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Your #Career : 7 Ways To Deal With Today’s Long Job Hiring Process…If you’re Looking for a Job, You Might have Sensed that it Seems to be Taking Longer to Snag an Offer Than in the Past. You’re Right.

A Recent Study from the Employment Site Glassdoor.com Found that the Average Interview Process in the U.S. is Now 22.9 Days, Nearly Double the 12.6 Days in 2010.  It’s a maddening shift that’s only added stress for job hunters. I’ll provide tips on how to deal with this new reality in a moment, but first it’s important to understand what’s driving this change.

Interviewer3

On the surface, the trend towards longer hiring cycles seems counterintuitive. After all, as the war for talent has been heating up, you’d expect employers to act faster, not slower, to lock-in the best candidates. The unemployment rate just hit a seven-year low (at 5.3%) and the CareerBuilder jobs site says 49% of employers plan to hire full-time, permanent employees in the second half of 2015, up from 47% last year.

So what gives?

According to Glassdoor Chief Economist Andrew Chamberlain, there are several reasons why the interview process is taking longer these days.

“Overall, the interview process has become longer largely due to the fact that more employers are requiring more comprehensive interview processes,” Chamberlain told me via email. “For job candidates, that basically means more hoops and hurdles they may have to jump through.”

Screening methods such as group presentations, IQ tests, personality tests and drug tests have gained in popularity, each lengthening the hiring timeline.

Chamberlain also noted that there’s been a marked change in the composition of the workplace in recent years, with a shift away from low-skilled, routine jobs and towards higher-skilled positions requiring more sophisticated skills. Hiring specialized and technical workers requires a more careful — that is, longer — vetting process.

Of course, hiring timelines vary according to job type and industry. Glassdoor says hiring decisions for entry-level jobs like retail sales clerks take less than a week, while the process for senior-level execs typically drags on for two months or more. If you’re a law enforcement candidate, you’d better have a holster full of patience: the average hiring time for police officers clocks in at a painfully slow 128 days.

Glassdoor says neither age, gender or education affect hiring time, though.

7 Tips for Job Seekers

Its report leaves little doubt that you should expect your job search to last awhile. Given that reality, here are seven ways to better manage the wait and, with any luck, cut the time it takes for you to get hired:

1.  Do your homework about the employer’s hiring process.Learn what you can before you apply. This will help you tamp down expectations.

Many companies now post information about their particular hiring process on the career page of their websites; some even offer online chats for prospective applicants.  You can also research the interview process by reading employer reviews on sites like Glassdoor.com or Indeed.com as well as by speaking with friends who work at your target employers.

 

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2. Ask about “next steps” at the end of each interview. Find out if more interviews will be needed — and if so, roughly how many, how soon they’ll occur and how they’ll be done (group, individual, phone, etc.). Ask the employer if you’ll need to provide any additional information such as references. Or, if appropriate, whether you’ll need to schedule drug testing. The more proactive you are about handling needed tasks early on, the less chance of delays happening on the back end.

3.  Do what you can to nudge the process along. While you can’t do much to control the employer’s internal decision-making process, there are a few ways to bolster your standing and help speed up a potential offer.

For one, send a compelling thank-you note that clearly explains why you’re the best person for the job. It’s not only the polite thing to do; the note will provide a reminder that you’re a savvy candidate who might get snatched up by a competitor if the employer doesn’t act quickly.

If you know someone who works for the employer, ask him or her to put in a good word for you. As I’ve written before, a strong internal reference is one of the most effective ways to best the competition.

Of course, it’s wise not to appear too eager. There’s a fine line between good follow-up and looking desperate. So demonstrate your interest by touching base at the agreed upon checkpoints, but resist the temptation to check in every time you get anxious.

4. Don’t read too much into employer promises. Even if you’re told “We’ll definitely have a decision by next week” or “You’re one of our top two candidates,” take such comments with a grain of salt.

Employers’ plans change. A hundred things that have nothing to do with you can delay the decision: The hiring manager goes on vacation; an internal project suddenly requires attention; the company becomes the target of a takeover.

It’s fine to take a moment to relish any encouraging comments, but then plow full steam ahead with the job search.

5. Adjust your expectations (and advise your significant others to do the same). Reset your mental time clock and plan on the process lasting two or three times longer than the employer indicates. If it finishes sooner, great. But in the meantime, you’ll have an easier time managing your anxiety during the wait.

6. Keep your job application pipeline full. When you only have one prospect, you’ll obsess over it day and night. The best way to keep your sanity during a long interview wait is by generating a steady flow of new opportunities.

Even if your dream job seems within reach, keep searching, keep networking and keep applying. That way, you’ll feel like you’re making progress and you may uncover other interesting job openings in the process.

7. Snag a competitive offer. Nothing speeds up the hiring process faster than letting employers know you have another job offer. Just like dating, you’ll appear way more attractive to potential suitors once they know others are seriously interested.

Of course, there are risks involved with this strategy, so use it wisely. Once you tell an employer there’s a competing offer, you start the clock ticking. That’s why this approach can backfire if the employer’s lengthy interview timeline can’t be easily shortened. Also, some employers might resent being pressured into making a decision before they’re ready.

But when presented in a non-threatening and professional manner, having a bird in hand is one of the best ways to force the employer’shand — and maybe even get a higher starting salary to boot.

Nancy Collamer, M.S., is a career coach, speaker and author of Second-Act Careers: 50+ Ways to Profit From Your Passions During Semi-Retirement and a contributor to Next Avenue. Her website is MyLifestyleCareer.com; on Twitter she is @NancyCollamer.

Forbes.com | July 14, 2015 | Next Avenue 

Your #Career : 20 Words you Should Never Put On your #Résumé …Avoiding Overused Terms can Help #Job Seekers Convey their Message & Stand Out From the Crowd.

While Any Large Companies Use Automated Résumé Screener Software to Cut Down the Initial Pool of Job Applicants, Loading your Résumé with Meaningless Buzzwords is Not theSsmartest Way to Get Noticed. 

Woman Using Laptop at Home

Get ready to start hitting the ‘delete’ button.

Nearly everyone is guilty of using buzzwords from time to time, but professionals are evaluated increasingly on their ability to communicate,” says Paul McDonald, senior executive director for professional placement firm Robert Half.

One of the major problems with using buzzwords and terms, according to Mary Lorenz, a corporate communications manager at CareerBuilder, is they have become so overused that they’ve lost all meaning.

Another issue, she explains, is that many of these words don’t differentiate the job seeker from other candidates because they’re so generic. Instead, Lorenz says job seekers should speak in terms of accomplishments and show rather than tell.

“Avoiding overused terms can help job seekers convey their message and stand out from the crowd,” McDonald says. Here’s what you should avoid:

1. ‘Best of breed’

1. 'Best of breed'

When CareerBuilder surveyed more than 2,200 hiring managers last year, it found “best of breed” to be the most irritating term to be seen on a résumé.

“Anyone can say they are ‘best of breed,’ a ‘go-getter,’ a ‘hard worker,’ or a ‘strategic thinker,'” Lorenz says. “Employers want to know what makes the job seekers unique, and how they will add value to the specific organization for which they’re applying.”

 

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2. ‘Phone’

2. 'Phone'

Career coach Eli Amdur says there is no reason to put the word “phone” in front of the actual number.

“It’s pretty silly. They know it’s your phone number.” The same rule applies to email.

3. ‘Results-driven’

“Instead of simply saying that you’re results-driven, write about what you did to actually drive results — and what those results were,” Lorenz suggests.

 

3. ‘Responsible for’

Superfluous words like “responsible for,” “oversight of,” and “duties included,” unnecessarily complicate and hide your experience says Alyssa Gelbard, founder and president of Résumé Strategists.

“Be direct, concise, and use active verbs to describe your accomplishments,” she suggests. Instead of writing, “Responsible for training interns …,” simply write, “Train interns …”

5. ‘Highly qualified’

McDonald saying using terms like “highly qualified” or “extensive experience” won’t make you seem better-suited for the job — in fact, it could have the opposite effect. Instead, he suggests you focus on the skills, accomplishments, and credentials you bring to the role.

6. ‘Seasoned’

“Not only does this word conjure up images of curly fries,” says Rita Friedman, a Philadelphia-based career coach, “it is well-recognized as a code word for ‘much, much older.'”

 

7. ‘References available by request’

This outdated phrase will unnecessarily age you, Gelbard says. “If you progress through the interviewing process, you will be asked for personal and professional references.”

8. ‘NYSE’

Vicky Oliver, author of “Power Sales Words” and “301 Smart Answers to Tough Interview Questions,” says you should spell out any acronyms first and put the initials in parentheses. For example, “NYSE” would read “New York Stock Exchange (NYSE).”

“For starters, acronyms are capitalized, and all caps are harder to read than upper and lower case,” she explains. “It’s also really difficult to wade through a piece of paper that resembles alphabet soup.”

 

9. ‘Team player’

9. 'Team player'

TaskRabbit

“Who doesn’t want to be a team player? If you’re not a team player, you’re probably not going to get the job,” McDonald says.

But using this term isn’t going to make you stand out from other candidates. “Instead, use an example of how you saved a company time, money, and resources on a team project or in collaboration with others.

10. ‘Ambitious’

10. 'Ambitious'

“Of course you would never say you’re ‘lazy’ either, but calling yourself ambitious doesn’t make any sense on a resume,” Friedman says.

“It can imply that you’re targeting this job now, but will quickly be looking to move up in the company because you won’t be satisfied in the role, leaving the employer stuck with doing a new job search in the very near future.”

11. ‘Microsoft Word’

Yea, you and everyone else.

It’s assumed that you have a basic proficiency in Microsoft Office, Gelbard says. Unless you have expert proficiency, there’s no need to include it on your résumé.

12. ‘Interfaced’

“Words like this make you sound like an automaton,” Oliver says. “Most recruiters would rather meet with a human being. Keep your verbs simpl

 

13. ‘Hard worker’

13. 'Hard worker'

War Production Co-ordinating Committee

It’s true that a company is less likely to consider you if you haven’t worked hard or don’t come across as someone who will put in what it takes to get the job done, but that doesn’t mean writing “hard worker” will convince hiring managers of your efforts.

“Give concrete examples of how you’ve gone the extra mile, rather than using a non-memorable cliché,” McDonald suggests.

14. ‘Honest’

14. 'Honest'

Screenshot

Honesty is one of those things you have to show, not tell, Friedman says.

“It’s not as if there are some other candidates out there vying for the job who are describing themselves as ‘duplicitous’ or ‘dishonest.'”

15. ‘Punctual’

15. 'Punctual'

Daniel Goodman / Business Insider

Being punctual is great, but it’s also pretty basic to holding down a job. Don’t waste the space on your résumé.

 

16. ‘@’

Unless it’s in your email address, avoid casual texting language like @.

“A resume is a formal document and is often the first impression a potential employer has of you,” Gelbard stresses. “Business language should be used to reinforce that first impression and text-style or casual words should be avoided.”

17. ‘People person’

Cliches like “people person” are impossible to prove, Oliver says, and recruiters have heard these phrases so many times they’re likely to feel their eyes glaze over as soon as they see them.

18. ‘Hit the ground running’

“This one is a pet peeve of mine,” McDonald says. “The expression is unnecessary and doesn’t add value. A recruiter isn’t going to be able to place you if you’re not eager to start the j

 

9. ‘I’

Avoid using personal pronouns like I, me, my, we, or our, Gelbard says.

“A person reviewing your resume knows that you’re talking about your skills, experience, and expertise or something related to the company for which you worked, so you don’t need to include pronouns.”

20. ‘Successfully’

20. 'Successfully'

Dogma / Wikimedia, CC

“It’s generally assumed that you were successful at whatever you are including on your resume,” Gelbard says. “There is no need to say that you successfully managed a marketing campaign or successfully led annual budget planning.”

 

Businessinsider.com | July 10, 2015 |  

 

#Leadership : Overcoming Burnout: 5 Ways To Get Back On Track At Work…What Is Burnout? Career Burnout is a Chronic Psychological Condition Characterized by Exhaustion, Cynicism & a Lack of Professional Efficacy

Why People Experience Burnout ?  Excessive workloads, unrealistic time pressures and resulting exhaustion certainly contribute to burnout, but they alone are not responsible. Day-to-day social interactions and a lack of civility in the workplace are a primary cause.

Burnout_Woman

“I haven’t seen you smile in a week,” Anne vividly recalls her husband saying. She was in the depths of burnout. She worked as a medical professional in a relentlessly pressure-packed environment, with an unreasonably heavy workload, yet she didn’t think her job was the source of her unhappiness. She had come to blame herself, believing she was simply incompetent.

With the support of her husband and a counselor, Anne began to see that work and misery didn’t have to be synonymous. She realized there was a difference between being busy and burdened, and she regained control, partly by making an effort to pause throughout the day to relax or exercise. Eventually, she even recognized that she could truly be good at her job.

Anne is just one of an increasing number of people who have experienced workplace burnout. “It’s more common than the average worker recognizes,” says Chris Ebberwein, Ph.D., a behavioral faculty member at Wesley Family Medicine, University of Kansas School of Medicine in Wichita and member of the American Psychology Association “It can creep into your life and make you start to think unhappiness at work is normal.”

 

What Is Burnout?

Career burnout is a chronic psychological condition characterized by exhaustion, cynicism and a lack of professional efficacy, says Christina Maslach, Ph.D., professor of psychology at the University of California, Berkeley, and author of the Maslach Burnout Inventory. “It’s not simply that people are tired…It’s not just that people have a bad attitude,” she says. “It’s that they’re working in a socially toxic workplace,” one that lacks support and transparency from supervisors and colleagues.

The idea of workplace burnout first gained traction in the 1970s, but awareness of the problem has peaked lately. “The workplace is just squeezing people harder and harder in a lot of ways, and burnout is that reaction to chronic, everyday stressors,” says Maslach. “People experiencing burnout talk about erosion—I love my job, I’m good at my job, but working in this environment is socially toxic.”

Job burnout affects professionals working across all occupations, but appears to be most prevalent among those in service jobs, particularly physicians, 46% of whom have reported experiencing it, according to the Medscape Physician Lifestyle Report 2015.

 

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Why People Experience Burnout

Excessive workloads, unrealistic time pressures and resulting exhaustion certainly contribute to burnout, but they alone are not responsible. Day-to-day social interactions and a lack of civility in the workplace are a primary cause.

“Something as little as someone rolling their eyes can wear away at you,” says Maslach. “It’s also sarcastic tone of voice, being nasty and rude. It’s what you say, how you say it and how you act.”

According to Maslach, There are 6 Areas Where Trouble can Lead to Burnout. These are:

1. Workload: Do you have too many tasks and not enough time to complete them, or too few resources? Is the flow of your assignments unsustainable?

2. Control: Does your job allow you a level of autonomy? Do you have control over what you’re doing and when?

3. Reward and positive feedback: When you do something valuable for your employer, are you recognized for your work? Do you feel appreciated?

4. Workplace community: Do you work in a supportive, transparent environment, or are you surrounded by destructive competition and gossip?

5. Fairness: Is everyone within your organization treated with respect, fair opportunity and equal access, or do you perceive favoritism and cheating?

6. Values: Do you find your work meaningful, or does it require you to compromise your personal values?

 

Overcoming Burnout

If you feel like you’re on the path to burnout, here are five ways to get back on track.

1. Seek input from within your organization.
In many cases, professional burnout is not exclusive to one individual within an organization. Identify other employees who may be experiencing the problem and collaborate with them to start to fix it. “People have to work together to figure out what’s creating a less than ideal working environment,” says Maslach. “Ask yourselves, ‘How do we turn this around?’ See if there are ways for the organization to work with everybody to find a solution.”

A successful example of this is CREW (Civility, Respect and Engagement in the Workplace), a burnout intervention program first implemented in Veterans Health Administration hospitals. Over a six-month period, participants met weekly to discuss respectful workplace relationships and participate in communication exercises. Outside of meetings, they were encouraged to practice positive social exchanges. The program yielded improved civility and decreased burnout more than one year later.

2. Establish new relationships.
If everyone in your office social circle has given up on escaping the burnout rut, it’s time to make a change. Surround yourself with coworkers who want to make positive strides in their work lives and draw support from one another. In “Conquering Burnout,” in Scientific American, Maslach and a coauthor write, “Receiving good vibes from others is an uplifting experience, but so, too, is expressing them to others.”

3. Find meaning in your work.
Identify the most fulfilling elements of your work and dedicate more time to them. If you can, talk to your supervisor about better aligning your responsibilities with your strengths and interests. “If you feel like the projects you’re taking on match what you like to do, burnout will diminish, because you’re enjoying yourself at work,” says Ebberwein.

4. Make a conscious effort to take breaks.
Whether for a few minutes or a few days, take time away to recharge. Set an alarm every 30 minutes as a reminder to get up and move around the office, suggests Maslach in “Conquering Burnout,” and make use of your vacation days. “Some companies love people who never take breaks,” says Ebberwein. “But that praise is moving them down a path to burnout.” If appropriate, talk to your employer about switching to a more flexible work schedule. Customizing your schedule to your needs can offset burnout by giving you a greater sense of control.

5. Change organizations or career paths.
Despite your best efforts, sometimes you can’t possibly overcome burnout where you work. In that case, beating burnout may require you to consider a new job or an entirely new field. “Some jobs are, by nature, difficult, tiring and stressful,” says Ebberwein. “If you can’t say you do it for a specific reason, explore other options.”

 

Forbes.com | June 23, 2015 | Vicky Valet 

#Strategy: The Best Way to Get the Truth Out of a Job Candidate…The Single Most Important Thing you Could Do as an Organization is #Hire the Right People.

Last week hedge fund manager Jason H. Karp explained during the Milken Institute’s Global Conference that his company’s personality assessment helps reveal positive and negative attributes in job candidates. He went on to say that the personality traits he looks for the most in traders and analysts are openness to change and grit (or resilience).

Man in suit sitting in dark room illuminated only by light from a lamp and looking in camera

“I would argue that the single most important thing you could do as an organization is hire the right people,” Frederick Morgeson, an organizational psychology expert and professor of management at Michigan State University, tells Business Insider. And a key way to do that, he argues, is by investing time, energy, and money into properly conducting personality assessments.

Morgeson says what’s truly unique and commendable about Karp’s tactic is his clear understanding of what he needs for the job and the company. This is the crucial first step to conducting personality assessments the right way.

Why do personality assessments matter?

The point of personality assessments, Morgeson says, is to get an idea of what traits someone possesses and what types of behaviors they engage in so you can assess how well they match up to the traits you believe are really important for success in the job and in the organization.

Questions like, “To what extent do you like trying new or different things?” and, “Tell me about a time when you had to try something new,” for example, would indicate a job candidate’s level of openness to new experiences and change.

job interview

Morgeson points out that if a company hires someone who makes between $50,000 and $60,000 a year, over the course of a 20-year career, that’s at least a million-dollar investment in that person.

According to Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic, a professor of business psychology at University College London and Columbia University and CEO of personality profiling company Hogan Assessment Systems, when tests are scientifically validated, they are better at predicting future performance than interviews, references, and résumés.

Here are the steps you need to take to get the most out of your own company’s personality assessments:

1. Understand your needs.

The first step to personality assessments is figuring out your company’s values, missions, and the needs for the job.

“If you don’t do the work as an organization to make sure that those traits that you’re trying to find in your candidates are in fact the right traits for your organization and for the jobs they’re doing, you’re going to have problems,” Morgeson says.

Businesses need to ask:

  1. What is is going to take to be successful in the job?
  2. What is it going to take to be successful in the organization?

Only once these ideal traits are clear can a business proceed to the next step of assessing candidates’ personalities and their fit.

 

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2. Pick an assessment.

There are thousands of different personality assessments available on the market today. One most people have heard of is the controversial Myers-Briggs Type Indicator test.

Karp said his company looks for openness to change, which is one of the “Big Five” personality traits, another common model for assessing potential new hires.

Collectively, these traits are often referred to with the acronym OCEAN, which stands for openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism. Even though Karp said that neuroticism could lead to what he calls a “nuisance hire” — someone that has potential, but could be a drain on the company — he admitted that he himself exhibits this trait.

Often people will exhibit a mixture of some of these personality traits, Morgeson says, but there are usually a few that stand out to assessors more than others.

interview

3. Beware of common mistakes.

Where companies often trip up, Morgeson explains, is not assessing these personality traits the right way.

“One of the things that the field [fusion_builder_container hundred_percent=”yes” overflow=”visible”][fusion_builder_row][fusion_builder_column type=”1_1″ background_position=”left top” background_color=”” border_size=”” border_color=”” border_style=”solid” spacing=”yes” background_image=”” background_repeat=”no-repeat” padding=”” margin_top=”0px” margin_bottom=”0px” class=”” id=”” animation_type=”” animation_speed=”0.3″ animation_direction=”left” hide_on_mobile=”no” center_content=”no” min_height=”none”][of organizational psychology] has struggled with is, we know these personality traits matter for how people perform, but how do we get at them, how do we measure them, how do we effectively assess them?”

Assessors could potentially ask the wrong kinds of questions to discern a personality trait.

“Even though they have an idea of what they want, they’re not engaging in a process that will really help them understand the candidates’ or the applicants’ standing on those characteristics,” he says.

Critics of personality assessments also claim it’s too easy to game these tests. John Rust, director of Cambridge University’s Psychometrics Centre, told the economist that because the expected answers to these assessments are often clear, companies wind up “selecting the people who know what the right answers are.”

Morgeson admits this is especially problematic when using these assessments for hiring, since job applicants are more motivated to lie and tell interviewers what they want to hear. But good personality assessors have ways to know when someone’s lying, he says:

  1. They build a lie/cheat scale into the assessment. One way to do this is to ask a candidate if they endorse something that doesn’t exist. If they answer in the affirmative, this raises the question, what else are they lying about?
  2. When a potential hire’s answers seem too good to be true, they follow up with them about it in some kind of interview process.
  3. They reach out to the candidate’s references and ask them to answer the same question about the job candidate and see if the responses line up.

“The whole point of the hiring process is you’re trying to learn the most you can about an applicant in as many different ways as possible,” Morgeson says.

Businessinsider.com | May 5, 2015 | RACHEL GILLETT

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