Time schedule

Why plan your time when you are not employed? The fact that you don’t have to go at work doesn’t mean that you have nothing to do. Looking for a job is every day 1-5 hours job, taking care of health, meeting with friends, home work, having time for hobbies, or new education. Those are the things that requires time, my time.

It is very dangerous to get tempted by laziness. Nobody is actually checking what I am doing and everybody is too busy to notice. Also I started to notice that since I am not employed I tend to do things much slower than I usually do. Fulfilling of a certain task is not that important for me anymore, since I have so much time, why not to rest now and think about the tomorrow tomorrow?

I have bought dairy to help myself organize time. I write in it things that require my attention, trying not forget every sphere of my life. It is helping more or less but I always have to add extra effort to actually do something. My husband sometimes likes to call me during the day and say 10000 tasks that I need to do right now... It is not usually working with me. Since I also have my schedule. Yes, I do things slower, yes, I don’t do some of the things at time... But I am a busy person at what ever I do (even if it is simply watching TV).

Even though it is so nice to be lazy at least for a while, it is important to make efforts. Just start doing things, stop thinking or hesitating. Because you have a certain goal to achieve (get job, new education, start your business). It is worth of trying! It is hard to choose road but much harder to make a first step. I notice that as soon as I start moving (in any direction I choose for now) I will come at the end of the day to the result I was looking for. It is much nicer to go and try so when the night comes you don’t have to face feeling of emptiness and not fulfilment after lazy and busy with nothing day.

General tips on CV

Writing appropriate Cv it is one of the most important task in getting new job. For me (I believe like for most of the people) it is much easier to say 10000 words about my experience, talking through every detail, explaining benefits of hiring me, than to write a CV, where in 100 words you need to state in clear form why you is the best one to be hired. When I was composing my CV three people, who had a huge experience in composing CV and hiring people were helping me. I would love to share some of the tips I learned from them:

1) Try to keep short. My Cv is on 2 pages, but most important information (relevant work experience, key characteristics) I keep on one page mainly because not many people will go readying my CV till the end (too much effort). So try to put most important information about yourself and your past experience (the best if it is relevant to the job)at the first page.

2) Keep it relevant to the job you are looking for. It is very easy to find required skills and experience for the job by simply checking required skills and experience in job adverts. For example job says working with clients, you say – I have strong communicating skills. Job says ability to work under pressure – and you go very hard working and flexible person. Look at 2-3 job ads you are interested in and simply adjust your Cv to suits their looking for requirements.

3) Use adjectives while talking about yourself. You don’t want to lie about your past experience, but sometimes it is important to add some colour to your CV. Instead of saying – have a knowledge of working with PC you can say – have a strong knowledge working with PC, excellent communicational skills, (you don’t want to exaggerate saying the best, amazing...) but can go on with useful, effective, qualified, highly.... and on

4) Talk about achievements. I found it is very useful to stay in Cv not only responsibilities but also achievements. Here you want to talk using past tense, some of the major achievements, every one that you think may relate to you.

5) Keep it in nice way. It is highly important and I strongly recommend you to check front, spelling, spaces, and paragraph in your CV. You are creating piece of paper that will represent you, make sure it look nice and clean.

I will talk more about different ways how to write CV later on.

Avoid at interview

There are some things you want to avoid while going through interview:

- answers that are too short (they want to hear that you are fantastic person, the best candidate... don’t be shy, talk about beloved you)

- answers that goes like: hmmmm, hm, let me see, hm... (just be prepared)

- being negative (the best way to be positive, even when you don’t feel like is to smile)

- providing more details or information than is required (sometimes it is better to shut up instead of saying something not appropriate)

-becoming frustrated or uneasy when asked stressful questions (come down, nobody is going to beat you. if you are not getting this job, there is next one for you)

- making derogatory or negative statements about former employer or positions (if you talk bad about your last company, you may talk bad about this company... so you would want to be positive. If your previous company didn’t pay you all your money, you may want to say - you had contradictions in the money issue)

- discussing salary information or benefits (you want to show that you respect company's policies, even if you no longer work there)

- misrepresenting your skills, experience or educational background (don’t talk about what you don’t have, they can check it)

Getting interviewed

Going to interview does not mean receiving a job. I remember myself going through experience of rejecting when deal was almost in my hands. Competitions is very high at the moment and having two identical candidates for the same position company may choose the one who was in blue shirt, just because lady, who was interviewing, likes blue. It does not mean that you have to prepare less for the interview or try to wear always only blue shirt. The more options you have to choose from the better it is for you.

If you have only one potential employer in mind and doing all possible to get that job, you still may be lucky at the end of the day (since you put a lot of effort there), but more usually you have great risk to be rejected. Maybe because your almost desperate strong desire to get exactly this job can look a little bit suspicious. Or simply someone else will have more experience in this sphere then you do. The best advice in this case will be just keep on sending you CV everywhere, even if you have scheduled two interviews for this week. Numbers will play its game. What is more important - you will feel more confident knowing that even if you will be rejected for this job, you are about to go to other interview where you might have a bit more luck.

Going through the interview

1) The better you are prepared to the exact company interview process the better it is. It does not take long time to answer possible interview questions with as many life examples of your past work experience as possible. Take your time answering main questions listed above, so that you know what to answer and don’t panic while interview.

2) Have a lsmall talk before starting interview. Ask few general questions, or state a comment, like: The weather is nice/bad today. You have a nice office (it is better don’t say anything if you don’t like the office), or it was easy to find you, good location. Avoid too personal questions or talking about too personal information, like boyfriend, when was the last time they did exercise, or you look lovely. It may scare a little bit people you are talking first time with. You want to look professional. This small conversation is the way of establishing relationships. And it is very important since during interview people will feel more relaxed, friendly, and interested to listen to you.

3) Make sure that you are clear about your own interests and goals. It is important to talk through interview about your strength and ideas to support your interest in this particular job and its particular job tasks.

4) Know your Cv and be prepared to cite specific examples that verify the information listed. In case you have adapted your CV to specific job descriptions, be sure that you talk about the same CV during interview.

5) Talking about your past experience mention details, such as: your last company name, name of the certificates, particular examples, etc.

6) I bet there is no need of talking about the way of dressing. Remember that first impression is the strongest one. In 5first min/seconds people get impression about you and then it is almost impossible to change it.

Interview questions

There are a lot of typical interview questions you may find in the internet, but they all separate in groups:

1) Questions about your potential employer (It is easy to get company information by simply typing name of the company in google and then “About us”. You do not need to know smallest details of the company’s history, just some basic stuff – what is their main business, their values, resent news. Remember you don’t want to know more about company than person who interviews you, but you are expected to know some common things.)

2) Questions about your past experience (Here you want to be more specific in giving examples from your past work life. There are many types of questions about you, but mainly they ask – what is your biggest failure/mistake , and what is your biggest success/and how you achieved it. Be careful talking about your mistakes. It is understandable that everybody has his/her failures, what really matters is what you learned from it and how you managed situation/resolved problem created by mistake. Try to think about your working experience when you converted negative into positive. E.g. I lost tender. I learned = I should listen to the client more. I did = continued to keep in touch with client and we won a part of the deal after all.)


3) Questions about job (Usually they sounds like “why we should hire you? Why you think your skills suits the job?... Here you would want to study job description and answer questions based on that. For example job says – every day task is customer support. And then you say – I love working with people, helping them to solve problems. You also may want to think about example to support your answer, like I used to work with that client and she came back because of good relationships we had. Think about your specific strengths that are correspond to the job description. Or if company you are passing interview is big, they may want to ask specific examples from your past work/life experience where you showed similar characteristics as they set for themselves as company’s mission or values. E.g. describe using innovative way to solve problem? How you motivate yourself?)


4) Strange questions (Those questions are designed to see how you react under stress. It does not matter how strange your answer is, as long as it is sounds logical and you can state your point clearly. Examples of those questions are: Why hatch cover is square shape?)

5) Questions to the company (It’s important not only answer the questions but also ask questions. This way you show that you interested in company and job generally. Don’t ask how much you are going to pay me? Maybe more appropriate would be: would I be paid? (I am joking). Seriously the questions would be: what is the structure of the department? What is the biggest challenge of my department?...and etc.



Here are list of link where you can find more quistions to prepare to the interview:

http://www.bradleycvs.co.uk/interview/list-of-interview-questions.htm

http://www.job-interview.net/

http://jobsearch.about.com/od/interviewquestionsanswers/a/interviewquest.htm

http://www.cvtips.com/job_interview_questions_and_answers.html