Ten Great Ways to Sabotage Your Chances of Getting the Job

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Note: This is a mild rewrite of a piece which appeared a couple months ago. Enjoy!

Here are ten methods I've witnessed candidates - first-hand - employ to ensure that they do everything in their power to sabotage their chances to snag that dream job in the application and interview process.  It's so easy to throw a wrench in the works!

1. Arrive late for the interview. Don't bother to call. Then act like nothing happened.

2. Learn nothing about the company in advance of your interview. Then, when asked by your interviewer "What do you know about us," make something up.

3. Ask how much the job pays. Even after you've already had this discussion with the corporate recruiter. Ask everybody with whom you interview.

4. Tell the recruiter you are close friends with the CEO, when you and she met once in passing. Maybe.

5. Be friendly to everybody you meet in the company. Except to the recruiter. In that case, be a total ass.

6. Bring extra copies of your resume. Folded up into a compact square in your pocket.

7. Send a nice, thoughtful thank you note after the interviews to people you've met.  Generously sprinkle in typos and misspellings.

8. Guess at your prior dates of employment on the job application. Go ahead, just guess. That way, when the company gets ready to hire you and runs the pre-employment background check, nothing adds up and you get disqualified for dishonesty.

9. Leave your cell phone on. When your phone rings during the middle of the interview, casually take the call.

10. Use your referral network to do everything possible to get in the door with the company. Make sure you ask an executive to sponsor you and they use every bit of their personal equity to push you through and get you an offer in another department. Then, AFTER you've received and accepted the offer, make your resume live and searchable on the job boards the company subscribes to, like Monster, so that the recruiter can stumble across it and inform the executive about it.

Scott Singer is the President and Founder of Insider Career Strategies Resume Writing & Career Coaching, a firm dedicated to guiding job seekers and companies through the job search and hiring process. He is a Human Resources professional and staffing expert with almost two decades of in-house corporate HR and staffing firm experience, and is a Certified Professional Resume Writer (CPRW) and Certified Professional Career Coach (CPCC).

Insider Career Strategies provides resume writing, LinkedIn profile development, and career coaching services, including a free resume review. You can email Scott Singer at scott.singer@insidercs.com, or via the website, www.insidercs.com.

Four Reasons Friday Afternoon is an Awesome Time to Apply for Jobs

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The weekend approaches. You're thinking about hitting the bar with your friends for your favorite margarita that your buddy the mixologistmakesjust so perfectly. Why apply for jobs on Friday Afternoon?

• Fewer people do! Job applications drop on Friday as everybody else is thinking about the weekend. You will stand out.

• As a corollary to the last item, Recruiters will also be thinking about the weekend. They'll have tried to review candidate applications received during the week. Why not help them end the week on a high note by sending them the right candidate (you) at an opportune time?

• You're feeling good about reaching the weekend. Consider everything you have accomplished during the week. Why not harness that positive energy into a great cover letter for your targeted email or application? A great attitude in your communications comes through.

• There are fewer meetings scheduled for Friday afternoons than there are during the rest of the week. In addition, email volume tends to go down then, too. There's a decent chance you can reach your intended target.

Scott Singer is the President and Founder of Insider Career Strategies Resume Writing & Career Coaching, a firm dedicated to guiding job seekers and companies through the job search and hiring process. He is a Human Resources professional and staffing expert with almost two decades of in-house corporate HR and staffing firm experience, and is a Certified Professional Resume Writer (CPRW) and Certified Professional Career Coach (CPCC).

Insider Career Strategies provides resume writing, LinkedIn profile development, and career coaching services, including a free resume review. You can email Scott Singer at scott.singer@insidercs.com, or via the website, www.insidercs.com.

What Should I Believe About Online Employer Reviews?

Online reviews are all the rage. Consumers review their product purchases on Amazon. Diners review their experiences eating out on Yelp. Why should employment be any different? There are sites online which enable individuals to do the following:

• Employees, both current and former, can rate factors surrounding their experiences working in a company, and provide a detailed description. They may also leave information about their salary.
• Interviewees can rate and leave a detailed description about the interview experience.

The exposure companies receive due to online employer reviews can often lead to positive change. Make no mistake - employers pay attention to what is said about them on the open market. In the war for talent, it all matters. Companies may use the data gleaned to get a pulse of employee engagement, and work to drive positive change.

And yet, there are several aspects of these online employer reviews which must be considered with a critical eye.

• Self-nomination of reviewers: Nobody is required to leave a review on online of their experience. In many companies, engagement surveys and exit interviews are conducted with the majority of current and exiting employees to get a sense of trending sentiments and specific issues. Who is more likely to feel compelled to leave a review: The individual who is satisfied with their work experience (i.e., promoted in the last year), or the individual with a negative work experience (i.e., passed over repeatedly for promotion)? For example, I love my camera - it works consistently and without issue, so the manufacturer never hears from me; but if I have a problem and it gets wonky, do you think I'll hesitate to make a fuss?
• Sample size: Individual experiences are valuable in terms of learning about some specific issues individuals have encountered, but unless there is a large enough sample of individuals surveyed, it's extremely difficult to draw general conclusions. I refer back to my example of engagement surveys and exit interviews.
• Comparisons across companies: This also makes it difficult to compare experiences between companies of different sizes. Let's assume for the sake of argument that one percent (1%) of employees leave a review online. For a 100-person company, such your local marketing firm, that would equal one review per year, which is hardly a large sample size. For a mammoth organization such as Walmart, which has approximately 2.2 million employees, one percent of this population leaving online reviews would equal 22,000 reviews per year.
• Anonymity of reviewers: Ex-employees can and usually do opt for the veil of an anonymous review. This puts the company at a disadvantage, because while the company may have the opportunity to respond online, they cannot know of the specific circumstances of the reviewer.

How do you decide what to believe about working for a company?

• Evaluate the validity of the online reviews. Look at the sample size of the online reviews to see if you can identify meaningful trends. Do the reviews strike you as reflecting structural issues, or do the complaints lodged appear individual in nature?
• Do your own research. Speak with individuals in your network who have worked at the company. Ask other people you know who may know folks who work there. If you have an acquaintance at a staffing firm who has tried to provide employees for the company in question, they may be able to provide you valuable insight. Check online news sites to see what they say about the company - positive and negative.
• Use data from online reviews to prepare. Make notes about what you see people say online. As you speak with acquaintances, ask them about the validity of what you've read. Use the data you find to build targeted questions to ask during your interviews with the company.
• Who is your boss? Sometimes, the department or manager you work under can matter far more than the overall corporate structure.

Bottom line: It's your decision, get all the facts before making any move. Just like with any major decision in your life.

Scott Singer is the President and Founder of Insider Career Strategies Resume Writing & Career Coaching, a firm dedicated to guiding job seekers and companies through the job search and hiring process. He is a Human Resources professional and staffing expert with almost two decades of in-house corporate HR and staffing firm experience, and is a Certified Professional Resume Writer (CPRW) and Certified Professional Career Coach (CPCC).

Insider Career Strategies provides resume writing, LinkedIn profile development, and career coaching services, including a free resume review. You can email Scott Singer at scott.singer@insidercs.com, or via the website, www.insidercs.com.