I can happily say I’ve met one of my major goals for 2019 – finding a new job.  My job hunt started off slowly at the beginning of the year – I wanted a new job but I didn’t want it badly enough.   I didn’t invest the effort or discipline into this goal that it needed.  Then July rolled around and my role was “disestablished” (which is a nice way of saying the company I worked for broke up with me).  This goal suddenly became my highest priority.

With the job hunt now behind me I wanted to share some of the things I learned during my job search:

Tailor your CV.  Everyone tells you this because it’s absolutely true.  It took me a few iterations to get my CV and cover letter to a point where I got A LOT of call backs:

• I re-wrote my CV incorporating snippets from a number of different job advertisements.
• I removed my job title from my cover letter.

I now had a solid baseline CV that I only needed to tweak slightly for each role.  My CV and cover letter now contained language and keywords that both humans and machines were looking for.  Also, I no longer boxed myself into a specific role by removing my title from my cover letter.

Know your CV.  Having a great CV will get you through the door but once you land the interview, you have to KNOW your CV and be able to confidently back up EVERYTHING in it.  You can be sure they’ll be a jerk in at least one of your interviews that wants to pick apart your CV and try to trip you up. 

Stand out.  I have a somewhat unusual hobby, cheese making, which helped me stand out against other candidates and became a talking point in a large portion of my interviews.  I built a story around my hobby to tie some of the skills used in this hobby into what I bring to my professional life:

• My enjoyment for being very precise and measured with temperatures, quantities and timings.
• The creative outlet of turning a cheese into something unique through experimenting with different rubs, brines and maturation times.
• The patience needed to wait out the maturation time and not cut into my cheeses too early. (Something I’m still working on.)
• The persistence needed. Not all my cheeses are successful – some have been complete failures – but I enjoy the process of cheese making.
• Being honest about my failures in cheese making.

Diversity is a myth – you must fit the mold.  At best, diversity is limited to ethnicity and gender. A lot of hiring managers aren’t looking for talented individuals or free thinkers.  They’re looking for someone who fits the mold of their existing employees.  If you don’t fit the mold you’ll be passed over as not having the right background, experience or not the right “cultural fit”.  In an interview setting you need to quickly size up the interviewer and identify the mold.  You may need to downplay your personality if it isn’t a perfect fit.  (I recognize this is a contentious point – if you can’t be yourself in a role then the role isn’t a good fit for you.  Unfortunately it’s not that clear cut though when you’re out of work and don’t have an income.)

Click to move forward.  I can’t stress this enough – if you don’t click with the interviewer, you won’t make it to the next stage in the process so find a way to connect with the interviewer.  Connecting with the interviewer won’t guarantee you move to the next stage, but if you don’t connect, you can pretty much kiss that role goodbye.

Practice interviewing.  I was terrible at interviewing and missed out on some great roles because of it.  My interview skills were very rusty and I lacked confidence.  I’d interviewed candidates as a hiring manager but was woefully unprepared for the reality of being a candidate.  Some questions tripped me up because I wasn’t expecting them, but the biggest challenge I had was that my technique wasn’t polished. Some of the common questions I was asked are:

• What sort of company/culture do you want to work for?
• Describe someone you didn’t work well with
• Describe someone you enjoyed working with
• Strengths
• Weaknesses
• What is an achievement you’re proud of?
• What is something you were involved in that didn’t go well?
• Have you received feedback that you didn’t agree with?
• Have you ever had to deal with an under-performing employee/peer?

Ask for feedback.  Each interview was an opportunity to improve my interviewing skills.  In addition to reflecting on my performance on the way home from an interview, I asked the interviewer for feedback as the interview wrapped up.  I didn’t ask the question like an eight-year old, “So how did I do?”  rather I asked the grown-up version, “Based on our discussion today, do you have any concerns about my ability to do the role?”  This question puts the interviewer on the spot and some people might find it confronting so use your judgement about whether to ask the question or not.  Benefits I got from asking this question:

• The interviewer revealed skills they were looking for that I hadn’t demonstrated.  I made a point to cover these in future interviews.
• The interviews identified lingering concerns.  I was able to address these directly before the interview wrapped up, and also provided these to my referees as areas to cover during the reference check.

My advice in a nutshell:

• Don’t work for one company for too long.  Your skills will still become stale even if you move through business units or are promoted within the company.  This includes your interviewing skills so….
• Get out there, talk to recruiters and go to interviews even if you aren’t seriously looking for a new job.  You don’t want to find yourself desperate to change roles but stuck at the interview hurdle.  Interviewing is like any technical or soft skill – if you don’t use it you will become stale and rusty.
• Have a handful of stories that speak well to who you are as a person and to your experience.  Know these stories inside and out.  Use artificial pauses when telling these stories to simulate the thought process so that you don’t sound over-rehearsed.

Photo: A lazy Sunday morning walk along Tindalls Beach in Auckland.