Boris Galerkin posted:I'd recommend just sticking with Word, without any fancy tables and poo poo. In 2014, tables are fiddly and difficult to use and cannot be consistenly handled. White space is white space, unless it's not. Various applications that will not be named do infuriating crap like randomly add an always-blank front or back page to your document, meaning you have to manually adapt your page count offset, buried deep in a submenu, to be 'x of y-1' or some such. People feel the need to use a typesetting system to prepare a CV as opposed to, say, a word processor to produce a clean and manageable document. As for job application forms, one can only hope that the people charged with both overseeing and deploying such 'solutions' were not required to use them before they got to their positions, as to knowingly inflict such a thing on a job seeker would be an unforgivable act of sadism. (That said, the one I used the other day wasn't too bad, mainly because you had to fill out your details and upload your CV...done. Took the precaution of e-mailing the recruiter to see if it had actually gone through OK, though.) 
|
|
#
?
Aug 28, 2014 14:29
|
|
|
Is there a standard procedure/timing for contacting a company after an interview to see if you're still being considered? Everything I turn up is just talking about thank you notes right after the interview. I had what I felt was a really good interview three weeks ago tomorrow. The job posting wasn't public so I don't know if its still active. They mentioned at the end that I was the first person to be interviewed and that they would be "interviewing some more people and then let me know" with no time frame given. Barring a standard procedure I'm going probably just going to sent an email to the HR rep and the manager I interviewed with saying I'm still interested in the position and asking if its been filled or if they are still interviewing.
|
|
#
?
Aug 28, 2014 16:12
|
|
|
Two to three weeks is acceptable for checking in to see what's going on.
|
|
#
?
Aug 28, 2014 19:08
|
|
|
Xenoborg posted:Is there a standard procedure/timing for contacting a company after an interview to see if you're still being considered? Everything I turn up is just talking about thank you notes right after the interview. I see this question all the time. 1. Who is your primary contact for this position? If it's a recruiter (internal or external), e-mail the recruiter once to check up, 1-2 weeks after the interview. If it's a REAL hiring manager, e-mail the hiring manager once to check up, 1-2 weeks after the interview. If it's HR, do not contact them because they are responsible for drug tests and filling out paperwork after accidents and stuff *after* someone is hired and have no hiring authority of any kind and somehow got stuck as your primary contact. Seriously if you see "HR Generalist" or "HR Specialist" or even "Vice President of Human Resources" or whatever they do not have any pull to get you hired, they just protect the company. 2. After doing the above, start applying to other jobs and do not make any other contact until they contact you. It will not help you in any way. The end.
|
|
#
?
Aug 28, 2014 23:38
|
|
|
(Posted in the LI megathread too, but it's a valid question for both!) A friend of mine is in the rather cliche situation of being very intelligent, university educated, stuck in a retail job which he is nown floating up to more store manager/multiple store mobile manager type position (do they give him the title and benefits to go with it? Of course not...) Anyhow, he's looking to make the step from retail to...anything else...does anyone have a good example of a CV that might be a good example of how to try to do this? Thoughts that have occured to me include putting an emphasis on his increased responsibility, managing multiple sites, being adaptable/flexible, putting a positive spin on his desires to move (NOT JUST because he wants out of a lovely, dead-end retail job, YES because he'd like to work in a more stimulating and professional environment!) I've got in touch with an old recruiter in his area who helped me get started back in the day. Already put a good word in for him, but that's about all I can do from here, and we want to make sure he goes off with his best foot forward. 
|
|
#
?
Aug 29, 2014 20:48
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 29, 2024 22:56 |
|
|
Tawd posted:(Posted in the LI megathread too, but it's a valid question for both!) A friend of mine is in the rather cliche situation of being very intelligent, university educated, stuck in a retail job which he is nown floating up to more store manager/multiple store mobile manager type position (do they give him the title and benefits to go with it? Of course not...) Anyhow, he's looking to make the step from retail to...anything else...does anyone have a good example of a CV that might be a good example of how to try to do this? By your use of university/CV I'm assuming you're in the UK or Australia or New Zealand. There's no one-size-fits all bullet for this situation. What did he get his degree in? What kind of employment hubs are in the area -- e.g. manufacturing, finance, government, etc.? What has he done differently than his peers (other than just not be a complete fuckup) to earn this increased responsibility?
|
|
#
?
Aug 29, 2014 21:44
|
|