Posts Tagged ‘Preparation’

There is a great read over at The Wisdom Journal on career preparation before you get to college. Geared at students who are just entering high school, it’s year-by-year guide for what you need to do in order to be successful in landing a great Entry Level Job. It includes some of my favorite advice for students including getting involved in extra curricular activities, constantly updating your resume, and getting a part time job.

This is great advice for anyone who wants a blueprint for success leading into college. Click here to check it out.

The other day, Amateur Asset Allocator, a great personal finance site that I follow, posted an article that might be of interest. The article called 8 Job Interview Tips covered some excellent material on how to successfully get through a job interview.

While the entire post is full of great advice, it also hit on one of my favorite tactics of successful job interviews: eye contact.

Establishing and maintaining eye contact is absolutely critical in a job interview if you hope to make a connection with the interviewer. Over the course of normal preparation, it is so easy to focus on your skills and abilities while neglecting the most important part of the interview, which is connecting with the other person.

Either way, this post is a great read. Take a look here.

Thoughts? Comments? Drop us a line!

We have now gone over the first five steps in the job search process. As a reminder, they are:

1. Preparation
2. Networking
3. Finding an Opening
4. Application (Resume and Cover Letter)
5. Interview
6. Offer/Acceptance

Today we are going to introduce the job offer.  Once you hit the offer stage, the hard work is over and the real fun begins.

In short, an offer is a letter which stipulates the terms of your employment, should you accept them. This includes not only salary and wage information, but also benefits, vacation, corporate policies, and any other information the company needs to make you aware of.

Some people might ask why this is a step in the job search process at all? Well, it has been included because an offer of full time employment is a big step, and you want to make sure you are fully aware of all of the details of the contract that has been presented to you. Careful consideration of the details will help to ensure that you don’t get yourself into a situation that is bad for both you and the company.

However, if you like what you see and you are ready to sign on the dotted line (so to speak) you have found your first job.

Please feel free to drop us a line with any questions or comments that you may have!

Now, it’s time to talk about interviews. So far we have covered:

1. Preparation
2. Networking
3. Finding an Opening
4. Application (Resume and Cover Letter)
5. Interview
6. Offer/Acceptance

An interview is the one opportunity for the employer to meet you face-to-face in order to judge how well suited you are for the position. This is, by far, the most important part of the job hunt process. While finding open positions and creating the perfect application package is a challenge, nothing quite compares to having to perform in front of a potential employer.

The good news is that if you have got this far, they already know that you are a strong candidate. That doesn’t mean that you will get the job, but it does mean that they are at least interested in you. How you handle yourself, how you answer their questions, and what questions you have for them will determine whether you get the job.

There are many different types of interviews (situational, behavioral, group, committee, stress, dinner, etc) which we will cover in future posts. All you have to know right now is that you will need to make every effort to prepare for the task at hand in order to secure an offer, which is the last step in the job search process.

Questions? Comments? Feel free to drop us a line below!