Employment

Sabotaging Your Job Prospects

If your job interview is going well, keep it to yourself. It’s probably best not to phone your parents half way through the interview to tell them how it’s going. Strange as it may seem, that’s juyst one of the crazy things that have happened in recent interviews.

British Recruitment Specialist company, Robert Half, recently released some fascinating research regarding job seekers. They named the top seven blunders from job interviews they’d researched. I wonder if you can top any of these.

1. One person brought his mother to the job interview and let her do all the talking.

2. A job applicant went to an interview with a cockatoo on his shoulder.

3. The candidate sent his sister to interview in his place.

4. After answering the first few questions, the candidate picked up his mobile and called his parents to let them know the interview was going well.

5. One candidate sang all of her responses to interview questions.

6. When asked by the hiring manager if he had any questions, the candidate replied by telling a knock-knock joke.

7. One candidate handcuffed himself to the desk during the interview.

It’s always helpful to be honest during your interview but can you be a little too honest? A few responses in interviews would suggest that sometimes it’s best to remain silent.

When asked by the hiring manager why she was leaving her current job, the applicant said, ‘My manager is a jerk. All managers are jerks.’

In response to the hiring manager’s offer to answer questions about the position, the job seeker replied, ‘What happens if I wake up in the morning and don’t feel like going to work?’

When asked what motivated him, the job seeker replied, ‘I’ve got a big house and a big car and a big credit card balance. Pay me, and I’ll be happy.’

The applicant told me he really was not interested in the position, but he liked that we allowed for a lot of time off.

Have you ever had a weird job interview? Has it ever gone horribly wrong for you or have you been interviewed by someone that has just left you scratching your head? have you ever heard of strange things happening in interviews?

On the other hand, what are your top tips for people going for a job interview? Have you found anything really helpful when searching for a job? I’d love you to share your comments.

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Just Go Home

Nov 24th, 2010

by Rodney Olsen.

Comments are off for this post

While many people can afford to be a little more conscientious at work, there’s a growing number of employees who are putting a little too much effort into their work at the expense of family, friends and relaxation.

Today is officially the day to start getting a little balance back into life. It’s Go Home on Time Day.

Go Home on Time Day is an initiative of The Australia Institute and their research gives us some very clear warnings about agreeing to last minute meetings and unpaid overtime. While they’ve focussed on the situation in Australia, it should be a wake up call for workers around the world.

Each year, Australians work more than 2 billion hours of unpaid overtime, worth an equivalent $72 billion.

For full-time workers, the average daily amount of unpaid work is 70 minutes which equates to six-and-a-half standard working weeks. Put another way, this is the equivalent of ‘donating’ more than your annual leave entitlement back to your employer.

A consequence of overtime is ‘time poverty’ or not having enough time to do all the things you need or want to do. This can have negative consequences for your physical and mental health, your relationships with loved ones and your sense of what is important in life.

If you need it, you can head to the Go Home on Time Day website to get a ‘Leave Pass’ so that you can officially head out the door at the right time today.

Are you finding that you’re giving more time and effort to your job and less to those areas of your life that really matter? Have you found yourself becoming more loyal to your boss than your family? Do you feel trapped into working longer hours without reward?

Will you be taking advantage of Go Home on Time Day to take back a little control?

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Are you exposing yourself online?

May 7th, 2010

by Rodney Olsen.

3 comments

The sacking this week of comedian Catherine Deveny following a public outcry over her tasteless tweets during Australian television’s Logies award night has again highlighted the connection between our work life and our personal online life.

Deveny used to write a column for The Age newspaper but editor-in-chief Paul Ramadge was quoted as saying, “the views she has expressed recently on Twitter are not in keeping with the standards we set at The Age.”

Passing Notes

Whether someone who was employed to be controversial should have been sacked or not while being controversial remains up for debate but her defence that Twitter is like passing notes in class seemed a little odd to me. It’s been a long time since I went to school but I seem to remember that the idea of passing notes was that you wanted information to reach a specific and very narrow audience. If you wanted to share something with the whole class there was ‘news time’. When you wanted to communicate privately you resorted to small, scribbled notes.

Twitter is not like passing notes in class, or even telling news in class. It’s broadcasting your thoughts to the entire world in 140 characters or less.

What does your online presence reveal about you?

Are you guarded about what you put online? Do you play close attention to what others are posting about you?

Your next job or your chances of promotion may be hanging on how much of yourself you’ve exposed online. 70 percent of United States hiring managers in a recent study say they have rejected prospective employees based on what they found. That means that what you consider to be a private matter between you and your Facebook friends could end your hopes of furthering your career.

We could argue all day over whether it’s fair or not but the reality is your online reputation can have a dramatic effect on your real life future. You may have been very careful with what you’ve put online via Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, your blog or whatever else you use online, but have your friends tagged you in their photo of that crazy night on the town? That image of you drunk and half dressed will be hard for a recruiter to ignore when they’re deciding if you’re a good fit for the job you want.

What’s put online, stays online.

A lot of people are of the misguided opinion that they can delete online material that casts them in a bad light. The sad fact is that there’s no delete button online. You can remove material but it’s sure to be cached and available somewhere. Removing it is still a good idea because it will make it harder for a prospective employer to find but a determined recruiter will know where to go snooping.

Research commissioned by Microsoft in December last year found that 79 percent of United States hiring managers and job recruiters they surveyed checked online information about job applicants. The interesting thing is just how deep their research goes. Check out the table below for a better understanding of what your potential boss is looking for online.

Who else is finding out about you?

While the Microsoft survey deals specifically with employers and recruiters, they’re certainly not the only people who can Google your online reputation.

You might think that your parents would never check up on what you’re doing online, and that may or may not be true, but your parents have friends who might.

A potential boyfriend, girlfriend or even a future spouse may take a dim view of you proudly describing your past ‘conquests’ online.

There are plenty of other people who may be seeking information about you. Don’t just assume it won’t happen to you. Nothing online is private. Don’t publish, or allow to be published, anything about you that you wouldn’t want splashed across the front page of the newspaper.

The other thing to consider is that identity theft is an ever increasing crime. Many identity thieves use material gained online to steal thousands of dollars from unsuspecting social networkers. I may say more on that at some time but for now a reminder that you should never accept a friend request from someone you don’t know, no matter how cute their profile photo looks.

What would I find out about you if I searched? Would there be cause for embarrassment? Do you need to spend a few hours undertaking some searching and editing?

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Retiring at 100

May 3rd, 2010

by Rodney Olsen.

1 comment

No thanks!

According to John Beard, director of the World Health Organisation’s Department of Ageing and Life Course, we could soon see people working up to the age of 100. I have no idea if I’ll still be alive at 100 but I do know that I won’t still be working. I’m hoping that if I do reach that age I’ll still be healthy and active but I think by that time I’ll be happy to let someone else have a turn at working.

“Ageing is too often portrayed as a burden on society,” he said before the Global Federation on Ageing conference opened in Melbourne on Monday.

“Sure, there will be impacts on health service delivery and pensions, but society overlooks the skills and experiences of older people.

“By marginalising them, we force them to become dependent on younger generations.”

Mr Beard, an Australian based in Geneva, envisions an older generation that is plugged in to the latest technology as people in their 80s and 90s choose to stay at work. – News.com.au

Apparently only 20 percent of retirees surveyed in a recent US study are happy about their life of leisure, saying that they’d prefer to still be working.

I know that many people say that they’d get Bored if they retired but I think they just lack imagination. I’m sure that I’ll find plenty to do when I retire. There are plenty of activities to keep me busy and more than enough good causes that could do with some help. I don’t see retirement as a chance to sit back and do nothing but an opportunity to change focus and gain more control over what I’m able to put my efforts into.

What about you? Would you want to work until you’re 100? What age do you think you’ll retire? What will you do with your retirement years?

I’d love to get your thoughts. Please leave a few lines in the comments section of this post.

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Do you hate the 9 to 5?

Apr 7th, 2010

by Rodney Olsen.

3 comments

Normally at this time of day I’d be rocketing towards work on my bike. I’d be enjoying the scenery of the Swan River as I pedaled along the bike path next to the freeway.

Today is different. In fact every day this week and next week will be different. I’m currently taking two weeks of my annual leave. I’m enjoying my break but it won’t be too much of a strain when I have to return to work. Seeing as no one has offered to pay me for 52 weeks annual leave each year I have to head back to work eventually but thankfully I enjoy my job. I wanted to work in radio from when I was very, very young and so I’m pretty much living the dream.

Unfortunately it’s not the same for everyone. There are millions of people around the world who dislike or even hate their jobs. I understand that in some places people need to settle for anything that puts food on the table for their family but there are many people, especially in developed nations, who could change their workplace yet don’t.

I wonder why.

What do you think? Why do people settle for jobs that don’t really thrill them?

Years ago there was a lot of talk about job satisfaction. Then there were many years of high unemployment and less talk about job satisfaction. People were encouraged to get whatever job they could and that was enough. Over the last couple of years we made our way through the global financial crisis and jobs were harder to find again. Thankfully, in Australia at least, employment opportunities are much better now.

Are you in a job that you enjoy? If you could do anything you wanted for work, what would you be doing? What’s stopping you from moving towards that goal? What did you dream of doing when you were young? Did that dream ever come true?

What do you think stops other people from pursuing a job they love? Let’s get some conversation going. I look forward to reading your thoughts in the comments section of this post.

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