What's Best Next

You are here: Home / Archives for 2 - Professional Skills / c Career Navigation Skills / Job Finding

Job Searching During the Coronavirus Economy

by

At least 30 million have become unemployed since mid-March. Suddenly, job searching is very relevant.

To help seniors at The King’s College who are launching their careers in the midst of these economic conditions, I wrote a series of articles a few weeks ago on King’s 101 (our website for making the most of King’s).

The principles in these articles are helpful for anyone looking for a job, at any stage in their career — not just college students. One of the articles also highlights positions from 75 companies that are hiring right now. Those companies have many positions beyond entry level, so that may be especially worth checking out for anyone doing a job search right now.

Here are the articles. Please also pass them on to anyone you know who could benefit:

 

 

Coronavirus and Your Job Search

by

My full-time job is to help students at The King’s College launch their careers. So I’ve been paying attention to how this Coronavirus pause is going to be affecting their job search.

This is one of the most helpful articles I’ve seen so far. It’s concise and insightful. It’s from The Muse, which is one of the best career development websites out there.

So if you were already in the middle of a job search when this Coronavirus pause hit, this article can be of use to you. Or, if you have found yourself out of work because of the economic hiatus we are on, these may also be of use.

The article is called What Does the Coronavirus Pandemic Mean for My Job Search? Here is a fantastic except:

As companies move to remote work to fight the coronavirus pandemic and an increasing number of workers are being laid off or furloughed, you might be wondering if you should continue to send out resumes or just assume that no one is hiring for the foreseeable future. It’s true that economists are predicting a recession, but career experts say it’s best to keep networking and applying, provided you change your approach a bit to acknowledge these are uncertain times.

“Companies might not be hiring today, because they’re trying to figure out how to do business virtually, but they will be hiring,” says Danielle Beauparlant Moser, managing director and executive coach with bltCareers in Asheville, NC “The people who continue to relationship-build and share their ideas will be in a better position when companies start hiring.”

Productivity with Your Resume

by

One crucial aspect of productivity is getting into the context where you can be the most productive—which means getting the right job. When it comes to the job hunt, resumes are still an essential tool.

So here are six resume dos and don’ts from Brian Brenberg, chair of the program in business and finance at The King’s College. The six tips are:

  1. Don’t fudge the facts
  2. Do include jobs you think nobody cares about
  3. Don’t make spelling and grammar mistakes
  4. Do invite people to critique your work
  5. Don’t assume a good resume will get you a job
  6. Do know your resume inside and out
You can also watch him discuss the points in this video segment. Brenberg is always entertaining and insightful—the best possible combination!

A Better Answer to the Question "What is Your Greatest Weakness?"

by

A common job interview question is “what is your greatest weakness?” (Or some variation of it.)

A common response is to answer in terms of what you are bad at or tend to overdo (but often trying to give it a positive spin by making it seem the flip-side of a strength!).

That’s an unnecessary and unhelpful route to go with that question. The reason is that it misunderstands the nature of a weakness.

A weakness is not what you are bad at. A weakness is any activity that drains you. Or, in other words, a weakness is any activity that depletes you.

Understood in this light, it is not simply the most honest thing to give a straight answer, it’s also the most strategic because you don’t want to have a job that calls upon your weaknesses primarily (for you will be unable to excel and will end every day drained). What you want to do with your weaknesses is make them irrelevant by managing around them. Adjust the position so it doesn’t generally require you to do what weakens you, for example. Or find a partner who is strong where you are weak.

Given these things, here’s an example of a good answer to the question: “What is my greatest weakness? A weakness is an activity that drains you. Understood in this light, one of my greatest weaknesses is falling behind on email. If I let my email go for a few days, I feel like I’m under a pile of nagging, unfinished tasks, and it drains my energy. [Then, you go to how you have addressed the weakness and make it irrelevant:] As a result, I have a daily process for getting my inbox to zero, and I make sure not to skip more than a few days unless circumstances really call for it. I find that as long as I make it a priority to keep my in box processed regularly (which I have a system for), I don’t have to deal with the sense of being drained from a collection of unprocessed and unknown emails.”

3 Questions to Ask in any Job Interview

by

In this down economy, a lot of people are looking for jobs. Part of the interviewing process is asking good questions of the interviewer.

Marcus Buckingham lists three questions you should always ask, and I think he’s right:

  1. What are the three top priorities for the person in this position during the next ninety days?
  2. What are the key strengths you’re looking for in the person you select for this position? How do these strengths relate to what this position is responsible for?
  3. How would you describe the company culture? Would you give me some examples of the culture in action?

First, you ask about top priorities so you can know what’s expected, especially at the start, and so you can identify if the employer has sufficiently thought through the position. If they don’t know what to expect, you won’t know what to expect. (And one of the three priorities they list will hopefully be: learn the position well.)

Second, you ask about strengths because the purpose of any organization is to make strength productive and because you will be at your best when you are in a role that calls upon your strengths. If the organization does not have this mindset, it’s a yellow flag and it may not serve you to work there. So you want to know if they think in terms of maximizing strengths. Also, you want to know if the position matches your strengths and thus if you truly are a good fit.

Third, you ask about the culture because this is fundamental to knowing your “fit” and because you want to work for organizations with a healthy culture. One of the best answers a potential employer could give to this question is: “Trust.”

And one last thing: Present your true self. First, this is right. Second, the interview will go better. Third, it won’t serve you or the company if you get the job on the basis of an inaccurate understanding of your fit for the position.