What do you do if a hiring manager says you are “overqualified” for a position? First, you need to know that what they really mean is a) you’re going to want too much money, b) you’re going to be bored and will leave in six months, or c) you won’t fit into the culture. All three of these underlying issues can be addressed with these two approaches:
Keywords in your resume, LinkedIn profile, emails and ‘pitch’ help to communicate your value. To job prospects, your use of the right keywords tells them you are an “insider” (everyone wants to hire insiders) and that you understand the problems they face. Organizations use keyword filters for candidate searches, so your use of strategically placed keywords will improve your likelihood of being spotted.
When someone is searching on LinkedIn for a candidate with your skills (increasingly LinkedIn is the first stop for candidate searches), keywords in certain parts of your profile matter more than others.
Every so often you will get an interview question like this from HR or a hiring leader. “Greatest weakness” types of interview questions also include “give me an example of a time you failed, ” “tell me about a criticism your boss once gave you,” or “give me an example of an area of development or a situation where you didn’t get the outcome you wanted.” They use these questions, especially for executive hires, to a) find people who have a maturity and ability to self-reflect that allows for improvement and learning from mistakes, and b) screen out people who say something problematic. When forming your answer, keep these three guidelines in mind:
Whether your goal is to sell, inform, or land a job offer, telling engaging, relevant stories can turn even a so-so presentation into a great one. Illustrating your points with the right stories will have a far stronger impact than many other things you can do, including slide design, body language, eye contact, and so forth.
It can be tempting to attribute a long job search to factors beyond your control. The factors that I hear jobseekers mention include age, experience (i.e. over- or under-qualified), resume gaps, weight, ethnic background, gender, or some other physical feature. While, at times, these factors and biases do cause problems for job-seekers, nine times out of ten I see that the problem is actually in their job-search strategy or execution.
So, here’s a checklist of 10 questions to ask yourself first, before attributing a long search to factors beyond your control. Your answers will help to put you back in the driver’s seat and on the road to the job you want.
Job-search clients often ask me whether they should mail or email their cover or followup letter. I tell them to default to email unless there is a compelling special case for sending a traditional letter. The reasons I recommend email:
Many (or most) of you are probably on LinkedIn to some extent (if you’re not you should be– www.linkedin.com). LinkedIn is an awesome tool for getting results in your job search. But are you really getting the value out of it that you could be? Use LinkedIn to advance your search in three ways:
While there are many nuances to a successful compensation negotiation, keeping these five principles in mind will increase the odds of your making tens of thousands of dollars in minutes.
Difficult interview questions fall into a few different categories, including stress questions (“I don’t think you’re good enough…”), seemingly off-the wall questions (“how do you find a needle in a haystack”), behavioral questions, including those that assume a negative (give me an example of a time when you had a difficult employee…”) and “greatest weaknesses” types of questions. In answering these questions, the key thing to remember is, as we say at the Five O’Clock Club, to play the interview “game”.
Surprise! Start Your Presentation Off with a Bang
by Robert Hellmann •Interviewing, On-the-job Success, Presentations
For example, I coached one client to begin his presentation (to an executive audience at a Fortune 500 company) with a slide that had one single large number on it. Then he said: