Not so much a ‘mini-lecture‘, this, as a ‘Mega-Masterclass‘ in how to attack a three-layer, Eiffel Tower of seafood [our French neighbour Dany in action in our favourite fish restaurant in the South of England].

Anyway, as I have done quite a lot of mini-lectures on this topic which are also cited independently on other ‘Candidature’ pages , I thought I would try to put them all together here for ease of access.

I will do this in an order based approximately upon chronology, running from positioning yourself in the market and post research, through the entire process through to interview and continuing professional development…

Context.

Understanding the recruitment and selection process from the employer’s side.  You’ll be a better application and interviewee if you know what is on their minds… and it doesn’t take much to appreciate what this might be: to find:

• the best candidates (Effectiveness):
• with the least effort and urgently (Efficiently)
• at a lower cost (preferably the lowest) (Economically)

I’m not actually going to give you a video here as my first task for you will be to get you to look at it and draw your own conclusions…. let’s call it ‘learning by doing‘…

Positioning Yourself Proactively.

 Putting yourself ‘out there‘: LinkdIn, social networks etc.  Why wait for an employer to set a job offer in front of hundreds or thousands of other ‘eyes’ via recruitment agencies etc and face heavy competition for the post….?  Employers may not want to bear the cost or the time of such a recruitment process – they may well find it easier, quicker and of lower cost to look in what they consider to be the ‘right‘ places where they calculate that the best candidates have taken the effort to position themselves ready for an employer to apprach them.  Roche in Switzerland, for example, have set up a system by which job offers can be produced and transferred direct to their own LinkdIn recruitment site. The employer thus goes direct to a very short shortlist.  The question for you is: ‘where would the type of employer I want to work for go looking?’….

Becoming a member of a recognised Professional Association.   Has major positive advantages for you as a strategy:

• most associations offer corporate and individual professional membership whuch offers initial and career-long networking and visibility prospects
• most associations attract their members by offering opportunities for individuals to post their CVs and career aspirations and enable corporate members to post new positions on offer and use the association as fertile headhunting ground.
• sets you in the top 5% (or less) – employers see individual membership as a tangible sign of commitment to the function/sector and to future self-development.

 My Video on Professional Associations

Preparing yourself for Recruitment and Selection.

Know yourself and what it really is that you want to do.   To convince an employer to hire you, you need to come over as genuinely interested in and excited by the industry and the sector so that you actually know something about it and can write and sound like a professional already.  So stand back and do some self-analysis then you can engage in research to identify and target particular employers.  Speculative or ‘general’ approaches are rarely successful…

Rehearse (before you even apply) with tools that employers are increasingly likely to use.  …. and what might they use?

• personality tests – do you know what you ‘look like‘ to an employer???
• Reasoning tests – numerical … non-verbal reasoning etc.  If they ‘spring’ one of these upon you either online or immediately before interview, will it destabilise you if you haven’t practiced (and such tests DO need some practice to perform well – trust me – and the experience of past MICAI students who have faced them!)
• Honesty tests
• Situational knowledge tests  Etc etc – you can test for virtually anything and everything!

I could go on, but  Practicalaptitudetests.com appears to offer a range of tests for free, but double check…. sometimes with online free tests you can receive the ‘result’ and a few lines in summary but payment may be required for the full feedback (i.e. what the employer would receive).  Even without the full feedback, knowing how the test works and what to expect is a valuable lesson in itself.

Job Offers: Descriptions and Person Specifications.

Job Descriptions. Easy to read this terms alongside ‘Person Specifications’, bracket them together, read them once, put them to one side then write the covering letter… BIG mistake. Ask yourself the question: WHY are employers going to so much trouble to give you perhaps 2 or 4 A4 pages of highly specific material?  They didn’t 30 years ago.  They all do now!  The day of a simple, one-line, job offer: ‘New marketing assistant post has opened up.  Would suit recent graduate », is long gone!   The only reason it can be is because they believe that you need the information to understand both the position and the person (in order to determine whether you really want to apply or not) and also to be able to ‘match’ yourself convincingly to the position (to convince them to select and appoint you).   What is the result of this?  The One- Page ‘Classic’ French CV is officially DEAD as far as graduates of degrees and Masters’ programmes are concerned.  Why?  Simply because one can never reply to more than a minute proportion of the requirements that the employer has been at pains to specify!

Person Specifications.  If the Job Description (sometimes called responsibilités in French) is about what is in the job/post/position, then the Person Specification is about what is in the applicant (beyond a history of names, dates, jobs and subjets).  Remember, your future colleagues won’t be working with what you did somewhere else at some other time: they’ll be working with you!  So it is hardly surprising that the potential employer will try to find something out about you, your character, experience, personality etc.

In either case, the Job Description and the Person Specification are THE keys to the covering letter, the CV and interview preparation – you neglect them at your peril!

My Video on Job Descriptions & Person Specifications and HOW to USE them.

Applying.

Applying for a post … or applying to be considered….?   Some employers like Airbus have developed systems where one does not immediately apply for a post which is currently available, one applies to be considered worthy to enter their database in order that you might be identified as a potentially suitable applicant for a future post.    A branch of BNP in Paris offers a ‘speed-dating‘ type service whereby potential applicants are on the end of the phone or the other side of the table for  very short space of time to be informed whether it will be worth them applying for future posts or not.   It is not as clear-cut as it once was.

My video on Digital / Database applications.

The ‘First Impression’ – The Covering Letter.  As I have frequently said: I prefer the French term ‘Lettre de Motivation‘, except for one thing – the reality that the covering letter COVERS the CV …. so if the letter is no good, then why would anyone who is pressed for time (with often many hundreds of applicants to consider) bother to turn the page to look at a cv – he /she has already seen ample evidence that justifies a decision to reject the application without wasting more time on it.  It is a wholly human response!   Here are my videos on the subject:

Writing Covering Letters that will positively differentiate you.

Think you’ve finished the Covering Letter?  Here’s my Checklist.

The Curriculum Vitae. If your covering letter (or your video-pitch perhsps) has been successful, you should have persuaded your reader to look at your CV in detail.  Obviously it has to be equally impressive, or you have effectively set up high expectations only to disappoint.  So how do you do it?   The first danger here is the dreaded TEMPLATE!  Often they might look reasonable, but they don’t permit you to use the space effectively to respond to what the employer has told you he/she wants. BEWARE the TEMPLATE!

There are different approaches to the CV depending upon the tupe of job/sector/industry, but there are also different schools of thought: standard or tailored.  I have to say that I would always go for the latter.   Here are my explanatory videos on the subject.

CV Forms and Choices

Traditional CV Form

New, ‘Tailored’ CV

Interviews …. and How to Prepare for Them

Remember, your best ally here is confidence… and that comes from having done your homework and knowing there is nothing more you could have done to prepare.  Knowing that, you can walk into interview relaxed and with confidence … and you will draw courage from seeing others in the waiting room who are scared stiff and underprepared.  Your confidence level will be visible in your body language and attitude: it ‘speaks‘ even before you open your mouth!

Here are my tips on interview preparation.

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WRAP

Just remember (as I’m sure I will have said at the outset), that job-hunting is not the Olympics: you don’t get a fabulous silver medal and lots of praise for coming second … rather you tend to be left with the frustrated feeling of being ‘so near – but so far’, so there is absolutely no point in doing anything half-heartedly: you have to GO FOR IT!

So please take on board the things I have been trying to get over in this unit and these videos.  They have helped other MICAI students significantly in recent years to really focus upon showing that you are what the organisation needs and I have had much feedback suggesting that this made the difference.

To end where I started, if one wanted to reduce Recruitment and Selection to just one word, then it would  be: ‘Differentiation‘ – that’s the name of the recruitment and selection ‘game‘ ….. but it is a very serious game … post and careers and futures hang upon it.  So take care to differentiate yourself positively at all stages: covering letter, CV, contacts with the company pre-interview and interview itself….

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