Getting the job(s) you want - 3

Okay, so putting yourself out there, networking, being yourself and chasing your motivators are the main pillars of getting to the job you want. However, how do you get into the job you want? That is what the final post of this series is going to be about. This post is about the point that you have found the job you want, you know that you are qualified for it and you are finally going to apply for the vacancy or invitation from the company.

Most of the people that are going to apply for a job, are doing so after receiving a job description or a fully described vacancy. When you apply for a certain function, the chances are high that you will first have a conversation with HR, which stands for Human Resources. At this point, these are the people that are just checking whether you fit the company and the team, since they know the human resources well and are trained to analyze possible future colleagues. Suppose you do well in this stage, then you will be admitted to the next stage which can be multiple things, namely a type of assessment, a conversation with an employee that holds the same function as you or a conversation with the manager of the team will follow. Most of the times it is the first two. The latter mostly happens as the final step of the procedure. Sometimes, all of those steps happen.

In the initial step in which you will talk to HR, it is important to keep in mind that they will not necessarily know function-specific knowledge, which means you will have an edge over them if you sound very knowledgeable. However, many people make the mistake of underestimating the recruiter at this point. There is a strong reason for why it is not a member of the team or the manager you are speaking. HR managers have a lot of human-knowledge, which means two things in your case. First of all, they know the structure, the type of people, the organizational culture and the teams very well. But the most dangerous part is that these are the people that will be able to analyze you as a person. While they are asking you about basic stuff i.e. your salary wishes, your goal in life, your preferred growth opportunities etc., they also assess whether you are a good fit to this role through those same questions.

All the answers you give will be analyzed by them. For example, if you would profile you like a growth-focused guy that cares less about his salary, yet would like to grow into a management function within the next 2 years, then HR can typify you as an ambitious aspiring manager that does not want to be in the function he is applying to for too long. The same goes for the vibe that you give in the interview. To improve your chances in this stage, the best things you can do are:

• Know the team you will be working with, both historical background and the type of person they are (through LinkedIn incognito or somewhere else).
• Know the vacancy very well, meaning you need to know what they want, who they want and in what kind of language they speak (use a wordweb generator to find out what words they use the most, and would like to hear the most).
• Be able to present yourself (in general) very well! In this stage, people would like to know who you are and what you can mean to them; the best way to do so is by presenting yourself well as a good beginning of the conversation.
• Prepare questions that popped up during your research; recruiters will often ask whether you still have questions and you should always have one as it shows your interest in the company and function! It can be very simple, but I mostly focus on relating questions to either their mission/vision or some special project of them.

So after this stage, we can have an assessment, a follow up conversation with the manager or a conversation with someone enrolled in the function that the vacancy described.

In terms of the assessment, my biggest tips are:

• Prepare yourself well knowledge-wise! Try to look up the assessment or something alike online. Most of the time you can find the conducted assessments online if you just look up the platform from which the assessment conducted. If this does not exist, then simply try to practice the individual assignments that you will get in an assessment. Most of the time you will see that they test numeric logic, spatial awareness and verbal skills.
• Do not forget to prepare yourself both mentally and physically as well! An assessment is a one-time measurement, and that is quite unfair if you think of it. Use that to you advantage though! Many people will make this assessment with a (slight) lack of sleep, background noise or just with not enough energy. Do not be like that! Sleep well, eat well and find a good place to make the test.

As for the conversations with the manager or anyone that has the same function as the vacancy describes, my tips are mainly:

• Get to know the person! Stalk them on LinkedIn and any other professional source. Look up their projects, see what they are interested in and try to know the person from the inside out. This might sound like a lot, but the benefit of this is that whatever questions they will ask, you will be able to link your answer to them. This is called frame of reference-building. Psychology shows us that people feel more comfortable when you speak their language. One of the ways of getting into their language is adapting to their frame of reference.
• Get to know the team, the culture and the current projects that the department is working on. Learn what these projects entail, what parts of the puzzle they are solving and missing, and then also try thinking what you and your specified experience can add to that. The same applies to the team and culture. Try to use very factual information. Do not nodd the whole time and try to be critical. Show that you know what you are there for and why you are going to ace the function.
• Think about why you out of everyone are really that interesting. What extracurricular thing of yours, that is not described in the vacancy, can lead them to finding new innovations? Learn how to sell yourself on the technical level. Even if HR was easy, do not underestimate the manager or team-members because they will have knowledge on the technical level and ask you a lot of questions. Prepare for this by studying the projects they do as I mentioned before.

I cannot guarantee you with all these tips that you will get the job you want. In fact, there is way more to it than this. If anything, this is only 5% of what I learned and teach to others when applying for job offers. There is still so much that I would like to write about, yet at the same time I would like the posts to be diverse, therefore I have chosen to finish this series with this article. The other 95% will gradually show up and be built up as time progresses. Nevertheless, these are actually the tips I value the most, even though most of them sound like a cliché. Do not overlook them, try to think of why I have chosen specifically these out of all other tips I could choose. If you do that, you will automatically be more reflective during your process.

I hope that I help at least one of you in finding your preferred job, optimizing your job search or maybe even finding yourself. If anything, I hope that you will see yourself gradually improve over time using any of these tips. Be yourself and rock it, I will always be the one saying that you can do it. I do not say that to motivate you, but I say that because I simply know you can. I have seen many people, ranging from age differences to ethnic differences and many other parameters. In the end, all of those people found a job. I know you can do that to. Stay strong and keep it up!

Follow your dreams and Never lose focus,

Harry T.