Ways to Kill Time Between Interviews (and Some Things to Avoid)

You get invited to interview for your dream job. You receive the agenda in advance, and there's a 30-minute time slot labelled "Break."  This means that they couldn't find somebody to fill that period of time, and they need to park you in a conference room or the company lobby for a while.

The most amazing thing about downtime in an interview is that you can plan for it. In fact, expect it. Think about all the scenarios which can lead to downtime in an interview:

• Arrival before the interview
• An interview ends early
• The next interviewer can't be located
• Company designated lunch break
• An emergency meeting for one of your interviewers

The potential reasons are endless. Here are some suggestions to effectively occupy your time:

• Prior to the interview, print up material pertinent to the job, including a job description, your agenda, relevant articles, LinkedIn profiles of your interviewers. Bring them, read them. Should somebody pass by, they'll see you're taking your day seriously.
• Bring an industry magazine to read (don't flip open your MAD magazine unless that's where you're interviewing). People will consider what you're reading - if you interview for a job as a fashion buyer, flipping through Vogue won't hurt your case.
• If nobody has taken your employment application from you yet, this is a good opportunity to review it for accuracy.
• Take inventory of whose business cards you have received during your interviews. When you're getting ready to send thank you notes, you'll need names and addresses. This way you can ask the Corporate Recruiter at the end of the day for anyone you may have missed.
• Ask for a nature break. Gotta go? This is the time. Do your business, and return promptly in case the next interviewer is ready. Remember to wash and dry your hands: Where are your manners?

Avoid the following:

• Don't check your phone. It's tempting. Really tempting. You want to know what's going on at work while you're out. Don't do it. Your phone should be off from the moment you arrived at the interview. What if you forget to turn it off and it rings during an interview? Worse, what if you decide to get on a call during your break, the next interviewer arrives, and you can't get off the phone? Do you really want to be in a position where you have to decide whether to hang up?
• Don't forget some reading material. Never assume that there will be something to occupy you. And staring into space because you've got nothing to read makes you look like you're on a bad acid trip.
• Don't get too casual. Keep a professional posture. Don't assume nobody is watching - the interviewers will be.

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.

How Should I Organize My Work Portfolio?

Having a portfolio of your work can be an essential interview tool for those in several lines of work - graphic designers and other creatives come to mind. But even if you're not a creative, a portfolio can be a fantastic way to highlight your skills and achievements.

In case you're not familiar with the concept of a portfolio, it's usually a binder or notebook of pieces of your work. Think of it as a brochure of what you have to offer to an employer.

Perhaps you're a marketing professional and you've had an article written about you in the local paper. Or you're an engineer with several high-profile patent applications. Maybe you've written documents that show off your writing skills. Include these in your portfolio.

In any event, your portfolio needs to be polished and professional. Here are some guidelines for you to consider when assembling one.

• Make it clean - Your portfolio should consist of your best designed work, arranged neatly and well formatted. If it's ugly, don't include it, unless...
• Make your work stand out - If that ugly piece of work is making a statement you want it to make about your skills, then by all means include it. Select pieces that best show off your creativity and intellect.
• Make it tell a story - Organize your work in such a way that it says something about the progression of what the reader is looking at.  Group like with like; if you've improved as time goes on, organize your work in such as way that it shows how you've grown.
• Make it shine - Pick your best pieces. Get an outside opinion on what is your best work - not everybody may agree with your own opinions, and it's easy to become attached to your personal favorites.
• Make it available online - A digital portfolio is great because you can always pull it up when you're sitting in a hiring manager's office. Pieces like that training module you designed come alive when presented in multimedia.

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.

Hey, Somebody Edited My Resume!

You've been in contact with a recruiter about a job opportunity, and he tells you the good news - you've got the interview!

So far, so good. You show up to interview, and you're sitting down with the hiring manager. The manager asks you to clarify something on your resume. You ask to see what she's talking about.

The manager shows you your resume, and it's unrecognizable. A quick glimpse at the resume she gives you shows that the formatting's been changed, your contact information has been removed, and it appears that there's been modifications to the body of the text. God forbid that any errors have been added in.

What. The. #*$!. Happened!?!?!?

Okay, brace yourself for this. Ready?

Recruiters may edit your resume to better suit their own needs. And it happens more often than you think.

A recruiter (even an internal, corporate recruiter) is in a sales role. He is held to metrics that such as placements, cycle time, etc.

At the minimum, the recruiter will remove your contact information to prevent an employer from going around them and reaching out to you directly, thus cutting them out of the deal.

But sometimes it goes further than that. Editing content, changing things around to appeal to a hiring manager, you name it - the recruiter may feel that he ishelping the candidate, but it's not always the case. A spell-check is one thing, modifying content is another.

You've put a lot of work into deciding how you would like to present yourself in your resume, what can you do?

• If you have the opportunity send your resume as a PDF, do it. It's a lot harder for anybody to modify.

• Bring your own hard copies of your resume to the interview. As the interview begins, provide a copy to the interviewer as your "latest version."

• Understand that changes may happen - the resume is often out of control once it leaves your hands.

• Make sure your resume is rock-solid before sending it to anybody. Make sure it's well-written, without errors or typos. Don't give anybody any reason to feel the need to edit your resume on your behalf.

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.