oliviatamccue

Much to the prediction of some recruiters and confirmed by job seekers, December turns out to be a more active month.   With holiday fast approaching, it feels like the last push before the end of the year.

When the market is active, job searching activities are much like managing multiple projects at the same time – different positions, different requirements, different teams, organizations and culture.   The experience of this would be a credential that effective job seekers have the skills asked of many position – the ability to manage multiple and very different projects in parallel.
There are additional similiarities between career transition and program/project management.  How so…

– explore the opportunities Vs opportunity definition

– define a position plan Vs program objective

– network or career transition services Vs program team or stakeholders

– submit resume Vs launch project investigation

– interview Vs business analysis

– offer Vs sign-off, often it involves the negotiation to get one working.

Seemingly a lot of common techniques.

What if the job seeker does not like project management?

How about this analogy with tennis tournament?  There are many tournaments, each has only that many players in the main draw, amidst many tennis pro.

First, the players get to the main draw, similar to networking or submitting resume.

The interview is like the single elimination process in tennis match.   Winner stays, other move on to next tournaments.

The initial rounds are a bit easier, when it gets to semi-final or final, the competition is more intense.  The intent to attend any tournament is to win and get the trophy.

There comes very different points of view about job market in the month of December.   A lot of suggestion that  November and Decemeber are quiet months with holidays kicking in; the contrary view points out more people land on jobs in December than any other months.    What’s what then?

My personal observation confirms that since November, there are less jobs posted.   Yet, seems more momentum from hiring teams to close existing job positions or shortlist candidates.  I have interviewers coming back for further interview earlier than set schedule; and that hiring manager has the tones that they like to close req. before the holiday.

For motivated job seekers, month of December could be a very good month with the intent of hiring manager, and a number of job seekers taking a break!

Some thoughts while going through more interviews….

Almost every investment bronchure would mention “past performance is not indicator of the future”.  One of the most popular forms of interview is “behavorial interview”, or “situational” questions where we are asked to relate how we address situation in the past.  Does it really help to forecast the future performance?  Situation changes, environment changes, and priority changes.

For many companies, people are the talents and they are the differentiator.  I just start to ponder it would be a cool problem to solve to figure out  ways to improve the quality of interview and the hiring process for companies.  Before I finish thinking, I read about a tool iLiftOFF, an online recruitment testing engine to help companys recruit better using online tests.

OK, how about companies having cool ways to measure “on the job performance” against “interview performance”.   With advance in technology and data analytics, maybe it would not be too long to find an app. doing this.

Job seekers get lists of typical interviewing questions,  they are like “questions that would show up in examinations”; and they show up in interviews.   So the list is great to help the preparation.   Some questions are more commonly used.   There are questions like “tell me about the greatest accomplishment on the job”… it is a tough one as it is  like choosing the best fruits of all, or in sports, discussion about “greatest of all times”;  or questions like “tell me of a difficult situation or a failure”.  If a difficult situation got overcome, would that stay as “difficult situation” in memory?  If the situation is a failure, do we want to remember, let alone share it in an interview…

I appreciate those hiring managers paraphrase the “real challenges” in the job, and ask the candidates how they approach.  We are then trying to solve a real situation in the present, and not trying to guess which past experience could be relevant.