Interview Answers for Tough Questions - What To Say If You've Been Fired, Laid Off, Or Out Of Work

By Don Georgevich
 

Job interview questions are impossible to answer when you feel angry about being fired, guilty about being laid off, or depressed about being out of work. Your emotions are going to work against you in the job interview.

The best thing to do is keep a clear head and have some prepared answers!

We all know that the unemployment rate is soaring, and it's true that layoffs are common, but it doesn't seem so common when it happens to you. You probably feel like you have a lot of explaining to do.

You have to explain why you were fired. You have to explain why you were the one laid off in your department. You have to explain why it's taking you so long to find work. You have to explain why there is a gap in your resume.

The best way to explain your situation in a job interview with a potential employer is to be honest, but brief.

Did I mention brief? Brief is the key. Rambling on and on will get you in trouble. You'll get tongue-tied and say the wrong thing. Rambling is a beacon to your interviewer that you are hiding something.

And there's really nothing to hide. Just explain yourself clearly, be honest, be brief, and be prepared with the best answer.

Avoiding the Resume Black Hole

Astoundingly, 75% Resumes are Overlooked

If you are like most people you have applied to and uploaded resumes for dozens of jobs and heard nothing back.  This is generally referred to as the "Resume Black Hole".  But don't lose hope, there is a solution.

The root of the "Resume Black Hole" problem is a piece of technology called an Applicant Tracking System (ATS).  The ATS was designed to streamline the flow of applicants for companies.  This is accomplished by having a central place where all applications and resumes are warehoused.  If you are applying to jobs online and uploading your resume it is surely landing in an ATS.

Interviewing and Credit

Image by Casey Serin via Flickr

We talk to thousands of job seekers every week and we hear first hand how the economy has impacted them directly.  Most of us know people who have been hit really hard.  This is why I was floored when I came across a recent article by Lisa Pulliam Weston who writes for MSN Money and The Los Angeles Times.

She writes, "Many employers -- including the federal government -- routinely scour credit reports on current and prospective employees to help decide who's hired or fired."  So regardless of your desire to find a public or private sector job, most companies are using your report as factor prior to making a job offer.

** Update:  Some states are considering banning this practice.   As of now it is still legal and a matter of practice at most companies.

Companies and the federal government routinely check credit but this recent downturn in the economy has made maintaining a positive credit score more difficult. The Society for Human Resource Management reports 35% of companies pulled credit on current or potential employees last year, up from 19% in 1996.

Most people think their credit will not be a problem, however, credit files can contain correctable errors.  Employers are looking for severe marks on your credit history and will generally overlook a few late payments.

Not knowing what is on your credit file is a gamble you should not take. There are many steps you can take to improve your credit and remove items that are old or not accurate.  It all starts with knowing what your credit looks like. Mrs. Pulliam suggests checking your credit a few times a year.

Cheers,
Mike

Now is the Time To Get a More Prestigious Job

More job seekers get new and better jobs in the first few months of the year than at any other time of the year.

You may be pleased to learn that the first few months of the year are typically the months where qualified professionals most often "move up" in terms of the prestige level of their jobs. Now, before we get too far into 2010, is a once-a-year opportunity that will be over before you know it.

As I am sure you are aware, the job market has been improving a great deal since the beginning of the year and thousands of peoples have "moved up" and found great positions-even those who were formerly happily employed in other jobs.

Every year after the first few months of the year I hear a surprising number of success stories:

• A large number of people "moving up" from small to larger employers with greater benefits, prospects and salaries;
  
• People getting jobs in their dream cities;
  
• People finding their dream job with one or more of the following: fewer hours, a better work environment and more interesting work.
  
  

What Can We Learn From Marc Cenedella, The Founder of TheLadders.com

Announcing a new event where Marc Cenedella, The Founder of TheLadders.com, will be joining us to discuss entrepreneurship. TheLadders.com is the world's leading and largest online marketplace for $100K+ jobs and $100K+ job seekers. It's also the 3rd largest job searching site after Careerbuilder and Monster. TheLadders.com has received numerous accolades including the 2009 Webby Award for Best Employment Website, 2009 Best Companies to Work for New York, 2009 Silicon Alley Award - Most Likely to be Worth $1 Billion and "Best of the Web" designations by BusinessWeek and Forbes.

You Need to Bring a Singular Focus to Everything You Do

Career Tip of the Week

Those who do one thing well are more valuable and wanted than those who can do many things not so well. This is what separates those who make the biggest impact from all the others who are just as smart. Any person or group of people who achieve greatness in any calling generally do one thing in the best possible way. Bring a singular focus to your job search and do what you do as well as it possible can be done.

Be Ready to Take Risks

Career Tip of the Week

Are you stuck in a job which is not satisfying? Many employees hate their present jobs, but they stick to them because they feel changing jobs is tremendously risky for their careers. But remember: To grow in life, one needs to explore opportunities and be positive. So, take risks and get going!

Avoiding the Resume Black Hole

Astoundingly, 75% Resumes are Overlooked?

If you are like most people you have applied to and uploaded resumes for dozens of jobs and heard nothing back.  This is generally referred to as the "Resume Black Hole".

If you do not know how to beat the Resume Black Hole chances are your resume can be overlooked.  The root of the "Resume Black Hole" problem is a piece of technology called an Applicant Tracking System (ATS).  The ATS was designed to streamline the flow of applicants for companies.  This is accomplished by having a central place where all applications and resumes are warehoused.  (Climber.com helps solve this,  please continue on.)

To further compound the issue, ATS's are only 65% to 80% accurate in reading the information in your resume. This means that one-fifth to one-third of the time the ATS is just plain wrong in importing data wholly and properly into the ATS.  If your resume makes this cut, the ATS then screens and ranks your resume against open positions.

Next, resumes that pass the ATS screen are generally sent to a gatekeeper who spends about 30 seconds reading the resume before they decide to move it along to the Recruiter or Hiring Manager or pass it along to the trash can.  About 1 in 10 resumes are passed along to the decision maker who decides if you will be interviewed.

Here are a few more tips:

   1) Job Fit: Make sure the job fits.  Especially in today's tough job environment, it is even more important to make sure that you have the skills and background required for the job.

   2) Join other networking sites like LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter:  Each offer tools to interact with recruiters and hiring managers.  These are great ways to start open dialogs and ask for a recruiters assistance in routing your resume.

Cheers and good luck in your career,
Mike

Plan out your career before doing anything

Career Tip of the Week


You need a plan for your overall life and career that you are seeking to accomplish. People without an overall strategy for their goals never rise very high. Set a strategy for both your personal as well as professional objectives

Continue the Communication Process

Job Tip of the Week

A little-known job search secret is that a significant percentage of people get jobs each year using non-traditional methods to communicate with potential employers. Communication is key. Once you interview with a company-or even send in a resume-you do not have much to lose by communicating further. For example, calling before sending a resume is a great way to get the employer’s attention. Calling after an interview to reaffirm your interest is another great way to get an employer’s attention. Making sure you remain on the employer’s radar with a series of notes (even if you end up getting the job six months from now) also helps a lot.

10 Secrets for Searching for a Job During a Recession

Focusing your efforts on jobs in growing industries and demonstrating how your work has generated revenue are just two simple ways to distinguish yourself from the rest of the job seekers competing for positions in a down economy. 

If you're tired of struggling to find a job and don't want an economic slowdown to hurt your chances of landing a new one, follow the best practices outlined in this story for conducting a job search when times are tight.

Identify New Ways of Job Search

Career Tip of the Week

Questioning assumptions, consistently doing new things and finding new ways to search are among the most important things one can do in a job search. The more you embrace new methods of looking for jobs, the better off you will be. Your job search and your career are too important to allow yourself to be stuck in one way of thinking. You need to open your mind and ensure that you do everything within your power to think about your job search in a way that gives you more opportunities and not fewer.

How The Recession Has Changed Hiring

Image by Getty Images via Daylife

I suspect hiring managers everywhere could tell you exactly when the economy really imploded: Last fall, I started to see dramatic differences in the hiring process from the employer's side. Everyone knows how the recession has impacted job seekers--there are fewer jobs and lots more competition--but here's what it looks like from an employer's side.

Explaining Job Hopping to Potential Employers

Career Tip of the Week

While there is nothing wrong in changing jobs for better career prospects, making too many moves in a short span of time can impact your ability to get a job. Job hopping can be a huge red flag on your resume because it leads employers to question your commitment. You hence need to be very careful that the reasons you cite for job move make sense to employers. Whatever your reasons for moving, or whatever be the number of moves you have made in your career, you need to convey to prospective employers that you are a stable and dependable employee.

Don't be a Dabbler - It's All or Nothing

Career Tip of the Week

Persistent pursuit of something you believe in, against all obstacles, is one of the most important keys to success. The secret to being incredibly good at everything is pushing through and getting better and better when others around you are quitting. Even while hiring, employers want experts and people who are the best at what they are doing-they do not want dabblers. They want to hire the person who is incredibly committed to a job and has persisted against odds in one direction when others have given up.

How to Get the Attention of Employers

By Rob McGovern

Are employers ignoring you because you aren't appealing to their new recession-oriented mindset?

In the past 6 months virtually every employer has transitioned to a new candidate evaluation mindset, although sadly most job seekers haven't adjusted to this "new normal." A few job seekers have figured this out and it is the secret that is getting them hired.

In this email I'm going to tell you how to make this necessary adjustment to your job search, with the goal of dramatically improving your odds of landing a job.

The "New Normal"

The biggest change in today's job market is that almost every "open" position is now a "replacement hire." Meaning, unlike boom times when jobs were created due to growth (e.g., "let's add another position because we can't handle all these orders"), the job openings you are looking at today are the result of someone leaving a company. They were fired, transferred, retired, or voluntarily left the company. When the job market gets into this mode, the nature of hiring decisions change dramatically.

What's the biggest difference?

In a "replacement hire" market, employers are focused on hiring impact players. To use a sports analogy, if you lose your star running back in midseason, you don't think about waiting for next spring's college draft. Rather, you head straight to the free agent market to hire the best impact player that's available today. Employers are in the same mindset. Getting approval to hire someone has become extremely difficult for managers, so when they get the green light they want to make sure it's a great "game-changing" hire.

Now for the advice

During times like these, the theme of your job search needs to be that you are an impact player. This feeling and message needs to permeate everything you do, from your resume and cover letter, to your interview responses, to your thank you note; the employer needs to feel that you are an impact player. They want to know that hiring you will lead to an instant improvement in their department. That means you need to convey confidence, self-assurance, and a message that you can step into the job and immediately make a positive impact on their business. Here's what it might sound like in an interview session:

Hiring Manager: Why do you want this accounts receivable position?

You: I'm confident that I can help you quickly reduce the amount of overdue invoices you have. I have six years of accounts receivable experience, and I would expect that you'd start to see results in the first week after me starting in the job. I'm not someone who is afraid of hard work, and digging into a new challenge is something that I relish.

Hiring Manager: How would you go about doing that?

You: On my first day I'd start a triage process, where I'd rank the outstanding invoices by size and age. If you're like most companies, 80% of your outstanding collections is attributable to 20% of your customers. Next I would create an action plan for each client, and immediately start making collection calls...

As you can see, this is a much different interview style than answering questions with cliché's like "I'm a fast learner and a good team player." My suggestion is for you to reread your resume and cover letters, think back to your last interview, and ask yourself whether the employer would think of you as the best free agent on the market, or just another job seeker

If the answer is the latter, you've got some work to do. (If you need help with your resume, check out Jobfox's resume writing service, it's one of the most popular resume writing services on the Internet.)

Best of luck with your job search,

How to answer the "Why You?" Question

by Rob McGovern

Recently I interviewed "Bob" for a job at Jobfox. His first response told me he doesn't "get" the new normal job market. I asked him why we should choose him for the job, and he answered, "Because this position would give me an opportunity to learn a new skill set, as well as work for an exciting high-growth company."

Huh?

We should pick you so you can learn and do exciting things? Did someone give you the idea that we were a benevolent university that paid people to learn and have fun? Virtually every corporation's charter states that the company exists to make profits for its owners. The fact that people have fun and learn things is extraneous in this job market.

The mistake this job seeker made was employing a 2007 job seeker's attitude. Back then it really was all about the job seekers, and employers pitched you on why you should join an organization. Now, it's reversed. Your objective is to convince the employer that you can help them achieve their business goals.

Bob would have been much better served by responding to the "Why you?" question with, "I think I'm the best qualified person to come in and solve your Web analytics problem. Not only do I have three years experience using your chosen Web tool but I'm also willing to work long hours and to commit myself to this position." With this response Bob would have positioned himself as the answer to the problem the employer was trying to solve.

This change of tone and approach should permeate every communication you have with a potential employer. For example, the objective statement in your resume should talk about what you can do for the company, not what you want for yourself. The same goes for your cover letter, follow-up letters, and phone calls. When the hiring manager is interviewing you for a position, he or she needs to feel like they can just plug you into the departing person's desk and the problem will be solved.

I hope you find this information helpful as you tune your job search.

Referrals Can Change Your Employment Situation

Career Tip of the Week

When you start on a job search, the most important tool you can equip yourself with is referrals from influential people. During the interview process they ensure that you are trusted more and salary negotiations are favorable. Even after getting a job, chances of promotions and raises are higher if you’ve come armed with strong referrals.

There are several powerful job search tools such as websites, mass mailings, and talented recruiters, but there is nothing more powerful and effective than a recommendation from a person of influence. You need to nurture such connections because they could change your life and your employment situation in an instant. Never burn any bridges.

Employment and Your Credit Score

Image by Casey Serin via Flickr

 By Mike O'Brien

I was floored when I read a recent article by Lisa Pulliam Weston who writes for MSN Money and The Los Angeles Times.

She writes, "Many employers -- including the federal government -- routinely scour credit reports on current and prospective employees to help decide who's hired or fired."

Companies and the federal government routinely check credit but this recent downturn in the economy has made maintaining a positive credit score more difficult. The Society for Human Resource Management reports 35% of companies pulled credit on current or potential employees last year, up from 19% in 1996.

Most people think their credit will not be a problem, however, credit files can contain correctable errors.  Employers are looking for severe marks on your credit history and will generally overlook a few late payments.

Not knowing what is on your credit file is a gamble you should not take. There are many steps you can take to improve your credit and remove items that are old or not accurate.  It all starts with knowing what your credit looks like. Mrs. Pulliam suggests checking your credit a few times a year. Follow this link for a free credit check: http://www.climber.com/url/kTZ4S37401365


Cheers,
Mike

Communicate relevantly with people

Career Tip of the Week

One of the biggest secrets behind successful marketing is communicating relevantly with people. The more the relevance in communication, the more people are willing to respond. Going the traditional way to communicate does not always work. Understanding your audience's needs is of prime importance and it works wonders connecting with them in a personal way. You need to bridge the gap that exists and reach out in the most genuine manner. People need to trust your interest in their well being and only when this happens, will serious communication take place.