Job Interview Attire – 7 Tips to Look Your Best Dressed in a Job Interview
Your job Interview attire is extremely important and can go along way towards determining your Interview success and failure. It helps the interviewer to create their initial impression of you and you want to create the right one! If you don’t take the time to make yourself presentable for an interview, will you take time over your work to make sure its to the right standard.
These are the sort of questions Interviewers will be asking themselves based on your job Interview attire. Therefor its important to get your Job Interview attire correct. We are going to cover seven tips to make sure your Job Interview attire is creating the right impression.
Tip 1: Wear a neat, tailored suit or dress.
Assuming its appropriate for the position you are applying for a suit or dress is the best way to go, if you are buying a new suit (first time buying a suit) its a good idea to take someone else with you to give you their opinion on how it fits.
Tip 2: Wear solid, conservative colours.
You don’t want to wear multicoloured clothes as they can distract the employer and while you may like the way it looks a lot of people won’t, you are better off going with grey, black etc. as the are neutral colours.
Tip 3: Go easy on jewellery.
A nice watch, ring, one pair of earrings (if you’re a woman) is more than sufficient.
Tip 4: Women – go light on makeup, perfume and hairspray.
Ladies don’t go overboard with makeup etc. It can be perceived that this is done to compensate for a lack of skills or experience.
Tip 5: Men – go light on cologne, and after-shave.
There is nothing worse when the smell of a mans aftershave is overpowering, even if the rest of your Job Interview attire is sport on it can be a major put off as Interviewers will have to bare their other employees in mind.
Tip 6: Overdress rather than under dress
If you’re unsur of how smart you should go in for your Interview its always better to over dress as supposed to under dress! The impression created when someone attends over dressed is far better than when someone attends under dressed.
Tip 7: Wear a smile!!
Smiling can make a big difference in your Interview success, it makes you appear more approachable and confident, your voice also has a far nicer tone to it when you are smiling.
If you follow those Job Interview attire tips your Job Interview attire will most certainly work towards creating that good first impression.
By: James P Grant
About the Author:
Executive Job Search Tips: What To Do When Your Search Isn’t Working
There is often nothing more frustrating than spending many hours each day searching for a job only to find that your hard work doesn’t seem to be paying off. Even though you’re probably aware that executive job searches can take some time, you might feel frustrated by the amount of time it seems to be taking.
While you can’t do anything to guarantee a dream job interview tomorrow, you can certainly take a look at your approach to make sure that you’re doing everything you can to appear a viable, effective candidate. So if your executive job search isn’t quite panning out, here are some tips to keep it going.
Make Some Unique Adjustments to Your Resume
If your traditional resume isn’t pulling in the attention you want, you may have the wave the red flag at the bull. In other words, you may have to say some things that may get a recruiter or employer’s attention. Try a change in your resume’s title if you’re applying online. Rather than simply restating the title of the position you’re applying for (i.e. “Executive Sales Director), you might use one that draws people in (i.e. “Executive Sales Director at 123 Trading Led Team to Record $1 Million Revenue in 2008”).
Another unique resume strategy would be to list the logos of past (or current) employers on the left-hand side of your resume. You can also show the logos from universities you’ve attended, including pictures of any awards you’ve received. These images display a powerful look at your background and qualifications, and make a large impact without words. And if you’re used to sending resumes via email, try sending yours via snail mail on quality paper to stand out.
Adding Interest With A P.S. to your Cover Letter
In a continued effort to stand out among your competition, you might also consider adding a “p.s” to your resume’s cover letter. One reason is that in this section you can add one or two tidbits about yourself that the employer may not know. Also, it will create an impression, and if nothing else is read in that important front page, the “p.s” will – in fact, it may draw the employer in first then intrigue him enough to work backwards and read the entire cover letter.
So what do you say in your “p.s.”? You may take a chance and namedrop. Use some subtelty and engage the hiring manager’s interest with something like “Contact me to find out why Dr. John Brown from Ivy League University said I’m the best Executive Sales Director he’s ever met.” You might just want to add a personal statement that explains why you’re a good executive hire for the prospective employer’s business.
Broaden Your Contact Scope
After years as an executive, you may have a healthy list of contacts to connect with as you seek job opportunities. However, if you haven’t had much success with your contact list in your job search, it’s time to make a few additions. LinkedIn and ZoomInfo are great web resources that can help you expand your list by contacting millions of professionals from every field of work and industry.
A dragging executive job search isn’t the end of the world, it just means that you may have to light a fire – better yet, a towering inferno – under your own you-know-what. By pushing passed your own limits, you’ll be able to supercharge your executive job search in no time.
Behavior Based Interview Questions
Capella University’s Career Center provides tips on answering the commonly asked behavior based interview question
Learn Writing Style – What is Technical Writing?
Technical writing, sometimes called business writing, is writing for a specific purpose and with a specific goal. Usually its goal is to inform/instruct or persuade/argue. Technical writing can really be considered transactional writing because there are two people or groups involved in the communication. One party has a clear goal to inform or persuade the other party. This is real-world writing in every sense. You may not be aware of how much it already impacts your world through textbooks, instructions, web sites, and communications from many businesses and service organizations. There are professional technical communicators but only large organizations have them and even then they are not there to do your daily work for you and that is why it is so helpful for many to take at least an introductory technical writing class.
Why is technical communication important and what will you use it for? Actually, technical writing will be used by most college graduates as a regular part of their work. It is much more likely that you will use technical writing than either academic or creative writing unless you specifically enter those fields. A few examples of why you will likely need these skills include: getting a job – preparing a resume or curriculum vitae, cover letter, application, and portfolio; doing your job – preparing memos, letters, reports, instructions, case reports, reviews, assignments, descriptions, etc.; and keeping your job – communicating with management, co-workers, peers, patients/students/public.
What separates technical communication from other forms of writing, such as academic writing? Technical communication has a specific audience and is purposeful, usually intended to solve a problem for that audience. One area that really sets technical communication apart is that it is quite often collaborative. Technical communication is also focused on readability issues, not only the use of clear writing, but also page design and graphics. The excellence of technical writing is judged by clarity, accuracy, comprehensiveness, accessibility, conciseness, professional appearance, and correctness.
There are seven principles to guide technical writing: remember your purpose (to inform or persuade), remember your audience (their concerns, background, attitude toward your purpose), make your content specific to its purpose and audience, write clearly and precisely (active voice, appropriate language to audience), make good use of visuals (good page design and graphics), and be ethical (truthful, full disclosure, no plagiarizing).
Technical communication serves both explicit, or clear, and implicit, or implied, purposes. Explicit purposes include to provide information, to provide instructions, to persuade the reader to act upon the information, or to enact or prohibit something. Implicit purposes include establishing a relationship, creating trust, establishing credibility, and documenting actions. Most technical communications are based on a problem statement which gives your document a clearly stated objective for your benefit as well as your reader’s. The problem statement defines the problem, by doing more than simply stating your topic, it goes on to explain what about that topic is at issue. For example, if your topic is career guidance then your problem could be the fact that many adults need help identifying a career that suits their strengths and abilities and the solution that your document will present is to create a comprehensive clearing house that helps people identify career paths through military, vocational training, and higher education.
By: Deanna Mascle
About the Author:
Write Resume Keywords That Gets Your Application Read
As children we often used to read stories where magical words can open caves filled with treasures or magicians using words like abracadabra… sim sim.. and magically things appear out of thin air.
Resume Keywords are the magic carpet that carry your application to the shortlisted files. It is especially important when thousands of resumes are recieved by the HR and the entire process is digitised. The sorting and shortlisting from a digitised data bank is done through keywords.
So what are the keywords and how does an electronic data bank work? Technology enables the data banks are searchable by inputting a particular word or key phrase to select suitable resumes from the huge resume data banks. The employers use specific keywords, traits or phrases which best describes the position they are seeking to fill. The search will electronically sort through the resumes and select bio data or curriculum vitae which have a high density of the keywords that match the keywords searched for by employers.
Successful use of keywords require that your resumes are rich in nouns specific to your profession or careers. You can get a fair idea of the employers use of keywords by looking at their job descriptions in the advertisement.
The broad or major keywords could be the position itself. Positions like Accounts, Finance, HR, Human Resources Management, Customer Relations, CRM, Customer Care, Marketing, Sales, Information Technology, IT, Software Development, Production Management, CEO, CEO, Profit Center Head may be the headline of the job advertisement and a good bet as an appropriate keyword.
Within these broad categories there would be further searches with more detailed keywords. For illustration a search within HR or Human Resources Management may include keywords such as:
Software recruiter,TQM, Compensation and benefits, HR policies, labour relations, Labour laws, trainer, needs assessment, performance management, performance appraisal, contracts, applicant screening.
So make your resume rich in keywords. Here you have to do a little bit of work. You need to research keywords specific to your career or profession. A good place to start is to collect all the advertisements and job posting online for positions similar to yours. Make a list of all the job descriptions, industry jargon, qualifications, expertise required, product knowledge and related terminology.
You have built up a list of keywords specific to your indusatry. Now all you need to do is pick up the appropriate keywords that goes with your own profile and sprinkle them liberally throughour the Resume.
While keywords are searched throughout the resume, it is still better to have a higher density in your opening Summary or Objectives. It is suggested by experts that about 25 to 30 keywords in a resume is sufficient to get shortlisted for human scanning.
Use this powerful technical secret to get more interviews. As in most things in life it is a numbers game. More the number of interviews, better the chances of landing your dream job.
