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How Can I Get the Best Job for My Qualifications? @ BillDoll.com
Billion Dollar Questions @ BillDoll - The Billion Dollar Site |
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Getting the Best Possible Job
What does it mean to get the best job? Does it mean an excellent salary, does it mean a job you love, or does it mean a job that allows you to become what you want to become in future – whether or not you love that particular job?
To most, the dream job is all three together. And why not? It’s only your “dream” job, and there are no limits to dreams!
But is it possible to convert these dreams into reality and land the best job? We research this question at this section of Billion Dollars Questions Site. Remember, this page is not about how to get a job, it is not even about how to get a good job, it is about how to get the best possible job.
This page – like all the other pages at BillDoll.com, The Billion Dollar Questions Site - is a work-in-progress and stuff will get added regularly.
Billion Dollar Site Highlights
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Components of Getting a Great Job
1a. Identifying that great job
In order to find that great job, you need to have an idea what that great job is. Kindly remember the saying, “If you don’t know where you are going, any road will lead you there.” If you don’t have a definition of your great job, it is unlikely you will recognize it when you come across one.
So, spend some time putting down your thoughts on what your opinion of a great job is. Even if you think the answer is obvious, it still is worth spending at least a couple of hours thinking about it and defining your great job, perhaps by writing about it on paper. If you are not satisfied after trying to define it the first time round, redo it until you have a satisfactory definition of your “great job”.
The following are some of the job characteristics you might want to think about. These can be broadly classified into two categories – tangible & intangible
Tangible Job Characteristics
Intangible Job Characteristics
On each of the above characteristics, how would you wish your dream job to be? Take a sheet of paper and make sure you spend a couple of hours thinking about each of the above and putting down your thoughts.
At the end of this exercise, you need to have a description that will define what you would consider the best possible job for you.
The job profile you have come up with needs to be realistic, but need not necessarily be easily achievable. That is, it should ideally be difficult – but not impossible – to get. If the job profile you have come up with is one you can easily obtain, you possibly have not been ambitious enough while arriving at the profile. If, on the other hand, the profile appears to be one which is impossibly out of your league, you have most likely been dreaming a bit too much!
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1b. The search process
Now that you have clearly identified what your “great job” is, plan a rigorous search process. Kindly note the word “rigorous”. It is quite well-known that few people actually plan out their job search process on paper. Most of us do some of the most obvious things and expect a great job. Don’t count on it.
Putting down a rigorous search process is not as complicated as it sounds, though it could mean some hard work. The key part of any rigorous search process is to identify sources from where you can get information about job openings related to your field. While some of the obvious sources could be online job databases & classifieds such as Monster or Craigslist or offline sources such as newspaper advertisements, please remember that there could be many other lesser known sources as well. Some of these could be:
a. Your friends’ network (see also: Network Your Way to a New Job or Career - From C.J. Hayden - Connections Made by Networking Are the Key to Finding a Job - About.com Resource) b. Your college alumni association c. Your colleagues from previous workplaces d. Online job consultant directories at various popular directories such as Yahoo or Open Directory (see also: How to Use The Internet in Your Job Search - from Riley Guide, Mar 2006, Employment & Job Search Guide & Blog – from About.com, Land the Ideal Job Using Social Networks – from About.com) e. Industry related seminars and networking events (great place to meet senior professionals and understand their companies’ personnel needs) f. Social networking sites such as Hi5, Orkut, MySpace, Face Book, LinkedIn g. Yahoo groups and other similar e-groups & mailing lists h. Offline job consultants i. Employees from companies that you wish to work for
Related Web Links
Web References
Related Web Resources
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Job Search Engines – Content Source: Wikipedia
End of Wikipedia content, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Job_search_engines
Content Derived from Wikipedia Article on Job Interviews
Job interview
Job Interview is a process in which a potential employee is evaluated by an employer for prospective employment in their company, organization, or firm.
Role
A job interview typically precedes the hiring decision, and is used to evaluate the candidate. Interviews are usually preceded by the evaluation of supplied résumés, selecting a small number of candidates who seem to be the most desirable (shortlisting). A company seeking to fill a single position will typically interview a handful of candidates - perhaps as many as ten if the level of application has been high. While job interviews are considered to be one of the most useful tools for evaluating potential employees, they also demand significant resources from the employer and have been demonstrated to be notoriously unreliable in identifying the optimal person for the job.
Multiple rounds of job interviews may be used where there are many candidates or the job is particularly challenging or desirable; earlier rounds may involve fewer staff from the employers and will typically be much shorter and less in-depth. A common intitial interview form is the phone interview, a job interview conducted over the telephone. This is especially common when the candidates do not live near the employer and has the advantage of keeping costs low for both sides.
Once all candidates have had job interviews, the employer typically selects the most desirable candidate and begins the negotiation of a job offer.
Process
A typical job interview has a single candidate meeting with between one and three persons representing the employer; the potential supervisor of the employee is usually involved in the interview process. A larger interview panel will often have a specialized human resources worker. The meeting can be as short as 15 minutes; job interviews usually last less than two hours. The bulk of the job interview will be the interviewers asking the candidate questions about their history, personality, work style and other relevant factors to the job. The candidate will usually be given a chance to ask any questions at the end of the interview. The primary purpose is to assess the candidate's suitability for the job, although the candidate will also be assessing the corporate culture and demands of the job on offer.
Lower paid and lower skilled positions tend to have much simpler job interviews than more prestigious positions; a lawyer's job interview will be much more demanding than that of a retail cashier. Most job interviews are formal; the larger the firm, the more formal and structured the interview will tend to be. Candidates generally dress slightly better than they will be expected to wear to work, with a suit being appropriate for a white-collar job interview, but jeans being appropriate for an interview as a plumber.
Additionally, some professions have specific types of job interviews; for performing artists, this is an audition where the emphasis is placed on the performance ability of the candidate.
In many companies Assessment Days are increasingly being used, particularly for graduate positions, which may include analysis tasks, group activities, presentation exercises and Psychometric testing.
Behavioral Interview
A common type of job interview in the modern workplace is the behavioral interview or behavioral event interview. In this sort of interview, the interviewers tend to ask questions about general situations, with the candidate asked to describe how they did or would handle a specific problem. A bad hiring decision nowadays can be immensely expensive for an organisation – cost of the hire, training costs, severance pay, loss of productivity, impact on morale, cost of re-hiring, etc. (Gallup international place the cost of a bad hire as being 3.2 times the individual's salary). Structured selection techniques have a better track record of identifying the soundest candidate than the old-style 'biographical' interview. Typical behavioral interview questions:
"Describe a time you had to work with someone you didn't like." "Tell me about a time when you had to stick by a decision you had made, even though it made you very unpopular." "How would you handle a boss you suspected of performing unethical actions?" "Would you describe yourself as an innovative person? Give us an example of something particularly innovative that you have done that made a difference in the workplace." "What was the last time you were late with a project?"
The goal of the interview is to assess the candidate's ability to respond to the sorts of situations that the job may present them with. The questions asked will therefore be based on the job description, the performance indicators, the skills/personal qualities required and the interviewer's knowledge of operating in the role. Questioning will either be hypothetical (‘how would you deal with situation X?’) or based on historical examples from your current or previous experience (‘when situation X arose, how did you deal with it?’). Either way, the interviewer is interested in (a) the thought process used and (b) the values of the candidate and the outcome of the situation.
Stress Interview
Stress interviews are still in common use. One type of stress interview is where the employer uses a succession of interviewers (one at a time or en masse) whose mission is to intimidate the candidate and keep him/her off-balance. The ostensible purpose of this interview: to find out how the candidate handles stress. Stress interviews might involve testing applicant's behavior in a busy environment. Questions about handling work overload, dealing with multiple projects and handling conflict are typical.
Another type of stress interview may involve only a single interviewer who behaves in an uninterested or hostile style. For example, the interviewer may not give eye contact, may roll their eyes or sigh at the candidate's answers, interrupt, turn his back, take phone calls during the interview, and ask questions in a demeaning or challenging style. The goal is to assess how the interviewee handles pressure or to purposely evoke emotional responses. This technique was also used in research protocols studying Stress and Type A (coronary-prone) Behavior because it would evoke hostility and even changes in blood pressure and heart-rate in study subjects. The key to success for the candidate is to de-personalise the process. The interviewer is acting a role, deliberately and calculatedly trying to 'rattle the cage.' Once the candidate realizes that there is nothing personal behind the interviewer's approach, it is easier to handle the questions with aplomb.
Example stress interview questions:
Sticky situation: "If you caught a colleague cheating on his expenses, what would you do?" Putting you on the spot: "How do you feel this interview is going?" Popping the balloon: "(deep sigh) Well, if that's the best answer you can give... (shakes head) Okay, what about this one ...?" Oddball question: "What would you change about the design of the hockey stick?" Doubting your veracity: "I don't feel like we're getting to the heart of the matter here. Start again - tell me what really makes you tick."
Candidates may also be asked to deliver a presentation as part of the selection process. The 'Platform Test' method involves having the candidate make a presentation to both the selection panel and their competitors for the job. This is obviously highly stressful and is therefore useful as a predictor of how the candidate will perform under similar circumstances on the job. Academic, Training, Airline, Legal and Teaching selection processes frequently involve presentations of this sort.
Controversies
In many countries including most of North America, Western Europe and Australasia, employment equity laws forbid discrimination based on a number of classes, such as race, gender, age, and marital status. Asking questions about these protected areas in a job interview is generally considered discriminatory, and constitutes an illegal hiring practice. Asking questions that touch on these areas, such as "Are you willing to travel/relocate?" (possibly affected by marital status) or "When did you graduate from school?" (indicative of age) is still usually possible.
There is extant data which puts in question the value of Job Interviews as a tool for selecting employees. Where the aim of a job interview is ostensibily to choose a candidate who will perform well in the job role, other methods of selection provide greater predictive power and often lower costs. Furthermore, given the unstructured approach of most interviews they often have almost no useful predictive power of employee success.
End of Wikipedia content, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Job_interview
Other questions you might be interested in: (see BillDoll Home Page for the complete list of questions)
References for Job Hunters
Resume Writing Tips
How to Write a Masterpiece of a Resume – from Rockport Institute 20 Tips for Great Resumes – from Chron
Dressing for Interviews Dressing for interviews - Kate Southam, Career One, Australia Dressing for Success – How to Dress for an Interview – About.com
Attractive Jobs Available Database
Checklist While Going for an Interview Interview Checklist – from BTI Consultants Pre-interview Checklist – from Yale University (PDF)
Interview Preparation Interview Tips, Questions & Etiquette – from Monster The Guide to Job Interview Preparation – from Quint Careers
Knowing about the Company – Company / Corporate / Business Databases Edgar – SEC Filings & Forms – US Specific Company Info from Hoovers Thomas Register – mainly for companies that are suppliers of industrial products
Typical search strings / key words to use in search engines while searching for similar job profiles
Thinking with Clarity during Stress Interviews Avoid Being a Chatterbox during Job Interviews – Career Journal How to Make a Good Impression During Job Interviews - from Work Bloom
Finding Out the Best Salary to Ask
Special Care Women Attending Interviews Should Take
General Reference
Web Portals
The following portals provide resources on research, directory, search engine / search engines, yellow pages, classifieds
AOL, Yahoo, Google, eBay, YouTube, Yahoo Groups, Wikipedia, CNN, Time, Forbes, Fortune, BBC
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