What are the Smartest Habits of Successful Job Seekers [INFOGRAPHIC]

What are the Smartest Habits of Successful Job Seekers [INFOGRAPHIC] To be a successful job seeker, theres certain things you need to do. This infographic by LinkedIn shows 7 smart habits that successful job seekers do. Takeaways: Make sure you follow companies you follow 91% of successful job seekers used LinkedIn Company Pages for research. Grow your connections by networking or finding relevant people to connect with. 81% of successful job seekers had 10 or more endorsements. RELATED:  LinkedIn Job Search  Secrets You Probably Didnt Know 7 Smart Habits of Successful Job Seekers from LinkedIn

Make your speculative cover letter shine 5 top tips.

Make your speculative cover letter shine 5 top tips. What should you do if you would like to find a job, or work for a particular organisation, but no vacancy is advertised? How about sending off a speculative application? You don’t have anything to lose (apart from some time) and you might get lucky. You’ll need to put together a good cover letter though and here are my top tips: 1. Get a name of someone to write to. This is important. Your application needs to hit the right desk. I have seen cover letters beginning “Dear Employer,” “Dear Sir or Madam,” even “Dear Whoever”. If you address a letter like this and it comes in through a post room, how is anyone to know where to deliver it? The same is true if you send your application to a generic email address. Do all you can to get the name of someone who deals with recruitment or human resources. You can phone the organisation and ask, google it and hunt through the website, talk to friends and contacts and / or use LinkedIn to try to track down the information. If you are applying to a small organisation you can even turn up at reception. Usually persistence pays off! If you absolutely cannot get a name then at least make sure you send your letter or email to human resources; the “Dear Sir or Madam” salutation would then be best. 2. Start the letter by explaining what you want. I suggest a heading immediately under the salutation, “Application for temporary work experience/a post in….” Your first sentence can then explain “I am a (first/second) year student (or graduate) looking for a position as… This is direct and your prospective employer  will know  immediately what the letter is about. You’re going to come across as business like and your addressee might well be tempted to read further. 3. Explain what you can do for the organisation. Probably the foremost thing in your mind, as you write the letter, is what getting a post with this organisation might do for you. Perhaps it might lead to an offer of  your dream job? Maybe the experience youd gain over the vacation period could really set you up to make successful applications for graduate schemes in the future? It’s really tempting to blurt all of this out, in hopes that the putative employer will be able to see how much benefit youll gain from working in the company. Before you do this, think about your application from an employer’s point of view. Of course there are altruistic employers prepared to give you some work experience to help you out, there are probably far more who will want to think what you might be able to do for them if they take you on. So what can you offer? Perhaps you’ve already got some great administrative experience, are a whizz with Excel, fantastic at setting up social media campaigns? How might this benefit the organisation? Think through your own unique selling points and pitch your application based on how useful you could be. 4. Dont try to compare your target employer with its competitors. If you’ve been applying for graduate schemes you’ve probably mastered the need to make clear why you’re applying for a particular organisation rather than its competitors. You’ll be used to talking about awards the company might have won, the unique culture within it and its arrangements for training its graduates. Youll be excellent at explaining why all this is better than the offering anywhere else. This sort of comparison isn’t necessary in a speculative application. It doesn’t mean that you don’t need to research the organisation and show that you understand something about it and the work it does. You do. Just don’t worry about demonstrating why you chose this company, rather than another one as your target recipient. 5. Stick to the normal rules of effective letter writing. We’ve blogged more generally about cover letters before and it’s worth a look at  one or two of our  older  posts. Remember to make sure that your spelling and grammar are correct. Try not to use overlong sentences or over complicated vocabulary, you want your letter to be easy to read. Make sure that what you write complements your CV and does not simply repeat it and keep the cover letter to one page. Good luck with the application!  You may not get any success (or even a response) from some employers, dont give up or lose heart. Keep going and the chances are that youll find someone prepared to give you  work experience, youll enhance your CV and probably gain some really useful skills. With any luck youll enjoy the experience too!

Why Developing Employees Starts with Developing HR

Why Developing Employees Starts with Developing HR We speak to David DSouza who is the  Director of Membership for the Chartered Institute of Personnel Development or CIPD. They are the professional body for HR and people development. They have almost 150,000 members and his job is to make sure that they are continually improving to make sure that they continue to grow â€" but just as important that people get value from being members. So we wanted to speak to him about why the role of an organization like CIPD is important in the HR world and how and why it can help develop not only your HR professionals but your employees too. Why should employers work with you and the CIPD? We do two key things that are important for organizations and people involved in trying to get the people bit of business right. We provide content â€" we are constantly researching and developing new content to help people do their job well and to better understand the changing landscape of work. We do some really interesting stuff â€" and part of our challenge is getting that work in the right hands â€" but if you work in recruitment our work on lessons from behavioral science (for instance) would be useful reading. Secondly, we also provide community â€" helping people to debate, explore, argue, enquire and get support and I think that’s increasingly important. Why should small businesses work with you? There are a number of reasons that small businesses would work with us and the most obvious is the range of support that we can offer. If you work in a small organization you often have to bridge multiple roles and we can offer support, materials across most of the employee lifecycle (that warmest of terms…) as well as access to a community of people facing similar challenges. We also offer things like free employment advice calls to our members which can be a really useful benefit for smaller organizations. Finally, as part of membership, you get online journal access which is a great way of keeping up to date with what is happening in the industry. What talent challenges is the industry faced with? There is a rapidly changing external environment but with some embedded and enduring challenges that haven’t shifted much since I started my career in volume recruiting in retail 15 years ago. There is a skills shortage in some areas and people being seen as disposable in others. Recruiting fairly at volume is a challenge as is maintaining a high quality of candidate experience â€" and I’d include giving developmental feedback as part of that. Fair and unbiased selection remains tricky and candidates expecting a more rapid response to queries complicates things further. There is lots of tech â€" working out the right tech is a high order puzzle. What are the most common mistakes you see recruiters make? One of the most common mistakes I see recruiters make (still…) is seeing attracting the volume of applications as some measure of success rather than the quality of those applications   It was a great campaign we attracted x applications per vacancy. It is an odd vanity metric that, for me, still distracts from the actual measure of success which is quality candidates that you would be happy to have in a role. How many people that completed an application process that you actually  didn’t  want to hire is primarily a measure of how scattergun your advertising is and how much time you are wasting? Whats the one piece of advice you give to HR departments? I give lots of advice to HR departments (sort of comes with the job), but I think that the one piece of advice that most would benefit from heeding is to work the recruitment process as hard as you can to get people that care about leading. Every single time you hire a poor leader you set your organization’s performance and capability back. Organisations still don’t test or even focus enough on that capability and the sense of obligation to lead. If you want to kill an organization over time just keep hiring people that focus on themselves rather than leading well. What hard lessons can you share with us? I think the hardest lesson I had to learn over time is that no matter how different disciplines would like to be known (talent, recruitment, HR, learning and development, OD) the employee has absolutely no interest whatsoever in those niceties. The employee wants a joined-up end-to-end experience from an organization that cares and the ego-driven conversations about who sits or what functions should be called will never change that. If you are genuinely focused on your people then your job is making the whole system point in the right direction â€" not just doing your bit and then sighing when things fall down further down the chain. What are your top 3 tips to recruiters? Don’t let fancy tech get in the way of actual thinking. I get that it’s like putting a complex puzzle together and I genuinely think that recruitment is leading the way with tech adoption when it comes to people in organizations, but keep focusing on the problems to be solved â€" not the solutions being sold. Don’t tell yourself that you are doing the diversity and inclusion bit well. Work out how you are going to measure that stuff to guarantee you know you are doing it well. Look after yourself. It’s one of the most demanding and, at times, tense jobs. Take the breaks you need. It’s a relay race of sprints adding up to a marathon â€" and that is tricky. What’s your tech stack? We are a professional body so we wouldn’t endorse any vendors above another. We love them all exactly equally. I couldn’t survive my day without Twitter, Flipboard and my Mate 10 Pro (long battery life). I don’t know how I’d survive if Linkedin wasn’t available to provide me with maths puzzles and inspiring stories of people paying for other people’s coffee with no desire of recognition for their actions beyond expecting thousands of likes. Who inspires you and why? I get inspired by elegant problem solvers. My approach in organizations I worked in was always to focus on what I used to call low cost/no cost solutions because it made my teams more creative. I love seeing organizations create workarounds or use different pieces of tech together to create different outcomes. I love lazy â€" if you are lazy you find the most efficient way Connect with David on LinkedIn.

Answering What Is Your Leadership Style in an Interview - Algrim.co

Answering What Is Your Leadership Style in an Interview - Algrim.co If you’re preparing to interview for a management position, you might be getting prepared to get asked, “What is your leadership style?” This is a tough question to answer. We’re going to go through all the information you need to know in order to prepare yourself with not only answering this question but having knowledge about the various leadership styles you can choose to display. Let’s go ahead and get started. Who Gets Asked This Interview Question This interview question comes up for those who are interviewing for leadership or management positions. It can even come up for those who are interviewing as a Project Manager or Product Manager. Anyone who is accountable for a team and ensuring that a team gets their work done accurately and on time, will get answered this question. Related: 6 Underutilized Leadership Skills For The Workplace Or Resume What The Interviewer Wants To Know The interviewer wants to know that you’ve had experience leading a team. This means that if you can include a short introduction regarding your prior leadership experiences before giving your leadership answer, you’re going to exceed the interviewers expectations. Ideally, you can communicate to the interviewer that your leadership experience is part of your experience being a manager. That you know how to influence and motivate people to do their work. What Makes Up A Good Answer The ability to answer this question is quite simple. The first part is knowing what type of leader you are. And having the working history to be able to back it up. Something that relates to your resume. The second is the ability to communicate that leadership style and why it’s valuable or why it works for you. There’s various types of leadership styles, so when the interviewer asks for you to describe yours, it can be unique. The two qualities that make up a great answer are: Your ability to know your leadership style Your ability to communicate how it is leadership Related: Answering “What Are Your Leadership Examples?” In A Job Interview The Various Types Of Leadership There’s a lot of different types of leadership. And it’s optional if you want to include these styles in your answer. These are for the formal business management styles of leadership. Democratic Leadership Autocratic Leadership Laissez-Faire Leadership Strategic Leadership Transformational Leadership Transactional Leadership Coach-Style Leadership Bureaucratic Leadership For the purposes of this article and answering your interview question, we’re only going to focus on 3 of them here: transformational, transactional and coach-style. The Various Methods Of Leading From the above list we know the styles of leadership. But what about the methods of leadership? The difference is that leadership styles have a process associated to them. The methods of leadership are regarding your approach. For example, do you spend time trying to lead. Or do you let people make mistakes and then correct them afterwards? There’s a difference in those two approaches. The first is active, the second is passive. Here are the three methods you should be aware of: Passive Active Hybrid If you choose to use the fact that you are a hybrid, then you should explain that you the way you lead depends on what’s required of the job at that moment. Which is a great answer! Leading Through Accountability (Transactional vs. Transformational) The best ways to describe your leadership are through transactional and transformational leadership. These are the two easiest to remember. Transactional leadership is when you are providing someone a list of tasks and asking them to accomplish those tasks. This would be the perfect type of leadership style for those who are applying for Project Management positions. Transformational leadership is when you are providing groups of people insights in order to better achieve their work. For example, describing a challenge and ideal outcome to a team. This is the best style of leadership for those who are applying for VP positions or senior management positions. 2 Example Answers To “Describe Your Leadership Style” Below are a few example answers to “describe your leadership style” using the information that we’ve gathered from the guide. Example one I find myself having a hybrid method of leadership, both passive and active. Taking each instance of what’s required to motivate the team, uniquely. Ultimately, I am always trying to lead through transformational leadership. Helping to inform our team and align their motivations to produce ideal outcomes. This is how I’ve found myself leading in the past and doing so with good results. Example two Leadership for me is a an active method. I want to be proactive about how I can help to inform our team members. Though I recognize the difference between transformation and transactional leadership, I find that transactional leadership is best for a Project Manager because my goal is to be diligent in what the project requires and making sure each task is done on time and with the business requirements in mind.

Why you should travel before getting a grad job - Debut

Why you should travel before getting a grad job - Debut Once university is finished, social media becomes clogged with one thing: travel photos. Pictures of people backpacking in Thailand, surfing down-under and inter-railing across Europe. Travel is one of the most popular activities for undergrads once the university year is finished with. Taking the plunge yourself, however, is another matter. It can be scary to commit both time and money to something that is primarily for your enjoyment especially if graduation is looming, and your mind is clogged with nothing but the thought of what career path you’re going to take. Ive been in the exact same position and had the same worries, but I’m here to tell you why you should get booking that trip before you start work, rather than delaying it. You have more free time No matter how busy you may think your are as a student, you have the luxury of term breaks. As much as we’d like it to be, extended summer holidays simply arent a thing once you enter the working world (unless of course you’re a teacher, but we’ll ignore that point for now). With no time constraints, you can choose whatever length of an adventure that you want. You want to take a few months seeing the world? Do it. However, if you’re not sure about booking something so long, try out a shorter break. You’d be surprised how much you can do in the space of a few weeks. I myself went through Trek America, which allowed me to road trip across the northern route of the USA from NYC to Cali in the space of just 21 days. This was perfect for me, because I got an action-packed few weeks, but I still had enough time to come back in time for graduation and to apply for jobs. plus it was a lot nicer on my bank balance than a six-month excursion! No commitments to tie you down It’s not just time that you lose once you start working full-time, there are other things to consider. You may move cities for a new job. That means that if you travel whilst renting, you’d be paying for a property you’re not actually living in. Plus it can be scary to take a large amount of time off of work. There’s nothing worse than coming back off a break and watching that email count tick upand upand up. Sometimes when you’re away, you may also be tempted to check in with colleagues and wonder how the office is possibly coping without you. But, if you’re still living at home and don’t have a job (and therefore no missed emails) to worry over, then this won’t be an issue. You can go and explore knowing that study time is over, and the only thing you have to think about is where your travels will be leading you. And an extra piece of advice? Don’t do Skype interviews for grad jobs whilst you’re travelling and meant to be enjoying yourself. Especially if you have a bad internet connection at a campsite, and an eight hour time difference to contend with. Not that I did that or anything It can be a career advantage Whilst yes, your Insta feed will be the bomb by the time the trip is over, this isn’t the only thing travelling is good for. The experiences you have will be so unique that you can draw upon them in interviews. For example, if you’re travelling by yourself, this shows how independent you are. You’re navigating a foreign country and organising your travel to and from home. This is a lot of responsibility, and you can certainly relate to it! If you have any quirky stories from travelling, then these are a great conversation starter to show off your personality. Many times I’ve mentioned my unforgettable trip to the Spam Museum in Minnesota and all the facts and merchandise that’s available there. (Highly recommend a visit, 10/10.) Meet like-minded people As I mentioned at the beginning, travel is most popular with students and young people, and many companies market directly to this audience.   One way to reduce the cost of travelling is to look into group trips. Not only is it kinder on the wallet, but it’s also a lot more socialable than backpacking solo. Plus, you may very likely be placed with other young people who you’ll have a lot in common with. Drawing on my own trip, I can attest to this. During my Trek America adventure I bonded with the greatest bunch of travel buddies, and we went through a lot together. From freaking out over giant spiders in our camping tents, to saving some civilians who fell into a river during our white-water rafting session. I could tell you more, but then this would end up being a dissertation. We’ve all stayed in touch, and will in fact be meeting up very soon! If you’re looking for people who are similar both in terms of age and interests, then going travelling as a student is definitely a must. So if you’re still teetering on that decision on whether to travel now or later on life, we say don’t wait. Go see the world, whilst there’s nothing here to keep you tethered! Download Debut  and  connect with us on  Facebook,  Twitter  and  LinkedIn  for more careers insights.