Interviewing

3 Reasons to Turn Down a “Good” Job Offer

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As the economy continues to rebound, more job opportunities are opening up, increasing your chance of landing a new role. Accepting the wrong offer, however, can actually cost you dearly. As one client put it: “I should never have accepted their offer; it was a toxic environment and I was not set up for success, but I was blinded by the money and prestige.” You can reduce the odds of accepting the wrong job offer by asking yourself three questions:More

How To Beat Age Bias In Your Job Search: 4 Techniques

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For the first time in nearly 50 years in the U.S., the unemployment rate for 55-and-older workers exceeded the rate for mid-career workers during the pandemic. The relative jump in this rate underscores the age-related challenges that older workers face in getting hired. If you fall into this group, there’s good news: you can usually overcome age-related barriers to being hired relatively easily.

To do so, understand this key insight: you’re usually not facing age-bias per se. Rather, you’re facing underlying issues that employers think about when they compare you to the younger competition. These issues include:More

How to Spot Job Search Scams and Protect Yourself

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Job-opportunity scams have risen with the growing level of unemployment. Below I explain how to spot them by analyzing an actual scam message that hoodwinked some recipients. It turns out that the scam message was sent from a real recruiter’s hacked LinkedIn account, which made this deception more believableMore

Power Up Your Pitch to Land Job Interviews and Offers

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A powerful pitch, one that resonates with your target audience, can give your job search a big boost in this challenging economy. Employers and networking contacts will be impressed when you concisely and engagingly describe what differentiates you from your competitors. Plus the process of creating your pitch is, on its own, well worth your time; the deeply self-reflective thinking that’s required will help you to sell yourself. You’ll need two versions of your pitch:More

Unemployed? 3 Ways to Fill that Gap in Your Resume

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If you’ve been out of work for a while, you may face a well-documented bias against the unemployed in your job search. But fear not; there are ways to easily fill the gap, preempting any potential uneasiness about your unemployment while reassuring employers that you’re current in your field. Here are three of those ways, followed by what to say when asked about an employment gap in an interview.More

When Bad Interviewers Happen to Good Candidates

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When you’re in an interview with a bad or inexperienced interviewer, they’re not giving you the opportunity to truly make the case for your candidacy. They’re not asking you the right (or any) questions, and in fact they may be turning you off by their behavior.

Very often, however, you can find a way to change the subject back to their number one question, “How can you help me?” and thus do both of you favor; they will get their answer and you’ll stand out from the competition as the candidate who answered this key question. Let’s look at how to improve your outcome in four of the most common bad-interviewer scenarios.More

Want to Ace Your Interview? Tell a Great Story

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The single most effective thing you can do in an interview is to make your experience come alive through stories or examples. Yes, you need to get other things right in an interview as well: ask the right questions, prep for handling issues with your candidacy, follow-up effectively and so forth. But telling a good story is the most powerful way to stand out from the competition, since our brains are wired to remember the imagery, the drama, and the emotion that’s conveyed in a good story.More

Turn Job Search Rejection into Opportunity

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All too often, jobseekers snatch defeat from the jaws of victory; they see rejection too quickly and end up essentially rejecting themselves. If you can adopt the mindset of a successful salesperson, however, you’ll see opportunity where others might see rejection.

That’s because in a job search, your “job” is now sales (you’re the product), regardless of what you do professionally. More

Don’t Reject Yourself in a Job Search

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dont-reject-yourself-canstockphoto19270108If you want to speed up your job search, adopt the mindset of a successful salesperson. Sales professionals know a few things about rejection that can help jobseekers. They know you shouldn’t assume rejection if you haven’t heard back from a prospect. They know that it’s often possible to overcome an apparent rejection or hesitations about the services you are offering. And they know how to skillfully keep in touch when there’s no interest now.

Many of my new job search clients, however, are too quick to see rejection and give up. They More

7 Ways to Jump-start a Stalled Job Search

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jump-start-shutterstock_206038111When clients with stalled searches first contact me, they often see the cause as something beyond their control. They tell me “I’m too old (or young),” “I’m overqualified (or underqualified),” “there are no jobs,” “I’ve sent in countless applications with no response,” or “I don’t have enough (or the right) experience.”

While in some cases they may be right, most of the time I find that they face a different problem with a much easier solution. Below I’ve included the top seven ways you can jump-start your search, based on my experience of the real reasons for many stalled searches.More

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