#startwire

At StartWire, we like to address the pesky problems in job search and unemployment that many sweep under the rug. Here are two of the big problems we’ve already tackled.

What happened to my job application after I applied?

StartWire provides a way to get updated on the status of your job search at over 7,000 companies.

Why am I seeing job listings that are six months old?

We’ve streamlined our job listings to only show you jobs that have been posted within the last two weeks.

You finally got that coveted interview, and you’re excited about the position and company, but now what?

Despite given the green flag to interview for the position, remember that there is a reason they call it an “interview”.  You will need to prove that the job should be yours.  The confidence you need to approach the interview is realizing that there is a reason they want you for an interview.  Your resume and skills seem promising to them, and there is a high chance that they find you the best match for the position.  Now you need to take this assumption on their part, and turn it into a concrete belief.

So how do you make this happen?   

  1.      Be Human

The term “Interview” stands for a discussion, meeting, a DIALOGUE.  The most important step is to have a dialogue with the employer.  People mistakenly see the interview as a one-way conversation where the employer asks the questions, and the interviewee needs to respond with the “right” answers. 

Instead, it’s enlightening to realize that the employer is another person—a very human person who enjoys a good conversation like any other person.  When they interview a prospective candidate, they want to see that the candidate is personable and relatable.  The interview will be looked back on in a brighter light if the conversation was less about answering questions and more about forming a connection between two people.

2.      Research and Prepare

Interviews are like exams.  If you walk into an exam unprepared, the chances of failing the exam increase.  Similarly, you need to study for an interview as well. 

First, do any basic research on the company.  What industry are they in?  Are there any recent press releases or news related to the company?  This may be a great talking point with the interviewer. 

Next, your job is to figure out what type of interview will be conducted.  By knowing what to expect, you can refine skills suited for that interview type.

Different types of interviews:

·        Behavioral Interview- This interview type gauges how you react to or “behave” in situations and will ask you for “real life” examples.

·        Case Interview- This interview tests your problem-solving skills and employers want to see how you’ll rationalize and think through a problem.

·        Group Interview- The group interview is designed to see how you interact with others, and your ability to make your input heard in a group setting.

·        Lunch and Dinner Interview- These interviews show the employer how a candidate behaves in a social setting, and whether they can maintain their professionalism over lunch/dinner.   Mainly, these interviews gauge whether you are qualified to hold lunch or dinners with future clients. 

·        Public Interview- This interview is more casual, but shows the employer how you react in a public setting. 

·        Panel/Committee Interview- This interview type involves being interviewed by more than one interviewer.  There may or may not be other candidates simultaneously being interviewed in the same room.  This interview is designed to test your group management and group presentation skills. 

·        Stress Interview-The stress interview shows the employer how you react under stressful situations.   The employer will deliberately react in ways to test how you respond or recover. 

After prepping for the appropriate interview type, don’t forget to find out an important piece of information—directions to the interview room!

3.      Be Confident, Smile

You can’t convince the employer to be confident in your abilities if you aren’t confident in yourself.  Know that every person is different, and your own unique experiences offer something promising to their plate of candidates.  Take your strong points, and let them shine.

You’ve done your job search homework. You’ve adopted the 5 Habits of an Effective Job Seeker.  It’s time to reap the rewards of your hard work and move on to the next step – the phone interview. To help get you through this crucial step, today we’re sharing three simple must-do steps to prepare for the phone interview.

1. Put the right phone number on your resume and in your contact information. This is not just a correct phone number, but the best number for a potential employer to call. Make sure you think it through. Because many employers call – rather than e-mail – to set up a phone interview, you want to make sure that you use a phone number on your resume where you can be reached – and that will reflect well on you. Choosing the right number to list on your resume can be tricky:

If you are currently employed, never list your work phone number on your resume. Even if the best place to reach you is at work, the impression you will leave is that you are comfortable using your current employer’s resources to look for a job – and that doesn’t sit well with most hiring managers.

Only list your cell number if you experience good reception at least 90% of the time. That sounded like an interesting job but I couldn’t hear what it was through all the static. Landlines can be great as the reception is always clear, but coach anyone in your household on the way you’d like them to handle a call from a potential employer for you. If a child regularly answers your phone, you may want to use a different number. Alternative option: Create a Google Voice number that will ring where – and when – you tell it to.

2. Invite people to leave you a voice mail. You know how it important it is to look good on paper; you also need a great greeting for your voice mail. If an employer calls you and receives a generic “this party is not available right now – please leave a message” response, they may wonder if they have the right number and choose not to leave a message at all.

Create a simple message with your first and last name. Invite people to leave their contact information, and – ideally – give a window of when they can expect a response. Example: “Hi, this is Jane Clarke. I’m not available right now, but please leave me your name, phone number, and your email address and I’ll get back to you within 24 hours. Thanks for calling!”

Make sure your message is clear and that your tone sounds friendly and professional.  

3. When the phone rings, don’t be afraid to say you can’t talk.

Even if a hiring manager says, “this isn’t an interview” – all phone conversations are part of the hiring process, and many “first conversations” are also the last.

If you’re in an active job search, don’t answer calls from strangers in sports arenas, bars, or other crowded venues. As soon as you say hello, you need to be able to respond in “hire me” mode – and if you’re not in a position to do this, you need to postpone. It’s always okay to say, “I’m not in a quiet place right now, can we set up a time to speak?” Make sure you have a pen and paper close at hand to get the details down. Even if your iPhone is amazing, you should never put your potential interviewer on hold so that you can take down details while you are talking!

Our 5 part series on "The 5 Habits of Effective Job Seekers" aims to shed light on 5 important habits that will help job seekers become more effective in their job search.  Ultimately, StartWire is a tool you can use to adapt these habits. 

So to conclude our 5 part series, we’re spending some time on the question: How does StartWire work?

For those who want a better understanding of what StartWire offers, we compiled a visually appealing and easy way to grasp StartWire’s cool functions!

ONE: Application

Comb through job boards or StartWire’s databases for jobs.  Find positions that interest you and apply!

When you receive that 'thanks for applying' email, forward that email to [email protected].

Alternatively, you can add a job through the “Track a New Application” bar on our homepage.

TWO: Visual Organization

Job Search is stressful enough, but disorganization, along with clutter makes it more stressful.  We're here to organize for you.  Now you'll have one place to view all the jobs you've applied to!

Furthermore, it's color coded to show you your chances of getting the job based on the amount of people who've applied to the same position.

 Green indicates better chances, whereas red represents positions with a higher number of applicants.  This give you a basis to adjust your expectations on whether you have heavy or light competition.

  THREE: Notification

We'll constantly be tracking these positions, so that you'll receive automatic updates on the status of your jobs.  You can receive these updates through email, but even through a text if you prefer!

FOUR: Recommendations

We know that combing through jobs after jobs to find good matches can be very time consuming.  So we make this process easier for you by providing actual recommendations! We base these recommendations from positions you've applied to and previous positions you've searched for.

FIVE: Networking help

You can find who you know from the companies you've applied to.  You'll have an insider in that company you can contact and ask for a referral.

SIX: Jobs

Since the main focus is jobs, we feature many of them!

We’re at the last part of our 5 part series on “The 5 Habits of Effective Job Seekers”!

The aim of this concluding part of our series is to tie together all the habits we’ve uncovered together in the past weeks. To refresh, the habits of effective job seekers are:

1) They Don’t Post and Pray

2) They Apply Early

3) They Get Referred

4) They Get Found

5) They Make Use of America’s #1 Job Search Organizer

Now that we know the habits necessary for effective job seekers, the important question to ponder is what then does StartWire do to help job seekers adopt and practice these habits (this is the StartWire blog after all!)?

StartWire does in fact offer solutions to these problems.  StartWire was built from ground up to make the process of job search more manageable, less stressful and, of course, more effective!  What this means is, for each of the habits that we’ve talked about, StartWire has resources in place to help you adopt the habits of an effective job seeker.  Some of you may not be aware of all that you can do with StartWire, so we wanted to take some time to highlight how StartWire can help you with these specific and effective habits. 

It’s week four of our 5 part series on “The 5 Habits of Effective Job Seeker”!

The fourth habit of effective job seekers is: They Get Found!

What does that mean?  80% of companies are now searching resume databases to find their next hire.

With many applicants applying with unqualified credentials, employers offset this by turning the search around.  Instead, employers are doing the searching.  Knowing this, what can you do?  Take the initiative to be found.

The benefit of posting your resume online is the increase in eyes that your resume will be receiving!  Instead of sending your resume to a specific number of job postings and restricting your resume to be read by the HR manager behind those postings, posting your resume onto a job board allows a larger pool of employers to review your resume.  Do make sure your resume is in the right databases by searching for and placing your resume in job boards that cater to your industry, function, or geography. 

A quick tip to posting your resume online: format it to be posted online.

Convert it to text-only form by saving it as a .txt file.

 Edit by left-aligning everything.  Center or right-aligning text will be lost on most online resume postings.

Indent using spaces, not tabs.

Don’t use special characters or symbols.

 Protect your identity! Leave out personal information, such as date of birth and home address.  Instead, post your city and state as an alternative to your home address, and set up a special email for job search.

Earlier this week, we shared strategies to avoid four mistakes job seekers commonly make when asking for a referral. Today, we're sharing information on ways you can ask for that referral -- even when you don't have a direct contact.  

Need to get in touch with someone you know who knows someone associated with the job? Ask for the connection through LinkedIn. Ninety percent of recruiters using social media to find candidates use LinkedIn to do so, shouldn’t you use it to get recommended? Connect your LinkedIn account to StartWire and you can see your connections when you look at jobs –simply click “get referrals” and customize a personal postcard to be sent to your connections.  

Wave hello using social media. At StartWire, we’ve conducted over 25 interviews with senior recruiting leaders at Global organizations. One of the most common themes? Employers are interested in getting to know candidates via social media.  Say hello on a Facebook company wall or through an @reply Tweet on Twitter and the employer has an impetus to get back to you. After all, you’ve just sent a public expression of interest – and it’s always polite to reply. Smile. You just shifted the balance of power in the hiring equation towards you.  

Go retro: Contact the hiring manager.  Many organizations list jobs through their HR department. The HR department often makes the first review at applications. If you know who your boss would be -- or can figure out who it might be -- don't be afraid to give them a quick call and let them know you've applied. A great way to do this? Do it at night -- after everyone's gone home. Leave a voice message saying, "Hi, this is _________. Wanted to let you know I've applied for ______ job. I have ___ years of related experience and am interested in joining in your team. You can reach me at ______ but I've completed my application with your HR department." Sometimes this act alone is enough to move you to the top of the pile -- when the hiring manager says, "What about that guy."

This week we’re focusing on Habit #3 of our series on the “Five Habits of Effective Job Seekers”: They get referred. As we mentioned yesterday, a referral can increase your chances of getting hired by up to 300% – that’s an easy way to increase your odds of having a shorter job search. You’re also more likely to have a happier landing: On average, people who are referred for positions through employee referral programs stay longer in the job once they are hired – in fact they are 3.5 times less likely to be terminated.

Just as you can exponentially increase your chances of getting a job with a referral, you can kill your chances if you play your cards wrong. Here are four common mistakes job seekers make when asking for a referral – and how to avoid them.

1.    Asking someone you don’t know to refer you – without introducing yourself or establishing common ground. Ever gotten a message that says “Because you are a person I trust, I’d like to add you to my LinkedIn network” from a person you’ve never met? Don’t ask to be referred into any job this way: it will likely only result in a weak recommendation. Many years ago, a private citizen asked U.S. President ______________ if he could recommend him. The result, a short letter that essentially said nothing at all: “I recommend this young man for whatever job YOU think he is qualified for.” A better approach? Express interest in the other person. Get to know them. Share interests. Ask later – when you have a relationship.  

2.    Not letting a referral know you are using their name. Many job applications have a referral box you can select if you have an inside connection. If you check the box but don’t let your connection know you’ve applied, they may be caught off guard – and may not be able to speak to your strengths.  They may also be annoyed with you for not sharing information. Bottom line: Tell anyone who has offered to help you in a job search that you’ve applied – before you give their name out as a referral and point of contact.  

3.    Not educating the person who’s offered to help you. While getting a referral can help ensure your resume gets read, it doesn’t guarantee you’ll make the interview list. If someone’s offered to vouch for you by serving as a referral, make sure they have a copy of your most recent resume – and know why you’d be a good fit for the job you’ve applied for.  

4.    Asking for a referral from someone who would not recommend you.