Finance/Your Job Interview

We have already talked out cover letters and CV`s but now comes the tricky part. The Interview. I hope that the information supplied helps you get your feet on the "Employment Ladder".

I'm always amazed at how few candidates arrive at the interview having done any professional research on the company they're applying to join! I suggest there are 2 levels of research:

1. Basic research: This requires you to know the basic information about the company such as:

a) What its main products/services are
b) Some history about the company
c)  Where it operates
d) The company's general "reputation"

Most of these points are easily found on the company's website or through a simple search on your favourite search engine. This should not take more than 15 - 30 minutes of your time.

2. Detailed research:

If you're really serious about standing out from the competition, then I recommend investing another 30 - 60 minutes of your time in some more detailed research. This is what you should do:

a) Search the web for press releases and news about the company in order to spot major launches, events, market response to services/products and investor reaction to results etc. By doing this, you will quickly be able to identify how the company is doing, its reputation and whether it is viewed as being well managed or not.
b) If its a quoted company, go to the investor section on the website and download the pdf of the latest annual results. There are 2 important things you'll find here - there's also a lot of boring stuff to avoid!. Firstly, you can find the CEO's statement. This will give you plenty of information on where the company is going, major initiatives etc. The second is the profit and loss or income statement. I'm not suggesting you all turn into accountants overnight, however a simple calculator and 10 minutes of your time will give you some information on how fast the company is growing and whether its profitable.

You now have about as much information as you need to move to our final step. 

Often, you'll be asked a question "what do you know about us"? Well, you now have the information to answer that one better than most. Towards the end of an interview, it's likely that you'll be asked the following "is there anything you'd like to ask us"?  This is a real opportunity to stand out as you will have developed 3 or 4 possible questions from your research that you can now ask. The video will give you some examples of how we suggest you develop your questions.

Importantly, when its your turn to ask questions of the recruiter, I suggest you preface your questions with the following ..."When I was doing my research in preparation for this interview, I came across ...". This will make it obvious to the recruiter that you've done your homework.

Congratulations!! by following a few simple steps, you are now professionally prepared for your interview - much more so than the majority of the other candidates. Good luck!

Finance/Employment for Graduates.

This may be obvious, but you need to write a great resume and cover letter.  This needs to be a long process, and in some cases it may even be a little painful.  Like any important document, both of these need to be proofread by your most trusted advisers.  For me, each version of my resume initially took two to three weeks of proof-reading before I finally had a framework that I was ready to use and easily modify. 

I also like to write these types of things in waves.  I'd write the first version, and the next day review it myself.  With the second version I'd review it myself and then send it out to my first group of reviewers.  At this stage, it's important to keep in mind your reviewers backgrounds.  Some of them may be great at grammar but know nothing about your field.  In my case, most of my friends that were reviewing had degrees in journalism and screen writing, but often misunderstood the technical parts of my resume.  It's important to make sure you understand where their advice is coming from and in some cases know which parts to heed and which to ignore. 

The next round of reviews came from professional relationships.  Site's like LinkedIn help a lot for this kind of stuff.  There were a handful of family friends and former colleagues who I knew had an industry perspective to bring to the documents.  This is the part that can sometimes be painful.  There may be things that you include that they think are completely irrelevant.  It may seem odd, but at this point these documents start to feel very personal.  For example, I had a few people suggest I take my Associate Degree off of my resume.  It took some time, but I eventually understood exactly where they were coming from.  In the end, I chose to keep this section.  However, the criticism offered by my reviewers showed me how employers would read my resume and taught me how I wanted to sell myself to them.  This sections inclusion was thought out and I knew exactly how I wanted to present the information in an interview situation.  As always take this criticism for what it's intended, friendly advise that you sought out .

The first place to start is most definitely your careers service or job boards- or equivalent - at your school.  .

Especially in this economy these job fairs are incredibly busy and crowded with people with much more experienced than a recent graduate. 

This illustrates the value of your schools, college, university local job fair.  The companies in attendance are looking for college/university graduates, and the only people you have to compete with are the same classmates you've been competing with all along.  It's a more comfortable experience, and probably more rewarding.

A great piece of advice, for any profession, is to make a professional website.  With employers using LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook to help them wade through resumes it's important to actively manage your online presence.  I handled this, by partitioning my social networks appropriately.

• Facebook is used solely for socializing, and it's privacy settings are set to reflect this; 
• Twitter, is an informal way to keep up with other young professionals, follow technologist, and post statuses about technology projects I'm working on.  I like to think of twitter as a casual professional area, and that's partially because of the culture of the site; 
• LinkedIn is used solely for professional connections;
• My website is a place to post more in-depth thoughts and write ups about projects that I'm working on; 
• And all of these accounts are tied to each other, giving potential employers a deeper look at who I am, in a way that I can manage appropriately. 

Especially as a technologist, my website has worked to my advantage in many ways.  Some people may not believe it, but I've had recruiters question me about projects I've posted on the site that I hadn't even mentioned in the interview.  My "Alcohol Project"seemed to be a favorite among the local recruiters, and was a great way to talk about a technical project to non-technical interviewers.

The single biggest advantage of creating your own site is that it gives you some control over what employers find when they google your name.  Do you really want them to find a comment on a blog you wrote in early college about the advantages of mixing certain alcohol?  Centralizing your online identity into a site you control is one way of minimizing this.  That, and set your privacy settings appropriately on the sites you use.

There are two sites I used aggressively, Dice.com and Monster.com, and one I used later on that proved to be a valuable resource, Craigslist.  Dice is geared specifically toward Technical Positions, however it was my experience that they were higher level positions and weren't looking for recent graduates.  Every once in a while I would get a response to a submission I'd make, but I never received a cold call from recruiters scouring Dice.  With Monster, however, I received many cold calls from recruiters, and overall the jobs tended to be a better fit for where I was in my career.

Later on in my search someone suggested I use Craigslist.  I was suspicious of this at first, but I actually had some very good opportunities arise from it.  I uploaded a resume to each city I thought I'd like to live in, removed all sensitive information, and within a few days I was receiving emails from potential employers.  Some were worthwhile, and some not so much, but regardless I think it's a powerful tool I could have made more use of.

MONSTER, REED, TOTAL JOBS are other websites that I and others have found useful too.

All of the previous steps mean nothing without persistence.  "Luck is the residue of design" - John Milton

These were just some of my experiences, but they may be useful for others in the future.  I hope they are to you, and best of luck in your job hunting.