60 Seconds, that is how much time you have to make a first impression!

Whether you are:

• Sending a cover letter / email
• Calling a recruiter or employer to follow up on an advert
• Attending an interview

It is this first 60 seconds that will be the crucial difference in being successful or not, this is the time it takes for someone to make their mind up and make an initial assessment about you. (Often subconsciously but nevertheless a fact!)

Is this fair?

Probably not but think about it, we do it all the time, it is said that in the UK the average homebuyer spends longer deciding what suit to buy than on a house! We get gut feelings, make immediate decisions, and often find those first impressions were right (or at least we perceive them to be right as we’ve already made the decision!)

Once it is accepted that the first 60 seconds are crucial it is possible to give yourself a real competitive advantage.

We covered the 3 Key aspects of the interview process Preparation, Presentation and Performance in detail.

These points are equally as relevant when making initial contacts with both recruiters and direct employers.

Tailor a cover letter for each application you send. A recruiter will receive hundreds (and often more) CV’s every week. This is your opportunity to stand out. Use the chance to highlight relevant experience and how this relates to the job. It can be easier to do this as part of a cover letter than CV as there isn’t the restriction of chronological order of jobs or job titles!

It is important to follow up on an application, but be relevant, concise and engaging. Rather that call with the opening line “I just wanted to call to see if you received my CV” or “Is the job still available” why not have a few sentences about how your experience relates directly to that required in the advert. (Similar to what you would say in the cover letter)

Once you have engaged the recruiter and shown that you have the skills for the job it isn’t difficult to work out what the first couple of questions are going to be, have the answers ready. Think about what you are going to say in advance and practice. It’s not easy to ad lib when the pressure is on!

The principal here is to make the relevant information easily available to the recruiter or employer in a straightforward and engaging way.

Some readers will think this is simplistic! It is, and on purpose! The fact is the vast majority do not make the extra effort, if you do it will give you a real advantage.

Written by Richard Morgan, Remit Resources – The IT Recruiters.

As an example of this 2 recent roles advertised on the Internet, a junior IT Helpdesk job and another, more senior, IT Management position attracted 1250 and 600 unique applications respectively. For both of these roles the client required a shortlist of suitable candidates within 2 days!

Recruiters have invested heavily in IT systems to help manage this process but the sheer volume of applications mean some qualified and able candidates will slip through the net and there simply isn’t the time to speak with every applicant and pass constructive feedback on every CV.

Job Hunters today must take personal responsibility for finding the next opportunity and must understand the new rules of job hunting

5 Things Every Job Seeker Should Know:

• The world has changed! Your approach to finding a job must also change. The old approach of putting a CV together, posting to an online job board or randomly sending to job adverts, and expecting the phone to ring doesn’t work anymore. Sure you will get the odd call, even an interview but this is luck, who wants to rely on luck? Be creative, network with everyone you know, use social media facebook, twitter YouTube etc. Don’t understand social media? Learn it, it’s not going away!

• Everyone should have a personal advert! Recruiters and Hiring Managers are facing a huge volume of job seekers, it is critical to engage them immediately. Take the time to prepare a 30 second advert, something you say every time when you meet people (in the US it is known as an elevator speech). It must be something that says who you are and what you do and it must be interesting. It’s should be friendly, positive, ideally with a bit of humour and should prompt a question from the recruiter.

• CV must sell! Nobody wants to read an 8 page document detailing every project or task you’ve carried out – it’s just not interesting! Be relevant and think about the role you are applying for, who will be reading it, what will they want to see. Highlight specific areas of expertise or areas of work that are a great fit and be specific. On a practical level, it isn’t good enough to present CV’s that are poorly formatted or with spelling mistakes (that’s what spell-check is for!) There is a wealth of information out there on CV preparation, spend some time on getting this right.

• What does your personal brand say about you? What personal brand? Exactly! Do you have a personal website, if not why not! It doesn’t cost much and can be another way of advertising yourself online. It can say who you are, what you do and what you stand for. Everyone prepares (or at least should) for an interview; do you think that employers don’t do this? Of course they do, and what do they find? What does your facebook page, twitter account, YouTube channel say about you to a future employer?

• It is tough out there, stay positive! Easy to say but harder to do when you are facing rejection. You must stay positive as your attitude is projected in everything you do, read positive books, speak to positive people and believe in yourself. Remember positive things happen to positive people. Finally when you get those interviews, prepare, prepare and prepare some more. That will be the difference in who gets the job.

It all sounds like a lot of hard work! It is, that’s the world we live in! Most people will not do these things, will not take action, and if you do you will have the advantage.

Written by Richard Morgan, Remit Resources

I’m sure you’ve heard of it, probably got an account, but how many are using LinkedIn (effectively) as a tool to find their next opportunity

What is LinkedIn?

In brief, it’s the No 1 Professional Networking site, its social networking for business!

Similar to other social media sites (FaceBook / Twitter etc.) you create a profile, invite your connections and build your network (just like in the real world but with more coverage!)

Whilst it wasn’t originally designed with recruitment in mind, this is one of its main uses and LinkedIn is also now the UK’s most visited recruitment site (source Hitwise , 02/01/2010)

Recruiters are using it to source candidates, employers are using it to hire, there’s 55 million people using it – surely they can’t all be wrong!

If you haven’t got a profile on Linked in, it’s time to get one!

5 Tips for using LinkedIn

Your profile is your online “CV”.  It’s far more effective than a traditional CV as in effect it’s “real time”. Got a new qualification or Job, just add it, actively looking for a new role, change your status etc. This takes away the need to upload multiple documents, sending updated CV’s to recruiters and deleting outdated files  - will it replace the CV, maybe one day but the CV will be with us for some time yet I fear however more and more recruiters are using LinkedIn!

Build your network before you need it! In a tough job market (I would also argue in most markets) networking is the most effective way to find your next role. Encourage people you know to join the network, look up people you used to work with, people you currently work with and add people once you’ve spoken to them. There are arguments for and against; my own view is to accept all invitations, bigger is better!

Long term relationships. It takes time to develop a network of contacts. If you are only doing this when you are looking for a job then it can be very time consuming and slow. LinkedIn allows you to easily keep in contact with the network at all times, if a contact has moved on, their profile will show this and saves time trying to locate useful contacts

Recommendations. Encourage your contacts to write positive recommendations about you. Recommendations are proof, and far more powerful than claims you make. Which do you think is more effective, a couple of lines on your experience that you have written or your previous IT Director saying how valuable your contribution to delivering the XYZ projects was!

Contribute. As with all social media “you get out what you put in”. Join groups that relate to your industry or the type of roles you are interested in. Join in the discussions, answer questions, demonstrate your knowledge and become an expert in your sector. Add people that communicate with you and your circle of relevant connections will grow quickly.  Remember, it’s not about who you know but who knows you!

Some say, academic qualifications, work experience, certifications, “who you know” – the list is endless.

The most important factor is likeability and the ability to engage! (OK, you’ve got to be able to do the job, but they think you can do the job already, otherwise they wouldn’t be interviewing you)

Now some people will say nonsense, it’s because I haven’t got experience with SQL 2008, I’ve only got SQL 2005 (or something similar)

Trust me when I say, if the person who is interviewing, likes you, wants to work with you, thinks you want to work with them and are 100% committed to doing a great job they will train you in the latest version of the software.  (The qualifier here is if you are a Cisco engineer and want to get a job as an Oracle DBA this might not be enough but hopefully you understand where I’m coming from)

What to do?

• Find something about the company that you think is great and let them know
• At the start chat about non job related things, if you notice something relating to golf in the office, and you like golf mention it. (warning, only talk about things you are genuinely interested in)
• Be interested in the interviewer and the company
• Show enthusiasm about the position and the company
• Smile and keep eye contact

I know you know this already, it’s not complicated or new. The question to ask yourself honestly, is how well do you do these things in an interview?

If you read any of my other posts you will notice I almost always end by saying give it a try, if you do it will, without doubt make a difference. Most people don’t, they do what they always do (it’s easier!), guess what results they get?

One final thing, you know those people who always get every interview, every promotion? Guess what they do?

The logic being that how you performed in the past is a better indication of how you will perform in the future than asking you what you would / might do if that situation came about again.

e.g. instead of asking “How would you react to a difficult call on the helpdesk?” they would ask “Tell me about a time when you dealt with a difficult Helpdesk call?”   (Please get in touch if you would like access to our question bank)

How do Interviewers judge answers?

As with all interview questions, the interviewer will be looking for negatives as well as positives. Take care with situations where the interviewer could perceive you as not being open to change, failing to get help sooner, taking things personally etc.

Interviewers will look for the following in your answers – STAR

Situation / Task Describe the situation that you were in or the task that you needed to accomplish. You must describe a specific event or situation, not a generalised description of what you have done in the past. Be sure to give enough detail for the interviewer to understand. This situation can be from a previous job, from a volunteer experience, or any relevant event.

Action Describe the action you took and be sure to keep the focus on you. Even if you are discussing a group project or effort, describe what you did, not the efforts of the team. Don’t tell what you might do, tell what you did.

Result What happened? How did the event end? What did you accomplish? What did you learn?

The interviewer may follow up (typically if you haven’t given enough details) with:

• What exactly did you do?
• What was your specific role in this?
• What challenges did you come across?
• Why exactly did you make that decision?
• How did you approach that?
• How did you feel?
• Whose idea was that?
• What exactly was the outcome?
• What would you do differently next time?

To prepare

Look at the job description, it will often give a list of the competencies that will be needed to succeed in the job e.g. Strategy, Management, Influencing etc.

Think of scenarios when you’ve been required to do these things and write examples, explain the situation, what you did, why you did it, the outcome and what you learned. Think of the follow up questions the interviewer may ask and expand your answer, focusing on specifics.

If you would like a copy of our competency based question bank get in touch.

Richard Morgan at Remit Resources

Source IT Jobs Watch

On average the permanent salaries for .NET jobs has increased by 6.25% to £42,500 in comparison to the same period last year. In terms of demand, the numbers of .NET roles available has increased dramatically on 2009 and whilst not at 2008 levels the trends remain positive.

When looking at the related skills we see Silverlight, for the first time as one of the “top 30”. Interestingly when you look at the demand for “Silverlight Developers” there has been a huge increase (41.17%) in permanent salaries and whilst numbers of matching permanent job adverts remain relatively low this is clearly a skill that is ever more in demand.

Average Salaries

To see full report http://www.remitresources.co.uk/NETDeveloperQ32010.pdf

The information provides a comparison between salaries as at the end of September 2010 compared to the same period last year. Our aim is to provide you with the most up to date, accurate and specific salary data to help you recruit and retain the right staff to take your business forward.

The data is independent, to assure you an impartial outlook.

To access our market data tool please visit:

www.salarysurveys.remitresources.co.uk

Highlights

• Permanent IT Director salary down 17%, contract rate up 16%
• Demand for Developers continues to be strong, including mobile development
• 27% increase in Silverlight Developer permanent salary and 44% increase in contract rate
• Flex Developer permanent salary up 25% and contract rate up 38%

To download full salary please visit:

www.remitresources.co.uk/SurveyQ32010.pdf

It’s holiday time and I’m in better shape but for the effort I’ve been putting in, not as good as I would have hoped. I’ve been working hard, my commitment has been good, and I’ve been doing the programme I started out with 4 times a week for 6 months.

So why haven’t I reached my goals? That is what I just asked the trainer in the gym. The answer he tells me is simple ( I wish he told me 3 months ago, I guess I should have asked) my body has been conditioned to the workout and because there was no variety my progress has basically stopped ( what is that saying about the definition of madness being doing the same thing every day and expecting different results!)

This got me thinking about job hunting. I speak with a lot of candidates every day, some of them have been looking for a job for a long time.

Why? They are good candidates, have good experience and are very employable.

Have they fallen in to the same trap as I did in the gym, doing the same thing every day, and getting the same results.

Why not try something different, be creative!

Alec Brownstein needed a job as a copywriter.

This is how he did it

Google Job Experiment

Will this approach work for everyone? I don’t know, but it worked for him

Why not try one thing different / creative in your search this week

Written by Richard Morgan at Remit Resources

They have been pretty specific about their requirements and needed someone that has worked for a small IT solutions company with 4 areas of experience that were a must (without these they would not consider the candidate)

I set these out pretty clearly in the advert, they were:

• Leadership – Managing a team of around 15 staff, between 10 – 12 will be field based. Organising and motivating the team to ensure the “face of IT” is functioning well and delivering first class service

• Service Delivery – They operate in a competitive niche were they have carved out a great reputation and compete with far larger organisations. The way they have done this is through the quality of their service, as they expand they need to continue and improve this service and need someone that can implement improvements and structures.

• Client Management – Someone to get very close to their clients, building great relationships to understand their business, identify any issues in advance, retain their business and ultimately expand and develop the services being provided.

• Project Management – Working closely with the business to deliver multiple projects on time and against budget. Understanding what can be done (and also what can’t!). This is project management for someone who has managed large numbers (dozens) of small projects at any one time, often only 1 week projects, rather than someone who is used to managing large global projects.

I also made the point that it would be a real advantage to set out, in a covering letter where there was a match in experience.

We had 979 unique applications for this role, how many covering letters addressed this point? 1! Yes only 1 candidate.

Now, it may be I can’t write clear ad copy, maybe I should read every CV in detail and call every candidate to discuss the role in detail, but I didn’t (nobody would – it would take over 16 hours without a break to even look at 979 CV’s for one minute) Is that fair, probably not, is it reality in today’s market, yes!

Of the 979 candidates, guess who got the job (congratulations again Rob)

Was he the best candidate for the job, yes I think so. Amongst the 979 candidates were there plenty of others who could have done an equally good job, I suspect so.

The point is, personalise your cover letters and write a fresh one every time for every job. Look at the requirements, think how you match them and set this out, in pretty straightforward normal language in an email.

Most people can’t be bothered, they either don’t write covering letters at all or they have “standard” cover letters that by changing the job title and “topping and tailing” they kid themselves are tailored for the specific role.

It takes a lot more work, but what do you think will lead to getting the right job, sending out 300 applications (or applying for the same job over and over again) or writing specific application setting out very clearly how you match the requirements

I know which option I would be taking!